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

blog.danpetrolito.xyz

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

#201

Post by midtake »

donatj wrote: 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.

Disagree. There are people open to chitchat right now. They are just young. We just grew old, most of us are having families, and it would be weird to idly chitchat instead of playing your family role.

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

#202

Post by [deleted] »

BeetleB wrote: post #165
gausswho wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many who lived through this inversion I can absolutely relate. I've culled my notifications substantially and my life is better for it. But I miss that feeling of firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi. I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mod…

> I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow state has subsided. You're not alone. Here's how I solved it: Last year I really wanted a new smartphone just for the better camera. My existing phone from 2018 was still workin…

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by mkl »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #168
donatj wrote: 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 might interest you, it was posted on HN early last year: Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496 (I have no association with the post, the people, or the project.)

Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496

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

#204

Post by Drew_ »

nvesp wrote: post #79
conductr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “satisfied” part is the most harmful imo. This is what causes lack of actual social interaction and real friendships. Loneliness is on the rise as friendships are on a decline, this is a byproduct of social media gratification The other more obviously negative components tired/overwhelmed are more of a hangover effect people have after over indulgence. But they’re addicted so ultimately always go back for more (m…

I'm not sure the tired/overwhelmed hangover effect is necessarily from social media. I like to think most of my time spent on the internet is productive,reading documentation and cs articles/papers for the most part and i still get that hangover feeling.

There's a noticeable difference to me between exercising my thinking skills and feeling mentally exhausted versus consuming lots of media and feeling "hungover".

I get that exhausted feeling after any hard day at work. On the other hand, scrolling through reels for about 30 minutes gives me a headache. If I spend over an hour on YouTube, I also get a similar feeling, but only if that time was spent watching many different videos. If I watched one 2 hour video, I feel fine.

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

#205

Post by flooo »

I have several chat groups with friends and even with my wife to avoid this topic. With my wife, I have several now: one to share recipes, one to share the weeks meal plan, one to talk about the activities of our two year old and one to share houses we might be interested in buying.

It’s great to separate for record keeping, but mostly to avoid forcing the conversation on some organisational thing when the other just needs eg to vent about something at work

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

#207

Post by Karrot_Kream »

101008 wrote: post #66
donatj wrote: 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…

> Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly.

I've been reading this on HN for years but I've always been puzzled by it because it's both so different from my personal experiences and seems so divergent from the types who hang out on HN.

From around my mid-20s the expectation to be always on in any of my friend groups just evaporated. Until we hit our 30s there was still a general expectation to read socials after work hours but even then as we got older many of us were too drained after work to do much. Then once we hit our 30s the expectation was that our partners, homes, and often kids took precedence. None of my friends are posting Stories on Instagram with their newborns.

Now some of my friends do still love being always on their socials but a lot of these friends of mine when not on socials are constantly hanging out at social events or on calls with each other. They'd probably be the neighborhood gossips in an era before telephony.

So I'm curious: is this a real problem or is this a bit of a strawman? What sort of social pressure do you actually receive to be always on your socials? Is this related to going on dates?

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

nemomarx wrote: post #72
101008 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by tomashubelbauer »

rockostrich wrote: post #134

I think Discord is the best chat app for friend groups and it's not even close. At this point I've written the following bots specifically for my friend group's server: # Music Quiz Bot Existing apps work ok. A lot of paid and don't let you use a specific Spotify playlist. The only thing annoying about this one is that none of the Discord API wrappers handle audio very well so I've found that this one gets a bit flak…

I'm 32 and Discord is the harbinger of getting out of touch with technology for me. It is clearly a great service, because so many people use it and seem happy with it, but it is _not_ for me. And I wish that wasn't the case because Discord is pretty much _the_ spot for the communities I'd like to hang around with.

But I wasn't able to get on top of its notification system or get past the gamer heavy UI.

Does your friend group consist of mainly techies? If not, I am impressed you were able to get them to use it. Even more so if they were already on it. I tried to get folks to use Signal with me for a bit and it was the most futile endeavor I've ever attempted.

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

#210

Post by OkayPhysicist »

98codes wrote: post #142
nemomarx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.

It's funny -- before social media, I was more likely able to go find someone to chat with on IRC, a Usenet group, or some purpose-built forum. I knew where my friends were (ICQ, then AIM, then Skype, then GChat), and it worked. Now, it's all fragmented into 1000 Discord servers, and who has the time to dig through it all?

See, I'm the opposite. I've got a Discord server, which are very much "where my friends are": If I make an acquaintance (or any of my friends do), they get added to the server. Some stick around, and get woven into the social fiber. Some never come back, and eventually get removed from the server during our annual purge. There's maybe 10-20 active people (i.e., people we see at least a couple times a month), a handful of regulars that are that multiple times a week, and then maybe twice all that again of people we hear from once in a blue moon. If I want to chat, I'll hop in voice. If I want to share something I found, I'll stick it in a text channel.

There's still plenty of communities on the internet. It's just that the communities worth belonging to are not wide open to the public. Community building does not scale.

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