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Making friends on the internet

jon.bo

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Re: Making friends on the internet

#31

Post by xboxnolifes »

celdon25 wrote: post #18
avgDev wrote: post #14

The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. I don't want to meet 'Yes' friends or 'always positive' friends. Social media is fake. There is no way around it. LinkedIn is fake and disgusting, looking at my feed for a second when I'm responding to recruiters makes me want…

> The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities. I've found gaming communities (and I've been in many) to be excessively toxic. You can meet good people there, but I've found it's not worth the headache.

Toxicity seems to correlate with size of the gaming community. I rarely have any issues when I join sub-groups to an interest, but trying to have casual conversation in a major subreddit/discord for a game is impossible.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#32

Post by zackmorris »

I wonder how VR will change this.

I got into tech as a teenager in the 90s because I was such an introvert and it felt like a way to game the system and maybe meet girls or avoid having to get an actual job.

Hah. Waking up every day in this bizarro world of endless overwork just to survive while some other geek wins it all and disappoints humanity has gotten stale. And even with all of this connectedness, people often feel more separated than ever. Like everything I ever wanted came to pass in a corrupted fashion.

So far VR is one of the few things that I consider a tentative cure for depression. I think it's because shifting out of this reality is pretty much guaranteed to feel better than staying at this point. So maybe VR will end up being the internet that I thought this one was going to be.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#33

Post by jfim »

avgDev wrote: post #14

The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. I don't want to meet 'Yes' friends or 'always positive' friends. Social media is fake. There is no way around it. LinkedIn is fake and disgusting, looking at my feed for a second when I'm responding to recruiters makes me want…

> The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world.

The currently trending social media app for younger generations is BeReal, which basically prompts everyone to take a selfie at the same time of the day, with a two minute timer to do so. No filters, and it shows the image from both cameras.

It's somewhat refreshing to see people on the bus, cooking, laying on the couch playing video games, or doing all kinds of other mundane things as opposed to a perfectly manicured feed. It's not amenable to making new connections due to it not allowing messages between unconnected users, and it's not clear if it's just a fad, but it's a somewhat welcome change in the space.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#34

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #31
celdon25 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities. I've found gaming communities (and I've been in many) to be excessively toxic. You can meet good people there, but I've found it's not worth the headache.

Toxicity seems to correlate with size of the gaming community. I rarely have any issues when I join sub-groups to an interest, but trying to have casual conversation in a major subreddit/discord for a game is impossible.

I've always had a feeling that toxicity is a function of community size.

Like in small online communities, you get to know the trolls and it's oddly endearing. You see their personality and everybody gets to know them and their trolling doesn't even derail discussion at that point it just makes everyone laugh.

Truly toxic individuals can also be booted. When a community reaches a certain size there is just an unrelenting deluge of anonymous trolls and toxic individuals, nobody can keep up.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#35

Post by unity1001 »

celdon25 wrote: post #18
avgDev wrote: post #14

The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. I don't want to meet 'Yes' friends or 'always positive' friends. Social media is fake. There is no way around it. LinkedIn is fake and disgusting, looking at my feed for a second when I'm responding to recruiters makes me want…

> The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities. I've found gaming communities (and I've been in many) to be excessively toxic. You can meet good people there, but I've found it's not worth the headache.

PVP related communities tend to be like that and there is little way to get around that. And I say that as a person who ran such communities.

Try RP gaming communities. By that I don't mean that hardcore RP communities or anywhere you have to do actual RP. Just the 'RP' tag in a mmo server weeds out assholes, pricks etc and ensures that there is a high age average in the server. The Wow Eu RP server I have been playing for years keeps getting 'immigrants' from US servers and PVP servers all the time. They escape the aggressive and toxic environments by moving to RP servers. They don't do RP, they just play and join raids and other activities.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#37

Post by rejectfinite »

jfim wrote: post #33
avgDev wrote: post #14

The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. I don't want to meet 'Yes' friends or 'always positive' friends. Social media is fake. There is no way around it. LinkedIn is fake and disgusting, looking at my feed for a second when I'm responding to recruiters makes me want…

> The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. The currently trending social media app for younger generations is BeReal, which basically prompts everyone to take a selfie at the same time of the day, with a two minute timer to do so. No filters, and it shows the image f…

> The currently trending social media app for younger generations is BeReal

Never heard this in my entire life.

And it would just be mu computer screen and my face.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#38

Post by djhworld »

One thing I really miss about the modern web is forums.

I'm in my 30s now but grew up on the web, from 1998 - so not exactly an old timer but enough to ride the wave of web 1.0 -> 2.0.

I made loads of friends on forums in those days. Sadly most of those forums died off as time has gone by. One still exists though but there's only a handful of us left, it's extremely rare to get a new member.

I know these days everyone uses Discord or Slack or whatever the one is the rust people use (zulip?) but chat isn't the same as forums.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#39

Post by holler »

jarenmf wrote: post #17

I made a lot of friends on IRC and internet forums a long time ago. It is much easier when you are anonymous and be truly yourself. I miss these communities nowadays and can't really find a replacement.

I just did a Show HN for an anonymous public chat social site in dev https://sqwok.im

Re: Making friends on the internet

#40

Post by mjevans »

djhworld wrote: post #38

One thing I really miss about the modern web is forums. I'm in my 30s now but grew up on the web, from 1998 - so not exactly an old timer but enough to ride the wave of web 1.0 -> 2.0. I made loads of friends on forums in those days. Sadly most of those forums died off as time has gone by. One still exists though but there's only a handful of us left, it's extremely rare to get a new member. I know these days everyon…

Some of us still use IRC. We wait for the true successor. An open protocol, a secure protocol. That which will subsume even email and provide the answer to all the problems we know.
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