That's the shortcoming of every alternative protocol and "indie web" community I've come across. They only attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them. If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work?
The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting at his own fans. There's no special line of code that's going to foster that. You have to ruthlessly curate a community to avoid a critical mass of sensitive nerds, but guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are. None of these communities will attract today or tomorrow's David Bowies.
> The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting at his own fans.
No, the magic of the early web was that people treated their online identities as a secret alternative life, rather than a resume for recruiters, friends, potential partners, and other real-world acquaintances to look at.
The Internet of today is little more than a (distorted) mirror of people's offline lives. That's why the problems of today's Internet are the same as the problems of the real world. By contrast, the Internet of the 90s was an exciting world of its own, with rules that were dramatically different from those of everyday life.
This, but also because it was something genuinely new that had never been seen before. Doubly so if you were young then and old now. Everything was novel, and therefore interesting - even the bad things. I’ve seen people expressing nostalgia for blink tags.
> attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them.
> If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work?
> There's no special line of code that's going to foster that.
> you have to ruthlessly curate a community to avoid a critical mass of sensitive nerds, but guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are
Great comment. Aligns with my own observations. On the note of "American HR Communication standards & work" I think most of us don't have experience participating in, let alone, organizing real communities[1]. Since most internet communities are awful, imaginary, transient etc, we default to the only actual experience we have semi-happily working with strangers: our jobs. Adding on top how internet comments are forever, cancelations is right around the corner, and careers hang in the balance, and you get a Bay Area photocopied dialogue.
guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are
The early web was mostly nerds, but not just tech nerds. I made my first site in 1997 and I linked to all sorts of things about TV shows, music and games that had been made by fans of things. If someone loved the X-Files and wanted to contribute to a site about it the only option was to get a book about HTML from the library and learn to use FTP. It thrived because it was just a group of people enthusiastic about things. Few people wanted to criticise because the only response you'd get was "well you make a better website then!". And when that happened people did. There were rivalries that worked like a feedback loop to improve things. That's missing today. People just criticise and don't try to do better. I blame the rise of guestbooks.
My first experience with "social media" was in the late 90s with a website dedicated to the Wheel of Time, www.wota.com. We had enormous fun in the forums and web chat, and I loved the design and flow. It was mostly hacked together in Perl. Rand Al'Thor, if you are reading this, where are youuu? It's me, TrueSource! ＼(≧▽≦)／
> None of these communities will attract today or tomorrow's David Bowies.
I kind of get what you're saying but I'm tired of people who act like "shitposting skills" are a useful quality trait. Similarly people who just can't not let something be.
I kind of dislike "forced kindness" as a community philosophy (I've met way too many people IRL who have a net persona of "super kind" and turn out to be, glibly, sociopaths), but "please don't be insufferable" is a nice rule of thumb for communities. Plenty of cool stuff made by people who are merely a little annoying. Meanwhile too many places have "those people" who just won't let something go. Let people keep their honor!
Shitposting wasn't the best choice of words, sorry. I think you know what I'm getting at though. There are cheeky artists and those to whom cheekiness is the art. The latter cohort are just annoying trolls, but the former group can animate communities. You just don't tend to find them among the small souled and dogmatic bitdiddlers that haunt every upstart platform.
The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting at his own fans. There's no special line of code that's going to foster that. You have to ruthlessly curate a community to avoid a critical mass of sensitive nerds, but guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are. None of these communities will attract today or tomorrow's David Bowies.