A note on portals and places

[maru]

I was mulling over today whether it was worth it to start an IRC server for paralogue.org.

My whole life, I was always averse to those sorts of places. I didn't use IRC on samus.co.uk. I didn't use dAmn on deviantART. Didn't use IRC around the Lemon Demon boards. Paralogue user "willow" runs an IRC server and I don't use that one, either. [^1]

Part of it was that I'm so used to constant, cloud access that the thought of a janky mobile client always turned me off. But what if it was a feature? What if it was something you only really used while at a desktop?

I feel like that's a bizarre thought, now — how often are we at our desktops? Most web traffic is on mobile, full stop; but that's a self-catalysing cycle, I think. My usage of the web on mobile is more or less junk, and my computer access is always more deliberate.

There was a point in time where the internet was situated in space; there were distinct "portals" to it, away from reality. Johnny Mnemonic made this feel very real: you were trying to find a computer to get online, or at best you were using some payphone somewhere for a quick connection, 1:1. But cyberspace itself required a deck.

Jade picked up the punkt mp02 and I've been intrigued by it. Just as a device. It's basically all I wanted: Signal and nothing else. I feel like there's a world in which I can restrict myself to 1:1 communication when not at my desk, and be specific and careful with my group interactions when I am. In that kind of world, would IRC even be worth it? Would I really have anything to say real time, but only at a computer? I would rather just make posts.

[1]: Now that I think about it, when did I start changing that up for Discord? I don't think I hung out on TeamSpeak. Didn't have a huge Skype group. I only did 1:1 chats, the occasional group chat on Facebook Messenger or whatever. The earliest server I can think of joining on Discord was the official Mastodon one. I can't see a single server that I've been in since 2016, and I don't really remember, so I feel sort of lost as to what I've been even doing on Discord this entire time. [^2]

[2]: All this comes up because I've been figuring out how it is I could just stop using Discord entirely. Right now, it feels like social suicide. But I also have so many friends who never ever use Discord at all, so why does it feel so impossible for me?

[watermoon]

i get what you're saying about how internet access used to be localized to specific environments, though i also remember how just accessing the internet involved a sort of mini-ritual of portal transport. you set the modem to connect, it makes some unholy noises that are now nostalgic to a certain generation, then internet explorer opens and you're on the world 🌐 wide 🌐 web. perhaps that made it more of an investment: like if you were going to go to that much effort then you'd want to have a good reason to upfront.

i'm personally not sure if i would want to return to those days, but maybe that's just a factor of how my own social network is structured. i like the idea of being always in contact with my few tiny friend groups and the people i care about. if i were to push for an anachronistic service then i'd choose a mumble server, because a perpetual vc seems idyllic to me. i think i might be needy…

and i think at this point my grievances with discord are primarily ideological – functionally it does its job too well for me to complain, and there's no single use case that it fails at strongly enough to compel me to abandon it.

[sinku]

When I stopped utilizing my noise cancelling headphones, my phone usage while out of the house stopped for all but the most basic stuff: maps, opening hours, internet queries, discord. I wonder what it would be like to cut it out entirely, but I could realistically not do such a thing. I need some version of android at least, to have access to apps that I need to communicate with family and friends (whatsapp in particular is important). I have my eyes on a Unihertz Jelly Star because I would prefer a cute little phone to my current one, which is some Oppo model.

[maru]

Oh, don't get me wrong. My ideal phone is a navigator + communicator: 1:1 chat, wayfinding, maybe some offline Wikipedia. I've dreamed of that for a while, though it's really something I could "craft" anytime if I locked down the install on my phone.

I just mean that there are some places that aren't served by writing something in shorthand here, now. Something is gained by having a place that you visit when you're there, that you don't have to catch up with. It encourages the idea that it's more casual, not that there's an eternal place that you *could be*, all of the time, if you were only more committed.

[Pogckets]

Group Chats can be fun because they are ephemeral, and specifically ones with voice and video allow an added layer of intimacy.

