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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

People just aren’t seeing it because they aren’t going to the fun places. Of course the major social platforms and search engines will never point the way to fun. Fun is made without any financial motivation.

The fun places are out there aplenty. People just have to go out and find it because no algorithm or advertisement is going to point the way. I get tons of fun in all sorts of small and specialized ultra-nerdy communities.

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Okay, so where are they? Show us some.

Let's be honest here, how many of these "specialized ultra-nerdy communities" are closed off Discord servers?

To find these spaces, you have to think in reverse. You can’t look for the community first. You have to start by having a specialized interest. You can’t rely on an algorithm to tell you what you care about and how you want to spend the time in your life. That answer has to come from within. Once you have that answer, finding the community online is quite easy.

The way you find them is to search for the creators and other community leaders. For example, let’s say you are interested in a specific video game. Look for the publishers, developers, top players, live streamers, and media coverage of that game. Those people are likely to be hosting or participating in communities that you can join, even if they are closed Discord servers.

They are almost always Discord servers, ruled by terminally online powertripping weirdos who will make your life hell if you even slightly offend them, where knowledge and discussion go to die because none of it is searchable and whatever was being talked about 5 minutes ago is already forgotten.

This has nothing to do with what the internet used to be like.

So exactly like textboards in the 1990s, except powertripping discord mods just ban you. Aggrieved sysops would target you with malware before banning you.

Nothing new under the sun.

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