The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world. I don't want to meet 'Yes' friends or 'always positive' friends. Social media is fake. There is no way around it. LinkedIn is fake and disgusting, looking at my feed for a second when I'm responding to recruiters makes me want to vomit.
I have known people who were going through divorces, abusive relationships and major life issues, all while their social media feeds were showing how great everything is going.
The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities. As you build trust you learn more and more about their real life, good and bad. Growing up I met a girl who was going through chemo treatment and could not leave her home due to all the severe side effects. This was in one of the gaming communities. I really enjoyed her company and it really opened my eyes. Internet was/is an amazing place, I was able to really connect with someone who normally would not open up to strangers. In the end, I didn't really know her IRL, maybe that is why she was able to open up and be direct about sharing her thoughts about suffering, life and death. I have not been able to connect with anyone like this IRL, is it me that doesn't seem trustworthy or approachable?
Is this really any different from other social interactions? We all have different selves we present to our families, coworkers, social club associates, exercise groups, bar buddies, significant others. Your comment seems to imply that there's a binary "real person" and "Twitter person", and it's never been that simple. We wear many hats and many faces. All social interaction is compartmentalized.
The difference is in orders of magnitude. The term 'breaking bread" comes to mind. People have been sharing meals and playing games with each other since time immemorial, because you can see their personality shine through in real time in doing activities together, than you can via simple correspondence where people can collect their thoughts and put forward the personality they want to simulate online.
> The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities.
I've found gaming communities (and I've been in many) to be excessively toxic. You can meet good people there, but I've found it's not worth the headache.
PVP related communities tend to be like that and there is little way to get around that. And I say that as a person who ran such communities.
Try RP gaming communities. By that I don't mean that hardcore RP communities or anywhere you have to do actual RP. Just the 'RP' tag in a mmo server weeds out assholes, pricks etc and ensures that there is a high age average in the server. The Wow Eu RP server I have been playing for years keeps getting 'immigrants' from US servers and PVP servers all the time. They escape the aggressive and toxic environments by moving to RP servers. They don't do RP, they just play and join raids and other activities.
Some are toxic, some are cliquey, some are too established to do anything in. If it isn't a PvP game, odds are you missed the boat if you don't hop on in the first 1-2 weeks of its introduction (or for MMOs / games with long lifespans, a major patch), or you have to really stand out in something (skill, fanart, whatever).
I like games, but the ease of getting into a community is nowhere near as low as some people like to sell it as. Especially today. Even if they aren't toxic in the obvious sense, it often feels like a minefield navigating these communities without upsetting someone, getting dogpiled or anything.
Toxicity seems to correlate with size of the gaming community. I rarely have any issues when I join sub-groups to an interest, but trying to have casual conversation in a major subreddit/discord for a game is impossible.
I've always had a feeling that toxicity is a function of community size.
Like in small online communities, you get to know the trolls and it's oddly endearing. You see their personality and everybody gets to know them and their trolling doesn't even derail discussion at that point it just makes everyone laugh.
Truly toxic individuals can also be booted. When a community reaches a certain size there is just an unrelenting deluge of anonymous trolls and toxic individuals, nobody can keep up.
The only ones I've really been fond of are groups where the members are also mostly in-person friends as well. So everyone knows what the others are truly like.
To be honest, maybe it's a terrible idea, but I do try to bring my "real self" to the internet and not some crafted personality. I never put up anything I wouldn't tell someone in person. I don't act different than I do in person.
I do agree with your observation. It is generally difficult to find a non-toxic gaming community. This was actually a battlefield group, which brought a lot of older folk. In the 20 years of gaming (jesus, can't believe it has been that long). I have only found a few good communities.
Really depends on the type of game. Niche minecraft servers often have great communities. Small games that aren't PVP focused can be great. FFXIV has some great communities as well. It's definitely out there, but you gotta know where to look.
> The problem with Twitter, and other social media where people use their real name and photo is that in fact people are NEVER going to be themselves. People want to show their best to the world.
