Personally, DMs are the only real thing in my life. Everything else feels artificial. You even set aside time to go see your parents, and make plans to go on vacation.
DMs are where the magic is. Even HN comments are starting to lose the feeling, but it’s probably because I’m getting old.
After that, everything in the unified/personal communications space got technically better but worse.
Circa 1999-2000, you could IM random ICQ users and they were not 100% dickpic creeps. It was almost like a pre-AOL internet for people in the know.
That's an entire generation!
I agree that classic IM was best IM, though. Unfortunately you can't make money on IM alone, and AOL isn't the portal of choice anymore. (Google was so close with Hangouts!)
I can't say that an unbloated app like Signal is a fundamentally different experience except for some of the deficiencies that've been ironed out (better file/image sharing is one that certainly comes to mind).
I'm open to being wrong on this point though!
EDIT: Actually, you can add Discord/Signal/Telegram to Pidgin for the throwback UI.
It’s true that in a thousand years, the systems that exist today are likely not going to be those of the next millennia.
But it’s also true that the incentives of society change very, very slowly. And right now the most impactful work seems to be done by politicians and corporations.
Which means the ambitious will always be attracted to those, like flies to sunlight.
I just don’t see the point in even recognizing these truths, let alone trying to change them. There’s nothing —- nothing —- that you or I can do about it. Not even YC could. They sailed with the wind, not against it.
The most we can do seems to be to maximize our own individual happiness.
Speaking of happiness, dear readers, remember that 35 is middle age. Working until you’re 60 is the biggest corporate triumph of them all. Do the things you want before you retire.
Yes, make the markets competitive.
Todays Big Tech replaced the earlier generation. But the markets have been so thoroughly captured that it seems impossible for any startup to replace Meta or Apple or Google. Netflix is struggling not against another startup but industry incumbents replicating its technology.
Until the markets get competitive again, there won’t be much innovation domestically. TikTok should have shocked the entire US tech industry but rather than try to come up with better products the Tech industry tried to dismember the company and gobble up its US assets ( a process that stopped only because of a change in administration).