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Ask HN: Where do you hang out virtually online?
In the past, the place to be to connect with like minded people was on IRC; in particular ##java Now with Slack and Discord, I haven't found a community of folks who are building products, ideas, sharing thoughts, talking tech, talking lessons learned about growing their company, virtually collaborating on problems by sharing ideas, etc.
This has created a bit of tension mentally for me. The feeling of being caged up with no physical cage.
There was a Slack group for startups by Jason a while back, but that looks to have died off.
- mateioprea 5y agoThis is a product my colleagues are working on: https://sowork.com/ https://sowork.com/
- herval 5y agoI've been trying to get friends to join me on VRChat. Lower pressure than a Zoom call, and after a day of typing, feels good to just talk a bit from the couch. Of course, VR as a requirement has been a bit of a deterrent.
- poopsmithe 5y agoThe VR in VR chat is optional. There's a desktop mode for people without the headset.
- herval 5y agoI know :-) I constantly have to explain that
- throwaway946513 5y agoYou don't have to have a VR headset or hardware in order to join people in VR chat. I've joined friends using a standard monitor with a keyboard and mouse. Of course the name doesn't help, but it isn't impossible to join if you don't have one.
- herval 5y agoI know, that's part of what I try to tell people :-) it does require a somewhat beefy desktop/laptop though, and most folks are used to doing everything on their phones these days
- Ralo 5y agoIt works on standalone quest hardware as well, but you'll be limited to the worlds you go to, and you will usually end up using people's "fallback" avatar.
- jMyles 5y agoDoes it work well on linux these days?
- ve55 5y agoI play it fine on Linux through Steam/Proton with a Valve Index. If you have a Quest it may be quite difficult, but it should be fine without VR as well
- Ralo 5y agoIt's a great game, it's entirely community driven so it's full of personality. However it did take a bit getting used to the weird sexual aspect of it, a lot of people living out odd fantasies. If you can filter through the weirdness, there's some amazing gems. I'd highly highly recommend the 3D movie theater.
- olah_1 5y agomozilla hubs is a lower barrier to entry because you don’t need to download a whole game. You can just give your friends a link and they also don’t need VR either. https://hubs.mozilla.com/ https://hubs.mozilla.com/
- ssivark 5y agoMozilla does all these cool things, and I’m afraid they’re gonna shut it down in a year or two :-/
- herval 5y agoHubs itself seems a bit abandoned for ~1y. They laid off a large number of folks related to it back in 2020
- CarbonJ 5y agoMy understanding is that they laid off their WebXR team in 2020. The Hubs team has been consistently shipping new features, and just posted 3X new roles a couple weeks ago. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6886711377419870210-IQts https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6886711377419870210-...
- CodeGlitch 5y agoHow about old-school mailing lists? They seem to be still used by OSS teams.
- kawfey 5y agoI get about 400 emails a day from ham radio lists. It's gotten a bit out of hand, especially because we still haven't solved the problems with threading and viewing. Some will send an formatted in-line reply, others a plain-text with a thousand >>>>>>'s, others without context, all from my gmail. I do have it curated into folders but I have never found a good way to actually stay engaged. If gmail could keep topics to a single email conversation thread under one subject line (not 40 that go on like RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:FWD:FWD:REE:EEEEEE), OR if there was some sort of platform that could take all these emails (aggregate from groups.io, mailman, piper, etc) and transform into a reddit/HN/tumblr-like threaded view, I would be so happy.
- fractal618 5y agoJust reach out to people directly. Introduce yourself. Look at who's active on github, follow the trail of edits and comments until you get to developers that have similar interests. Use direct message services on linkedin, facebook, instagram. Just say "Hey that project your working on is cool".
- ziggus 5y agoIRC is still a thing, and a very popular one at that. I've found that it's a great tool for finding like-minded tech people with relatively less 'noise' than in similar Slack or Discord groups.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoI think the technical obstacle to even get onto IRC acts like a great-filter, most the people on there have an interest in it and brain cells to use technology. Unlike Discord where you can just sign up from your mobile phone...
- DoItToMe81 5y agoWhich networks do you recommend searching around in? I've not really looked hard, but the only ones I've found that are remotely active are filesharing ones.