I love/d how scenes emerge in discords often without planning.

The archiving features of Signal and Discord are neat too.

Idk what IRC offers that those dont except gatekeeping people less familiar.

There is no substitute for holding space one on one though. Tit á tit, heart2heart.

and you have lots of funny things to say in real time, thoughtful posts are good and so are spur of the moment puns, bits and wordplay

[sinku]

Idk what IRC offers that those dont except gatekeeping people less familiar.

IRC, when set up without backups or history, is totally ephemeral. You simply miss conversations you aren't there for. Some people prefer this to something like a discord where every message ever is kept around forever.

[maru]

Yeah, it's basically a really different dynamic. You coexist with some people at some time. Imagine you leave a window open while playing TF2, you check in, you put it away. You're there when you're there. I feel like it's kind of interesting because it means that the times you see stuff that sticks around, it's usually longer form and more deliberated, takes more work to figure out.

I think that the timeline of this stuff moving to toilet paper world started with Tumblr, actually, because it was just this nonstop parade of stuff that was worthless beyond quick social affiliation and communication, in a way that Twitter does. If you ever read a Tumblr on the page itself, it's usually reblogs upon reblogs in a way that is not easy to parse. It's quite hostile to someone trying to engage with it from the outside.

[JennyDog]

Yeah, IRC without a bouncer or logger of some sort is very ephemeral -- you don't keep the history of anything except for what you saw yourself and the history your client keeps. There developed a whole ecosystem to get around this: IRC bouncers like Quasselcore keep a constant connection to the server, and many servers would run bots that would log everything anyway.

I think a lot of social media form that period kind of created a distinct between ephemeral and non-ephemeral interaction: Facebook messenger didn't persist messenger logs past web session for at least the first several months of it being a feature, and now to the best of my knowledge the messages are as eternal as Discords are. I think maybe having some mix of both is nice.

I have a phone and I've strived to take _most_ things off of it aside from texting, internet usage I avoid, and Youtube, which I've mostly been striving to avoid unless needed. I also sometimes just turn my phone off while walking around or hanging out, I think that helps me feel a bit more in the moment. I think a lot of my friends feel similarly uncomfortable which how much tech is like, part of their short term cycle of attention -- maybe that especially comes from working in tech or tech adjacent stuff haha.

I removed Discord form my phone, and that kinda leaves me having a bit of a web-portal experience with my computer -- I have long periods where Discord isn't there (tho I could always reinstall it). I remember reading an article about some kids being "luddites" and embracing using flipphones in the last few years; they said it gives their teenage years romanticism. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if a lot of the stuff we talk about being lower-case h harmful for us is that it kills the romanticism and joy in life. Personally, I really miss my fancy flip phone that had long/wide views, a full keyboard, and some native apps -- I max-ranked metal gear solid on it!

I think it's also probably true that we would miss a lot if we returned to the internet days, but I think we can reap all of the nice features it's given us -- Browsers being some of the most optimized distributed app systems on the planet and instant communications globally if needed -- and figure out how to take it slow. Like, I started writing this message 3 hours ago and then walked away to do something else. If I did that on Discord, if it showed the "now typing..." message, I'd probably freak everyone out haha.

[maru]

I actually also really like how you can start a post, keep it open in a tab and then come back to fill it out later. I mean, it means the whole process takes more effort overall, I guess, but I feel more able to let a thought breathe for a second.

I remember reading an article about some kids being "luddites" and embracing using flipphones in the last few years; they said it gives their teenage years romanticism. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if a lot of the stuff we talk about being lower-case h harmful for us is that it kills the romanticism and joy in life.

Truthfully I'm still working out my feelings on this. I make these experiments as ways of figuring out differences in practice. I really like paralogue as one such area because it feels like a participatory blog for me: bringing an open question into a space instead of positing a thesis as an expectation of the medium.

It's true that teenagers seem to be playing with the past like we do; I see ads on Instagram advertising Samsung Galaxy Folder 2s, which are fine phones but at best on Android 8 or something.