Tree Raves: A Case Study in Social Protocols | Hacker News Reader

Tree Raves: A Case Study in Social Protocols

prigoose.substack.com

27 pointssurprisetalk15 comments

Silent disco parties are fun, and occupy an interesting social niche— you are around other people, having a shared experience, BUT you are each wearing headphones and therefore presumably not speaking to one another. Of course, you’ll end up having opportunities to talk before and after, but this guaranteed time isolated-but-together can be a nice bridge for people who experience some degree of social anxiety.

Here in Cambridge, MA, a friend used to host silent disco parties by bringing a small low-power FM transmitter connected to his audio playback device. He’d hand out small FM receivers & headphones, but people could also bring their own (in those days, most portable audio systems included an FM radio receiver).

I find silent discos (I've only ever been to three) are actually more social because it's so easy to transition from the music to being in a crowd with a light hubbub. If you've ever had to shout in someone's ear at a club you'll appreciate how nice it is to have a fairly normal conversation, and you can tell who is/isn't willing to chat by their headphones.

interestingly, if you still have an audio jack on your cellphone, attaching wired headphones to them allows you to use the phone as an FM receiver (with the proper app). Wire on the headphones acts like an antenna.

assuming the phone has an FM receiver and it is enabled. Far from all phones with headphone jacks have them.

Even though it probably guess against the concept of it being as low tech and simple as possible, it's hard for me not to think of technical solutions! I'm imagining a WiFi AP you connect to at the event, which opens op a captive portal web page, which starts streaming the music. That way you can join even if you arrive late and miss the countdown.

Or just a Bluetooth pineapple that you can pair any headphones with.

What is a "Bluetooth pineapple?"

Bluetooth is so flaky that I couldn't imagine a solution that would work for ~30 connections.

A pineapple is a general term for something with tons of wireless cards stuffed into it, so named because some versions are studded with antenna spikes vaguely like a pineapple.

They are commonly used for pentesting, hacking, and Wi-Fi mapping.

Is it silent because everyone has headphones/ear buds? I’m assuming so since it mentions everyone using Spotify (apparently it is also assumed that everyone has a Spotify account), but I looked through the instructions and didn’t see anything about BYOH (bring your own headphones). Maybe this is targeted at an age group where everyone will naturally have them.

That age group is pretty large, though. So many people had walk-mans in the 80s and 90s. I'd also venture to say most people who would go to a rave probably like music enough to own headphones.

I do agree though, the useage of Spotify as a given is annoying. Especially since everyone will never be perfectly synced up. I remember silent raves, back a decade ago, would use a FM transmitter mixed with cheapo portable fm receivers.

BRING

headphones

Yea, its right at the top of the article in the screenshot. Not sure how OP missed it since they said they read the instructions

Sounds fun! I'll get one scheduled. I love trees.

Does anyone have a link to said whatsapp group? With the weather warming up in nyc n all this looks like tons of fun!

Oops, I should have included that. Just added! https://chat.whatsapp.com/FFHXQYohvCHKNAwCgHcd1w

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