- znpy 5y agoIRC is still great. I'm using "thelounge" (https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/) to have a pleasant IRC experience both on my laptop and on mobile.
- ozarkerD 5y ago+1 for thelounge, ui is great and it seems very stable. Been running an instance for about a year and a half with no downtime except updates
- mariocesar 5y agoI do Slack for Work, and recently lot of Discord for my many interests like Programming, Python, Cowork Spaces, Activism, Woodworking, No-Code tools, Minecraft-Parenting. And WhatsApp/Telegram for Family and close Friends
- hprotagonist 5y agoIRC, still.
- theshrike79 5y agoIRC is still there, the average age is way over 30 though. Whether that's a bad thing is for you to decide :) Some IRC channels have moved to Telegram, a few larger communities over to Discord. I still associate Slack strongly with work stuff and don't really want to have any non-work related things on there.
- hemloc_io 5y agoThe incoming message noise on slack always raises my heart rate like 5 BPM haha.
- cbm-vic-20 5y agoRecent TV ads for Slack have that notification sound. So annoying. Like police sirens in radio ads when you're in your car.
- hemloc_io 5y agoI'm so glad I'm not the only person who thinks this!
- spike021 5y agoSimilar thing here but with an alarm tone. The tone I used to get when paged while previously working for a FAANG seems to also be used for some function at a grocery store I frequent. So my BPM does the same jump every time I hear it.
- ingvul 5y agoWhy do you have sound alerts on Slack? I thought turning them off was the norm (at least in my experience). I have all the alerts turned off except the notification banner/popup.
- bleomycin 5y agoThis is definitely a positive for me. Any suggestions for channels/networks to start with? Haven’t used IRC regularly in a decade+ which coincides with me being unable to make any new online friends since then. Facebook seems to be where a lot of “older” folk have moved to but i refuse to engage with that platform.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AlwaysRock 5y agoMostly city specific slack groups or game specific discords. There are great Chicago and Missoula tech slack channels. I don't live in either of those places anymore and I'm still really active in both because they provide a lot of value to me. I don't have as good of a casual non work related hangout place though. Just Twitter generally.
- choxi 5y agoCould I get a link/invite to the Chicago one? Email is in my bio
- chrisshroba 5y agoSame if possible, <my hn username> @gmail Eager to be a part of expanding the Chicago tech scene!
- AlwaysRock 5y agolinking here for others. Will email as well. https://chicagotechslack.com/ https://chicagotechslack.com/
- AlwaysRock 5y agoLinking here for others. Will email you as well: https://chicagotechslack.com/ https://chicagotechslack.com/
- chrisshroba 5y agoThanks for posting this but for me it says: This link is no longer active To join this workspace, you’ll need to ask the person who originally invited you for a new link.
- AlwaysRock 5y agoOh no. Try this one. Just generated it. Should work for the next three days: https://join.slack.com/t/chicago-tech/shared_invite/zt-10woz2ymv-c~ydt6DLjhP9Tmaxd4SJWQ https://join.slack.com/t/chicago-tech/shared_invite/zt-10woz...
- nanomonkey 5y agoI've found that most tech these days are dog fooding their own products. I've been a happy participant on Secure Scuttlebutt for the last 5 years, where approximately a third of the conversation is about Scuttlebutt, where the protocol should be going, what's going on with each client, and coming to consensus on how to distribute funds or encourage further growth. The same thing is true for Disaster Radio, SudoMesh and other mesh networks...you use the technology to talk about the technology, coordinate growth and goof around with inside jokes. I'd be surprised if soon electric cars (...domestic robots, razor crest spacecrafts) didn't all have internal forums where folks talked about the technology itself. So the question is what are you interested in connecting with people about? Robotics clubs have a different needs for interacting than say the folks interested in the Gemini protocol.
- BostonEnginerd 5y agoSSB is a really neat project. I saw today that the Patchwork client is no longer recommended, but there don't appear to be any other equivalent frontends. Do you have any recommendations?
- itake 5y agoI think patchbay is the preferred client? But it hasn't been updated in over a year. https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay
- nanomonkey 5y agoI still use Patchwork or Patchfoo. But Manyverse is probably the more up to date and worked on client. That or Patchfox, which is a firefox plugin that uses one of the other clients (like Patchwork) as a SSB client/daemon of sorts.
