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The thing with sites like reddit, HN and the like is that they don't promote "identity" like IRC, forums and others. Like, I'm replying to you, we are being "

The thing with sites like reddit, HN and the like is that they don't promote "identity" like IRC, forums and others. Like, I'm replying to you, we are being "social" , but mostly we will interact in this thread and call it a day. There's no push to form community or some longer term interaction. In the late 90s early 2000s I was very into a game called Tactics Arena Online, and we had several great communities.

baby 1y ago
Whoever can recreate this community feeling is going to be rich. Why did people spend so much time in specific phpbb forums? Maybe the problem is that there are too many communities out there now and so people just give up because you're in all of them and you're part of none of them at the same time?
- chad_c 1y ago
  I’m sure an anthropologist can clarify, but once a community reaches a certain size, it seems that emergent properties take over.
- darth_aardvark 1y ago
  Discord servers are the closest. People do build up friendships, relationships, enemyships, and a public persona / reputation within a Discord server.
  - sneak 1y ago
    Discord is centralized, heavily censored, and surveilled, so it can’t serve this purpose for many communities (such as most of the ones in which I participate).
  - jonwinstanley 1y ago
    My limited experience with discord was either no activity at all, or so much activity it’s hard to follow what’s going on. I suppose I never found the right place
- sneak 1y ago
  They did, and it’s called Reddit. Then it got enshittified.
- vjk800 1y ago
  Communities don't scale. This is the reason why nobody has done and why you couldn't get rich forming communities. Communities are handcrafted to accommodate the unique personalities of the people involved. Communities involve activities where a handful of people can socialize and bond. A service with a million users can never become a community because our social/grouping instincts don't work on that scale. A community should always be a few dozens of core people, with maybe a larger number of non-core people participating occasionally.
  - meltyness 1y ago
    When they establish personality archetypes and roles bonds form readily. That's like, the purpose of roles in an organization.
- goosejuice 1y ago
  Indeed, I think the size of the internet these days is partly the problem. The community in GameSpy and Zone were super small from my memory. We had crappy websites that tracked singles and team ladders. Then Steam came along.
- notachatbot123 1y ago
  If their goal is becoming rich, then this is doomed from the very start. How would it be monetized? Ads? Great, then you have no incentive to actually build a healthy community. Signup fee? Not going to work, way too much of a barrier.
doublepg23 1y ago
I browsed around Gemini Space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)) for some weeks, cold emailed an interesting guy and now we chat daily. I think the communities still exist if you seek them out, Agora Road is a fun one.
xxr 1y ago
I’ve been seeking out classic phpbb-style forums more and more for community. I just stopped browsing Reddit a few weeks ago after realizing there was nothing I’d truly miss: no characters that I’d come to know, and no reason to maintain a relationship with anyone there in particular. Regarding “identity,” I actually feel that Reddit (and of course Facebook) rely on it too much: maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two).
- eitland 1y ago
  > maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two). One of the few things Google+ actually got right (admittedly after a good deal of pressure from the community) was the ability to set up simple one-way pseudonyms. It meant you could talk about business or mental health without it being forever chained to your real name.
firesteelrain 1y ago
Tbh better to stay anonymous as those were the days of not having to worried about being “cancelled” or “doxxed”
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Yeah, exactly this. No idea exactly what happened but people at some point seem to have stopped accepting other people having different views or perspectives. With basically every community there was invariably some sort of oddballs. I remember a BBS with this guy called 'Nihilist' who was a total insufferable asshole that'd make glory days Linus look like the world's most gentle man. But as is the nature with community, you learned more about him over time - and he was a guy in his 20s dying of some sort of a muscular deterioration issue, and him acting that way was just how he coped. Everybody loved him, hated him, mourned when he passed, and the community was somehow genuinely a worse place without him. For another example I'm sure some here are familiar with, Flipcode had this one dude, extremely knowledgeable, who'd basically snipe into conversations, give amazing advice in a rather curt borderline hostile fashion (was it all caps? I think it was, but that was a long time ago), and then disappear. But he was such an important part of that already large community that I'm certain somebody else can fill in the blanks I'm leaving here. But now when anybody does something as mild as saying the quite part out loud on dumb things, of which there are many in modern times (probably owing to this exact issue), it's like 'zomg burn the witch'! Basically a prerequisite of community requires accepting people for who they are. In modern times today that statement is basically a euphemism for sexual/LGB stuff, but obviously that's a negligibly small part of the diversity and richness of personalities, even if those personalities, or their opinions, may not always be the most pleasant or politically correct.
  - tejohnso 1y ago
    > 'zomg burn the witch' And that often comes from groups who loudly claim to promote, and obnoxiously demand diversity and tolerance.
    - achenet 1y ago

baby 1y ago

Whoever can recreate this community feeling is going to be rich. Why did people spend so much time in specific phpbb forums? Maybe the problem is that there are too many communities out there now and so people just give up because you're in all of them and you're part of none of them at the same time?

