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Reddit, TikTok, Youtube, and 4chan are all flourishing. Ian's a known pessimist. We're seeing economic effects on corporations here, not disinterest in social

by diydsp 4y ago

Reddit, TikTok, Youtube, and 4chan are all flourishing. Ian's a known pessimist. We're seeing economic effects on corporations here, not disinterest in social networking. Dunbar's number of 150 meaningful relationships has built into it a definition of "meaning" which was not anticipated back in 1992. The meaning of meaning changes. Furthermore, the constraint that meaning has on communication is not fleshed out. Sure I only have 150 meaningful relationships... but I still subscribe to 1000s of youtube channels to learn to fix my toilet, compose music, meditate, etc. These are meaningful to me, but don't require a traditional relationship. The meaning is, now, "I improve my life, and suffer the first 5 seconds of an advertisement for it.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I don't know, I find it difficult to post on reddit anymore, my interest has just flat out waned. Same with HN in a lot of ways, just not as bad as reddit (yet).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
somedude895 4y ago
> I still subscribe to 1000s of youtube channels to learn to fix my toilet, compose music, meditate, etc. I've always found it strange that YT is considered social media to be honest. Most people just go on there to consume content, not engage on an eye-to-eye level. You can comment, sure, but then any news site that has a comment section would also count. I suppose Youtubers do have a community among themselves, but still that's a tiny minority of the platform's users.
- sw104 4y ago
  I think the jury is out on YouTube being social media. Like yourself I'd agree it's not social media based on the way I use it. For people who just watch the videos it's purely a video streaming site. For other users it's social media because they use comments/messages (if it has this feature). It ponders the question that if a website can be used in 2 ways (as a social network, or as an information/entertainment source, like when lurking anonymously), whether you should really call it by it's full-feature name. For the most part, I rarely write on HN and I browse Reddit but don't have an account, so am I using them as social networks? And if on a site like HN I can't add somebody as a friend, and always reply once or twice to a fresh user I've never met before, does that still count? Is it socialising or just taking part in a one-off conversation?

by diydsp 4y ago

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

I don't know, I find it difficult to post on reddit anymore, my interest has just flat out waned. Same with HN in a lot of ways, just not as bad as reddit (yet).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

somedude895 4y ago

> I still subscribe to 1000s of youtube channels to learn to fix my toilet, compose music, meditate, etc. I've always found it strange that YT is considered social media to be honest. Most people just go on there to consume content, not engage on an eye-to-eye level. You can comment, sure, but then any news site that has a comment section would also count. I suppose Youtubers do have a community among themselves, but still that's a tiny minority of the platform's users.

sw104 4y ago
I think the jury is out on YouTube being social media. Like yourself I'd agree it's not social media based on the way I use it. For people who just watch the videos it's purely a video streaming site. For other users it's social media because they use comments/messages (if it has this feature). It ponders the question that if a website can be used in 2 ways (as a social network, or as an information/entertainment source, like when lurking anonymously), whether you should really call it by it's full-feature name. For the most part, I rarely write on HN and I browse Reddit but don't have an account, so am I using them as social networks? And if on a site like HN I can't add somebody as a friend, and always reply once or twice to a fresh user I've never met before, does that still count? Is it socialising or just taking part in a one-off conversation?