I’m really curious where else everyone here hangs out on the internet besides Lemmy.
I myself am frequently on discord with my wife and friends playing games. I’ve also found myself in and around smaller blogs spaces like Kev Quirk and related people. Reddit used to be a place for me to hang out but I never found a community that I felt connected to. I don’t know if YouTube would be considered a place to hang out, but I frequently spend way more time there than I should. IRC used to be a great place for me.
So, where are your favorite places?
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I’m still on IRC! There’s a raw simplicity to it that I appreciate. You don’t have to use a bloated Electron app to connect to a proprietary service, you can just go straight text on the protocol-level in terminal (if you’re nuts), and the protocol is open and simple enough to understand that you can easily make your own client even if you’re a lazy or mediocre dev.
So IRC, Lemmy, and I guess Instagram (if that counts)
What IRC servers still exist that allow random people like me to just join but have interesting people and channels and not just trolls and spam?
I second this question! I’d like to know some good servers with healthy communities.
Probably should not post those publicly, even on Lemmy.
Sad. Guess we just have to go through them
Do we though? We can just leave them alone and do something else.
Alternate question: how can we find interesting discussions on IRC?
Follow-up question: Are there any IRC channels where people don’t just talk about compiling their favorite IRC client on their favorite linux distro?
Yeah it’s feels really nice. I’m not on it now but I remember loving the feeling of it because it’s not fucking big tech shit.
Cool, Im going to see how I can sell ad space irc channels this week and then sell it.
I like Mastodon, but I gotta say, Lemmy has basically taken over as my go to boredom relief app. When I’m not on Lemmy, I’m probably on YouTube.
Then there’s work: GitHub and email.
And play: Steam.
Agreed, YouTube first, Lemmy next, then either Steam or Xbox
Ever since Reddit killed itself, the only places I really lurk are Kbin (and therefore Lemmy by proxy) and Discord. That’s pretty much it.
Mostly the same for me. I’ve been poking around Bluesky too but I’m having trouble finding content/follows I like.
It’s interesting that you say that because I have trouble finding content that I like on all microblogging platforms : Mastodon, X, threads and all. If you crack the code, let me know.
Same!
Ditto.
I have ignored Discord for years until recently. It just seems like IRC with a lot of flashiness and emojis. Is there more to this experience? I don’t intend to be disparaging, but I looked for some specific topic servers and just found the quality of discussion to be low and the experience to be chaotic.
I’m willing to be told I’m doing it wrong though - is there a “here’s the right way to get into discord” approach I’m missing?
I personally think the best way to use discord is to create a server and invite people to it as you meet them online. For me, it’s gaming that connects me with people. My wife and I meet people that we like and want to play with more, and so we invite them. This usually results in getting invited to other small community servers.
Reddit (only subs related to living in Japan since those didn’t migrate here), kbin/lemmy, fark (though I almost never comment anymore), and an old-fashioned forum/bulletin board (more stuff related to living in Japan).
Edit: and I guess YouTube? 99% of the time, I’m watching from my TV which doesn’t have comments or anything.
Hacker News, mainly.
Sometimes I log on to Reddit to help travelers to my country or hobbyists trying to learn engineering. I try to avoid discussion on Reddit as the quality is often not high, e.g. lots of tourists asking how to commit crimes in my country – better to just not answer.
For discussion I go here, it’s much more interesting.
IRC has always been pretty cool. I might go back to that one day. For now this is just the part of my life where I try to make money and don’t have much time to socialize.
Which IRC servers are worth some time?
Oh that’s ancient history. I don’t think they are around anymore. Used to be on the one for the local hackerspace before they moved to Mattermost.
Then a few for technical assistance with various tools.
Honestly, I read more, do more gardening, play more videogames. Kinda a weird benefit, but I joined two book clubs and a walking group. Started going to a parenting group on Sundays so my kiddo and I are making more friends. I guess reddit just pissed me off enough to go out and be more in my community. It’s kinda nice.
Primarily mastodon. Really enjoying that.
Facebook for relatives & friends from the real world.
I find the Mastodon/Threads/Twitter medium to be kind of hard to love sometimes. You must have found a great community! Where/who do you interact with on Mastodon?
Retrocomputing, film & art crowds.
I’ve been posting a lot of silent film stuff recently.
On the big instances or some niche ones?
hachyderm. Medium-big?
YouTube has kicked the wasp nest by blocking Adblockers. Lots of drama over there
What’s weird is that you can still use ad blockers just fine while you’re logged out. So I just open the videos in a private browsing tab to watch them, but in a regular tab to rate or comment.
At this point it’s mainly Lemmy, Imgur, and Discord for me.
Do you just look at pictures on Imgur? Are there actual communities? I’ve only used it as a place to upload pictures to link on Lemmy or Reddit.
Reddit for niche topics, Imgur for weird and funny.
Obligatory “fuck Reddit”
I think some of us are intentionally avoiding big tech now and try to find places online that doesn’t feel completely dead soul wise.
Lemmy feels good for me, but I’m also looking for web sites where I feel connected to people.
I’ve found that small blogs are excellent for this. I started my own and reached out to a few smaller blogs from some really interesting people. I instantly felt at home in the community.
Thanks, yes, I guess it’s time to go back to following blogs and interacting with real people again on the web. Before big tech, that’s what the entire internet was. Just lots of original web sites from individuals wanting to show their web design skills or talking about random topics.
It just feels like it’s harder to find those now, and also a bit inconvenient to remember to go to each site every now and then. We got lazy with centralized services, with everything under one centralized controlled roof owned by an insane billionaire with mommy issues.
An RSS reader is the ideal tool for that. No need to remember to go to every site when all of them are in one place. And most blogs have an RSS feed as well.
I know some websites with single moms looking for connections…
Already found my girl. :)
XMPP MUCs, IRC, some Matrix Spaces. Lobsters, Mastodon.
I refuse Discord. I really wish I could refuse Microsoft GitHub—source code doesn’t need to be a proprietary social media plaform.
Soon. https://forgefed.org/
I mean federating is nice, but honestly a lot of the social features need to go
My routine is, in this order, Lemmy, Mastodon, Tumblr
YCombinator’s HackerNews mostly.
Twitter and BlueSky. Shifting more so to the latter the worse the former gets.
No Mastodon? I always assume all of us lemmy people use Mastodon (if they are into the twitter kind of thing).
I prefer bluesky
Got an invite code? I don’t know how that works…
I only give them out to people ik
I keep wondering if BlueSky is going to eat mastodons lunch when/if they open up next year.
I’m not on there myself, but from all the things I hear it’s got the vibe of doing the federated Twitter alternative “right” rather than, let’s say “idealistically”.
wdym by right and idealistically?
Well they’re in quotation marks for a reason … It’s unclear.
The essential idea is “right” is what works and “idealistically” is what some people think should work but doesn’t.
I think it’s related to who you follow
Different groups on twitter are migrating to different platforms. If your group went to Blue sky, then that’s where you’d go to keep reading their stuff
Yeah I mean I never had a twitter group, so I’m mostly looking for interesting communities and figured there’s a lot of that on mastodon. But to be honest I don’t really find great stuff there.
