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Comment by pram | Hacker News Reader

Im 36, I guess so? I don’t use “social media” at all anymore, but I use Discord a lot. It reminds me of the good ol’ days of AOL and IRC, and I prefer chat rooms over posting into the void.

I find Twitter and such intolerable because it mostly started to feel like I was just a mark for random grifts. At some point around ~2016 everything seemed to turn into a link for Patreon or a podcast or blah blah

View on HN

Discord sounds like something I would enjoy, I was heavy IRC user back in the day. But I never found an interesting server.

Any recommendations for servers focusing on topics like AI-ML/Python/Math,probability, statistics?

While I don’t personally know any good servers for those topics, https://disboard.org is a good resource for finding new servers that match your interests. Good luck!

Any advice for finding quality Discord servers (things like ideal member count / “red flags” etc)? I feel like I have a lot of trouble finding servers that strike a good balance of being active but not impenetrable.

I don’t have any, other than maybe look in general chat to make sure it’s active. I’ve also struggled with this, often a promising new server is disappointing after I get to know it over a couple days.

It's a mess of malignant attention whores and child predators. The servers that are good inevitably attract the bad types who, when removed, go out of their on way to take the server down. Don't waste your time.

Thanks, I quickly found what I was looking for!

> I don’t use “social media” at all anymore

Posted on HN, QED.

I've also quit all social media besides HN. At least I can try and tell myself that HN is more stimulating intellectually, it's my one dirty little digital habit I have left

HN is just a last crutch for me after leaving reddit at this point. I prefer it because upvotes and downvotes are anonymous except for your own when it comes to comments, so there isn’t as much of a dopamine hit after posting when you really think about it.

This kind of pedantry is exactly what keeps me coming back for more!

You better write longer, more informative paragraphs LOL

Do you consider forums "social media"?

I don't consider forums social media. To me, HN is more of a forum.

A social media's primary goal is engagement - to keep you coming back for more, to keep you scrolling. And the content reflects that.

A forum's primary goal is discourse.

Reddit straddles that weird space in between.

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