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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

#91

Post by zeroCalories »

watwut wrote: post #59
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…

There used to be a lot of disdain on HN against people who were "just partying". While the geeks stayed home, learned for school or job yadda yadda. People who socialize were always maligned here, their socializing was supposed reason why they earned less money. And that attitude is one part of the answer. Second is that home entertainment became easier and more fun, so people stay home watching movies, browsing inte…

The stigma is pure cope. Most nerdy types I know wasted a ton of time on some stupid hobby. If not video games, it was some other dumb geek thing like anime, comic books, or furries.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#92

Post by ghaff »

xg15 wrote: post #81
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…

I suspect there are a lot of reasons. You don't have men and their housewife for the most part. So the typically male Lions, Elks, etc. clubs don't fit as well with modern lifestyles for that reason in part. Bowling nights went out of fashion. People are less likely to to be clustered in a town/small city for work. There are just a lot of reasons why routinely heading down to $PLACE with all the guys after work just isn't that popular any longer.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#93

Post by ghaff »

xg15 wrote: post #83
mannanj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

I'd add that, in spite of a US and probably SV focus, it's very geographically distributed. Back in my BBS days, we actually had a core of local participants who got together IRL from time to time.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#94

Post by tehnub »

Such excellent writing. I also read the linked post from 2018 near the bottom. When every other thing you see on here is Claude-inflected if not Claude-written, encountering a blog like this is an occasion to cherish.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#95

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #2

Do not expect a reward, dude. I spent 15 years building a local community, I had 10,000 daily users once, people recognized me on the street, then everyone left on a whim when Facebook made it easier to hang in one's own echo chambers. I still think it was worth it. Once in a while, I bump into a stranger, and they tell me how the found their only true love because of me, or how they landed a job that made them loads…

>then everyone left on a whim when Facebook made it easier to hang in one's own echo

Personally IMHO I'd rather have a small dedicated bunch of individually do the 'community' thing to each other rather than cater to mass market. I'm selfish and rightfully so.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#96

Post by greekrich92 »

xyzelement wrote: post #32

// Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries True in general. As a kid you think of th…

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#97

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

biscuits1 wrote: post #53

". . . but our social scripts telling people to produce social fabric . . ." The author of the article may benefit from reading "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam. Although it's now in a class of books on American history, it explores this topic in depth. afaik, a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric." Of course, the Internet (or technology), by its nature, is actually collatin…

"a society needs to face a potential collective crisis to "produce its own fabric.""

Good point - the linked article, and the article it itself links to, essentially, but without realizing it, indicates the American experience of WWII.

The entire country suddenly and powerfully altered to support total war. Every fit man under 40, pretty much, shipped off to be in the military (you can see hints of this in late-war films, where each male actor has a line explaining why they are in an American setting vs being in foreign lands ("I'll be shipping in out in two months, so I have time to solve this murder mystery til then")).

All industry shifted to produce the massive needs of the war, vast swathes of the female populace brought in from being a housewife to become factory workers creating the materiel for combat at a truly astonishing scale.

All of this jarring shock to the entire country creating the novel collective experience of total war that temporarily upended and transformed the society. All this creating that "collective crisis."

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#98

Post by pclowes »

greekrich92 wrote: post #96
xyzelement wrote: post #32

// Lots of people have a sort of consumer attitude towards their communities, where they take everything for granted. I saw things this way when I was young. A social scene is an automatic feature of the world that appears on its own, like a wild blueberry bush. It starts sprouting parties and dinners and conferences and reading groups as naturally as the bush sprouts berries True in general. As a kid you think of th…

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation.

If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#99

Post by Exoristos »

xg15 wrote: post #81
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…

The downfall of social institutions was well on its way by the Boomers.

Re: If You Build It, They Will Come

#100

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

t0mpr1c3 wrote: post #71
Dig1t wrote: post #52

I think this is a little bit oversimplified and I don't know that it's even true at all. It's basically the opposite story of what's told by "Bowling Alone". That book was written in the year 2000, when the author observed that institutions that previously provided social fabric were all dying. The United States used to have a robust web of institutions that provided social fabric and they have mostly all gone away,…

I don't believe it either. This advice has probably never been less true. Perhaps there is just a certain kind of Substack journalist who chooses some dubious piece of conventional wisdom every Sunday to sermonize about.

I don't know that I would characterize the typical Substack writer as a "journalist."

It's just opinion blogging.

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