That was an innocent and wonderful time for many of us, but there was a dark side to it, especially as this haven for nerds went mainstream. I have a good friend who was basically groomed/seduced in ann online game and raped by a 35 year old man when she was 13.

It just sucks on so many levels that we can’t have nice things because many among us are beasts.

That is some crazy mental gymnastics.

that's absolutely horrible, but it's not like it doesn't happen today; maybe even worse today with all the different social media

Literally nothing got better for your far fetched use case, nothing.

If anything it got worse.

This is actually significantly worse now. The video game Roblox alone is awash in tens of thousands of cases of attempted grooming or child endangerment, according to their own metrics, and that's just what they have detected.

This is a parenting issue. The internet doesn’t need training wheels. No offense to those children, but their parents are complete failures.

At some point you reach a critical mass of personal responsibility failures where you need a systemic solution.

Even if the internet doesn't need training wheels, the video game where the average player is 12 might.

20+ years ago kids would play out on the street unsupervised with their friends from the neighbourhood from the age of 6-8 and all the adults would look out for each others' kids. It's only recently that everyone's retreated inside onto their screens that all sense of community has been lost and you get comments like this.

LAN parties were welcoming on other levels. Never played DnD? Come join.

One time I recall was an isle of misogynist folk who haven't showered in days playing WoW.

The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys.

But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there to game. You kind of respected that and they respected you as you were there too to do the same.

Outside of all that they were highly intellectual and I recall talking for hours about other highly intellectual topics, psychics, space mathematics, their characters showing me around the azaoth? I was never played and neither I did I approve of their certain extremist views.

You could tell something went wrong somewhere with their psyche but there was mutual respect. Unfortunately I was too young (20's) to grasp the true vibe.

I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery.

Granted the audience there are would be clique, everyone seemed to knew each other and the mean age would be 40-something but the attitude from some left me astonished compared to attitudes of some of the worse LAN gamers, I've encountered.

If I can hang out with folk who are of such and yet unable to hang with those who are not, I couldn't figure what I was doing wrong. It left a sour taste for my first major goth event, a sub-culture I've followed since 17, I am 36 now and the whole weekend made me feel like I am ready to hand in the towel because of.

I went with no expectations and maybe I was craving the LAN I once I enjoyed in my teens, but it was cold. It felt horrible being there by myself unable to connect with others. I left a day early, maybe it was me.

I do believe gaming has a power to bring others together but online games, I agree are now just half arsed. And are more released for money rather than fun. I've not been able to pick up a game and just play.

Two different sects, yet the one you'd expect to be the worse turned to be more social. It's weird to think that, but shrug. You don't know what's going on.

> I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend

> the mean age would be 40-something

At least in Germany the "black" scene has a serious "recruitment" problem. It's basically the same set of people for decades now with very little additions to the pool.

It strange to me that I am amongst the youngest attendeds at concerts and "disco" events at 40.

"At least in Germany the "black" scene has a serious "recruitment" problem."

I mean, if that is the general attitude

"I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery."

Then where should the new blood are coming from?

seconding this.. went to Mera Luna a weekish ago (going there yearly) and in my early 40s I felt like such a child compared to many other festival goers even though it was like my 16th or so time.

Been there for 10+ years as well. Recently decided that it has gotten too money grabby and started our own privat festival :-/

I remember going to a goth concert in Germany back when I was 19 (20 yearsish ago) amd yeah not welcoming described them well. So I do think it's very much a problem of that specific segment of the community

Huh, here in Lyon, France, the scene (or maybe I should say scène) is quite vibrant and you've got everything from old ponytail greybeards who remember their first Black Sabbath concert to 16 year old edgy teenagers who think smoking rolled cigarettes they bought from a government regulated shop with their parents money counts as "sticking it to the man and overthrowing the capitalist system".

You're welcome to drop by, the Rock'n'Eat in particular is a good "vampires, werewolves and other demons of the night" type venue and it's quite near my house, so feel free to hit me up if you ever feel like going, it'll be a good opportunity for me to practice my German :)

Thanks for the invite :-)

Had been decades since I've been to Paris. But with a life and kid, I guess coming back isn't too high on the priority list ;-)

All the like/share/upvote stuff makes the internet much less authentic. Imagine going to a party where everyone offers a thumbs up/thumbs down whenever you finish a sentence. Do you anticipate making any close friends at this party?

