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Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

It was fine when forums were still a big thing, that wasn't a bad transition.

What I find now is that there is less community. Even "social networks" like TikTok aren't really social, in that nobody is doing much socializing. We're all just throwing out witty little comments and leaving.

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Yeah that sounds right to me. Even though use of the internet has expanded a lot since I was a kid, I remember making more genuine friends in the earlier days.

My theory is that it has to do with the ubiquity of feedback mechanisms. Likes, followers, upvotes, etc. It's a never-ending popularity contest. We're now living this Onion satire from 14 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg

The ubiquity of the "news feed" concept could also play a role -- long-running discussions are now fairly impossible. People who disagree just take potshots at each other, instead of getting to the root of the disagreement.

It's a shame there's so much homogeneity across different social sites. Wish people would experiment more.

That Onion was great, thank you.

I love the Reddit format, I think for the most part it works well in terms of commenting (same as HN), but the problem is the "news feed" concept, like you say. A Reddit post is only alive for a few hours before it drops away never to return.

At least on forums whenever there is a reply it bounces back to the top and keeps topics alive.

> I remember making more genuine friends in the earlier days.

I used to have friends I would meet in a random video game or chat room and then communicate with them for _years_ over AIM or IRQ or mIRC. In a lot of cases not even knowing their real names.

Reminds me of this old 1997 MMO released by Sony Online Entertainment (and later reimplemented by KaZaA and Skype co-author Priit Kasesalu) named Subspace (renamed Continuum) I grew up playing. So anyways...

10 years ago or so everyone got added to a FB group and suddenly everyone knew each others real names and faces. It was a very strange feeling.

Just some reminiscing.

I still do but most of our interests shifted to finance

I think about SubSpace every month or so. 1997-1998 was a pretty special time for the Internet and its denizens!

You do know it was revitalized by the community after it was shutdown? I played primarily from 2000-2009ish and then fell off after college.

Why think about it when you can play right now? [0]

It was this game that got me into technology and programming. Implementing bots to run king of the hill or elimination style games.

A bit of history..

One of the original programmers (Jeff P? maybe) included the server software along with the client with the CD. After SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) ended the game, the community ressurected the game by using the included server software.

After many years of cheats due to the stagnating closed-source client, PriitK (of KaZaA and later Skype fame) reimplmented the client from scratch with better encryption, and named it Continuum. It still communicated with the original server software.

Years later, someone would reimplement the server side software named ASSS (a small subspace server) giving complete freedom to implement certain gamemodes and features wanted by the community for decades. For awhile you could only connect to "third party" servers which was a lot scarier and used a different chat/name/etc service than the main zones. It took a few years, but eventually PriitK give access to the encryption code and now most servers and zones are hosted by ASSS.

It was still limited by the original Subspace/Continuum client features though.

Maybe 5 or so years ago the community got the game on Steam Greenlight and we expected a bunch of new users. It didn't really plan out that way but it was fun while it lasted. It didn't happen earlier because while the entire game at this point had been re-implemented by the community - it still used original graphics which were stilled owned by SOE. Somehow, it got done though.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...

I did not know any of that, that's amazing! I remember the beta coming to an end, but don't remember whether I bought the game or not. My friend group moved on to other things, and I never bothered to look it up.

Too bad to miss the renewal five years ago.

Another way to think about it is that "social" media may call itself social, but it's actually more like broadcast media in most ways.

Bizarrely I find a certain notorious imageboard to be much more sociable than anything that calls itself 'social media'. Even though everyone is anonymous, I come away feeling like it was more like a conversation with randomers in a pub, only with more success than I'd have in the namesake situation.

I think the lack of any 'news feed' or forced revealing of your identity makes it a much more social experience. We're behind a screen talking nonsense and sometimes saying horrible things to each other, but it is fun.

Heartily agree. I don't visit much anymore as I have a tendency to overuse, but some of the most interesting, real, and oddly respectful, conversations I've had in a long time were on said board.

Along similar lines, Season 1 Episode 7 of The Orville, "Majority Rule", had a similar theme.

Also Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1, "Nosedive" and Community Season 3 Episode 1, "Biology 101" apparently have similar topics (but I haven't seen them).

Hat tip to ChatGPT for helping me track these down, since I couldn't remember at first what show I'd seen related to this:

https://chat.openai.com/share/d2ac7651-4ab3-4504-9369-7ea4db...

We really had this worm in 2002 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TtyMecqsbds&pp=ygUScGV0ZXIgZHV...

Wow, The Onion IRL.

There were a lot of individual websites, entire subcultures that you'd never know about unless you met someone who brought you in.

Kinda like private Facebook Groups I guess, except not all controlled by one megacorp, in fact not controlled at all.

You also had to be quite technical to be able to host a site, so that defined the culture. Anarchy but tech nerd.

social media consumers is the a better description. influencers peddle shite, and it is dutifully consumed by the followers. we've all been co-opted into eating bowls of shit and enjoying it without asking any questions. i say all, but there's a few hold outs.

› Even "social networks" like TikTok aren't really social,

Social there is for 'social graph'

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