Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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I define friend as someone I'd invite over to my house. Those are the people I interact with on social networking sites and send YouTube links to.

Discussion forums are, socially, a very different thing than hanging out with friends, even though they both involve people and saying things. That's what I think HN collectively misses when talking about Google+ or Facebook; they think those are Internet Discussion Forums when they are actually something for closer friends.

You have to understand that very few people are willing to write this much on the Internet for public consumption by total strangers -- we are very unusual people, and most online services aren't designed for us. That's why we're typing hundreds of words into a Web 1.0 GUI written in a custom programming language, rather than using Facebook or G+ or Snapchat or whatever.

> You have to understand that very few people are willing to write this much on the Internet for public consumption by total strangers -- we are very unusual people

Seems you're a bit out of touch with "usual people" - or at least "usual people" under the age of 35. I do agree HNers are unusual, but if anything I would say they are more likely to be concerned with what they share publicly, not less.

You've missed the point entirely. That comment was about the nature of the content posted. Facebook, snapchat, et al are essentially click-click-clicking through pages heavy on visual stimulation and interacting through short bursts of text, now video and images too. HN is about reading and formulating arguments and exchanging walls of text in an environment completely free of visual distraction.

The type of person who tends towards HN will be different from the type of person who tends towards something like Snapchat on the above grounds.

Check the stats on reddit. There are a ton of people who want topic-focused discussion with strangers on the internet.

G+ seems to be trying to be both a public discussion forum and a hangout for existing friends at the same time. This is part of what makes it often unpleasant.

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