- pmarreck 5y agoHow does SB compare to other options here (is this like Mastodon?)?
- 5y ago
- donclark 5y agoSuperhighway84? https://マリウス.com/superhighway84 https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/superhighway84
- rayrag 5y ago> talking lessons learned about growing their company, virtually collaborating on problems by sharing ideas, etc. I don't hang out there but you could check indiehackers.com?
- netfortius 5y agoThis reminded me of the amazing communities of the early 1990s, when comp.lang.<language_of_interest>, or sci.engr.<engineering_speclialization_of_interest>, or even the soc.culture.<country_of_interest> were places of great conversations and learning opportunities. I poked around Discord, in search of such, but never got interested to the same level ...
- aukhfauwhf 5y agoMatrix. From my point of view, most IRC communities are slowly moving. Major projects i interact with (kernel, kde, rustlang, mozilla, etc) all have "rooms" in matrix with a considerable quorum (not as good as irc, not as empty as other places)
- skinkestek 5y agoAnother vote for Matrix here. With rooms and nested rooms it starts to look a bit like the good parts of Discord but with less gamer focus. Earlier it felt like a wasteland but now it is starting to come alive. In particular https://matrix.to/#/#activitypub-community:codelutin.com https://matrix.to/#/#activitypub-community:codelutin.com is a nice overview of what happens in the federated space. (If you open it in Element, right click the icon in the left margin and click "Explore rooms") to see what I'm talking about.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> I haven't found a community of folks who are building products, ideas, sharing thoughts, talking tech, talking lessons learned about growing their company, virtually collaborating on problems by sharing ideas, etc. Twitter can be exactly this, but you have to put in some work to curate your follow list. You also have to be quick to unfollow anyone who turns out to be spammy or picking fights all of the time. If you just let your follow list grow unbounded, the quality of Twitter goes way down. If you follow and unfollow all the time, you can get a fairly interesting Twitter feed full of people sharing projects and discussing ideas.
- cblconfederate 5y agoIt's hard to participate. It's good for finding interesting ideas and people, but participating is a job on its own , since everything seems to attract the wrong people. Too public, too much anxiety
- Terry_Roll 5y agoPicking fights is a valid efficient form of communication and means of getting things done. Survival is in everyone's interest thats why country's go to war, it speeds up change.
- ehutch79 5y agoOn twitter, it's an efficient form of stirring up useless drama.
- m00x 5y agoTwitter fights are well known to turn into meaningful change. /s
- Terry_Roll 5y agoWell it got Trump into office didnt it? https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016 https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strate... https://www.channel4.com/news/topic/cambridge-analytica https://www.channel4.com/news/topic/cambridge-analytica But its not just twitter thats being manipulated and today we have algo's analysing everything making automated decisions, after all thats what cyber warfare is as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29896985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29896985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872227 https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/twitter-botnets-research https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/twitter-botnets-r... Things have got even better now since this guardian article was written. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... Look at #PartyGate with Boris Johnson for a recent example. It does make changes, the police are now forced to investigate the Govt & politicians! I dont think you realise how much people are manipulated consciously and subconsciously.
- fryingneurons 5y agoindiehackers, wip .co & tech twitter is what you seek
- habeebtc 5y agoI quite like BoingBoing bbs. You will find a mix of knowledgable on a very wide variety of topics discussing current events. Many techies, but also doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, etc.
- cuoco 5y agoUsually in this small and open source MMORPG called The Mana World: https://www.themanaworld.org/ https://www.themanaworld.org/
- sekao 5y agoI'm building my own hang out spot: https://ansiwave.net/ https://ansiwave.net/ Strictly a BBS right now, but i'm considering adding chat as well.
- themodelplumber 5y agoWhoa, that's really impressive, I like the extra touch with GitHub.
