A sentiment I often see here on Gemini is that they think the web is 'dead' and full of 'shallow' people but frankly I don't feel it. I am certainly not saying this applies to everybody but I feel like a lot of people who find the quality of discussion on the WWW to be 'lesser' than the quality of discussion here feel that way because they want 'genuine discussion' but have no clear idea what that discussion is even supposed to be about. You'll find maymays and shitposts if you just look at the frontpage of some random social media website, big surprise, fork found in the kitchen. But I don't think there's any shortage of engaging discussion and discussion partners if you actually look into a space dedicated for that particular topic.
I never run out of fascinating things to talk about because my online presence is marked by a particular niche (primarily discussion on psychological and sociological concepts like personality disorders, paraphilias, lovelessness and other things that aren't visible in the 'mainstream'). It's to the point where even though I don't openly have a blog about those things anymore, I have curated a space for myself where I can engage in discussion about it any time if I felt like it. The topics that concern me are not things I feel like I will get any productive discussion out of here on Gemini since this place is way too small and tech-focused.
That isn't a 'criticism' of Gemini per se (I know it fulfills its own niche), but my point is that finding the content you want to see and the discussions you want to have means 1) knowing where to look, 2) knowing when you ought to just do it yourself and hope that somebody else finds you. It's a little confusing for me to see how often I see complaints from 'smolweb' spaces that they 'can't find' anything 'genuine' or 'interesting' on the Internet anymore. Where on earth is everyone looking, the frontpage of xwitter dot com? Even if it were true, at that point it just seems more productive to start making the 'genuine' content about your interests yourself.
Oct 08 · 7 days ago · 👍 Homer, bsj38381, fstfabi
4 Comments ↓
Ngl, I've been thinking of making a Capsule, and make it art themed, and add a blog section where I talk about why I believe the human race should abandon gender roles/stereotypes that's forced on them in society.
Saying people on the "normal" web are shallow does sound too elitist, but, for now, I enjoy not having to worry about advertisers and chatbots wasting my time here. Of course, some of that is down to the size of this community and not the protocol itself, but I've seen em-dashes on here — and I didn't think anything of it ;)
👻 darkghost · Oct 08 at 13:58:
Gemini is on my own terms. Nobody is trying to noodle in my psyche to keep me on the platform longer for the benefit of advertisers. (I block ads anyway but the engagement algorithm is still there to waste my time.) Community is a bonus to that. That's why I like it. I could seek out the same on the traditional web but I'm established here after wandering in by accident.
It's not impossible as a matter of principle but it's beyond obvious to me that the substance to effort ratio is nowhere near what it once was and that's because there is a glut of people on the web now who were not subjected to the kind of selection pressures we once were. I think you can argue subjectively about the former if you have a different taste, and I'm just not interested in arguing against that the same way "let people enjoy things!" does nothing for me, but the latter point about selection pressures is just objectively true.
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