When you put it like that, I really prefer some of the precursors.

Reddit is just Usenet.

I like reddit because it's a bunch of millennials and has been from the start. My old manager, he talks all glowingly about the haydays of usenet. He's a gen-Xer. Given the equivalency of social networks features, the most important thing is just going to be the identity of the users consuming them.

I love to joke to my kids that twitch is just AM radio for their age group... they get mad on that one cause it's pretty on point.

As a Gen-X, almost Boomer, and the only social media I use is Reddit…

I think, perhaps, you might be looking at the wrong “groups”.

CasualUK is where I spend my time.

> hacker news just coffee shops and bars

Ok, I really follow you on the rest and the overall point.

But this one … hacker news is how : delicio.us/Reddit/digg/slashdot used to be, before the network effect.

I rarely talk about BRNF at bars and I don’t use drugs while reading HN.

What was hacker news before delicious/reddit/digg/slashdot... before the web bassed internet... before bbs's... what's the analog version of these?

Also I've talked about SQL, made an adobe flash joke, ML, and many other tech things at bars in the last month, with randos.

Had a good hour discussion about ChatGPT with an NFL journalist from the local paper.

Again, agreed. I’m just bored tonight. No animosity here.

My goal was to point out that the metaphors is not equality working across all the examples.

Why Dropbox got NFS and not the postal service or train station locker?

Why google got Grep and not the Dewey classification system ?

Why HN got a pre internet, multi-milenary and deeply human “ancestors”. While BBS would have been sufficient?

Same for Craigslist and Amazon I guess.

Cause that's what I typed while in the bathroom at a baseball game after 2 beers and it wasn't my a-material :)

Thanks for clarifying, I guess I'm in paranoid mode...

I didn't say BBS because I was never on one.

Dr. Dobbs, early computer magazines. Then there was email and usenet.

Wow. Good analogies.

"Google just grep"

That's a keeper.

Larry's dad to Larry (pretending that dad was not computer literate, but somehow knew just grep and the web):

Son, now that you're outta school, whaddya do to make rent?

Larry: Oh dad, Sergey and me, we just grep the web for folks. Makes us rent, and a tad more.