- holler 5y agoI'm currently building something like you describe over at https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im It takes inspiration from irc/aim/twitter and packages it in a way I wanted to use personally and didn't find available. Happy to discuss what I've learned through building it! (blog post imminent) https://sqwok.im/p/R6-x8BdgecDjyg https://sqwok.im/p/R6-x8BdgecDjyg
- WallyFunk 5y agoFacebook group chat with the family. Mostly dank memes and dark humour on there. It's fun posting memes with a select few people that you trust. By all means, broadcast memes to 5000 randos on your Facebook timeline, but you can't beat the personal touch of a small group chat. Plus: the memes sometimes have context for what's happening in the family at any given moment.
- standardUser 5y agoThere was a "metaverse"-style chat room in the mid-90's that I loved. It looked like a side-scrolling game that was actually a chat room, and you chose an animal avatar to interact with the other avatars. There were ways to unlock different avatars, as well as some sort of currency, but I don't recall any of the details. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It's been in the back of my mind for almost 20 years.
- discardedrefuse 5y agoThere were a few of these. But you're probably thinking of The Palace Chat. Or maybe Microsoft Comic Chat.
- standardUser 5y agoThank you for the tips! But it wasn't either of those. Looked far more refined/less chaotic. And as far as I can recall, it was not a mainstream or popular platform. I believe my favorite avatar was an anthropomorphic unicorn? And the selection of avatars was fairly limited.
- ffhhj 5y agoIMVU?
- ebbflowgo 5y agohttps://www.vibehut.io https://www.vibehut.io for 1-on-1 calls
- peruvian 5y agoDiscord + iMessage, but it's just friends and for fun. We're not building anything.
- eatonphil 5y agoMy company (just me) hosts a hacking group on Discord. Particularly interested in topics like databases, compilers, emulators, operating systems, browsers, etc. That's where I hang out! https://discord.multiprocess.io https://discord.multiprocess.io for the invite I also just started a virtual monthly hacker night where hobbyists and professionals give talks on any of the above topics (anything tech internals, really). I'm looking for more speakers. If you want to do a lightning talk or 20-30m talk let me know what you're interested in talking about! meetup.com/hackernights or multiprocess.io/hackernights/
- moralestapia 5y agoSee you there :D!
- tedyoung 5y agoI run a Discord server that focuses on the tech side (Java, TDD, Hexagonal Architecture). It supplements the things I do on my Twitch live coding stream (https://JitterTed.Stream https://JitterTed.Stream). We have weekly book study groups, an "office hour", etc. (You can DM me on Discord for an invite if interested: JitterTed#4770)
- Shared404 5y agoI like the tildeverse. An assortment of pubnixes (I run one[1]! Well, technically only me atm, but others are welcome.), and an IRC network. Edit: If one is interested, they should note that the tildeverse has a different culture than much of HN, and you should be aware of and respect that. [1] http://marvilde.cc/ http://marvilde.cc/
- danirod 5y agoAccidentally discovering that tildeverse doesn't like to be visited if following a link from Hacker News :-)
- Shared404 5y agoHm, so it appears. I'll remove said link, though I do think it's a little sad considering this is where I found it from.
- emptysongglass 5y agoCan you expand on how the culture is different?
- Shared404 5y agoI'd be happy to! The culture definitely overlaps some with HN, but the main difference I've noticed is that people on the Tildeverse rarely care how "useful" something is. I've seen some complaining about HN, especially with regards to something Tilde-related being posted to HN and then lambasted - I believe the specific example was Gemini. So in short: Part of HN lines up, part doesn't. People in tilde's tend to be more driven by software lining up with their personal ethics than on HN, and they tend to dislike anything capital driven afaict.
- gaws 5y agoHere's where you can find multiple tilde groups: tildeverse[dot]org
- LinkSake 5y agoPersonally I'm not that confortable on places like Discord and Slack since I can't keep up with the wave of messages. My replacements have been Facebook Groups, in the early days of FB they used to be so good but they fall out of fashion until recently (on my social sphere at least); some good specialty communities have emerged and they're awesome. The only reason why I keep a FB account tbh.
- netcyrax 5y agoDid you try one of the many tech subreddits on Reddit?
- tabtab 5y agoIt's too hard to cross-link on Reddit, resulting in reinventing the topic wheel. I like boards where one can use message number tags: (Ex: see message #12345), or wiki's (Ex: see topic [[great topic]]. And Reddit discussions get locked after about 7 months, resulting in yet more wheel reinventing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoanecdotally, this feels like the tenth "Ask HN" I've seen pop up in the past week that seems to be driven by loneliness. A lot of us seem to be creeping up on a breaking point.
