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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

#71

Post by cogogo »

stndef wrote: post #65
IAmBroom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but your privilege is offensively visible. Deaf people need this.

Yup! I have significant hearing loss to the point that I'm useless without hearing aids. I'm going to take this idea for my partner to use to get my attention if needed. Having it tie into Home Assistant is a win for me as well.

I don’t have hearing loss but the best way I’ve found to not miss important notifications is a smart watch. Game changing to ensure my wife and I don’t miss each other’s messages around school pickup or anything else important. With an apple watch you can make the vibration pretty unmissable. We both have almost all other notifications silenced so it’s not overly noisy either. I never use sound for any kind of notification anymore - even when expecting important calls.

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

#72

Post by nemomarx »

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…

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.

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

#73

Post by stevage »

That actually sounds really nice.

> Over the next year, our group chat (in Signal) was drowning in notifications. A mix of general chit chat, talks on the ever changing news of COVID and the most important - when can people play games and chat. It really annoyed me when people would post on "hey anyone wanna play [game] in 15 mins?", for it to be buried in another 5 messages.

My friend group's solution to this problem is...lots of different group chats. They're all on Google Chat, but we have tons of different ones for different topics: bikes, space, covid/infectious diseases, baking, craft, plants, wildlife, true crime, politics, depressing news, renewables/sustainability, tech geekery, board games, home improvement...

I do miss video chat nights during lockdown though.

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

#74

Post by sgarland »

f3b5 wrote: post #37
thedanbob wrote: post #24

> 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.

They said a status board on top of their monitor, not every corner of their house. This seems like a very unobtrusive signal to me. Plus, some people like to hide or obscure their phone from their field of view during work, to minimize distractions. Honestly, the only person I immediately check my phone for is my wife. If I could have a priority indicator along with that, I’d love it. There are some things I need to know immediately (a kid is sick and one of us needs to pick them up, etc.) regardless of what I’m doing, and there are others where it can wait until I’m done with a meeting.

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

#75

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

johndhi wrote: post #36
johndhi wrote: post #35

I had the idea of making a website where anyone of a group of friends can post their evening plans - go to trivia, play tennis, etc - and others would be able to sign up to join. Never made it but glad to see these things can work.

Anyone know if something like this already exists I could buy or use?

I do think this is an interesting idea. Lemme see if I can do this. How do you think the UI/UX should look like.

Here's what I am thinking. You sign in It asks you what you want to do And at what time (hour) in another column and (date) in another column And then it asks you the location

And then we can have a contact-me: which could lead to discord or signal. Or, if you aren't comfortable sharing that info, then you could have a shareable link that you can share with anyone and then they can write their email or whatever and you would get live notifications through mail or whatever platform you decided.

Lemme know if we are on the same page?

EDIT: I have created a mvp but like, the problem is that it's just a form y'know and I just created something where you would input in this information and it would give html and then you can host it and using https://formsubmit.co/ you can use it. Though I guess one of the issues is that you have to validate each form in formsubmit (not good for ephemeral forms) and I guess it also shows email but there's a way to hide it too.

Also, I guess the problems aren't of forms but of discoverability. How do you make people discover your forms but I guess one way could be of having a list of all your forms or just the current ones that you want to show (IDK?) on github pages for example and then you could just share the github pages link to anyone or just have it in a about me section of most messengers?

Also.. Maybe then if you wanted to rather share it to anybody you could create a additional place where anybody can share their forms/such website. But I am not sure if what I've all said is the best user experience.

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

#76

Post by conductr »

shark1 wrote: post #43
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.

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.

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 (most people).

It’s weird for me to witness as I never indulged in social media and could always see it for what it is. I watched my wife use and just classified it as a huge waste of time (and had some not so fun, “get off your phone” conversations along the way). Some people are finally coming around to it but a lot of damage has been done and a lot of social fabric has eroded.

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

#77

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #75
johndhi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know if something like this already exists I could buy or use?

I do think this is an interesting idea. Lemme see if I can do this. How do you think the UI/UX should look like. Here's what I am thinking. You sign in It asks you what you want to do And at what time (hour) in another column and (date) in another column And then it asks you the location And then we can have a contact-me: which could lead to discord or signal. Or, if you aren't comfortable sharing that info, then you…

I just realized that I just reinvented a form generator or a form itself...

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

#78

Post by codingdave »

Aachen wrote: post #18

s/something/a Discord bot/ to unclickbait the title..

I completely disagree. The point is the impact it has on lives, not the tools used to build it. I would enjoy it if more people focused their writing on the impact their work has on people, and less on the tools and processes used. Or at the very least, clearly delineate the build from the impact.

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

#79

Post by nvesp »

conductr wrote: post #76
shark1 wrote: 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.

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.

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

#80

Post by thesuitonym »

al_borland wrote: post #31
kqr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, coming from an IRC and email background I have the opposite reaction. Rather than having to wait until someone is online it is much nicer to just type to them and they'll respond once they can. Everyone is open all the time!

Some people used AIM like this as well, at least I did. I left my computer on all the time, so I was always online. I was in college during the peak of AIM and it was useful to know who was at their computer or not, which I believe was still viable. Around meal times, we could quickly scan for who was around to see if they wanted to head down to the cafeteria. If they weren’t around, there was no point it asking. For…

AIM also had useful states. If you were away for a decent chunk of time (And you could configure what that amount of time was!) it would mark you as idle, and you could set custom away messages (That were actually visible) so folks could know why you were away, or more realistically, what song was on your mind.

Nowadays the status is completely meaningless. It's a small dot that doesn't accurately reflect your status, and if you choose to set a message, most of the apps hide it anyway.

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