The currently trending social media app for younger generations is BeReal, which basically prompts everyone to take a selfie at the same time of the day, with a two minute timer to do so. No filters, and it shows the image from both cameras.
It's somewhat refreshing to see people on the bus, cooking, laying on the couch playing video games, or doing all kinds of other mundane things as opposed to a perfectly manicured feed. It's not amenable to making new connections due to it not allowing messages between unconnected users, and it's not clear if it's just a fad, but it's a somewhat welcome change in the space.
To talk about the connection you had with that person. I think that's is exactly why it is so special to meet with people online is that you can open up fearlessly and have very deep exchange super quickly while still being total stranger. So you get theses very unique interaction you'll most likely never have irl. It's quite common i believe. It happened to me and i know other people it happened to them as well.
I think it's interesting that on website/apps designed for dating and meeting, all the exchange i had were very poor and shallow, the best place for me was actually lastfm before it became a ghost town.
> I have not been able to connect with anyone like this IRL
Perhaps learn to be non-judgemental, and learn to show that too. Social status signalling and ranking prevents most people from being honest. To learn how you could try: (1) to have friends that are non-judgemental and model your behaviour from them, (2) hang out in places where status is less important and honesty is more valued. This has worked for me, even though I am not a good listener and have some other social deficits. Note that it is very tricky to train yourself to be non-judgemental: our social ranking and signalling is hidden from ourselves in so many of our behaviours.
For years I have wanted to make a profile on some of the big social networks that were intentionally (for comedic purposes) the absolute WORST I could possibly make myself out to be. My profile photo could be me in a torn up 3 piece suit passed out in a bush - my job something ridiculously awful - etc etc
"The problem with visiting New York City is that everyone you meet is fake."
One case see how someone could easily come away with that impression, but also, it's just silly on its face. It's all just going to be highly dependent on "the how," and frankly, also luck.
One thing I really miss about the modern web is forums.
I'm in my 30s now but grew up on the web, from 1998 - so not exactly an old timer but enough to ride the wave of web 1.0 -> 2.0.
I made loads of friends on forums in those days. Sadly most of those forums died off as time has gone by. One still exists though but there's only a handful of us left, it's extremely rare to get a new member.
I know these days everyone uses Discord or Slack or whatever the one is the rust people use (zulip?) but chat isn't the same as forums.
Well I'm older, I've made friends on forums, Fidonet, IRC etc., but I don't really share the sentiment here, I think it's nostalgia speaking here, you are older so you made friends in past and now it's more difficult and you blame the medium, while younger people nowadays are still making friends.
Forums were essentially replaced by Reddit and you can have pretty much same experience as in forum in small subreddit, because what is the difference in the end? You have there threads with replies which can be even quoted, but yeah, media content in comments is heavily discouraged by problematic support in clients.
Though I have less time and don't frequent small subreddits and main issue for me would be how anonymous (I don't mean real name, just how recognizable are users from each other) it feels, which is maybe partly because of my Reddit client setup and could be probably resolved by using large avatars at each post/comment, because name and flairs won't stick in the head as much.
Discord would be probably decent alternative to IRC nowadays.
Some of us still use IRC. We wait for the true successor. An open protocol, a secure protocol. That which will subsume even email and provide the answer to all the problems we know.
I got into tech as a teenager in the 90s because I was such an introvert and it felt like a way to game the system and maybe meet girls or avoid having to get an actual job.
Hah. Waking up every day in this bizarro world of endless overwork just to survive while some other geek wins it all and disappoints humanity has gotten stale. And even with all of this connectedness, people often feel more separated than ever. Like everything I ever wanted came to pass in a corrupted fashion.
So far VR is one of the few things that I consider a tentative cure for depression. I think it's because shifting out of this reality is pretty much guaranteed to feel better than staying at this point. So maybe VR will end up being the internet that I thought this one was going to be.
I made a lot of friends on IRC and internet forums a long time ago. It is much easier when you are anonymous and be truly yourself. I miss these communities nowadays and can't really find a replacement.
