Lack of appeal to the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige retards is key.

HN is still too mainstream, but it's going in the right directory with early 00s-looking UI and lack of JS bloat. Imagine something that can only be accessed with a text-mode browser using a protocol completely separate from, and unlike, HTTP, with no official Windows, Android or Mac/iOS build.

The community has to be small enough that it's irrelevant both politically and as an advertising platform.

So gemini?

I can say it 'cause I am one.

Deep space but not with rockets, rogue/advanced biology/medicine?

For some reason it's unpopular here, but that "place to go" is the altweb of crypto and other networks like I2P, often dubbed "web3". Yes, all of the scams and beige this-or-that are there. But it's so vast and so granular right now that you can definitely find your dreamers and weirdos doing interesting things.

When I lived in a small European town a few years ago, upon hearing that I was a software developer, regular-ass business dudes would regularly want to talk about NFTs, inbetween a conversation about football and one about cars.

I'm sure there are weirdos in the web3 spaces, but I feel like they're very outnumbered. Projects like ENS or IPFS are probably much more interesting to weirdos than most "crypto stuff". I2P too, though I don't think this twenty-year-old project should be lumped in with "web3".

I think the Fediverse is a better place to go. Lots of little communities, almost all of run by regular nerds, each one with their own quirks and petty personal drama and constant UI tweaking? It's like forums all over again, except it's now safe to use one password for everything.

> It's like webrings all over again

Fixed that for you.

That's the polar opposite.

I have a lot of respect for you and am disheartened to hear such a blasé condemnation of a big umbrella. The signal to noise ratio is poor, but there are genuinely interesting things going on.

Alternative internet communities with higher (even if only slightly) barriers for entry and no financial incentives to ruin everything. Maybe mastodon/matrix communities or something? I honestly am not up to speed on what exists in geek online communities space nowadays.

No, the people who run those are the people who couldn't cut it as reddit mods.

If you want the old internet vibe the dark Web is the place to be. Tor, freenet, i2p.

I'm quite partial to freenet because it's completely segregated from the regular internet and refreshes as the speed of dial up. No interactive web2.0 here.

Outside

Be the change you want to see. Create quality content.