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I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

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Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#111

Post by nol13 »

y2bd wrote: post #61
gkoberger wrote: post #44

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Yeah, there's a lot more content to consume now. However, it doesn't feel like a community... it feels more like watching reruns on TBS. I remember making actual friends on message boards. Friends I eventually met in the real world. I don't think relationships like that are really formed anymore. Most of social media now is a broadcast, not a conversation. People (m…

This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. You grab your friends and play Overwatch, while you play TF2 and meet your friends. And also a parallel, TF2 obviously still exists, but all of the servers I used to play on are gone now. Haven’t found anything else quite yet. FFXIV actually was super enjoyable…

Internet's been all downhill since Westwood Chat got shutdown.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#112

Post by bullen »

I think media is moving from Movies and later TV Series (none are good since 1 year back) to now become MMOs. Just the MMOs we have are really bad still. Follow the lineage of WoW, then PUBG; and extrapolate.

The internet will become MMOs; hell, life will become MMOs. MMOs are virtual reality more than VR itself could be if it tried real hard (yes, I'm looking at you Nevell).

Edit: Maybe streaming of MMOs is where the mass audience kicks in, though in the long run everyone will jack in.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#113

Post by [deleted] »

Terr_ wrote: post #90
y2bd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. You grab your friends and play Overwatch, while you play TF2 and meet your friends. And also a parallel, TF2 obviously still exists, but all of the servers I used to play on are gone now. Haven’t found anything else quite yet. FFXIV actually was super enjoyable…

I think the key distinction is the concept of "place". TF2 has (or had) a concept of "place" in the form of named servers. That made it possible to encounter the same stranger repeatedly over time. In contrast, Overwatch wants you to already know and specify your friends into their social-media graph and group up before going to a random/anonymous/ephemeral location. So you seldom knowingly encounter the same strange…

[deleted]

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#114

Post by querulous »

gkoberger wrote: post #44

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Yeah, there's a lot more content to consume now. However, it doesn't feel like a community... it feels more like watching reruns on TBS. I remember making actual friends on message boards. Friends I eventually met in the real world. I don't think relationships like that are really formed anymore. Most of social media now is a broadcast, not a conversation. People (m…

this absolutely still exists, it's just different than it used to be. go find a twitch streamer that averages 10-300 viewers and you'll find a community. join a slack/discord organization for some niche hobby and you'll find a community. start an instagram account chronicling your trips to craft breweries and you'll find a community

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#115

Post by jbluecreek »

I also find myself lacking ideas for places to explore. I usually wastes time like this:

- Do I know of a youtube channel I like and want to watch: mps-youtube [1]

- Do I want to get youtube content randomly/reddit-recommended: reddytt [2]

- Do I just want some images and gifs, not whole videos: redditp [3]

- Do I want to explore twitch, but do not know of a streamer I like: ryck [4]

[2] and [4] are my own tools for a more optimised time-wasting (I apologise if self-plugging is considered bad behaviour).

[1] https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube

[2] https://github.com/johanbluecreek/reddytt

[3] https://github.com/ubershmekel/redditp

[4] (early stages of development) https://github.com/johanbluecreek/ryck

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#116

Post by jgalentine007 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #50
dchuk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to try and fire something up this week. I’ll do some research on software for it, I’m fine spending money on xenforo or vbulletin but it looks like there are quite a few options out there. I’ll announce it here when it’s ready!

I think it is important to curate it, but I applaud the idea. I would say; only allow people with over a certain karma score on HN (>1000)? That way you benefit from the quite strict moderation here. But indeed I remember the days on vBulletin forums; all my remarks against ‘you cannot make friends over 30’ that I uttered here come from there: most my current friends and one of my best friends I met on forums. It jus…

Dude, I've been on reddit since 2006 and I don't even have 1000 karma. Don't exclude the lurkers! (Who are too busy programming to post.)

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#117

Post by cyberferret »

I can really identify with the author of the article. I used to be able to successfully distract myself from 'real work' a lot years ago, but lately, most of the internet is just plain boring to me, or even extremely hostile.

I used to hang around several guitar forums which took up a TON of time, but I closed my account on all of them years ago when hostility and snarkiness accelerated to dizzying highs. It just stopped being a fun hangout. Twitter and most social media is now just a cesspool of antagonism. Most interesting news articles are now behind paywalls or layered under a ton of ads.

The only thing that takes up some of my online time now is watching chess game analytics on Youtube - but I NEVER scroll down to the comments on Youtube any more because I value my sanity.

Other than that, I find that I spend those minutes between long downloads/uploads or compile time actually turning around in my home office and picking up a real guitar and playing for a few minutes. I am starting to enjoy the offline tools around me nowadays far more than online distractions.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#118

Post by spc476 »

nol13 wrote: post #111
y2bd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. You grab your friends and play Overwatch, while you play TF2 and meet your friends. And also a parallel, TF2 obviously still exists, but all of the servers I used to play on are gone now. Haven’t found anything else quite yet. FFXIV actually was super enjoyable…

Internet's been all downhill since Westwood Chat got shutdown.

It's all relative. There are some that think the Internet has been all downhill since September of 1993 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#119

Post by spc476 »

mturmon wrote: post #55
pmoriarty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now it just seems like every website online is trying to steal and sell your data." I remember the days before the Morris Worm, the days before we were all drowning in malware, before you had to worry about your bank account being hacked in to, before your personal data stood a good chance of being leaked, stolen, or held for ransom, before the corporate/government gold rush for profit, spying, and control. Spam and…

Nice comment. I’m thinking that some technologies, if handled carelessly —— and we have been nothing if not careless —— merely recapitulate existing power structures.

Or that existing power structures figure out how to co-opt technology. Seems to take about 20 years (telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, cars, computers ... )

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#120

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

JimboOmega wrote: post #21
foolofatom wrote: post #13

I think the internet is less fun now -- I can't decide if its from maturation of technology or maturation of people though. (Has anyone else felt like things became less fun as they got older?) I felt a greater sense of community 10 years ago when I mostly used IRC and PHP BBs. The communities were smaller, and it was fun even if you disliked people. Flame wars and trolling were mostly for the audience's amusement, b…

I don't know either but I have absolutely had the same experience. Although for me the heyday of IRC was 20 years ago, and even then (in the late 90s) it felt dated and quaint. People at that time were moving on from ICQ to AIM, and IRC was the old, weird place you went to get anime DivX videos in particular. I do think the maturation of "troll culture" has really devalued a lot of the Internet. Virtually any event o…

Go to Wikipedia and press X. Type it again. And again. And again...

If you want obscure 80's music you can find archives of old 80's comp tapes from everything to folk to punk to experimental techno (https://contortyourself-cy.bandcamp.com/album/80s-undergroun...). I think the 90s+ has way more to offer in terms of just massive amounts of raw weird shit from bands most people never knew to begin with. You can stretch out and find all the sub-genres of a particular type, like electronica (https://beat.media/obscure-genres-of-electronica-you-need-to...) death metal (https://www.listchallenges.com/the-obscure-us-death-metal-10...) 90s UK indie (http://www.nme.com/photos/50-forgotten-90s-bands-who-prove-9...) or random French bands (https://frenchcrazy.com/2014/04/popular-100-french-songs.htm...), or do what most music nerds do and visit a record swap.

My interests have mostly shifted to history, cookery, materials engineering and gardening, so it's impossible to get bored. There's too much left to learn.

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