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If You Build It, They Will Come

benlandautaylor.com

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Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#81

Post by xg15 »

Exoristos wrote: post #39

America used to be awash with grassroots social institutions. I know an elderly gent who belonged to the Lions _and_ two similar organizations. When my mother was young, there were dances and dinners multiple nights a week. Which, for me, raises the question why weren't these things passed down? Why weren't the young a kind of apprentices to the old? That seems like the natural progression. But we see this generation…

It's trite, but I think a part of it is "because the internet happened" - and I don't mean just today's enshittification era but also the "good old times" everyone seems to remember fondly here. At some point, the internet was full of that kind of community spirit that you described, but of course this meant that people were more likely to direct their energy to online community building than to real-life stuff. And unfortunately online communities didn't always teach the skills that offline communities required, and also probably contributed a lot to the "consumer mindset" the OP warns against...

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#82

Post by ventana »

Noticing how many comment threads here discuss that America is something, has become something, or is not something, I just wanted to remind everyone, especially those not living in the US, that the US combines several very difficult cultures which have different ideas of community, Christianity, civic duty, and everything. The first book I read on this topic was "American Nations" by Colin Woodard (highly recommended), and after visiting several states in different parts of the US, I try to be very cautious before making any statements about the US as a whole.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#83

Post by xg15 »

mannanj wrote: post #80
skybrian wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical that posting on social networks will accomplish what you're hoping for. I've been fairly actively commenting on Hacker News for over 15 years and haven't met anyone this way. This is just recreational typing.

I wonder about that. Why is this one of the few communities, that despite being so high quality in a technical sense has so little in person community connection?

Won't say this is all, but I think there are some design decisions that actively push it away from that:

- No DMs

- A UI that strongly deemphasizes specific posters and emphasizes messages in an abstract "discussion tree"

- No persistent or "sticky" threads. Every discussion that takes place here will be off the front-page and essentially forgotten in a few days. There is no space where anything like "community lore" could develop. (*)

All that strongly encourages you to focus on links and messages, but not on the people behind it or on longer-form discussions.

(*) That's not quite true - if you're long enough here, you do see some patterns emerge, like reoccurring preferences or discussions emerge, and even "celebrities" whose pages get upvoted to the front page disproportionately often. But it's all implicit, observational stuff, there is not really a "water cooler" or "off topic" area for discussion. (Apart from the annual "Merry Christmas" thread maybe)

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#84

Post by intended »

Exoristos wrote: post #73
intended wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organized things started going down in participation no?

In the United States tradition that arose in the early nineteenth century, religious bodies were spiritual families with "brothers" and "sisters" that assisted in each other's lives outside of services. Descriptions of just how involved in daily life churches were can be found in e.g. Boles's 'Religion in Antebellum Kentucky.' Much unofficial societal organization flowed from there. Granted this was not the case, or…

While the root may have been religious, Lions and Rotary were things in other parts of the world, shorn of their religious connection. I know that my grandfather was a Lions club member, and that was in India.

Generally clubs of that nature have seen their membership drop, have they not?

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#85

Post by nicbou »

crab_galaxy wrote: post #7

You really have to do it for the love of the game. It can be surprisingly vulnerable to be the social fabric, and it’s super easy to fall into various toxic inner dialogs when you’re busy and others don’t pick up the slack, or if others don’t reciprocate the effort, or worst of all when others don’t include you for whatever reason.

I fully agree. I have experienced the same thing. It was hard not to take it personally, but I have come to accept that people are busy, tired, shy, and sometimes just not organisers of things.

When I feel that way now, I remind myself that to some people, I am the one who does not reciprocate invites, or who rarely has time. I rarely feel anything negative about them; I am just bbusy/tired/shy/not-in-an-organising-mood.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#86

Post by jancsika »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #75
jambalaya8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't only the decay. People change. Who you were online at age 23 and 30 and almost definitely 39 is bound to be vastly different as your priorities and real life relationships change (like marriages, etc). And the topics changed faster. People into mainframe OSes had the same conversational fluidity in that for decades. Leave linux for too long and everything sounds like vocabulary from an alien world, now. And…

In the late 80s I was working at Rabbit Software in Malvern PA (they made IBM 3270 terminal emulator software). I used to car pool to work from Phila. with a brilliant woman who was a lot older than me, and had a solid lifetime of IBM mainframe experience. I was a Unix hacker with just a few years under my belt. We realized very quickly that if there was one thing we couldn't talk to each other about, it was computer…

Back in 1984 George Lewis apparently did a stint at IRCAM, culminating in an electro-acoustic performance with three Apple IIe's connected by MIDI to three DX7s. I'd bet his conversations with the IRCAM directors were similarly limited!

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#87

Post by nicbou »

skybrian wrote: post #63
sim04ful wrote: post #60

This is indeed part of the something i've been internalising for quite a while. I've always felt i needed to improve my social circle by finding/making one, but i realised it's better to just have hobbies and skill sets that make me useful and relevant to a certain niche and then my circle would naturally arise from there. It's also why i'm trying to participate more here, even with the crippling imposters syndrome t…

I'm skeptical that posting on social networks will accomplish what you're hoping for. I've been fairly actively commenting on Hacker News for over 15 years and haven't met anyone this way. This is just recreational typing.

I meet everyone this way. I reach out to people and people reach out to me.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#89

Post by zeroCalories »

crab_galaxy wrote: post #7

You really have to do it for the love of the game. It can be surprisingly vulnerable to be the social fabric, and it’s super easy to fall into various toxic inner dialogs when you’re busy and others don’t pick up the slack, or if others don’t reciprocate the effort, or worst of all when others don’t include you for whatever reason.

That's the cost of doing business. Luckily, you can't go bankrupt from hurt feelings....

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#90

Post by jbeninger »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
customguy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a tangent, but it's fascinating how often you hear these stories (and I experienced one, myself), of communities "moving to Facebook" and basically dissolving as a community. I would like to see a collection of such anecdotes, but I can see why it doesn't get compiled, because it would essentially just be [description of community] and then [Facebook], with no specifically interesting thing to report other t…

> fascinating how often you hear these stories (and I experienced one, myself), of communities "moving to Facebook" and basically dissolving as a community There's an analogy here to suffocating in an anoxic atmosphere. Our bodies don't sense blood oxygen well. Instead, our urge to breathe is mainly driven by dissolved CO2 [1]. So if you're breathing out CO2, and breathing in no O2, your alarm bells stay mostly silen…

This analogy is one of the best I've seen. It's going to live in my head a long time, I think.
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