- AlwaysRock 5y agoA multi year pandemic will do that to ya. Even if you live in an area that doesnt take it very seriously, meet ups and in office work/events are still significantly smaller or less frequent than they were pre pandemic. TBH my weekly online poker game with buddies keeps me sane.
- holler 5y agoSomeone close to me had a breakdown last night and it freaked me out... I could tell it's been building ever since the pandemic started and I sensed poor coping mechanisms were being used more frequently. I have compassion because I've felt that way too, but nonetheless it's a wake up call to be honest with those around us and talk about the negative feelings! It's refreshing to see how many other people are dealing with it and to know that none of us are alone!
- mythrwy 5y agoFebruary is a rough time of year also. In my opinion it's a month to be especially sensitive to others and especially mindful of your own emotional state. Something about the short days or months of cold or something. No accident Valentines Day is that month imo.
- munificent 5y agoI hang out on a bunch of subreddits dedicated to hobbies and interests of mine. People shit on Reddit because the biggest subreddits can be toxic wastelands. But, like the web itself, the smaller communities are often absolutely wonderful. I don't do chat or anything synchronous like that because it doesn't fit into the way my free time is sliced into small chunks by family commitments.
- cblconfederate 5y agoI don't think the small ones are much better. It's all about signaling and politics everywhere.
- distrill 5y agomaybe you're in the wrong small ones, it does not sound like we have the same experience.
- pmarreck 5y agoyou have to unsub from basically everything they shovel to your account by default and only sub to what you're interested in that isn't annoying. My reddit homepage while logged in is COMPLETELY different from what it is while logged out. And I use multiple accounts to group interests/homepages and retain some anonymity. I also use old.reddit.com because the new (or maybe not-so-new but newER) site is still so f***ing annoying.
- progbits 5y agoI agree that small, focused subreddits can work quite well. Regarding the "toxic wastelands" - while there are plenty of those - my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality. A book/game subreddit with interesting discussions about themes, characters and plot changes into endless "look at this <blanket|cake|...> my <relative> made me for <holiday>". Technical subreddits go from low volume, high quality original projects to "hey look I just bought an arduino and blinked a led". Maybe I'm just a grumpy old fart but save that stuff for your Facebook wall. This can probably be fixed with strong moderation, but I've rarely seen that work.
- ydhddhtchgvbdc 5y agoOf all the places I've hung out online, IRC is still, by far, the very best. It had something to do with the simplicity of it. It had something to do with the organic policing, how channels and voices don't get overrun because it's impossible to understand a conversation after X number of participants (i.e. if too many people chatting, then people leave or silence themselves, like an auto-organic throttle). Of how unique voices and interesting people seemed to bubble to the top simply by the nature of the anonymity and the force of their personalities, of how punishment for bad behavior was carrot or stick and judgement rendered instantly /kick. There was something about the meritocracy of it all. And your name was only so good as your lastest contribution, because you knew that people would remember what you said. You had the power of anonymity, but it regulated itself because you cared about the people you were talking to, because you would develop relationships with them through that anonymity. Those who contributed the most were respected. You weren't competing with NeverEndingWaterfall™ of blah from Facebook, Insta, etc. Yeah, I miss IRC a lot. I know, it's still there, but the privacy and anonymity are all gone, so too the personalities.
- na85 5y ago>but the privacy and anonymity are all gone Maybe on EFnet and other legacy networks but more modern ircds support host cloaks for preserving pseudonymity.
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoHaving the ability to post anonymously online is very important, but more and more developers seem to discourage this, and I don't like it.
- pwython 5y agoWhere are you seeing this happen? I can only think of one social media website that doesn't easily facilitate anonymous commenting: Facebook. Believe it or not, they sometimes flag new accounts and make you submit photo verification (happened to me).
- 5y ago
- jdmark 5y agoKeep in mind social engineering when discussing personal credentials online. They WILL send you phishing attacks via e-mail and other communication methods.
