Hello folks.

So someone posted your "Digital Cargo Cult" article on /g/ https://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/107130780

...And I thought I'd give my thoughts about it there, but it seems my IP range is mysteriously banned for spam again. This was just another somewhat unusual occasion where I decide to see what's on the catalog. Anyway.

Firstly, I would have never imagined someone making a blogpost like this on a website that actually tries to live up to old Internet standards. I think that's quite neat. Color me just a little bit surprised, I thought I'd have to do it myself lol.

Now, take these words from someone who hopped on the whole "let's revive it properly" train many years ago. And suffered a lot of heartache through all of it.

Surely, you've noticed the conflicts and limitations that readily appear. Such as the marginalization under email providers or hosting/domain providers, or the acid pushback against your suggestions of alternatives. It is understandable to be frustrated at these things.

But, the tone strikes me as generally overtly alienated and neurotic. There's no need to be like that really. It repulses everyone who doesn't think like you, and that's really just a boring way to go through life- inadvertently trapping yourself in an echo chamber, that is.

To elaborate, are you familiar with Don Quixote? Fighting windmills? It's something like that. As long as you define yourself in opposition to something, that very something will continue to define you. You must learn to be ecumenical, to cooperate with people and agree to disagree: Not everyone on proprietary platforms is devoid of nuance or independent thought- in fact, in your contrarian impulsivity, you may be as nearly devoid of nuance as they are. Sure, some spaces might not really seem to understand what you're talking about, but these things are easier to resolve and explain than you might think, as well- it is important to understand that if you pounce on anybody with dramatically different opinions to theirs, their already "Othered" view of a stranger becomes even more Othered as you do so. Do not understate the value of gentleness and assertiveness.

To cooperate confidently, you must first find a path to forge by clearly defining what your goals actually are. Is it aesthetics you seek to revive? Functionality? Or... A Spirit, an Ethos? These latter are quite different indeed. A Medium and its Contents are not one and the same. Furthermore, you may have realized how reviving aesthetics often results in Kitsch, so it is a misguided goal regardless.

(Also, Discord is the current nerd hangout, similarly to what IRC was. Do not curse this fact, rather, embrace it. Do as in alchemy, where nothing is lost, but instead transformed. It is a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor to learn and earnestly navigate through the Internet's current topology, as calmly and amicably as you can.)

Finally, I said how I was in these "old Internet revival" communities years ago. I believe they declined because of this overarching neuroticism, too. It may seem like a stretch, but being so anal retentive over certain things - social matters in particular - is very often correlated with anal retentiveness as a whole, and this makes for unpleasant, flatulent communities.

(P.S., don't you think it's a little fart-huffy? "Foundational critiques on the modern digital experience"? Really? :-| Not to mention how it feels co-written by a LLM in a rather glaringly obvious manner, but I don't have a sure way to prove it. Additionally, there is no need to say such condescending things as "You should be ashamed of yourself" just as you link a Discord. I am sorry to sound rather coarse at times, but I cannot hide what it makes me feel either.)

I will stay around for a little while in case you find this worth commenting on at all. I know it's rather disorganized, apologies, not exactly the most formal writing here. I hope you get something out of it. Have a nice life.

And yes, the irony of being this coarse when I am generally talking about gentleness is not lost on me. I am unfortunately not sure how else to communicate this. I am simply going to hope that there is a slim chance this helps or resonates with anyone here at some point.

There's also the element of how personal goals and community goals don't have to be one and the same. They can overlap, and it's good when they do, but differences make for individuality, and that's a wonderful thing.

It's fine to indulge in aesthetic revivals as well, it's something part and parcel to art and art movements, really. But trying to make a baseline or a "new normal" out of it, treating it as a community goal, is mere make-believe. Cultural make-believe has had certain points where it's worked, but I believe a lot has to come together to make it happen. And, it may not feel so artificial in the moment, more like running with whatever was there at the moment, perhaps mixing in some idealistic elements. Even then, it's usually not the idealistic portion that remains. (I'm using the mental example of 4chan being a mix of SA+Futaba Channel/2ch at its start, along with the whole free speech/anonymity-centric mirage that emerged there soon after.)

(Another example that comes to mind is the U.S. leading up to its Independence with its Enlightenment-informed ideals.)

>Also, Discord is the current nerd hangout, similarly to what IRC was. Do not curse this fact, rather, embrace it. Do as in alchemy, where nothing is lost, but instead transformed. It is a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor to learn and earnestly navigate through the Internet's current topology, as calmly and amicably as you can.

I'm albeit nitpicking here but i disagree with this particular statement primarily because that the "Discord is the current nerd hangout" is slowly becoming more and more degraded to the point that tech related discussion isn't really valued as much on that platform compared to others such as XMPP and many others. plus due to radical shifts of events such as Digital State I.D scare in the U.K being implemented on discord there has been an increase in userbase within platforms such as these.
But i do agree with your statement regarding that article's approach to the issue. we had a discord server which was an experiment and treated as an option that we discouraged using but it was an option for people that didn't really understand all the free'er platforms and using discord as a platform to teach users that there is options. it was a failed experiment because those users felt discord was "superior" while they maybe right to a certain extent but this entitlement caused far too much drama and intentionally discouraged users from swapping over to what we think is better platforms where 'freedom' is valued.

