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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

#121
post #9

I feel like this problem wouldn't be limited to a person's use of the internet but would be an indicator of a person's lack of curiosity in general. The internet, at its most fundamental level, is just information. Saying you don't know how to "waste time" on the internet is like saying nothing interests you anymore.

The medium is the message. The internet changed drastically after the rise of social networks and Google. It took a while for Google to get going though and fittingly, the founding year of Facebook, 2004, was the turning point.

The new internet has been carefully and intentionally designed to capture user attention and direct it into profit streams. Virtually all of the interactive online spaces on the web aren't trying to support community or educate minds or foster discussion, instead their sole purpose is to direct attention to those who will pay for it. The only notable exceptions to this are (1) open source software communities that ironically make the internet go and (2) the invisible private communities (various mailing lists, forums, irc) that use various technologies to hide from Facebook and Google and (3) the cryptocurrency communities (4) Wikipedia. (The last two communities are interestingly full of crazy poor people -- notably bad targets for advertisers). All the other spaces on the net have either succumbed to advertisers or been built from the ground up to serve the will of advertisers.

This is what has changed on the internet, not so much the information -- it's still mostly porn and cat pictures -- but the medium, the way that information is produced, managed and distributed. The question is to understand those design choices that allow online spaces to resist the advertising onslaught. The other question is whether people still want online spaces that do not serve the goal of advertising.

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

#122
post #86
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve actually been thinking about this recently, as I was also a heavy forum user back in the day. Why don’t we just start a forum for the HN crowd? Not a new interpretation of the forum model or anything like that, literally any instance of vbulletin or phpbb or something comparable and “traditional”. If people are genuinely interested in this, I would be up for spinning something up over the weekend.

Update: Spent the evening researching software options for the "old school" style forums, and it seems like Xenforo is a solid choice in terms of active development, lots of addons/themes, and not crazy expensive. So I think I'll snag a license and put it on a droplet later this week when my wife is out for the evening :) Also think I found a good domain for it that I'll snag tonight as well.

What's wrong with Discourse? It seems to be a popular choice.

Here are some more ideas: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#social-networ...

Flarum looks like a worthwhile option: http://flarum.org/

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

#123

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

There are a lot of friends to be made on IM groups. I have found the best way to create a good community is to have it be invite only so you don't get random people joining and leaving constantly and the people who are there tend to stick around for a long time.

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

#124
I think it's the age factor. No one makes friends in their 30s and no one is excited to find new things as they get older. If you ask younger people, they can tell you a 1000 ways to waste time on internet, be it instagram, snapchat or other such apps which grown-ups don't even know about.

You are just getting older.

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

#125

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 feel the same and I believe it's definitely because of age. When I was younger I had hours each day to invest into online interactions. sure it was fun, but it's over.

Kids nowadays have it the same, they just use snapshat or instafram or something entire else to create their unique online experience (that they will miss in 15 years)

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

#126

The author hasn't come across the decentralized web (ie scuttlebutt or dat). That's where I've found all the personalized interesting content.

This is something I remember noticing when messing with zeronet. There were no big players and no search engines but a sea of random shit people had hacked together and you would just follow links around to the other weird things people made. This kind of stuff all still exists in the greater internet but it's so easily lost under the megawebsites.

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

#127

The author hasn't come across the decentralized web (ie scuttlebutt or dat). That's where I've found all the personalized interesting content.

Can you expand a bit more on this? How do you find content on these decentralized services?

When I tried zeronet people would make pages with links to all the cool stuff they had found so you could jump from page to page following links to find more stuff. It looks like what I have seen about the start of the internet before real search engines.

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

#128
As a 42 year old, I read that article and think "thirtysomething old man yells at cloud!" - there are tons of diversions out there of all sorts.

OTOH, I live out near Santa Barbara, and downtown SB is nowhere near as good as what it was before 2006 or so. It had Borders+B&N, good thrift stores, some random shops, etc. Pretty much all of that's gone now.

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

#129
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…

A good thing of forums is that you get everything as is. As raw as it gets. If you don't like something or someone you just block it.

You can also have privileged threads/subforums that are read only if you don't meet some requierments.

You can even have an option to only show comments/posts for users with karma > N, if thats what you want.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Maybe you are right but how to prevent it from becoming a sales/recruitement/troll/showoff fest again?
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