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I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

blog.danpetrolito.xyz

171–180 of 276 posts

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#171
post #20

Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with people I barely knew. There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once great about online communication.

I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#172
post #58
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is a pretty cool hardware project, I would be quite annoyed to be your partner. No offense, but it almost reads as satire that you want to flash LEDs in every corner of the house if your wife doesn't look at her phone notifications quickly enough.

Why back in MY day we just had 5-7 kids stationed throughout the house. A simple “Joey, go tell Mom” was all you needed! /s

I remember the year my dad installed an intercom system in the house and then disabled it within a month or two due to its use by children.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#173
post #66
post #20

Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with people I barely knew. There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once great about online communication.

This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but basically, it's the idea that the internet used to be offline by default, and now it's online by default. People used to be offline by default. You had to “connect to the internet.” Open MSN, go into forums and check the latest unread messages, come back from a concert and manually upload the photos to…

> You’re expected to reply as soon as possible.

I am happy to disappoint these expectations. I feel no pressure from it whatsoever. Of course, I'm of the age of default offline, so that has a lot to do with it. Remember coming home to a "machine" to check messages? That was glorious even if it too had a glowing red dot that wanted your attention.

The always on mentality is not worth it and quite tiresome, figuratively and literally. I know it's different for women, but I've met a few that are really into the always on concept where they never leave the house without full war paint because "you never know who you might meet". I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#174

Going from signal to discord is crazy. How can you be OK with knowing that your personal voice chats are being monitored, recorded and sold to the next highest bidder? How can it be so easy to choose convenience over that? Or is it that we have essentially given up and wanna actively take a part in mass surveillance?

Is there some reasonable way to self host a (secure) voice chat channel?

Depending on your definition of reasonable, you could just pipe the audio over SSH: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/116919/redirect-sou...

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#175
God I'm so jealous you were able to get your friends to join Discord.

My in-person friend group revolved around the bar we all went to. When the bar shut down, I floated the idea of a group chat but couldn't get anyone interested. No one wants to install another app and get notified more. In olden days, we'd just solve the problem with Facebook, but no one uses that anymore either. My friends are ordinary, normal, overworked people who need an easy option. The bar was that. Show up when you want to connect. Easy.

So now there's nothing. I basically just lost all my friends. We all have each other's numbers but that's just not an option for coordination.

Fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg, for making Facebook so shitty it's not even useful anymore for the one thing I ever found it useful for. I hope when we finally start coming for the billionaires, we come for you first.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#176

> I also had this idea to turn this into an IoT device that has 5 RGB lights and sits on your desk. It would light up when each friend you have delegated joins your Discord voice channel and you could customize the colour for each friend. If I get some traction I might turn it into a real product, so email me at my email address in my about page if that seems something you'd like. Hah, I'm also building something lik…

My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she messages me over SMS/Signal/etc. As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where we each have an LED sign…

Or just get a $5 radio doorbell. You know, when it's 'urgent, right now' you don't want to learn what you are too late because for whatever reason internet/wireless/cellular wasn't working.

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some reasonable way to self host a (secure) voice chat channel?

Mumble!

Mumble is awesome but definitely difficult to properly configure. Especially the TLS certs for any reverse proxy won't work directly, there's a hacky way to make it work which I don't fully trust

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#178
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some reasonable way to self host a (secure) voice chat channel?

Depending on your definition of reasonable, you could just pipe the audio over SSH: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/116919/redirect-sou...

Wow, I never thought you could ssh your audio. That's so fucking awesome

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#179
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory: what was scarce once, is not anymore. Social networks make people tired/satisfied/overwhelmed of "interacting online", and in the worst possible way: passively, not producing anything and just consuming it. It sucks.

> It sucks. It sucks because the social aspect of social media has been bent and twisted into squeezing every bit of money out of it. In some regards, people are being forced to consume. Companies do anything they can to manipulate users into continual consumption because it generates money for them. Even worse now? Companies are rewarding people when users interact with their content. Now people are enticed to creat…

> I've deleted all of my accounts now

except for this one

Re: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

#180
post #38

I always try to solve problems by using what people already have, so I wonder if having another group on Signal, where only “I'm playing!” messages would be allowed, couldn't fix the issue…?

My friend group has multiple Signal chats for different purposes. One is a general chat, no politics allowed. Then there's a chat that is for politics. One is for live music, and there are other sub-groups for specific interests.
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