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deathhand

My personal journey: Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN

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Based on other responses here, I guess I'd be dating myself to say mine started with Usenet.

BBS, Compuserve, Usenet, The Well, Slashdot, MeFi...

I was grounded for a month after I ran the long distance bill to $926 calling a BBS in San Jose from Lake Tahoe.

We put in a Warez bbs on the north Lake Tahoe cad server.

Fun times

BBS, Fidonet, Usenet, ...

Someone will oneup this too with Arpanet or similar :)

I talked to the other hams in high school using Morse code and a vacuum tube transmitter.

And get off my lawn. :)

I've actually joked about building a Bluetooth telegraph key to make texting more concenient.

I assume you already have the Morse key USB keyboard? (https://mitxela.com/projects/morse_code_usb_keyboard_mk_ii)

PLATO

That's exactly the sort of thing I figured would one up me. Ironically, too young to have been exposed to PLATO.

I discovered (although I still use all these platforms) IRC, reddit, usenet, HN (in that order).

Compuserve, MSN (no not messenger), Usenet, Slashdot, Fuck Beta, Soylent, HN

Prodigy. BBSes. Usenet. /.. HN. Digg. Reddit.

Gave up on /. around the time cmdrtaco got married. Gave up on digg sometime before the downfall. Have stuck with HN (was fairly early here). Reddit on and off.

Mine was Quantum-Link.

I used to go outside and talk to people.

I have, to this day, never once used any kind of social media or forum, not even HN.

AMRAD BBS, Bruce's NorthStar Horizon BBS, NBS-TIP, MIT-DM ITS, ZORK, UNTALK, Essex MUD, INFO-MICRO, SF-LOVERS, ITS-LOVERS, UNIX-HATERS, BANDYKIN, TANSTAAFL, LECTROIDS...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080221

Keith F. Lynch wrote up some interesting history of the net from his perspective:

http://keithlynch.net/history.net.html

That makes me feel even more weird about going Slashdot, HN, sometimes-Reddit-but-mostly-HN.

but I'm a bit weird with account creation. A service generally has to really prove its worth before I bother to create an account. I spent a couple years on HN before before bothering with an account and commenting, and it took way longer after that until I finally found some Reddit communities that made me want to create an account (and even now, I comment sparingly), even though I looked at it occassionally.

> That makes me feel even more weird about going Slashdot, HN, sometimes-Reddit-but-mostly-HN.

Same, except I started with CompuServe, then MSN before /. I visit a few reddits now, but I still don't really like the feel for some reason.

Same here, with some Fark mixed in with Slashdot.

My social media experience started with the program I wrote myself, in 1975 for a 300-user timeshare system. That's the last time I was even close to the forefront. Didn't pay any attention to Myspace until it was obvious there was no need to. I've completely avoided Facebook because I've never trusted them.

I've never heard of Digg, but I still read Slashdot (though it has certainly gone downhill since the 90s), Reddit (at least certain subreddits like r/boardgames), and HN daily.

This will date me but at one time Digg had a section that ranked how influential of a user you were on their platform. There was a superstar who used the alias "MrBabyMan" that ruled the roost.

I was in the top 100 users back in those days. I loved their platform. It's a shame what they did with it. It is my opinion that Reddit has gotten away with a terrible UI compared to what Digg once had.

If you liked Digg you might also like: https://barnacl.es https://voat.co/

Where is Kevin rose these days?

He's been doing a podcast since 2016: https://www.kevinrose.com/

> I've never heard of Digg

Ok, now I'm officially an old man.

The strange thing is, I've been using the WWW since 1995 (and the Internet since the late 80s). I don't know how I missed Digg, but it's not because I'm a newbie ;-)

The Register, slashdot, Ars Technica, Hacker News + Reddit

I went from Digg to HN. Skipped Reddit. I find that place to be a bit nasty and a really bad source of information.

I skipped Digg; it seemed always seemed irrelevant to me (EDIT: that's just my personal perception -obviously I was wrong).

My personal journey was: BBS -> Usenet -> Slashdot -> phpbb/vb forums -> Ars -> Reddit -> HN

I haven't had any problems with Reddit as far as technical information goes, but I mostly go there for non-tech subs (eg AskHistorians).

I absolutely get what you mean about it being nasty though -it took me years and years to break down and finally make an account because of the nastiness.

You need to skip the main/popular parts of Reddit and choose your subreddits carefully. I personally spend a lot of time in r/boardgames which is an amazing community.

I prefer proggit to HN these days. This place is mostly political commentary. The rules around engagement - while outwardly all about having a good conversation - just make this whole place feel passive aggressive and limp-wristed.

A lot of the trolls and flaming on proggit is funny. HN feels too much like that episode of South Park where Kyle moves to San Francisco and everyone is huffing their own farts.

True. On HN i mostly don't even bother to write my own opinion if it's not in line with the mainstream. It will just get downvoted to death instead of sparking a discussion...

Agree. Apparently it's ok to downvote people you disagree with, rather than crap arguments. I've mostly lost interest. Too bad too, it was really great for a while.

ArsTechnica is even worse

Slashdot, Gizmodo, Slashdot, HN here :)

Slashdot, Reddit, Ars Technica, HN here, though I still read Ars every day.

Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN... Soylent News!

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