[tikwidd]

Some random folk practices I've come across:

* Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended behaviours that became core game mechanics.

* Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the comments appearing in a reblog ("Why do people use tags on tumblr instead of comments?" [1])

* The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510, designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur radio QRP power amplifiers. "In talking to International Rectifier, they were floored to find out QRPers were using them at 7MHz or higher." [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/nu4vpa/w...

[2] http://www.iw3sgt.it/IW3SGT_PRJ/IW3SGT_AMP_LF/ClassDEF1.pdf

[pjc50]

Twitter's "retweet" and "hashtag" were both folk innovations that became product features. People used to write 'RT @user "comment"' to retweet.

[goblinux]

I remember early twitter thinking RT was some guys initials and was so impressed at how popular and cool he was. Everyone was tweeting him and he seemed to be everywhere

Then I learned what it meant.

Never meet your heroes

[Cthulhu_]

I found that a really interesting development, and they embraced it. Probably the best example of "go with where your users are going" I can think of.

And it's silly as well, because anyone with a few weeks of software development knowledge could probably hack a Twitter-like together. Not that at that scale, admittedly, but still, prototype-twitter was nothing fancy.

[pimlottc]

There’s a term for this: “desire path”

Like when you see a worn path in the grass where hundreds of people took the same shortcuts instead of using the proper planned-out pathways.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

[amadeuspagel]

The quote RT is another example. People used to take screenshots of tweets to quote RT.

[pjc50]

They still do sometimes .. and it may become more common as the edit button is rolled out.

[salmo]

Distortion, overdrive, and the 808 are all examples off the top of my head of folk analog audio.

The former two tend to use the imperfection of diodes leaking to create varying degrees of fuzz (really clipping) based on placement. It fakes pushing an amp past it’s thresholds.

The latter abused chips that failed QA as the source of noise. They can’t make “real” ones anymore, since the chip is out of production. This one’s from my memory and the description may be flawed.

In both cases, abusing electronics’ imperfections is the goal.

Now with pedals, you get magical beliefs about “original” parts, but that’s another story.

So many guitar effects are based on accidents and replication/reduction of them. It’s both technically and historically fascinating to me. “This sucks, but sounds cool. How can I make a smaller box that does it?”

[kanar1e]

I believe another term related to these phenomena is Elephant Paths. Named after the trails that pedestrians leave behind when they choose a shorter path over grass in favor of the official paved paths.

[dietmtnview]

Since we're talking about DOTA. Defense of the Ancients was a custom map game in Warcraft III. I don't know if this is still a thing, but custom map games on Starcraft and Warcraft III absolutely ruled. There was freeze tag, capture the flag, tower defense, a zombie defense like game based on Starship Troopers. Absolute golden age of gaming for me as a kid.

[d4mi3n]

It goes further back, actually—IIRC there was a DoTA custom map on StarCraft: Brood Wars. It has no resemblance to the DoTA of today, or even the one on Warcraft, but the lineage of that game goes back further than a lot of people are aware of. :)