Ironically, I've replied to several people using physical thumbs up/down recently. This can be caused by several variations on voice not being viable at the moment:

* sore throat

* eating

* having another conversation

* context demands silence (often requires the question to be nonverbal somehow, but not e.g. if the context is "sleeping baby right next to me")

* noisy room (often asymmetric)

* target is deaf

I use nonverbals frequently as well, but I think what 0xDEAFBEAD is getting at is more like if everyone were to walk around with a touch display hanging from a lanyard where you could like or dislike every comment. The simulacrum would cheapen the real experience by its very presence.

Exactly. These metrics are supposed to help filter for "quality", but popularity isn't that great as a proxy for quality, and the metrics have the side effect of turning social interaction into a constant status competition.

https://xcancel.com/AliceFromQueens/status/11280356337279303...

The thing with sites like reddit, HN and the like is that they don't promote "identity" like IRC, forums and others. Like, I'm replying to you, we are being "social" , but mostly we will interact in this thread and call it a day. There's no push to form community or some longer term interaction.

In the late 90s early 2000s I was very into a game called Tactics Arena Online, and we had several great communities.

I’ve been seeking out classic phpbb-style forums more and more for community. I just stopped browsing Reddit a few weeks ago after realizing there was nothing I’d truly miss: no characters that I’d come to know, and no reason to maintain a relationship with anyone there in particular. Regarding “identity,” I actually feel that Reddit (and of course Facebook) rely on it too much: maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two).

> maybe I want to be someone in one place and someone else entirely somewhere else (or at least not be easily traced between the two).

One of the few things Google+ actually got right (admittedly after a good deal of pressure from the community) was the ability to set up simple one-way pseudonyms. It meant you could talk about business or mental health without it being forever chained to your real name.

I browsed around Gemini Space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)) for some weeks, cold emailed an interesting guy and now we chat daily.

I think the communities still exist if you seek them out, Agora Road is a fun one.

Whoever can recreate this community feeling is going to be rich. Why did people spend so much time in specific phpbb forums? Maybe the problem is that there are too many communities out there now and so people just give up because you're in all of them and you're part of none of them at the same time?

Discord servers are the closest. People do build up friendships, relationships, enemyships, and a public persona / reputation within a Discord server.

Discord is centralized, heavily censored, and surveilled, so it can’t serve this purpose for many communities (such as most of the ones in which I participate).

My limited experience with discord was either no activity at all, or so much activity it’s hard to follow what’s going on.

I suppose I never found the right place

I’m sure an anthropologist can clarify, but once a community reaches a certain size, it seems that emergent properties take over.

They did, and it’s called Reddit. Then it got enshittified.

Communities don't scale. This is the reason why nobody has done and why you couldn't get rich forming communities. Communities are handcrafted to accommodate the unique personalities of the people involved. Communities involve activities where a handful of people can socialize and bond. A service with a million users can never become a community because our social/grouping instincts don't work on that scale. A community should always be a few dozens of core people, with maybe a larger number of non-core people participating occasionally.

[delayed]

Indeed, I think the size of the internet these days is partly the problem. The community in GameSpy and Zone were super small from my memory. We had crappy websites that tracked singles and team ladders. Then Steam came along.

If their goal is becoming rich, then this is doomed from the very start. How would it be monetized? Ads? Great, then you have no incentive to actually build a healthy community. Signup fee? Not going to work, way too much of a barrier.

Tbh better to stay anonymous as those were the days of not having to worried about being “cancelled” or “doxxed”

Yeah, exactly this. No idea exactly what happened but people at some point seem to have stopped accepting other people having different views or perspectives. With basically every community there was invariably some sort of oddballs.

I remember a BBS with this guy called 'Nihilist' who was a total insufferable asshole that'd make glory days Linus look like the world's most gentle man. But as is the nature with community, you learned more about him over time - and he was a guy in his 20s dying of some sort of a muscular deterioration issue, and him acting that way was just how he coped. Everybody loved him, hated him, mourned when he passed, and the community was somehow genuinely a worse place without him.

For another example I'm sure some here are familiar with, Flipcode had this one dude, extremely knowledgeable, who'd basically snipe into conversations, give amazing advice in a rather curt borderline hostile fashion (was it all caps? I think it was, but that was a long time ago), and then disappear. But he was such an important part of that already large community that I'm certain somebody else can fill in the blanks I'm leaving here.