What stops you from being anonymous and truly yourself in small subreddits and Discord channels?
I'm frequent visitor of politically incorrect ostracized subreddits (usually following same scenario when the sub grows to big ending being quarantined/banned because it doesn't comply with leftist woke Reddit ideology), I'm anonymous and I can speak my mind usually in majority of people who have no problem with that.
I would suggest some of the decentralized (non-corporate owned) social platforms like Matrix, Scuttlebutt, Mastodon, Gemini, Hypercore (DAT/Beaker Browser).
+1 for Matrix and Mastodon, might wanna check out Libera too. IRC is never coming back in the way we remembered it, but there's still plenty of online communities that are living out their individual Eternal Septembers.
In my opinion, the answer has always been to participate in group activities that cover something you're interested in, as it gives an easy starting point to begin a friendship. For me, it is either games or certain coding niches.
As a non-user of Twitter, I don't think its organization is conducive to easily finding friends - instead of focused individual communities, I believe it is more free-form (?) as a result of "the algorithm" determining your interests. Which could be considered a plus because of discovery as noted in the article.
I do see how you could extrapolate similar interests from other users based on their tweets or replies and bootstrap a friendship from that as the author mentions (kind of risky when dealing with anonymized opinions about controversial topics or just straight up lies), but it seems like much more work compared to participating in a group which you know already shares that interest.
To summarize, finding friends on Twitter is kind of like shooting in the dark.
However I initially missed the main point of the post because it was stuck towards the bottom after the list.
> translat(ing) these (online connections) into offline connections.
So now my question is why do you need to make your online connections offline? I have good friendships that are ongoing for years with people that I've only met online and have never felt the need to meet them offline. Note that I don't consider setting up an irl meeting online then meeting them irl as "making friends on the internet" unless I have been regularly interacting for a while already in somewhat private circumstances (like daily casual talk or playing games together).
> So now my question is why do you need to make your online connections offline?
I don't believe it a necessity, and there are some online friends I probably won't be able to meet for a while, if ever.
But I enjoy moving a conversation offline because no online interface can replicate wandering between parks in Los Angeles and having pizza slices together. Though interfaces can still allow plenty of unique forms of expression -- just vastly different from embodied exploration and reacting to the world together.
> To summarize, finding friends on Twitter is kind of like shooting in the dark.
Aptly put. Not unlike dating apps or applying to jobs or talking to strangers at bars. It's just one additional avenue for meeting people.
You mention the separation between individuals getting algorithmically sorted and interest-based topics. In my experience I find twitter to be both: emergent scenes or corners form by a bunch of independent actors interacting with one another regularly, even though not all are following one another. The edges are fuzzy and overlapping but they have much more "placeness" than an endless feed, even if it is in fact experienced through a feed.
Not sure what it's like now, but over a decade ago I made "online friends" on online games. Those were great times... Legend of Mir 2, Phantasy Star Online, Gunbound, even WoW!
I am still making friends online, so Imma write my experience too:
In MWO, I saw someone with interesting username, that was sole reason to start chat with them, then later got invite to Discord server,
And there I met more people, and made like 3 good friends,
In World of Warships... It was mostly:
Find clan -> Join discord -> Chat -> Potentially find people you vibe well with -> Friends
So yeah... a bit of discord focus there..
But still, some friends I made, were over steam, via TF2 or Garry's mod, and considering those are still alive, definitely still possible,
Tbh I still have yet to try MMO
Twitter... Feels a bit different. I find someone I vibe with, we interact with each other, but usually... it tends to feel, at best, something that has to be yet a friendship, but not reaching friendship itself at all?
Hard to tell.