- d--b 5y agoSomehow Twitch is the closest thing to IRC that’s not IRC
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoThis is a great question, because I don't really like Reddit/Twitter/Hacker News/IRC/Discord, but I don't know where else to go. I don't like Reddit's culture. Twitter seems like people shouting into the void. Hacker News attracts psuedointellectuals. IRC seems to have too many channels with 80% idling. Discord is for close friends but not great for discovery. I want something like forums where I can post a topic, but also maybe chat to drop in and talk with folks if people are around and want to hang out. I hate like/dislike systems and karma. I want to be able to say whatever I want within reason without some nerds downvoting something they disagree with. Old forums were great for this, because you had to actually read and think for yourself. I think there are novel social platforms that could be explored, but I don't see anyone working on them.
- holler 5y agoI left a top level comment already but check out https://sqwok.im/p/R6-x8BdgecDjyg https://sqwok.im/p/R6-x8BdgecDjyg No voting and each post has a chatroom built into it, for topical live convo w/low friction, in active development!
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoThanks for sharing!
- coldpie 5y agoCheck out the Something Awful forums.
- skinkestek 5y agoFriends and family on Telegram, HN is the stable one for technical stuff. Earlier I have dabbled in Mastodon but they seems doggedly insistent on recreating the same problems that Twitter had (everything public, subscribing to the whole person, not just interests). These days Matrix is finally (IMO, some might have enjoyed it a while already) shaping up nicely (again IMO).
- DoItToMe81 5y agoI have my own personal chatroom for friends, which I now spend most of my time on. Most of my favourite forums and IRC rooms died, and the few remaining hardcore users moved to Discord, and it's just not the same. I have the same problem you do. It's very difficult to find a community similar in scale or content to the stuff I used to post on. I used to be able to pop into a community and learn just by listening to people far smarter and more experienced than I. You should try Matrix and XMPP chats. It's the closest thing I've experienced.
- raintrees 5y agoUniversity of Reason via Discord, No Agenda Social via Mastodon.
- kayodelycaon 5y agoIt's not tech, but I spend most of my time hanging out on Telegram with number of people I've met through the Furry Writer's Guild.
- quaintdev 5y agoIt changes frequently depending on what I'm doing in my day to day life. Nowadays I'm hanging out at r/selhosted. It's amazing community and I have learned a lot from them. https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted
- tabtab 5y agoI used to hang out at the C2.com wiki, the first wiki ever, actually. It was devoted to software engineering. Unlike Reddit, the discussion topics remained "alive" for several years so that we could revisit ideas. Discussions sometimes turned contentious, but it raised good questions deserving of more formal research, especially in terms of balancing tradeoffs (is getting less of X worth getting more Y?). I had what I call the "practioner's" viewpoint, which conflicted with what I'll call the "academic" viewpoint. We practioners viewed it more from a business expense standpoint while the academics wanted to build what seemed like an overly idealistic model of the domain and/or world. I didn't find such realistic without producing a million clones of Sheldon Cooper, but removing his arrogance so that he could work in teams. However Ward Cunningham eventually pulled the plug on the wiki (it's read-only now), partly to experiment with a "federated" version of it (which is a failure in my opinion), and because he got tired of cleaning up after a nasty vandal. I think the vandal issue was solvable without shutting the whole thing down, but that's another story.
- detaro 5y agoand no "fork" happening that retained editing?
- tabtab 5y agoNot that I'm aware of, at least not without a lot of fiddling.
- kingcharles 5y agoI posted yesterday on here that I thought WikiWikiWeb was the first "web app". What do you think?
- ipnon 5y agoI regrettably still frequent a certain infamous image board which has been often described as the "cesspool of the Internet." The noise to signal ratio is shockingly high, the risk of brainwashing and indoctrination is ever present. One must always be on guard, but I'm in love with the Wild West feeling. Anything goes, and it feels like going a Indiana Jones treasure hunt for fresh and original content. It's also given me a thick skin in online discussions. I've been called every insult in the dictionary. It's an antidote for the curated, ad profile targeted, walled garden web we've slowly constructed around ourselves. They have a saying: "don't forget, you're here forever." 16 years later ...
- beamatronic 5y agoWikipedia?
