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0 pointsnetsharc7mo ago0 comments

> Social media rose to prominence with ubiquitous always-on internet.

Hmm.. Wikipedia says: From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.

Then again, Myspace (and most social media) isn't an app for synchronous communication, you logged into it and see who's interacted with your content (or comment). OK then someone invented notifications, and the smartphone (which went from bookish BlackBerry to hip and trendy iPhone in 2007-2008) would bother you.

In the old days of AOL, ICQ or MSN and not always-on-internet, you weren't reachable 24/7. I think one of these didn't even have offline messaging, meaning, if the other user is not online, you couldn't send them a message. A friend showed me ICQ and I hated the concept; I thought "but if I go online and I see someone online there, isn't it like walking into a cafe and seeing them, it'd be rude to ignore them and not say hello?". I saw it as a virtual place where people can come and go and you have a chance o catch up.

Nowadays I can make anyone's phone ping and notify them that I want their attention using WhatsApp, etc within seconds of thinking it, and we've lost the concept of "Hey, fancy seeing you here! How have you been?". It seems connecting to anyone is possible 24/7, so it doesn't happen anymore.

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Modified30197mo ago

That’s an interesting point. I would also add that having a pretext can be important as well.

I’ve had 24 hour instant access via phone/text to my siblings for almost 2 decades, but we really didn’t talk much until we started doing gaming stuff with voice chat on weekends. I think part of it is it really helps if there’s something, anything, that can fill the gaps in conversation and provide a pretext to getting together (even just virtually). We’ve since talked about so much that we likely would have never otherwise brought up or picked up a phone to talk about.

Hell, one of my favorite games as a kid (wyvern: https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.caboch...) was basically just a chat box with an adequate mmorpg attached. Sometimes I even just skipped the game and connected via telnet, since that was an option, so I’d be available when someone I knew popped on.

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