I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been on the Internet for a long time. Long enough that I remember when getting online actually felt like going somewhere. Before Facebook. Before Instagram. Before everybody carried a smartphone around in their pocket.
For me, the Internet used to be a collection of places. There were forums where you'd know the regulars. You'd recognize people's usernames. You'd have conversations that might go on for days or weeks. There were little communities built around whatever weird thing you happened to be interested in, and I loved that.
One of the communities I was involved with here in Springfield, MO was an old phpBB forum called "417Vibe". Somebody handed me a flyer for it back in the early 2000s, I signed up, and suddenly I knew a whole bunch of people I probably never would have met otherwise. That was how the Internet worked for me. You didn't necessarily know someone's real name. You knew their screen name. You knew what they were interested in. You knew what kind of music they liked. You'd see them show up in the same conversations over and over again, and eventually you might meet them in person. Sometimes those online friendships became real friendships.
Then MySpace happened. Then Facebook. Somewhere along the way, I think the Internet changed from being about "us" to being about "me".
That's not necessarily a criticism of any particular website. Facebook did some incredible things. It made it ridiculously easy to stay connected to people and put everybody in the same place. But it also changed the nature of that place. Instead of going to a community to see what everybody was talking about, I started going to a feed to see what the algorithm decided I should see. Instead of having a conversation that everybody could participate in, we started having individual conversations that happened to be visible to everybody else.
The Internet became much more personalized, but somehow felt less personal. I've never quite gotten over that.
I think that's part of the reason I've always been drawn to projects that try to build communities. It's probably why I got involved with 417EDM. It's why I care about preserving the history of the local electronic music scene. It's why I started the 417 Mix Collection. And it's probably partly why I'm back here writing on Hive after all these years.
I'm not particularly interested in building another place where everybody comes to consume content. I'd rather build something where people actually participate. That's one of the things I like about the idea behind 417EDM. There are people in this town who have been involved in this scene for 20+ years, and there are people discovering it for the first time right now. Most of them don't know each other. There's a story there, there's a community there, and I think those things are worth documenting.
That's also why the first episode of the 417EDM Podcast ended up being with Psyberwitch. We talked about this very thing during the interview. She told me about discovering the rave scene, getting involved with 417Vibe and some of those early parties, and how different things feel now that everybody has a phone in their hand all the time.
We both came from that same weird period of the Internet where you could stumble into a community and actually become part of it. Maybe that's what I'm trying to find again. Not the old Internet exactly, because we can't go backwards of course, but maybe we can build little pieces of that feeling again.
I don't know. I'm still figuring that part out. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
I know how you feel. I was able to meet about 7 Steemians in real life which was cool and the guys i have met through trading on FOMO seem cool and I could see meeting people from there in real life.
Yeah, that's one of the things I always liked about Steemit and Hive. You start out interacting with somebody online, and eventually there's this realization that there's an actual person behind the username. I did get to meet some people from the Steemit days in real life, although it's been a pretty long time since I've had that experience.
That's really what I was getting at with the post. The Internet isn't necessarily less social now, but a lot of the places where people actually became part of a community seem to have disappeared. It's nice when you find one that still works that way.
Let me chime in and confirm your suspicions... I get you! 😃
I will have to go even one step further into the past, in pre-Internet times, when you would connect over a modem to the BBS and discuss on public forums... After that, it was the Internet era and phpBB, and it was exactly as you described... You would join the discussion with strangers and become part of the community...
Also, when MySpace, FB, and the rest came, I was still on phpBB, and somehow, I skipped most of the socials that came after (Pinterest, IG, etc.. Interestingly, HIVE got me! Maybe because it was a similar "logic" to the one before... Strangers>building community>offline meetups... Or is it an "old-tech-type" social network that sticks with us "oldies"? 😂
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BBSs are actually a little before my time, but I remember that same basic feeling once I got into forums. You'd find some random corner of the Internet, start talking to people you'd never met, and before long you actually knew these people. Then you'd end up meeting some of them in real life, which still seems kind of amazing when you think about it.
And I think you're onto something with Hive. I skipped a lot of the social networks that came after the forum era too, but Hive immediately felt familiar to me for pretty much the same reason. It still feels like a place where people are actually there, rather than just being an audience for whatever the algorithm decided to put in front of them.
Maybe we're just old. 😂
I've been messing around with online communities starting with bulletin boards before I got on the actual internet. Then there were forums and I had actual meetups with people from those. Now on Hive I feel we have real communities. I've met loads of Hivers in person at the big international events and some more local ones. I'm sure this happens with FB groups too, but some of those are much bigger than the whole of Hive.
The technology is just an enabler and it's up to people to connect using it. We don't have to just take the feeds we are given. It should be about people and I don't want to see us all just interacting with 'AI'.
That's exactly what I mean. The technology has changed dramatically, but the part I miss is that feeling of actually being somewhere with other people. The Internet was smaller, but somehow it felt more personal.
And I agree about Hive. For all the differences between the old forums and what we have now, there's still something about Hive that feels more like a community than just a feed. I've met quite a few Hivers in person over the years too, and that's always been one of my favorite things about this place.