31–40 of 57 posts
My 8 year likes to chat in Roblox. Lots of the games are sort of a surrogate open world / chatroom type deal. It seems close enough to the same thing, but for today's older kids, I'd have to imagine they are all on Facebook or whatever social network is current.
That said, we also grew up, and now I'm sure a lot of those conversations would seem as inane as the average Discord shitpost. Which, tbh, is terrible... The anime superstimulus girls are grotesque in their exaggerated neoteny, the memes are artless cos the baseline is now what you can glue together on a phone, and the background murmur is gossip pulled in from social media, like a hen party on coke.
I have managed to meet enough interesting people over the years that I can still sustain interest even at age 35, but it's tough. Most people my age are too busy tending their kids, which has permanently distracted them from hanging out, and has turned many into insufferably bland soccer moms.
For the remaining participants it also takes some serious commitment to actually engage in good faith and not let calcified attitudes trump it, for the topics you wanna talk about at middle age. Cos it turns out there's a pretty big difference between saying you're tolerant and open minded among a group of samey youngsters who know jack, and actually being those two things.
That said, at middle age you also just know better what you want. No amount of discussion will convince me sportsball is for me... Most movies are formulaic and predictable because that's what the masses respond to... Math and science is hard and it's taught entirely wrong but the people who can fix it have better things to do than be teachers... SQL is kinda shit and mainly serves as job security for the data priests and constabularies.
(But hey, I'm @geodesic#8759 on discord, hmu if you're interesting)
I missed them for a long time, but I found that there are lots of groups on Telegram (I know there are lots on Discord as well but I don't like the bloated UI too much) Telegram is at least semi-open and there are IRC gateways as well. I would prefer if it was easier to just drop in and out of channels like in IRC, but at least there are many of places to discuss special interests and meet people again!
Given some people commenting how they liked the screen names and anonymity of irc, it's hard to see telegram being a replacement with its requirement for a phone number identifier
In 20 years, today's teenagers will be talking about "the good days when Twitter and Instagram were all the rage". I think that part of what you miss is the feeling of being young, with an open road ahead of you, fewer responsibilities, and hormones in full force, making life seem much more colorful.
Yeah I think I actually prefer the Netflix experience.
In 20 years, today's teenagers will be talking about "the good days when Twitter and Instagram were all the rage". I think that part of what you miss is the feeling of being young, with an open road ahead of you, fewer responsibilities, and hormones in full force, making life seem much more colorful.
Guys! IRC is still there! Usenet is still there! The reason it's not the same is that all you guys left.
+1.
Usenet is still there, and a few groups are still being used for academic discussions. But many other groups have almost no "legitimate" users anymore, and have been filled with spam messages.
But the real show stopper today is that, since a community does not exist in these groups anymore, one or two crazy people can completely control and dominate a group. Recently I tried to explore the present day Usenet, and I found a conspiracy theorist can keep yelling at everyone in a historically reputable infosec newsgroup. Or you can have two college professors debating about creationism in a boring way for half a month. My conclusion is, Usenet still has some good uses, but is generally worthless today for most discussions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given some people commenting how they liked the screen names and anonymity of irc, it's hard to see telegram being a replacement with its requirement for a phone number identifier
The phone number stays private