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Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

reslash.co

61–70 of 236 posts

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#61
post #24

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

I'm slightly older than you, so we're both millenials, and I've noticed a lot of my friends sort of struggling with the fact that we're no longer the "young and cool" crowd. The Gen Y/Z TikTok crowd are the cool ones now, and speaking anecdotally the people I know in their late teens and early twenties are quite a bit more sheltered and childish than my friends and I were at that age. We were using fake IDs to get in…

Respectfully, I think the younger generations are “up to” the exact same stuff. I should write a post about college campus ID culture. It’s always fun to break out a pseudonym.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#62
This reminds me of an old article by Jakob Nielsen, "Better than Reality" [1], about how the web shouldn't try to emulate reality. Of course, technology has advanced a lot since 1998. But I wonder if his core point is still right. For one thing, at its best, the web is still better than reality in that it can be much more accessible to people with disabilities. Products like this one still run the risk of negating that advantage.

[1]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-than-reality-a-funda...

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#63

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

There's a term for the current 20-somethings who can't be seen as responsible adults yet, I don't remember what it was, but searching for it got me this long article, from 10 years ago! https://www.salon.com/2010/12/23/not_quite_adults_interview/ Maybe it's the still-living-at-your-parents-at-25 economy... Maybe it's also because the 20, 30-somethings have been raised by more and more helicopter parents and schools g…

I've heard the term "peter-pan generation" be applied to this characteristic.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#64

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

A combination of things you mentioned and more:

* US has been suffering from its postwar boom period hangover for over 40 years now. The job market isn't like it was due to other emerging economies now having their boom periods. All those dreams and aspirations that millennials were promised (You can be whatever you want! Follow your passion and the work will follow) were shattered and turned out to be contemptible lies perpetuated by the secondary education system and the job market as a whole. As a result, a whole generation is saddled with debt, and are delaying milestones of life progression (buying a house, having kids), indefinitely for many.

* The rise of the Internet and the millennials being at its forefront has opened up massive new markets in the entertainment section, most notably Disney. They own most entertainment IPs, and know that millennials want to relive their childhoods so they sell it back to them. Comic book movies aren't just a fad like 80s actions movies were; they're here to stay. And Disney wants adults to keep being obsessed with what are essentially children's movies. All the social media companies want you on their product all the time using it and sharing everything you can (especially the juicy controversial stuff that is polarizing the country, oh boy do they love those articles).

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#65

I built a video calling app which is the antithesis of Zoom. It's called Reslash. You can play with everything - backgrounds, gifs, stickers. You can recreate a bar lounge, classroom, office, 80s party and more. It also has spatial audio - just move closer to talk to people, like you do IRL. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwXL7ZJra4 You can sign up here: https://reslash.co I would love to get your feedb…

Two points regarding the pricing table: Firstly it mixes different spellings("up to" and "upto"). And then there are the bullet points with strikethrough text that I just can't understand. Why do both variants have "unlimited spaces" crossed out? Why is "no unlimited guests allowed" crossed out, which in my head implies that unlimited guests are allowed.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#66
post #53

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

I am 23, have same feelings. It's not the age.

Same age as well. And that’s after strongly correcting for the stereotypical “they don’t make music like they used to” bias that one might accuse me of.

Professionalism is seen as patronizing - which is a vibe I can mostly get behind, but massively hinders direct, important communication or collaboration. I also see a lot of dishonest but well-intentioned platitudes being thrown around that hides actual feedback.

But I’m ranting! Literally sounding like an old person... should I feel guilty about age-ism??? That’s my young person perspective.

It’s good to not feel totally alone in these things. The kids behind us are wild, in my opinion.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just because going to work is more fun when it's.. fun? I spend 8 hours a day there, I want to show who I am and I prefer my coworkers doing the same. Especially the last 9 months. Normally one would talk with coworkers in the office, over a coffee, before a meeting etc. Remote meetings I find are strictly business.

Why do you have to make work fun, shouldn't you already be enjoying it if you are doing what you want to do? Are you not doing what you want to do? See, that's the kind of problem that creates the infantilisation.

Is it reasonable to expect that everyone in every WFH-friendly job is actually "doing what they want to do" all the time? In my opinion, no way. Even for someone doing their dream job, parts of their day-to-day are guaranteed to be eaten up by objectively not-fun tasks.

Also, the fact that someone enjoys their job doesn't mean the experience can't be improved.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#68

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

I am actually 32 haha I do understand where you're coming from. However, our motivation around this was to have an emotional response to space. The idea of personalizing your space where you're spending time is an important one. We also want to be treated like people online and not boxes. So the whole idea of being on "mute" when you're listening to someone needs to be challenged. This is probably not an answer to wh…

An experiment well worth doing, and probably a preferable option for people weary of listening politely to 'authorities' or 'guests' or 'lecturers' one-at-a-time... which can be extremely low-bandwidth.

Certainly at conventions with 'presentations' many people sit near each other to discuss what's being said (or talk past the parts not relevant to them) in real-time. Orchestras still have conductors (strictly interpreting fixed works) but I think most people would rather be in a band (for the creative interactivity) and rather listen to a band.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#69

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

I don't know about that - I'm a little older than you, and I remember when the web was more like this. GeoCities and MySpace allowed tons of customization, and everybody made their own barf on a page to express themselves.

Then sometime in the mid 2000s everything online became sanitized and corporate.

Re: Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL

#70

I feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. I…

Or just because going to work is more fun when it's.. fun? I spend 8 hours a day there, I want to show who I am and I prefer my coworkers doing the same. Especially the last 9 months. Normally one would talk with coworkers in the office, over a coffee, before a meeting etc. Remote meetings I find are strictly business.

I totally agree with you on the fun part, but I think what we define as fun is pretty different. I also agree with you that talking and knowing people you work with is important.

Where we disagree is the point that I don't think that gifs are helping you to know who your coworkers are. And more importantly I think it is not helping anyone to better understand themselves, which is one of the values of having conversations with people in the first place - that's kinda what philosophy schools were for. Gifs seem to serve some sort of emotional regulation function, but I've never investigated more deeply into that.

Now, I'm not trying to make a point here that you should only have serious conversations all the time, and definitely see the humour value of well timed gif, but I've found out that in general the trend is to shallow out the discussions and keep them within very narrow window of discourse.

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