chad_c 1y ago
I’m sure an anthropologist can clarify, but once a community reaches a certain size, it seems that emergent properties take over.
darth_aardvark 1y ago
Discord servers are the closest. People do build up friendships, relationships, enemyships, and a public persona / reputation within a Discord server.
- sneak 1y ago
  Discord is centralized, heavily censored, and surveilled, so it can’t serve this purpose for many communities (such as most of the ones in which I participate).
- jonwinstanley 1y ago
  My limited experience with discord was either no activity at all, or so much activity it’s hard to follow what’s going on. I suppose I never found the right place
sneak 1y ago
They did, and it’s called Reddit. Then it got enshittified.
vjk800 1y ago
Communities don't scale. This is the reason why nobody has done and why you couldn't get rich forming communities. Communities are handcrafted to accommodate the unique personalities of the people involved. Communities involve activities where a handful of people can socialize and bond. A service with a million users can never become a community because our social/grouping instincts don't work on that scale. A community should always be a few dozens of core people, with maybe a larger number of non-core people participating occasionally.
- meltyness 1y ago
  When they establish personality archetypes and roles bonds form readily. That's like, the purpose of roles in an organization.
goosejuice 1y ago
Indeed, I think the size of the internet these days is partly the problem. The community in GameSpy and Zone were super small from my memory. We had crappy websites that tracked singles and team ladders. Then Steam came along.
notachatbot123 1y ago
If their goal is becoming rich, then this is doomed from the very start. How would it be monetized? Ads? Great, then you have no incentive to actually build a healthy community. Signup fee? Not going to work, way too much of a barrier.

doublepg23 1y ago

I browsed around Gemini Space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)) for some weeks, cold emailed an interesting guy and now we chat daily. I think the communities still exist if you seek them out, Agora Road is a fun one.

xxr 1y ago

I’ve been seeking out classic phpbb-style forums more and more for community. I just stopped browsing Reddit a few weeks ago after realizing there was nothing I’d truly miss: no characters that I’d come to know, and no reason to maintain a relationship with anyone there in particular. Regarding “identity,” I actually feel that Reddit (and of course Facebook) rely on it too much: maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two).

eitland 1y ago
> maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two). One of the few things Google+ actually got right (admittedly after a good deal of pressure from the community) was the ability to set up simple one-way pseudonyms. It meant you could talk about business or mental health without it being forever chained to your real name.

firesteelrain 1y ago

Tbh better to stay anonymous as those were the days of not having to worried about being “cancelled” or “doxxed”

somenameforme 1y ago
Yeah, exactly this. No idea exactly what happened but people at some point seem to have stopped accepting other people having different views or perspectives. With basically every community there was invariably some sort of oddballs. I remember a BBS with this guy called 'Nihilist' who was a total insufferable asshole that'd make glory days Linus look like the world's most gentle man. But as is the nature with community, you learned more about him over time - and he was a guy in his 20s dying of some sort of a muscular deterioration issue, and him acting that way was just how he coped. Everybody loved him, hated him, mourned when he passed, and the community was somehow genuinely a worse place without him. For another example I'm sure some here are familiar with, Flipcode had this one dude, extremely knowledgeable, who'd basically snipe into conversations, give amazing advice in a rather curt borderline hostile fashion (was it all caps? I think it was, but that was a long time ago), and then disappear. But he was such an important part of that already large community that I'm certain somebody else can fill in the blanks I'm leaving here. But now when anybody does something as mild as saying the quite part out loud on dumb things, of which there are many in modern times (probably owing to this exact issue), it's like 'zomg burn the witch'! Basically a prerequisite of community requires accepting people for who they are. In modern times today that statement is basically a euphemism for sexual/LGB stuff, but obviously that's a negligibly small part of the diversity and richness of personalities, even if those personalities, or their opinions, may not always be the most pleasant or politically correct.
- tejohnso 1y ago
  > 'zomg burn the witch' And that often comes from groups who loudly claim to promote, and obnoxiously demand diversity and tolerance.
  - achenet 1y ago