- ipnon 5y agoSergey Brin's microblogging platform: thefacebook.com
- hhsbdbdbdbdb 5y agoThere is only one board there where I have meaningful discussions and actually learn things. Everything else is straugt garbage. It feels like a chore to browse any of the popular boards.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoDo large text groups count on this one? Some friends and I have one that's been going for years, and at times I wonder about this. We drop in and out of MMO's, and some of us have dropped off of most "social media" for one reason or another. But the text thread remains. I used to be on specific Reddit threads, but the toxicity started to leak into even them, so I started to go into them less and less, until one day I stopped; when I realized I didn't like how I felt when I went on. HackerNews is about the last one I have.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bullen 5y agoIf you just want to play a multiplayer cube drop game and chat you are welcome at http://fuse.rupy.se http://fuse.rupy.se You can make rooms but they get the name of the user, so I guess you need to create a user with the name of the topic you're interested in! Xo
- vasili111 5y agoNo guest play.
- bullen 5y agoNo but the register is two fields (name/pass) and no mail required! I think pseudonymity is important so you know that one name is the same person the next time. Creates persistence in every meaning of the word!
- bullen 5y agoBeen an interesting evening out of 7 users only one actually managed to play with me, thx for joining: abddd, santi, nick12, bobbob, samsss, joe and boop! :D They say "do things that don't scale": well I'm trying son, I'm trying!
- opan 5y agoI'm still on IRC. Rizon, Libera, OFTC. Rizon is the most "fun" network of those, but I'm in pretty small/intimate channels I wouldn't want to share. The other ones mainly have tech-related channels for specific projects, but can still be entertaining. Also useful when you need help with something.
- gaws 5y ago> I'm in pretty small/intimate channels I wouldn't want to share. Why mention it at all?
- nathanaldensr 5y agoI hang out with the good people of the C# Discord server[1]. My username is NathanAldenSr#2130. Come say hi! [1] https://discord.gg/csharp https://discord.gg/csharp
- colund 5y agoInteresting to see more people who used to hang out on ##java on Freenode. That channel was horrendous back in the day with uncool admins who took pride in insulting people who were asking normal questions These days I actually mostly hang out on Facebook Groups discussing interests like photography and music. I also hang out on tech slack servers and have many Discord servers open. The problem I see with Discord is I join many servers that I never return to but sometimes don't leave due to FOMO :).
- namrog84 5y agoI do a lot of unreal engine hobby stuff and hang out in the unreal slackers discord. Tons of different focused text chats and have occasionally hung out in voice chats too. Met people and been in some of their discord. Also same applies to blender. There are newbie questions but there are also plenty of advanced convo too. Also out of curiosity what it means to grow a community. I've started with a subreddit called r/StylizedArt We just about hit 1000 people. Eventually I might add discord. Its been interesting so far.
- gaws 5y ago> Tons of different focused text chats How every "niche" server is organized: #memes #politics #vidya #off-topic #news #the-actual-topic
- aqaq2 5y agomatrix, web, irc, mainly... getting away from email, as fast as I can (I wish websites would stop requiring email for signup)
- conradludgate 5y agoI'm currently hanging out in some Rust discord servers. They're fun and you learn a lot, but Discord does have a younger demographic so the audience can be a bit immature at time
- stereoradonc 5y agoIf you are okay to join Telegram channel, I collect all kinds of stories and long forms (and post books) which are worth reading. The link is here: https://t.me/+pwdYcfBiV1I3Njll https://t.me/+pwdYcfBiV1I3Njll I have started with the comments, and I have a similar motive to have a group to share ideas and discussions without being dogmatic. It stays closed and private, and you can have a nice forum for an idea exchange. I haven't used Slack or Discord. The success of building a community depends on either doing it in private or keeping the bar high for those joining in. It takes considerable effort to succeed with that objective. In my mechanical keyboards group, most users stay quiet. At any given point, there are a few active members anywhere. Most users prefer to consume content passively. That should change, because everyone's perspective matters. .
- pyuser583 5y agoHacker News.
- culopatin 5y agoI miss forums. The pace of the info there is much more manageable than chat rooms. Posting something is more “expensive” than sending a chat.