Comment by Dumbdo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dumbdo | Hacker News Reader

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For me to understand Instagram stories, it's important to kinda understand the Instagram culture. Normal posts (not stories) are pretty "high-effort" (in terms of shooting and editing) and are posted not so often, maybe every two days at max for your average teen. This left a gap for short-lived stuff (I'm currently eating in this 5* restaurant, I'm currently hiking, I'm on this "cool" party etc.) you wanted to share to a large group of your "friends" (so DM like whatsapp is not a real option because it feels attention-whoring to write it to everyone).

This was mostly filled by Snapchat stories, where you could share exactly that without having to fear to spam people because it's time-limited, everyone does it and it's a very casual format. This feature was basically copied by instagram and is a success for the same reasons, expect nobody uses snapchat stories anymore.

Source: I have young siblings and I kinda use that stuff as well, although not that much.

I get this. My problem seems to be one level deeper. I do not want to share my current plate or the hiking track I'm on. Neither am I interested in this kind of news of my friends. I'm ok with the youngsters doing that for fun.

But where is the serious conversation gone? Did we share our latest meal in the forums back then? No. Where do the young people get their information when they are serious about sth?

What is this "the young people" thing you are talking about? I've got a bunch of friends around my age (40+) who use stories heavily.

Serious conversation happens on FB or here or Reddit.

If you seriously think this is bad or something, then think of it as roughly analogous to the old finger command, where we'd all put random status things and ASCII art in our .plan files.

Stories is pretty much this feature, just done much better.

I'm not sure what you mean with serious in this context? Do you mean invested?

I'm not really into sharing this info either, but I find it refreshing to see what my friends far away are currently doing and often use it as a possibility to connect with them.

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