Re: Emigration from Usenet [was: Re: PTD was the most-respected of the AUE regulars ...]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:

On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:

  On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:
 

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

  On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
 

On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:

  On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
 

[Followup-To: comp.misc]
 Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
 

Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.

 Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.

 There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
OS, and software.  To me, this is a reiteration of the story
of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
for immediate comfort.

 It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
hoops to jump through.
 But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
islands eventually?

 How would that work?  The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
figure it out.  The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
 

 A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
there are a few who do see the light?

 This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
from years ago)?  And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
already well underway for facebook.  Apparently the "young crowd" (as
in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
facebook).
 Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
equally bad corporate devil.

 Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
telling them I'm a regular usenet user!

>
Way to go, guy!  I assume you also flash a wad.
>
Maybe 20 years ago I would chat with the people I rode up with on the ski-lift.  6 minutes.  I asked them if they were involved with usenet and the skiing newsgroups.  Not a single one for several years, maybe 120 rides per year.  And this is before the ascendancy of facebook.
>
Most of the usenet people I've "known" since 1995 have switched to facebook, and a significant percentage of those have just disappeared. Some of us are still hanging in, though.  Those are my facebook 'friends' along with RL friends and friends of friends.  Mostly we all know who we are and some of us have even met each other IRL.
>
And if we really want to talk about stupid, there's always Nextdoor...

I never had a facebook account, so my evolution went from brief usenet in the late 90s, to BBS:s, to web forums for many years, and lately a come back for usenet.
I think there is a small trickle of new people from the digital minimalism movement.