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Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

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Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#231

Post by dragonwriter »

Novosell wrote: post #188
Always_Anon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where I grew up, that was called being polite and it didn’t automatically rule out anything other that liberalism. Where I grew up, that was called being polite and it didn’t automatically rule out anything other that conservatism. >There’s a ton of room between disagreement and harassment. There was a time where that may have been true, but we're far away from those times.

Mind you, he said liberalism and not liberal. Modern day conservatives tend to be very pro-capitalism, which liberalism loved. Not sure when things got all turned around in America. Liberalism = smaller government and a free market. Yet in the US a "liberal" dislikes capitalism and wants more government? It's odd.

> Yet in the US a "liberal" dislikes capitalism and wants more government?

American liberals love capitalism; its one of the key things that differentiates the liberal (center-right) faction of the Democratic Party from the progressive (center-left) faction, which is (largely, quite mildly) critical of capitalism, and, in turn, from the actual left.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#232

Post by rconti »

metabagel wrote: post #224
stevebmark wrote: post #170

It takes blog posts to discover these because Mastodon micro communities aren't discoverable and no one knows which ones to sign up for. Mastodon has no long term potential. We're still waiting for the Twitter replacement.

Discoverability is Mastodon’s Achilles heel.

TBF, a problem that twitter also had.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#234

Post by input_sh »

Ridj48dhsnsh wrote: post #194
inamberclad wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the long-term potential supposed to be? Is Mastodon supposed to replace Twitter, or is it supposed to enhance the lives of people? I'm a member of several small forums that just don't grow. It's the same people each day, and that's fine. It's much closer to how human interactions work in real life. You don't join an ever-expanding pool of people where you strive to maximize your connections (or at least, I do…

Not being indexed by search engines is a fatal flaw in my opinion. There might be some interesting discussions taking place on Mastodon, but I would have no way of knowing.

You have an option in user settings to allow search engines to index your profile and public posts. (It's off by default.)

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#235

Post by mcintyre1994 »

maxlin wrote: post #198

When a blog post starts with saying "twitter is dead" it doesn't really make it worth reading further. "Twitter is dead" was said pretty much as numerously as "2 more weeks" but it's off better than ever, with Community Notes having proved themselves and X now having proved its capability to serve its main mission by working as the town square on issues related to OpenAI, Gaza, etc, etc. Eventually, with subscription…

I’m unconvinced that subscriptions are ever going to make enough money to pay the bills. Musk has been pretty clear he needs to get advertisers back. I don’t think his approach of specifically telling Bob Iger to fuck off is going to help with that, but he isn’t hiding that he needs to figure it out pretty quickly.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#236

Post by jackstraw14 »

hsn915 wrote: post #173
p-e-w wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting at his own fans. No, the magic of the early web was that people treated their online identities as a secret alternative life, rather than a resume for recruiters, friends, potential partners, and other real-world acquaintances to look at. The Internet of today is little more than a (distorted) mirror of people…

Also many of us were much younger, even teenagers, with little to no exposure to HR hell.

Many weren't, too.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#237

Post by [deleted] »

smsm42 wrote: post #228

Opened the front page of the "community of the nicest, most interesting people". Here's what I found, omitting some jokes, "dear diary", etc (profanity omitted, light rephrasing to keep it short): AI is taking our jobs Trump is a liar MAGA republicans are plotting against democracy and Trump is Putin's puppet Trump is bad AOC is cool, she's showing that evil GOP Twitter is dying Christians are hateful bigots Republic…

[deleted]

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#238

Post by prmoustache »

maxlin wrote: post #198

When a blog post starts with saying "twitter is dead" it doesn't really make it worth reading further. "Twitter is dead" was said pretty much as numerously as "2 more weeks" but it's off better than ever, with Community Notes having proved themselves and X now having proved its capability to serve its main mission by working as the town square on issues related to OpenAI, Gaza, etc, etc. Eventually, with subscription…

Well twitter doesn't exist anymore so yes it is dead.

Also it is funny that for a lot of people including me, slashdot, digg, twitter and reddit are already a thing of the past while we are still visiting regular old forums.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#239

Post by onion2k »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #154
shusaku wrote: post #131

That’s a fun set of features, but I don’t see the connection with the community. You can browse their mastodon feed and it’s just a bunch of vaguely liberal vaguely tech posts? I’d like to see which accounts are using the services for a better community

That's the shortcoming of every alternative protocol and "indie web" community I've come across. They only attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them. If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work? The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting…

guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are

The early web was mostly nerds, but not just tech nerds. I made my first site in 1997 and I linked to all sorts of things about TV shows, music and games that had been made by fans of things. If someone loved the X-Files and wanted to contribute to a site about it the only option was to get a book about HTML from the library and learn to use FTP. It thrived because it was just a group of people enthusiastic about things. Few people wanted to criticise because the only response you'd get was "well you make a better website then!". And when that happened people did. There were rivalries that worked like a feedback loop to improve things. That's missing today. People just criticise and don't try to do better. I blame the rise of guestbooks.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#240

Post by hooby »

damiante wrote: post #65

I love the idea of such smaller communities and the "old web" style of interaction, but for me the issue is one of discoverability. How do I find and follow people? Does anyone still use RSS, or are we relying on Mastodon/ActivityPub? Bavk in the day this was the purpose of search engines, but it seems that now such small pages are scarcely even indexed...

Might be a tangent - but is more discoverability actually desirable in this case?

Could it possibly preserve that "old web" style of interaction, if it becomes a global phenomenon that everyone uses? Or does this only work as long as it stays a little hidden niche, that most people don't know about, and will never find?

Or in other words - can something feel like "the old web" (which was early adopters and enthusiasts only) - if it's frequented by everyone?

You love the idea of smaller communities - but how can they stay small?

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