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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people thought the people they chatted with or watched content of on the internet were their friends, and not just bored strangers. Once money got legit it became profit seeking individuals/enterprises.

The solution is not to pine for the old days of the internet but to rethink your friendship/companionship seeking strategy.

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Bored strangers is the embryonic stage of many, if not most friendships. The more exposure we have to bored strangers, the more opportunities we have for establishing friendships.

>Bored strangers is the embryonic stage of many, if not most friendships.

And romantic relationships.

I've only had two of those, bur if there was ever such a stage with them, it was exceedingly short... maybe the first few minutes. Come to think, it's the same with friendships. My friendships basically formed with people who were going to be there for longer than I asked for anyway.

YMMV, but the only time I connect with a bored stranger is inside of a video game.

I was talking more about bored people connecting IRL so maybe that was out of context which I guess was focused at online relationships only.

>were their friends.

This was true. I don't know what to tell you. I've been to weddings. It used to be a good place to meet people.

The problem now is that the bulk of the legitimate bored strangers are desperately trying to come up with some witty pun or incredibly comfortable The Office reference on reddit to garner fake internet points and are indistinguishable from AI bots these days. I really fucking hate The Office at this point. Millennials need some new material.

In any human interaction within which there exists economic value, the human(s) will be disintermediated.

We rarely go, meet few and talk little. Of course, people are lonely when they’re atomized.

Did you mean intermediated?

No. It’s the people that are the intermediates that are removed from the interaction. Most commonly, only on one end.

Probably works both ways.

Instead of direct human-human comunication (speech), we now write posts on websites and IMs.

I blame streamers and influencers.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. The commercialization of platforms made influencers possible.

The saying don't hate the player hate the game is pure cope.

It's finger pointing. Blame the game and the players who perpetuate them.

Players wouldn't have the ability nor incentives to play the game if the gamemakers didn't create the conditions for it.

Can we agree to hate the gamemakers and not the players? Incentive structures are always more powerful than individuals' choices.

>made influencers possible

What would we do without them? /s

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