Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.

[edit] and in this case the term is far more useful if it is not as expansive as you suggest. We’d just need another term, then, to describe the kind of thing people usually mean by “social media”.

Is the person (their face, their personality) more important, or the content of what they say is more important?

HN falls much closer to the "content" end of the spectrum.

Regular visitors knew each other after seeing the other users' posts, there are in-jokes, and it's not so different. I would say HN is less self-centered (we don't have unique avatars or signatures) than many old-school forums were. Friendships are less likely to be formed here.

And I ran a forum, over a decade ago, in which people from all locations/walks of life participated, and I met more than a handful of them in real life. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

I don't know of any ills with social media that weren't present on forums for me. The difference seems to be one of scale.

I know my intention for joining both was the same (human connection over common interests).

Those are distinguishing factors that are strong enough to differentiate otherwise the BBS I used to hang out on would have been social media and IRC would be as well. I don't buy that broad categorization. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter -> social media. Reddit not and HN definitely not.

Though the quantity of 'meme' content may have to factor in there somewhere and then we have a continuum of online participation with on one end personal messaging and on the extreme other IG, TT, FB etc.

What it lacks to be true "social media" is engagement around a social network. There are certainly "social networks" at work on HN, but most of the users don't know each other and aren't focused on each other's statuses, pictures, videos, relationship statuses. Instead they're mostly focused on intellectual competition via comments. (when you're not allowed to compete for jokes, like folks do on Reddit, you compete for whatever else defines your identity, which on HN is intelligence).

Ironically, HN's always wanted to be a social network, in that they want to build "a community of users" where the users all recognize each other (they claim that's necessary in order to build a community). Once HN introduces personal blogs or tweet-like status updates, it will 100% be a social network, with all the same health concerns.

in fact try to stop going to all “slot machine” sites where you can constantly refresh and get new interesting things

Hackernews and other forums don't really hit that nerve with me. Yes, it's easy to just keep scrolling and reading more but at least I don't feel like shit afterwards. It's addictive but only but for me in that I waste time on it when I could be doing other stuff. It doesn't make me depressed though.

When I was heavily into Reddit I'd use RES and get to know people so it felt more like social media. Now that I've deleted my account and sporadically read Reddit it doesn't feel like social media or something I'm addicted to.

Hacker news isn't social media. Facebook and Twitter are. It's pretty easy to see why.

Ironically to me, "this is just a cope" is exactly what I can't stand social media.

Just large groups of people puppeting the same dumb language and ideas back at each other, ad nauseam.

Are comments and discussions separate from "content creation"?

A comment you wrote, or a link you posted -> meta-content.

- HN doesn't have notifications

- HN doesn't provide affordances for virality: you can't "retweet"/"subtweet"; you can't start trends like #ProtectTaylorSwift; you can't brigade people; etc

- HN doesn't have a personal algorithmic feed

- HN doesn't have DMs

- HN links elsewhere (mostly) for the main content

- HN's moderators are available directly, and they also participate in discussions

- You can't be an influencer on HN: you might be a patio11 or something, you might even get jobs from your HN karma or posts, but hawking products based on your clout for a kickback is astroturfing/shilling and the community is pretty good at snuffing it out

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I guess overall my argument is that if forums--even forums like Reddit or random vbulletin forums--are social media then the term kind of loses meaning. It opens the door to questions like "are blogs social media, after all there are accounts and comments sections".

I know people highroad social media and its users a lot (I'm guilty of this haha; finally my misanthropy is good for something!), so there's something attractive about an argument that cuts holier-than-thou HNers back down to size (trying to be generous and lighthearted here, again I'm a member of this crew). I just think the shoe doesn't fit in this case. There are good things about social media! Black Twitter! Queer/Geek Mastodon! But I really feel like those services are meaningfully different than forums--especially this one.

Most of the best videos I saw were Vine compilations

It depends on what your social circles are like. Given that you're not attached to social networks, it seems likely your associates aren't super connected either. So you might miss out on a few inside jokes, but those are fleeting in the moment anyway. Probably nothing truly long lasting. Because of the broadness of the social network experience, it's not the same as missing Dallas or Game of Thrones in prior decades. And you might not have a water-cooler to talk at anyway...

tell me how old you are without telling me how old you are :)

When I was a kid, the source was an over-priced encyclopedia. Now, it's a search and to me, that's the magic.

Also, you can't Ctrl-F search paper, and that's a huge downside, imo.

YMMV.

I am a person. You have interacted with me using tech.

How are you defining "tech" exactly? I use messaging apps all the time to organise things with friends or talk to distant family members. There's no better way to do it, I can't meet everyone in person and if plans change, it's better to know sooner.

The better question may be: How are you defining an interaction?

This may be a hot take, but I don't consider HN to be personal interaction. We post content individually. We read it individually. Replies are about the content, not about the person. I am replying to something you wrote, but know nothing about you as a person, so it is hard to claim we have a personal interaction together just because of this comment.

I agree that personal interactions are hard to come by online, but this is different to interacting with people at a surface level online.

I've seen on many long-term forums, or even sub-reddits on Reddit, people really get to know each other.

I have 2 accounts that anyone could argue are social media and this is one of them. The other is so specialized that I'm fairly sure no one here uses it and I mainly use it for reference. An account was needed to search. Since I have an account, I will occasionally provide an answer to someone that has a question that I've had in the past, but even that's rare.

Otherwise, I use Teams at work, but that's not social media.

There is already plenty accounts out there that even the relatively small barrier of iMessage -> SMS is a large enough of an inconvenience to stop a lot of casual relationships from moving to the next level or even continuing.

Having no phone means you are basically unreachable for most of the day. A much more significant hurdle to get over. It’s possible to find another like minded person but that is a very tiny minority of people looking for a partner. It’s not the 90s anymore and people are accustomed to living in this constantly connected world. Look at most sitcoms from the 90s so many of the situations they find themselves in just aren’t relatable because of the easy communication we have with everyone at all times.

I send >85+% of my sms or sms-like messages from a laptop/desktop. So no, I don't see a phone as an important part of my communication besides the fact it gives me a number serving as an ID that could just as easily be provided many other ways.

I primarily took this line to mean dating apps, facetime, and other social media like functions; which I would argue are mostly worthless for developing and maintaining friendships or partnerships.

If we're taking it to the extreme and saying that not having a phone somehow disallows you any digital communications; then yes it will be significantly more difficult without a phone, perhaps to the point that some would feel it's a necessary device.

I deleted my FB account ~8 years ago and twitter ~1 year ago and have not regretted it one bit. IG is the only one I have left and use that to share/keep up with family/friends' photos.

From my own experience, you don't actually feel very "in touch" unless you're successful. Instead, you end up making a lot of posts into the void that maybe get 10-20 views? 100 on a ++ post. Spend a month on a demo and get 1 comment. Watch nobody ever read what you wrote, while others post "does sugar go in spaghetti?" and get 60 million views and 4 million comments. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497

Game I made for the Library of Congress' Game Challenge this year. Combination of a match-3 game, and a society simulation, such as the Civilization series. Part I thought was neat was Tetris style swap powers you earn with trominos and tetraminos, as well as pentaminos for structure criteria. Note: LoC wanted "simple, easy to start"

http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.ht...

Spherical planetary erosion (quick gif, video's on Twitter, I just left after the strobing X on the roof episode.)

https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif

Least squares curve fitting with semi-arbitrary equation matching and visual points you can move.

http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html