Ask HN: Is getting online still fun?

I know this seems flippant, but I mean it with all due respect: Is it possible that you've just grown up?

I don't mean to say that those pursuits weren't fun or worth pursuing. My point is a lot of time has passed since "chat rooms" and "browser games" were all the rage and also that "fun" is not an objective measure and depends on your perspective. There are a lot of things that I found "fun" when I was younger that I simply don't or would not anymore (like logging in once a day to a BBS, pre-internet, to play a text-based RPG). Also, the things that younger people today find fun online aren't things that I, now a middle-aged man, would enjoy. As far as I know from my distant, curmudgeonly viewpoint, kids today are still having fun online, be it on snapchat, discord, fortnite, or whatever. It's just that, because of my age and life experience, I can't find those to be fun in the same way.

The web in 1995 seemed magical. A whole new universe to explore.

The web in 2018, in fact for a few years, is actively hostile on every level. You so something as simple as view a document and someone will try to execute code on your computer, present you with a distorted view of reality for psychological manipulation for their own profit, sell you counterfeit goods, make a record of everything you do incase it can be used against you years later... This is not what we meant to build

> The whole game, anymore, is to try and get internet points by making intellectual points in discussion forums. How lame.

Nah, just feck gamification and express yourself! I would have double karma here without controversial opinions but who cares, these exact comments led to constructive dialogue without the so lame and usual echo-chamber effect.

Yes, I have a lot of fun! Apart from being able to instantly download any movie/series, book, journal paper that I want[0] (and I do a lot of that), I have friends in a lot of countries that I chat with on FB, in English and Spanish. (I started learning Spanish after meeting Latin Americans online. Finding teachers was super-easy thanks to sites like livemocha and lang-8, which I was only on for a few days because immediately I found an amazing teacher who became a dear friend.)

I used to play online chess a lot until recent years - it's very addictive, also I chatted with people from many countries during/after playing them, made one very close friend from that. (One of the most recent people I played/chatted with was a blind pianist in Iran, not sure how blind people can do that!) Nowadays just watch commentated chess tournaments online, a format that didn't exist 10 years ago. I prefer to watch commentary in Spanish; then I can improve my Spanish at the same time.[1]

[0] I grew up on a farm pre-WWW, and every day I marvel at how different things are now. Like I watched that Rob Pike talk on Unix history yesterday, and it took me about 10 seconds to find and download the Ken Thompson paper on regular expressions.

[1] There are unexpected effects, like: OMG I can't stand writing names of languages with Capital Letters, it seems soo weird. (Spanish doesn't use capitals for that, or a lot of other things English uses capitals for.)

I still have fun buts it been reduced to scraping as much data from the web and finding ways to profit from it. as another post said, I miss the irc days.

The "web" has certainly changed shape, not always for the best. Things have become monetized and a lot of websites are now a business model serving ads and tracking scripts, not providing quality of content.

On top of that there is the blanket of censorship that is being pulled over us all.

I have nostalgia for the irc days.

> It's like the internet is all work and no play.

I guess it depends on your filter bubble. There is still a lot of silly chat on Discord, Slack channels. Still a lot of jokes on Reddit and 9gag. Funny videos on YouTube, etc.

I tend to hang out in the digital marketing and self improvement circles and I agree with you. Spending too much time there feels like the internet is all work and no play. However, there is life outside as well.

Someone posted this app they made on reddit a few months ago: https://chatcircles.com/ Perhaps it's the missing fun link you're looking for? Sometimes there are a fair number of people hanging out but other times it's just another lonely place on the internet.

I've seen other people say things like "the internet sucks in 2018"

On the one hand: The quantity and quality of "stuff" I can find online right now is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AMAZING. I can find TV shows, music, books, essays, news, commentary, games, etc., out the yazoo. Especially if I have no qualms about piracy, in which case I can find almost any book, tv show, or movie I would ever care about, to read, watch or listen to.

On the other hand: while it's still "fun" in a sense, it's definitely not the same kind of fun as it was maybe 20 years ago. And I'd say in some ways it's less fun overall.

Sounds contradictory, no? I was just thinking about this a week or so ago, and trying to figure out what is missing on the 'net today vs. 20 years ago when it felt more "fun" somehow. I don't have an exact answer, but I think I can explain some of it. Here are some thoughts on what is different now that makes things less fun.

1. Everything is indexed and searchable, and you know where to find most stuff, which takes away the sense of mystery and the experience of serendipitous discovery that were big in the past. In years past you dialed into a BBS and browsed the "filez" section and had NO idea what you were gonna find. And the gems you found, like the first time you found an issue of Phrack or the Cult of the Dead Cow newsletter, or a list of dial up numbers for Telenet or something, would just blow your mind and fill you with this sense of awe. Now, you just Google whatever you want, or go to Wikipedia, or IMDB, or whatever, and find everything "on demand".

2. There is mostly no sense of "going online" at all now, because most of us are online all the time anyway. In years past, "going online" was a discrete, specific activity. You dialed up your ISP, connected, browsed for an hour or two, and dropped off. Now, we have broadband at home, broadband at work, broadband at Starbucks, at the airport, on the airplane, etc., and have 4G connections we carry around in our pockets. So "being online" has kinda become the default state now.

3. The "paradox of choice"[1]. There is SO MUCH great content on the web now, that no matter what you are looking at, reading, watching, or listening to, part of your brain is wondering "why aren't I (watching|listening to|reading|etc) this other thing X?" at the same time. You're on Netflix, and a background thread is wanting be on pg's site reading his essays. You're reading pg essays, and a background thread is wanting to be on Youtube watching the "Greatest fake punts in NFL history" video, etc., etc. yadda, yadda.

4. And, again, just familiarity... chat rooms were awesome when chat rooms were new, and different. Eventually everybody had so many chat rooms open that lurking and not posting became the default and now there are IRC channels or Slack channels with hundreds of people in there, and nobody ever says anything.

5. The Eternal September[2] effect. Forums and chat-rooms get diluted and watered down over time as too many newbies join and the culture devolves towards a lowest common denominator.

All of that said, am I still blown away by things like 3blue1brown videos, or khanacademy.org, or "The Haunting of Hill House" (Netflix), and many other things I experience online? Hell yeah. But I simultaneously find myself feeling sad like I've lost something of the joy I used to find in doing this stuff.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it would take to recapture some of that old magic, but I can't claim to have any good answers so far. And frankly, at least for me personally, it may be that some of what I feel is more about changes in myself over the past 20+ years, than anything else. I mean, I'm not exactly the same person I was in 1999, no matter how much I hate to admit that. My tastes and interests have changed, I've learned stuff, forgotten stuff, experienced stuff, yadda yadda, so maybe it's no surprise that the 'net doesn't feel like it did then.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

If you like strange conversations on IRC, Snoonet[0] is organized into corresponding subreddits (hence the name). #linuxmasterrace is currently quite popular (and has nothing to do with Linux 85% of the time).

It’s still fun, it’s just that we’ve (mostly) all grown up.

[0]: https://snoonet.org

Irc, is still around. Usenet is probably still around (was 7 or so years ago) and, who knows, maybe The Well has some interesting things happening.

You don't have to take the top result on google.

welp, i just found this on Show HN and just made my browser (full of work related tabs) 1000% more fun.

http://radio.garden/live/

the brilliant days of 1993 chat rooms (whole earth irc etc) and when google launched are hard to replicate, but the net is still a dazzling universe of human potential.

>Chat rooms for some reason died.

Websites whose sole purpose was chat died, but people chat on social media, in games, on Discord, etc. Chat is bigger than ever.