Good post, a lot rings true in my experience! Twitter is a uniquely good place to meet people, though it requires a lot of work and calibration to use successfully, and it takes practice to be yourself in a public broadcast medium. But I feel like curating a quality follows list and interacting with people you like online has very high ROI. And it's worth taking the initiative — asking good questions, planning casual events, proposing ideas for collaboration — even if not everything pans out, it's about increasing the surface area for serendipity, opening up more possible paths, planting seeds…
> even if not everything pans out, it's about increasing the surface area for serendipity, opening up more possible paths, planting seeds
Well said. Like taking daily walks in a neighborhood, getting to know the rhythms of a place and bumping into whoever else might be wandering around. Eventually magic happens!
I feel like the structures engineers design in the tech world sort of work against making friends in some ways by emphasizing certain aspects of the software we use away from people. lin83's comment here about enforced behaviors rings true to me.
My experience with the regression of social interaction enforced by software is the lack of server browsers in video games. Matchmaking is such crap. Kids don't even really get to experience local multiplayer, but to make things worse, you can't often find servers online and establish making yourself a regular with some people on a dedicated server much anymore.
At one point in time, MMOs were considered very social, since all interactions had to basically be done in person via chatting.
Nowadays you just hop in the dungeon finder, get hucked in with some random people who may not even be from your server but only from your sata center, who you will never see again.
I've met really incredible people with lastfm personally. It was around 2010 in Berlin and other European cities. Also soulseek to some extent but we've never met irl. On the other hand, I've never met or had any meaningful talk with people from dating apps/website. It just doesn't feel like it's made for people like me.
start by opening up yourself. if you have a family member or close friend pass away, mention that and pick up on the responses. everyone experiences that at some point, and everyone is looking for ways to cope, so you are not sharing some unusual intimate secrets, but it allows to share vulnerability without being invasive.
No thanks. If this is the state of socialization in an era where online discourse is controlled by private interests with "agile" ethics, and people are too afraid to socialize in real life for a growing number of reasons, I'll deepen my mastery of hermitage.
> I’ve been on the internet since I was 14 (11 years ago).
The author is young. They weren't around to remember the early internet or life without it. Their childhood/adolescence is corporate controlled, algorithm driven websites like Youtube and Facebook. Their outlook as an "Internet native" has been shaped by the enforced behaviours of sites like Twitter.
Yes, probably the saddest thing I read this week. Self-promotion on twatter and HN is different than forming friendship. The goold old days of fora was way better to make friends from the internet IMO. Nowadays everything seems to be a link aggregator which fundamentally change how people interact with each other.
Also it may be more an academic thing, but cold emailing is a good way to make contact. Not necessarily friends thought it can happen but at least it can make projects advance, with very little (public) noise.
Okay. But those days are gone. So what do you expect OP and folks growing up today to do? Shy of time travel they cant live the childhood you did and experience the magical internet of the ~90's.
Maybe their version is just as good to them as yours was to you?
Uh I guess? Wasnt the point thought that companies are shaping the online experience more now than in the past? Discord may be less moderated than most (although the controversies section of their wiki page is longer than any other section) but that seems to be more of a bug than a feature. Eventually the big acquisition or IPO will come and then the moderation will follow.
There are still plenty of decentralized (non-corporate owned) social platforms like Matrix, Scuttlebutt, Mastadon, Gemini to experiment with, set up for your own community or meet people and make friends online.
> attend offline events! Be adventerous Meeting in-person is harder but increases the intimacy and richness of communication. Combine an offline meetup with a walk through a park or a museum for maximum serendipity.
I have known people who were going through divorces, abusive relationships and major life issues, all while their social media feeds were showing how great everything is going.
The only 'REAL" people I met online were either focused niche/small subreddits or gaming communities. As you build trust you learn more and more about their real life, good and bad. Growing up I met a girl who was going through chemo treatment and could not leave her home due to all the severe side effects. This was in one of the gaming communities. I really enjoyed her company and it really opened my eyes. Internet was/is an amazing place, I was able to really connect with someone who normally would not open up to strangers. In the end, I didn't really know her IRL, maybe that is why she was able to open up and be direct about sharing her thoughts about suffering, life and death. I have not been able to connect with anyone like this IRL, is it me that doesn't seem trustworthy or approachable?