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

blog.danpetrolito.xyz

51–60 of 276 posts

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

#51

This is really interesting as a way to keep people connected on a regular basis. I wonder if something similar could be done for groups who aren't necessarily into gaming: like say a "virtual fireplace" where folks could just pop into a call and talk

Discord is already like that for a lot of niche communities and fandoms that aren't necessarily gaming; it just all evolved on a gaming-focused platform.

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

#52
post #49

I tried that a long time ago with teamspeak, and then discord, but my friends are not big users of these tools and so it didnt work. Discords do too much. If whatsapp could do this it could work

I do think that whatsapp could do this tbh if it would actually provide its api like discord does.

Telegram feels like it can definitely do such stuff and I found in my opinion that its way easier to host telegram bot on cloudflare than it is on discord so theoretically you could even have it as a cf worker with a deploy on cf button so as to even people who don't know too much about deploying could use it.

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

#53
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 remember the early days of Skype and Google talk, calling random strangers and… actually having a conversation with them. I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger, but were almost always happy to chat anyway!

Sounds exactly like ham radio operators.

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

#54
I didn't see this in the article, but why not just organize the games in a Discord text channel? Discord has very granular notifications that seem the perfect solution here, so folks can see there are unread messages in #games, and the folks gaming are already on the server.

One big noisy chat for everything is an antipattern, as any group of sufficient size eventually learns.

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

#55
post #49

I tried that a long time ago with teamspeak, and then discord, but my friends are not big users of these tools and so it didnt work. Discords do too much. If whatsapp could do this it could work

WhatsApp should totally add that as a feature! A voice chat room with join notifications.

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

#56
post #37

> 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…

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.

No offense, but your privilege is offensively visible.

Deaf people need this.

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

#57

I didn't see this in the article, but why not just organize the games in a Discord text channel? Discord has very granular notifications that seem the perfect solution here, so folks can see there are unread messages in #games, and the folks gaming are already on the server. One big noisy chat for everything is an antipattern, as any group of sufficient size eventually learns.

One Big Chat is great for the terminally online. Everyone else gets horribly behind.

Organized channels is the way to go and spending time thinking about setup is worth it. Otherwise they develop naturally and haphazardly.

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

#58
post #37

> 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…

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

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

#60

I didn't see this in the article, but why not just organize the games in a Discord text channel? Discord has very granular notifications that seem the perfect solution here, so folks can see there are unread messages in #games, and the folks gaming are already on the server. One big noisy chat for everything is an antipattern, as any group of sufficient size eventually learns.

The discord of '22 was, iirc, very different from now, or at least the culture around it. It looks like they just only used it for a single voice chat lobby
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