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Great insight! Another thing I came to realise is that current "social" media is extremely de-personalized (lack of a better term): back in the 80s and 90s, I

Great insight! Another thing I came to realise is that current "social" media is extremely de-personalized (lack of a better term): back in the 80s and 90s, I participated in many public online places (I have always been shy in person). Those places (irc channels, WBS.net, ICQ, BBSs) were actually very social in that you actually made friendships. I travelled half the country after being invited to a Linux User Group! Nowadays must public "social" media interactions do not promote that sort of affinity. Like, I'm replying to you... but not really, I'm just replying to your comment in this page. It is very rare to establish even a loose relationship with people in today's online pages. And it doesn't have to be super close. I still have 2 acquaintances I made in the 90s, one is a girl that we happened to stumble upon in WBS chat, we were from different countries so it was exciting to chat. We just say hi from time to time. The second is a person in Norway with which we shared metal music joy. We met after we both signed a "guest book" , shared Live Messenger accounts and sporadically chatted. Even a cursory view of subreddits like /suicidewatch were people are supposed to be close, you read a lot of comments like "I care for you friend" which are hollow. I miss those sort of interactions.

nootropicat 4y ago
Those interactions moved to discord (and telegram, although that's second-hand info). I fully understand what you describe, and once I realized the truly abysmal return on time spent I cut my time on public social media by ~100x. It's just not worth it beyond an occasional comment.
hbn 4y ago
Small dedicated communities where people know each other by (user)name are still around, but you have to hunt a little more. The bigger issue is seemingly any community made up of nice people eventually pushes them all out when identity politics cry-bullies show up. It's happened to multiple communities I've been part of.
ajmurmann 4y ago
Especially with BBSs there was a lot broader focus than on the thing they were formally about. For years I was active on a retrogaming forum. The forum of course had topic areas related to retro gaming, but more than half of them had nothing to do with that. We had movies, video games, quizzes, music, off-topic and probably a bunch more that I cannot remember. I think that led to people to actually form a community rather than only interacting on a narrow subject where you are supposed to stay on topic. I learned so much random stuff about people there. There of course were get togethers every other year or so. I think things have gotten too focused and purpose-driven. Seems like a continuation of a general trend in society
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I think things have gotten to focused and purpose-driven. If you are looking at something like a subreddit, yeah, it's pretty focussed. On other hand, sites that have their own forums, despite often nominally being as focussed or more than a single subreddit in terms of the nature of the community, are often open in the same way BBS’s were, because they can have multiple forums tied to the same community. Consider r/rpg vs. https://www.rpg.net https://www.rpg.net for instance.

nootropicat 4y ago

Those interactions moved to discord (and telegram, although that's second-hand info). I fully understand what you describe, and once I realized the truly abysmal return on time spent I cut my time on public social media by ~100x. It's just not worth it beyond an occasional comment.

hbn 4y ago

Small dedicated communities where people know each other by (user)name are still around, but you have to hunt a little more. The bigger issue is seemingly any community made up of nice people eventually pushes them all out when identity politics cry-bullies show up. It's happened to multiple communities I've been part of.

ajmurmann 4y ago

Especially with BBSs there was a lot broader focus than on the thing they were formally about. For years I was active on a retrogaming forum. The forum of course had topic areas related to retro gaming, but more than half of them had nothing to do with that. We had movies, video games, quizzes, music, off-topic and probably a bunch more that I cannot remember. I think that led to people to actually form a community rather than only interacting on a narrow subject where you are supposed to stay on topic. I learned so much random stuff about people there. There of course were get togethers every other year or so. I think things have gotten too focused and purpose-driven. Seems like a continuation of a general trend in society

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I think things have gotten to focused and purpose-driven. If you are looking at something like a subreddit, yeah, it's pretty focussed. On other hand, sites that have their own forums, despite often nominally being as focussed or more than a single subreddit in terms of the nature of the community, are often open in the same way BBS’s were, because they can have multiple forums tied to the same community. Consider r/rpg vs. https://www.rpg.net https://www.rpg.net for instance.