There's an interesting problem in digital preservation, which is that preservation only exists actively. Only the things you actively move to new formats, survives.
Community is probably the same way: it has to be actively maintained in order to outlive whatever spot it's currently in.
The ideal social media is not actually any particular instance, but an up to date contact list. Everything else is details, and every hangout spot will inevitably go rancid.
That game you love vanishes if no one bothers to crack it and pirate it and emulate it.
That person you like, vanishes if the ground turns sour and you didn't figure out a way to find them after fleeing elsewhere.
If you're gen x or millennial, odds are you have known some people online for *decades*. Across multiple now-dead forums, across vast gulfs of time in internet years. You've probably got a friend group that outlived multiple sites.
Which is interesting. Gen X and millennials grew up having to learn how to use computers, how to go online, etc.
One of these skills later generations didn't learn, was how to reconnect outside walled gardens.
If you're over the age of 30, your first internet friends were outside walled gardens, they didn't really exist yet.
You found them, and then found them in half a dozen different places none of which were the really *important* thing. The important thing was they were there.
If you're *under* the age of 30, pretty much all you've known were walled gardens, you didn't really need to learn the skill of finding a friend hanging out somewhere else.
One of my oldest Internet friends I met on neopets in 2003.
The days when asking for someone's AIM could get you banned but we did it anyways. Because talking outside of that was better lol
If you got online in the late 80s/early 90s, you went from walled gardens like AOL and Prodigy (or more wild but still walled BBSes) to the infinitely more open early web. That sudden freedom made a big impression on me and shaped what I've been willing to put up with from later services
Yeah, Gen X, have followed the same group of friends from walled garden to walled garden since 1995. My author newsletter has a special group for them: “have known me for decades.”
There is a reason I have had some form of “cmraman” as my login on every site since 1988. There are people who know me by that who don’t know my real name.
My first forum was for a Role Playing Game podcast, circa 2007. Everyone was older than me and I was a silly 13 year old but I still remember some of them very, very fondly.
That does sound lovely!
I'm gen x & been hopping in and out of walled gardens since the early 80s (BBS's, compuserve, &c.) as I never could make "real" friends. (I have a millennial kid and was in a prodigy forum with other moms due the same time!)
I kinda relish the freedom of friendless-ness
This is one of the reasons I have no problem with being on Mastodon and BlueSky rn and rooting for BOTH. My electronic social media back in the day was Bulletin boards, and MOST of them were focused interests, so you were always on different “places”.
Actually, I was just realizing my EARLIEST social media was the free personals ads in the Phoenix New Times (an Alt media free newspaper)
“gather ‘round children, and I’ll tell you of the flame wars between the Dr Who fandom and the Duran Duran fandom (“Durrannies”) of ‘83” 😂
for the reasons you describe, discord makes me a bit suspicious / gets my hackles up. it's convenient for sure, but it's trying to make itself into a single point of failure
Not really. It's just another walled garden. Eventually the owners will allow ads in to bring revenue, then the usefulness will be crushed under the increasing weight of ads until we have to find a new IRC clone.
It's true, too.
Met people on fanfiction .net, left for fandomination .net, through to Deadjournal, then Livejournal, added on MSN Messenger and then AIM, then we went to Plurk and Tumblr, then to Discord, AO3 and Twitter.
Met my best friend through Fanfiction .net. She lives with me now.
I have mutuals on Bluesky whom I've never met in person, (and one I've met, like, twice) but whom I first knew on a MUSH that I first logged into back in 1995 or 96.
That MUSH lasted until... at least 2004, and then kind of limped along until 2009 or 2010, I think.
I have friends still I used to rp with when MMOs (before that term even existed) were exclusively text-based in a separate black window with white text. I didn’t see photos of some of them until 15 years after meeting them.
Ah, text-based MUDs. Got at least one very long-term friend thanks to those. I should poke my head in sometime and see if I still remember how to play.
There are still some active. I feel it’s something that needs to come back. I started on MUDs and moved on to MUSH and MUX for more rp based experiences. I have so many great memories of those!
facts. i haven't actively played everquest since 2001 (or WoW since 2009) but i still "know" and occasionally communicate with a small handful of people from those days that i have never once met in person (many of whose real names i don't even know)
We've toasted each other's first houses and held each other's babies and commiserated with each other as our parents died. And met playing Quake and Starcraft.
I have a group of about 20 who still talk, we more or less raised our children together. Many of us rented a large house to gather once and a bunch of us have matching tattoos from that trip. Trying to get them off Facebook has been a years-long struggle, and I believe it may be a bridge too far.
For sure, for me, most started on those pioneer sites, before MySpace, did MS, then went on FB and got trapped there. Many quit social media, as well. FB really fd shit up.
