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Making friends on the internet

jon.bo

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Re: Making friends on the internet

#51

Post by jrm4 »

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…

Takes like this sound to me like:

"The problem with visiting New York City is that everyone you meet is fake."

One case see how someone could easily come away with that impression, but also, it's just silly on its face. It's all just going to be highly dependent on "the how," and frankly, also luck.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#52

Post by jrm4 »

zackmorris wrote: post #32

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 ofte…

I kind of feel like "roughly as much as MMORPGs slash Pokemon Go slash Fortnite?" I can't see how it would end up too differently from those.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#53

Post by Melatonic »

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…

For years I have wanted to make a profile on some of the big social networks that were intentionally (for comedic purposes) the absolute WORST I could possibly make myself out to be. My profile photo could be me in a torn up 3 piece suit passed out in a bush - my job something ridiculously awful - etc etc

Re: Making friends on the internet

#54

Post by LambdaTrain »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #29
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.

The only ones I've really been fond of are groups where the members are also mostly in-person friends as well. So everyone knows what the others are truly like. To be honest, maybe it's a terrible idea, but I do try to bring my "real self" to the internet and not some crafted personality. I never put up anything I wouldn't tell someone in person. I don't act different than I do in person.

I do not think this is a terrible idea. Games such as league of legends feel dramatically different when I play with friends in real life.

One strange thing is that as my age grows my preference for multiplayer game changes from "competitive" to "coop".

Re: Making friends on the internet

#55

Post by EZ-Cheeze »

dt3ft wrote: post #47
EZ-Cheeze wrote: post #24

The internet should be making friends for us. Find me everyone who GETS ME. I want a thousand or more

I’d be okay with just one :)

But think about it - humans will be able to do qualitatively new things with thousands of friends each

I was recommended The Affinities while posting about this before and currently have read halfway through. It explores that question quite well so far

Re: Making friends on the internet

#56

Post by em-bee »

jackallis wrote: post #42

i would like a friend who is comfortable being vulnerable with me and viceversa.Idk how social media provides that.

start by opening up yourself. if you have a family member or close friend pass away, mention that and pick up on the responses. everyone experiences that at some point, and everyone is looking for ways to cope, so you are not sharing some unusual intimate secrets, but it allows to share vulnerability without being invasive.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#57

Post by temp-account684 »

mjevans wrote: post #40
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.

Matrix seems promising in that regard.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#58

Post by fold3 »

I've met really incredible people with lastfm personally. It was around 2010 in Berlin and other European cities. Also soulseek to some extent but we've never met irl. On the other hand, I've never met or had any meaningful talk with people from dating apps/website. It just doesn't feel like it's made for people like me.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#59

Post by fold3 »

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…

To talk about the connection you had with that person. I think that's is exactly why it is so special to meet with people online is that you can open up fearlessly and have very deep exchange super quickly while still being total stranger. So you get theses very unique interaction you'll most likely never have irl. It's quite common i believe. It happened to me and i know other people it happened to them as well.

I think it's interesting that on website/apps designed for dating and meeting, all the exchange i had were very poor and shallow, the best place for me was actually lastfm before it became a ghost town.

Re: Making friends on the internet

#60

Post by Markoff »

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…

Well I'm older, I've made friends on forums, Fidonet, IRC etc., but I don't really share the sentiment here, I think it's nostalgia speaking here, you are older so you made friends in past and now it's more difficult and you blame the medium, while younger people nowadays are still making friends.

Forums were essentially replaced by Reddit and you can have pretty much same experience as in forum in small subreddit, because what is the difference in the end? You have there threads with replies which can be even quoted, but yeah, media content in comments is heavily discouraged by problematic support in clients.

Though I have less time and don't frequent small subreddits and main issue for me would be how anonymous (I don't mean real name, just how recognizable are users from each other) it feels, which is maybe partly because of my Reddit client setup and could be probably resolved by using large avatars at each post/comment, because name and flairs won't stick in the head as much.

Discord would be probably decent alternative to IRC nowadays.

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