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I kissed comment culture goodbye

(sustainableviews.substack.com)
256 points spyckie2 | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 20:11 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nostrademons ◴[05 Sep 25 20:59 UTC] No.45143535[source]▶
I actually made plenty of friends commenting, in the early days of the Internet, but it wasn't just commenting. It was that a comment on a message board would lead to following them on LiveJournal, which would lead to AIM chats, which would lead to volunteer positions and real-life meetups and being invited to their weddings and a job referral to Google in the late-00s.

I've got plenty of friends now. Most are not the ones I met online; that was a phase of our life that has largely passed us by, though I keep up with a couple. I still comment on things, but it leads to more shallow relationships if any, but perhaps that's because I'm not really looking for friends anymore.

But I think that the bigger reason I'm reconsidering commenting online is: I can never be sure if the other person is real anymore. And even if they are, it often doesn't feel like they're debating in good faith. A lot of recent Reddit comment threads have really felt like I'm arguing with an AI or Russian troll farm. Social media now feels like a propaganda cesspool rather than something where people come together to share disparate views.

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novok ◴[05 Sep 25 21:19 UTC] No.45143746[source]▶
Yeah I second this. You need a social media structure that follows this. HN doesn't build for it because there is no private message or comment reply notification infra. Other news websites and youtube comments are even worse. Reddit also is a bit like HN in that regard where the main unit of social media is the community / news post, but you could make it work to make internet friends because it has PMs and focused communities.

Instagram, X, & old school forums etc lend themselves to it a bit more, but it's probably the chat / watering hole ones like discord and IRC that lend themselves the most to making internet friends. All the other ones you need to reach out specifically and it can be difficult.

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1. bri3d ◴[05 Sep 25 22:55 UTC] No.45144651[source]▶
I think the ease of direct connection helps, but there's also a big difference in terms of permanence and frequency/volume. While on IRC people were frequently running bouncers or logging bots that eventually posted to the web, it still felt ephemeral and therefore more authentic. The same goes for Discord - much as the demise of the traditional web-indexed phpBB forum is lamented, I feel that people more frequently act like "themselves" in spaces that don't feel as permanent, regardless of if they actually are or not. Plus, most active IRC and now Discord users just post a lot more messages than, say, an average HN user, so there's a lot more socializing to be done.

For whatever reason, public Discords just don't seem to work the same way as IRC did, though. I've had great luck seeding Discord servers with friends from elsewhere (real life, forums, shared activities, etc.) and making friends as the group grows, but I've never really jumped into a random Discord and made a friend the way I did on IRC. I can't really figure out what the difference is, but it's one of the little things I miss that I haven't been able to put a finger on.

Overall though, I've made plenty of friends online, even in the last few years and even as I get older and the Internet changes. The original article really didn't resonate with me at all, which actually made it even more thought provoking for me - I can't imagine making 16 years worth of posts without a single direct connection.