Where do I hang out now?
For years now, anytime I have gone “online” there have been certain destinations I go to, much like when you step into a chic neighbourhood in a city you visit, there is a bar, a club, a square you’d gravitate to.
(I know we are all perpetually online now, but since I grew up when in the dial-up era, there was very much an offline state of my computing device and an online state.)
These destinations have changed over the years. ICQ, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, Blogs via Technorati, Nifty, Facebook, DeviantArt and so on. Or offbeat destinations like the Iron Maiden forum, or Bloody Disgusting (for horror fans), Audiogalaxy. For many years now, my hangout spots have been Techmeme, Hacker News, Instagram, Twitter/X, or a very specific research hole on a topic that would start on Google and end in a tangle of tabs and these days starts on ChatGPT. But I don’t enjoy these spaces any more. Instagram only broadcasts brands and influencer content. X seems to be stuffed with AI content – not AI-generated content, but content from folks talking about AI – also the new blogging (?) feature on X is super-weird. Techmeme and Hacker News don’t interest me anymore.
The “internet” used to be a fun place, but is not anymore.
Where do I hang out now?