After Flash sent me a post on Twitter about the modern web and web 3.0 and "traditional" websites (I only use this to catch everything but social media platforms, "curated" sites like YouTube and Twitch, and such) it started several strands of thought which maybe y'all would have some input on. So I wanted to learn the problem of staying away from these sites and why people often fail consistently in using the "old web" despite plenty of available resources.
When I deleted my social media a few years ago, several things stuck out to me about the usage patterns and also how people cope with alternatives. I determined the following trends:
1. People demand obtuse, useless, and even counterintuitive "features". They will not move to platforms that lack them. I knew a lot of people on Twitter who left or were banned. But most simply went to GNU Social platforms or twitter clones. When I tried to make people move from Discord to other chatrooms, I was the only person to use IRC save the owner of the room. When I asked why no one came, the answers were things like " I want emojis" rather than things like "people will see my IP address"
2. No one uses RSS. This in particular pisses me off because it's the simplest thing in the world and runs on a toaster. I've known about it since I was 10 years old. And yet I cannot name a single person who uses it. Maybe someone here does, but not even I touch it. I even see people use the weird Google launcher "feed" thing on Android more.
3. Social media warped perception of what websites have to look like. I feel like when most people think now "I want to make a website" the way it is constructed is not necessary. I don't mean visually or about JavaScript or something. I mean what the site should be like, the information it contains, ways of interacting, etc. I want to see more sites that think out of the box (for example, why does a cooking site need to be formatted like a blog? Maybe you can get what I mean from this). So if people want to stick to the "old web" there should be more than 500 forums and nothing else, but a variety of different sites. Yet today, most people only get things from the format of social media, a blog, or video steaming sites.
This post was longer than I expected but there is probably a lot more to this problem so I would like to hear what anyone else has to say.
When I deleted my social media a few years ago, several things stuck out to me about the usage patterns and also how people cope with alternatives. I determined the following trends:
1. People demand obtuse, useless, and even counterintuitive "features". They will not move to platforms that lack them. I knew a lot of people on Twitter who left or were banned. But most simply went to GNU Social platforms or twitter clones. When I tried to make people move from Discord to other chatrooms, I was the only person to use IRC save the owner of the room. When I asked why no one came, the answers were things like " I want emojis" rather than things like "people will see my IP address"
2. No one uses RSS. This in particular pisses me off because it's the simplest thing in the world and runs on a toaster. I've known about it since I was 10 years old. And yet I cannot name a single person who uses it. Maybe someone here does, but not even I touch it. I even see people use the weird Google launcher "feed" thing on Android more.
3. Social media warped perception of what websites have to look like. I feel like when most people think now "I want to make a website" the way it is constructed is not necessary. I don't mean visually or about JavaScript or something. I mean what the site should be like, the information it contains, ways of interacting, etc. I want to see more sites that think out of the box (for example, why does a cooking site need to be formatted like a blog? Maybe you can get what I mean from this). So if people want to stick to the "old web" there should be more than 500 forums and nothing else, but a variety of different sites. Yet today, most people only get things from the format of social media, a blog, or video steaming sites.
This post was longer than I expected but there is probably a lot more to this problem so I would like to hear what anyone else has to say.
Not gonna lie, this is the only forum I've properly used.
Also I don't think the idea of "communities" is really a thing anymore. I haven't really been able to find a place to discuss drawing better than motherfucking /ic/. People just have their own internet friend group that met each other on twitter or some game and then make a discord server because it doesn't require any knowledge of programming, it's free, and it's gonna be a closed group anyway. Also the users can have all their chatrooms in one platform and on several devices at the same time.
It's also important to take into account that there are people who just wanna see the funny tiktok or youtube/twitch and don't wanna talk with randos on the internet. I don't think I would have ended up using this if it wasn't because I knew some people previously. In the end this is another platform that you kind of have to check every once in a while and I didn't really like spending a lot of time keeping up with stuff. Nowadays it's true that I don't have any social media except for IRL stuff this is the website I check the most, usually once every day or 2 when I'm in the mood of being active, and if I am not in the mood for it then I won't visit it.
ps: i may be wrong, but i think that some people also don't like to read long paragraphs of text on the internet. i've skipped some posts here and there on this website because i wasn't in the mood to read much and i wasn't that interested on the topic of discussion to begin with.
ps2: Making posts that are longer that 3 lines is something I don't like to do unless i am not on a specific mood. they take too much of my time and to be honest I don't think i can usually give anything interesting to the discussion. Maybe some people don't post as much because of similar reasons, who knows.
Also I don't think the idea of "communities" is really a thing anymore. I haven't really been able to find a place to discuss drawing better than motherfucking /ic/. People just have their own internet friend group that met each other on twitter or some game and then make a discord server because it doesn't require any knowledge of programming, it's free, and it's gonna be a closed group anyway. Also the users can have all their chatrooms in one platform and on several devices at the same time.
It's also important to take into account that there are people who just wanna see the funny tiktok or youtube/twitch and don't wanna talk with randos on the internet. I don't think I would have ended up using this if it wasn't because I knew some people previously. In the end this is another platform that you kind of have to check every once in a while and I didn't really like spending a lot of time keeping up with stuff. Nowadays it's true that I don't have any social media except for IRL stuff this is the website I check the most, usually once every day or 2 when I'm in the mood of being active, and if I am not in the mood for it then I won't visit it.
ps: i may be wrong, but i think that some people also don't like to read long paragraphs of text on the internet. i've skipped some posts here and there on this website because i wasn't in the mood to read much and i wasn't that interested on the topic of discussion to begin with.
ps2: Making posts that are longer that 3 lines is something I don't like to do unless i am not on a specific mood. they take too much of my time and to be honest I don't think i can usually give anything interesting to the discussion. Maybe some people don't post as much because of similar reasons, who knows.