[a008t]

I think the way the internet has changed in the last decade has contributed to loneliness significantly.

10-15 years ago, the internet was full of small independent communities: message boards, IRC channels, chat rooms of all kinds, etc. You could really "hang out" with the same people and get to know them.

But something killed pretty much all of them. Instead we have centralized "social media" that is at best all about narcissism and self-promotion. Sites like Reddit where there is too many people and everyone converges to a single "hive-mind", you cannot have someone reply to an interesting post you made years ago, and that really take the humanity out of the whole thing (like Facebook or Tinder or what not). Even HN is problematic in this regard - it is good for the purpose it exists for, but you cannot have any sort of casual threads or discussions just to get any sort of rapport within the community.

Even messengers have somehow become worse in this regard. Yahoo/MSN messengers, ICQ etc. were somehow all about having connections with online friends. Maybe it is just me, but there just doesn't seem to be an option that works for this as well nowadays. Or at least people do not seem to use the existing options in the same way.

[dexen]

> message boards, IRC channels, chat rooms of all kinds, etc

> But something killed pretty much all of them.

Not in the least.

Interest-driven, channel-centric communities are alive and kicking, from IRC through Discord, Steam and other gaming communities, to Youtube/BitChute comment sections (nasty as they may be) and new meta-/platforms like Mastodon or Minds.com.

What has changed is the expanded version of Eternal September - influx of newcommers who join the ?book / ?gram / ?itter du jour, enjoy the interface candy and the occasional outrage, and are very slow to - or even fail to - explore the wider net of chats and other communities. It certainly doesn't help that media tend to paint all non-mainstream platforms as dark, scarry underbelly of the internet with nothing of value to offer, best to be avoided. [1]

The slow filtering in of new users into smaller communities is not even necessarily a bad thing, as quick influx of newcommers to interest communities can easily disrupt them to the point of derailing. The IRC and the likes being a cozy hangout where friendships are forged and projects are kicked off isn't based on a particular technical quirk of the IRC protocol or clients. It's all thanks to the established, cozy & social culture[2] being able to take in a certain amount of newcomers, guide them in and let them grow into part of the community. Moving too fast tends to break things.

[1] the smartphone is also partly to blame, as it's much less comfortable for extended back-and-forth conversations than a computer; IMO it's more of a prepackaged content consumption terminal. But that's a personal, debatable opinion.

[2] certain glaring exceptions notwithstanding

[a008t]

I remember often stumbling on online communities and message boards on Google when looking for something ~15 years ago. Most people in those communities also stumbled on them through Google. I cannot remember a single time I saw one in search results recently.

So either Google is deliberately excluding them, or they actually ceased to exist for the most part, or it has been a self-perpetuating cycle and one cannot pinpoint what came first - exodus to 'social media' or disappearance from Google search results.