this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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The web as a whole is more alive than ever, but many of those old school places aren't. They still exist, but most of the userbase doesn't.
I have some hobbies, which used to have a thriving online communities on forums and blogs. For the average internet user, that wanted to read up about such hobbies, they would gravitate towards those forums or blogs. This has fundamentally changed with the popularity of sites such as reddit, facebook, youtube & discord. The conversations that were had on the forums moved to the above platforms and as such a lot of the deeper nuances of conversation were lost.
A specific hobby of mine had a dozen active forums to read. Now all but one are mostly dead. The only one in my native language is also gone. My country's native communities moved to facebook, which is now only used for announcements and some simple questions being asked again and again.
There has been a complete reversal of internet discourse on many topics. Instead it's (again) back to having discussions with your friend group and building up connections locally.
It's not a simple thing, but the solution to is to do yourself what you wish existed. I'm shifting away from social media to my own site that I can personalize as I want. It feels nice.
At the same time, one of MY hobbies is blooming. There are thousands of sites dedicated to it, new productes emerge on daily basis, there are tools, communities, the interaction I couldn't dream about back in 80s or 90s. I can enjoy it with people from all the world, I can add to it and see other fans commenting on it. It grows, it becomes better with each new year.
I guess it begs for the question, whether the subjective choice of a hobby is enough to judge by as vast medium as the Internet...
I suppose it cannot. I guess my views are largely based on my own experiences.
I would still like to bring up another online activity, which is gaming. That has surely seen a huge change in culture and how the most popular games are played. 15 years ago one could show up on a public server, and after a while get to know the regulars. That served as a good stepping stone to creating online relationships.
With the advent of matchmaking, such interaction is no longer the norm. As such one has to go through the effort of finding communities, that they might want to be a part of.
Back in the days games were meant to serve for long. These days, new titles appear all the time and often disappear before they can mature enough. It limits the possibility to build a healthy, long-term fanbase/society and/or maintain equaly lengthy relationships.
But that's video-gaming problem, that only seeps into the medium that is the Internet, much like the state of the modern politics, or moviemaking. The Internet is influenced by it, but is not responsible for it.