Now that I think about it, make-believe can be fun if embraced as the performance art that it is, but it's no material for a "new normal".

Thank you for your reasonable response.

> "Discord is the current nerd hangout" is slowly becoming more and more degraded to the point that tech related discussion isn't really valued as much on that platform compared to others such as XMPP and many others.

I don't disagree. I think finding the discussion you may be looking for is highly contingent on what kind of Discord community you're in.

And I'm sure that certain tech topics won't emerge as much on Discord. Such as free software, privacy and the like.

> plus due to radical shifts of events such as Digital State I.D scare in the U.K being implemented on discord there has been an increase in userbase within platforms such as these.

I'm also not going to deny that it would be great if Discord started declining. I don't like the platform.

It's a good time as ever for alternatives to emerge with a feature parity.

> because those users felt discord was "superior" while they maybe right to a certain extent but this entitlement caused far too much drama and intentionally discouraged users from swapping over to what we think is better platforms where 'freedom' is valued.

Yes. These things tend to quickly become an ideological battle of attrition, unfortunately.

I must add that the whole topic of "how should an alternative be like/be publicized" is quite extensive, and I haven't thought about it as much as I'd like. Broadly, I believe what an alternative needs to have is somewhat misunderstood. It's not even necessarily about feature parity, but social excuses for it to grow.

To reiterate myself a little with this example: Since XMPP's "excuse for growth" is mostly attributed to privacy concerns, FOSS/privacy advocates are mostly all you get.

Discord as a case study is quite interesting with that. There are many word-of-mouth accounts of how it slowly encroached a lot of the Internet. I'd have to sit down and recapitulate.

"of how it slowly encroached a lot of the Internet" - especially in its first few years. Remember "It's time to ditch Skype"?

Discord is really a marketing wonder more than anything else. And I think that's often underappreciated. Like, it's dismissed as an evil rather than something to learn from for profit.

>I must add that the whole topic of "how should an alternative be like/be publicized" is quite extensive, and I haven't thought about it as much as I'd like. Broadly, I believe what an alternative needs to have is somewhat misunderstood. It's not even necessarily about feature parity, but social excuses for it to grow.

The issue with communites such as these attempting to publicized and spreading the word to other non-free platform is that the method of advertising feels incredibly aggressive, forced and improperly guided. also the thing with people on non-free platforms and like majority of the poplation they're usually on the status-quo line and change can be difficult especially if your social circle is within non-free platforms.
Communities such as cyberix should consider on the idea of picking up pages from books that teaches propaganda. target analysis is such example, it's easier to convince a person or group that is concerned about their privacy but misguided than it is to convince a person/group that doesn't care about such things. it's like if a communist trying to convince the far right that communism is better. a propagandist would target people that is kinda status-quo but not really.

>Discord as a case study is quite interesting with that. There are many word-of-mouth accounts of how it slowly encroached a lot of the Internet. I'd have to sit down and recapitulate.

Discord has a similar amount of encroachment as skype did, and like skype, discord will most likely suffer the same fate, platforms come and go and since that there has been a recent surge of concern for privacy, albeit not as massive as people think, it's still an increase nonetheless. i believe the next platform will probably value privacy but how much exactly? that i cannot predict.

> is that the method of advertising feels incredibly aggressive, forced and improperly guided.

Definitely a method thing than anything else.

> also the thing with people on non-free platforms and like majority of the poplation they're usually on the status-quo line and change can be difficult especially if your social circle is within non-free platforms.

Yeah, path of least resistance.

> Communities such as cyberix should consider on the idea of picking up pages from books that teaches propaganda. target analysis is such example, it's easier to convince a person or group that is concerned about their privacy but misguided than it is to convince a person/group that doesn't care about such things. it's like if a communist trying to convince the far right that communism is better. a propagandist would target people that is kinda status-quo but not really.

Agreed. It's something I've been meaning to read about, for sure. Just rhetoric in general. As it is, I only have an intuitive grasp on it from so much trial and error.

I think Louis Rossmann is a great example to follow. Scattered among videos, he's shown a quite particular, really an unusually productive and actually optimistic/non-neurotic philosophy in how to advocate for these matters.

> Discord has a similar amount of encroachment as skype did, and like skype, discord will most likely suffer the same fate, platforms come and go and since that there has been a recent surge of concern for privacy, albeit not as massive as people think, it's still an increase nonetheless. i believe the next platform will probably value privacy but how much exactly? that i cannot predict.

It's really a matter of "how" and not "if". Particularly, how messy the transition and "successor" might wind up being.

Perhaps it's only tangentially related, but Manufacturing Consent's been on my reading list for a while.