In the last 3 days I’ve been paying attention to r/all, expecting several posts about it and…
Yeah
Wasn’t expecting the website to literally shut down nor to monopolize r/all, because 3rd party users are the minority, but I hoped for more than whatever this was.
At least there’s a silver lining, I discovered new alternatives that have healthier communities
I have seen a lot of that, too, but I view that as a plus. I mean, you have all these people wandering around here, asking for directions to the equivalents of all their old digital gathering places, but they are engaging. Like, actually having conversations and building camaraderie and all that jazz that happens when you build a community, and that’s just awesome to see, man. Where we all come from wasn’t like that at all; smaller subreddits aside, it was like shouting into the crowd at a frickin Kid Rock concert, y’know? The atmosphere wasn’t exactly conducive to conversation. Not to say good conversation was impossible in big threads; it happened all the time. But it was always just so frickin loud and obnoxious in there, ya know?
And now we have this new space, and its newness is forcing people to talk, and…ah fuck, I forgot where I was going with this. Um… Reddit bad! Me like Kbin! Or something. Have fun with settling in, and I mean that sincerely.
Yes, I tended to stay in the niche places I had found, only going out to the big ones during major events or news because of the same reasons. Smaller crowds feels like a discussion, big ones is a shouting match with only a few hearing you. I come from the days of BBSes, and this right now is exactly the same feel, only not just local people. Now we just have to figure out how it works, and how it can be improved.
Ah, ye old Bee Bee Esses. Sadly, I missed the boat on that…I was definitely old enough and technically capable, but I didn’t know they existed. I hear you though, my first real exposure to the internet was Gopher! You could find all sorts of stuff out there, like in people’s shared directories, but more importantly, MUDs! Damn near flunked out of college because of them. Fun times, though! The internet was so much smaller back then.