I wonder if Discord is replacing that? Lots of teens have their private discord servers (or whatever they're called) where they chat with each other. It reminds me of ICQ, MSN Messenger, Trillian, and the other chat protocols we used to have.
I never had the experience of email pen pals, but there are still ways people are connecting with each other authentically online.
Discord seems to be ethereal. If you're on when things are happening, cool. If not…it's just a wasteland, like walking into a bar at 10am and seeing holographic echoes of last night.
usenet was probably the first community I found on the internet, and I think the format is still a good template for human interaction. Reddit was, in a way, very similar in it's "old" and pre-enshittified format and I believe that's why it found success. It's less about discovery and more about deep dive, niche communities where you can connect with real and remote people with the same interests.
I use the internet for so much more than social media; the only real downside (aside from the loss of communities like usenet/reddit as a common point of connection) is that the search engines have tipped over and are getting worse rather than better. They're falling into the AI/ML autocorrect disaster hole where specific, technical queries are dumbed down to an 8 year old's level of perception because that's what the average user is searching for.
I wonder if Discord is replacing that? Lots of teens have their private discord servers (or whatever they're called) where they chat with each other. It reminds me of ICQ, MSN Messenger, Trillian, and the other chat protocols we used to have.
I never had the experience of email pen pals, but there are still ways people are connecting with each other authentically online.
Discord seems to be ethereal. If you're on when things are happening, cool. If not…it's just a wasteland, like walking into a bar at 10am and seeing holographic echoes of last night.
usenet was probably the first community I found on the internet, and I think the format is still a good template for human interaction. Reddit was, in a way, very similar in it's "old" and pre-enshittified format and I believe that's why it found success. It's less about discovery and more about deep dive, niche communities where you can connect with real and remote people with the same interests.
I use the internet for so much more than social media; the only real downside (aside from the loss of communities like usenet/reddit as a common point of connection) is that the search engines have tipped over and are getting worse rather than better. They're falling into the AI/ML autocorrect disaster hole where specific, technical queries are dumbed down to an 8 year old's level of perception because that's what the average user is searching for.