But now when anybody does something as mild as saying the quite part out loud on dumb things, of which there are many in modern times (probably owing to this exact issue), it's like 'zomg burn the witch'! Basically a prerequisite of community requires accepting people for who they are. In modern times today that statement is basically a euphemism for sexual/LGB stuff, but obviously that's a negligibly small part of the diversity and richness of personalities, even if those personalities, or their opinions, may not always be the most pleasant or politically correct.

> 'zomg burn the witch'

And that often comes from groups who loudly claim to promote, and obnoxiously demand diversity and tolerance.

The classic "tolerance of intolerance" thing (not sure if it fully counts as a paradox).

Basically this has been stuck in my mind ever since 2018 when I hear a friend of my aunt's teenage daughter answer the question "should we tolerate the intolerant" with "no, we should NOT tolerate intolerant" people.

I didn't think of this back then but, by definition, if you do not tolerate intolerant people, you are yourself intolerant, and therefore do not tolerate yourself, which I imagine could lead to some problems if your life goals are anything other than "self-loathing tortured artistic genius".

Related, the classic "I can tolerate everything except the outgroup" from Scott Alexander https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

This does not scale. If you have eccentric sure it's fine. If you have millions it degrades the experience and is impossible to moderate.

Helping look after QuakeNet in the early 2000s was pretty wild. Glad you have positive memories!

In the late 1990s, living in South Korea during the fallout of the IMF financial crisis, my friends and I discovered PC bangs. These gaming havens offered titles like Rainbow Six, MechWarrior 2, and the legendary StarCraft. As a teenager, those moments were unforgettable—sitting in a buzzing PC bang, immersed in epic battles, sparked a lifelong passion for computer networks that I still pursue today.

In the 2000s, I helped establish CyberCafe, a PC bang in Oakland, California, where a diverse crowd came together to play StarCraft and Counter-Strike. It was a vibrant community hub, filled with shared excitement.

I wish PC bangs would make a comeback. Despite our powerful home setups and fast internet, gaming solo in your room can’t match the electric atmosphere of playing alongside others in a match, surrounded by camaraderie and competition.

PC Bangs in Korea are so awesome. I wish we had some where I live. The atmosphere is hard to describe. They are easy to miss. If you happen to get to Korea (gz as this whole country is just tantalizing) don't skip on the PC Bang experience!

What are "PC bangs"? Are they like internet cafes, but meant for gaming?

broadly yeah. the computers have games pre installed and sometimes with subscriptions or free game time included in the price of your time there etc

I taught English in Seoul for a year in '02/'03. bang = room. There was (maybe still is?) a PC bang on every block or two pretty much. I'm sure I went at least 100 times. Great way to kill some time playing counter-strike for me and dabbling in starcraft. It was maybe $1.50/hr at the time. For a much better PC, nice chair, pre-installed games and snacks available.

There are lots of computer clubs throughout the world. Especially in CIS region. In Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, where I live, there are 182 computer clubs, with average 20-30 pcs. From low cost to luxury options, culture of going to computer clubs with your friends is still strong here

Weren't consoles with split screen supposed to fill that niche (too), right in your living room?

Consoles don’t even have split screen any more. Sucks.

Sure they do - depends on the game. Baulder’s Gate 3 can handle split screen coop. It Takes Two is a co-op only platformer. Knight Squad gets up to 8 people playing at once.

You can find many more options here https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php

It’s more like: the default assumption of a AAA console games used to be some local multiplayer. Now, you have to look for it.

Different kind of experience

Alternatively, there's enough folks here who could probably commit to a time/day every month to play some of these games online.

Obviously, not the same as doing it in a cafe or a LAN party, but I'd personally love to play some Brood War with fellow HN folks. Private server or not, i don't really care - I just want to play with people I can connect with in the lobby or in a discord server or whatever.

I never got into SC2 but Brood War IMO is the best RTS ever made hands down.

This sounds a lot like one of my favorite games, TagPro, aside from the difference in scale. It has a very tight-knit community, brought together especially by its several community-run competitive leagues. There was even an IRL meetup recently. Sadly it doesn't have anywhere near the marketing budget to become as big as CS.

What is stopping us from all using IRC again ?

agreed - damn i miss DoD now too haha - that was a fun mod to play when i wanted to get away from CS