Can a platform become popular without being ruined? - NORMIES GET OUT REEEEEEEEE

[Bongocat]

The very fact that you're here means you probably know what I'm talking about. At one point in time, twitter was usable without 100,000 bluehairs and boomers screeching at everything all the time. Discord servers could be left in relative peace without being sought and destroyed by people that don't even know they exist yet. There was a time when Facebook wasn't the hip, happening place where your mom hangs out.

My initial thought is that hosting a large and diverse crowd under one roof is destined for disaster because it's filled with cliques that necessarily hate eachother. But even platforms like skype where everyone is separated got ruined from things like overzealous and malicious advertising once it got too popular (the ads would literally give you malware). This isn't even to mention all the privacy invasions from the glowies getting interested.

The strangest example is 4chan's /b/ where pretty much none of the usual suspects applied, and yet due to it's popularity and lack of gatekeeping, it turned into an unfunny cesspit and eventually just a big porn dump.

Is it possible to have a platform get popular without it going to shit? Are there any examples of this today?

 

[It's HK-47]

Nothing can. The more people that show up, the more things start to suck. That's one of the primary reasons that I'm thankful that all of the games I enjoy and all the communities I'm a part of are largely under the radar, wildly unpopular, or have such a steep learning curve that almost nobody bothers to show up.

The broader a community becomes, the more it's going to attract people who don't show up out of passion, but out of popularity. This eventually causes a diluting effect that happens over and over and over again until you're eventually left with people who showed up purely because a friend of a friend to the 10th power is the reason they wound up dragged over here in the first place.

Similarly, the easier that a game or a platform becomes to access, the less of an obstacle it becomes for deeply uninteresting and unintelligent people to find their way through the front door. Complexity is anathema to the retarded. Sometimes I wonder just how many boring people we've kept away from the Farms purely due to their inability to quote Alex Jones.

 

[Meat Pickle]

It's a paradox that even Null has to face with this site. Either your site grows and become popular but it gets filled with normies or your keep it the way you like but it stagnates and fades into irrelevancy.

 

[Dom Cruise]

It does seem like the more users a website has, the worse it's going to be.

But I've also seen websites ruined by poor management and I've seen small, tight knit communities ruined by nevertheless going woke.

 

[Bongocat]

It does seem like the more users a website has, the worse it's going to be.

But I've also seen websites ruined by poor management and I've seen small, tight knit communities ruined by nevertheless going woke.

Going woke is a common affliction, but it can happen in the other direction as well. A certain content creators discord server that shall not be named was super cozy when it had around 300 users. Most were engaged, on topic and shared interests. As it went on, however, you started having a lot of retards showing up spamming the chat with ifunny watermarks and making it very difficult to hold conversations. The mods had an absolute dedication to Freeze Peach to the point that they wouldn't stop 9gag spamming.

After a while, all the thoughtful people exited and all that was left was qboomers, lolbertarians and LE FUNNY MAYMAY FROM REDDIT XD spammers.

I hop in to check things once in a while.... jesus christ that place is unbearable now.

 

[Flip: Draw 2]

Nowadays, no way.

"Free speech" websites are only populated by social media refugees since they're the only ones in the market for that kind of product. So, inevitably, these kinds of websites become an echo chamber for typically right-wing ideas which makes it completely intolerable for more moderate or left leaning audiences. Look at BitChute. While it's a free speech friendly website (forthe most part) it's populated by nothing but right-wingers. Artists and meme accounts common to Twitter don't spring up because the audience will be smaller and they weren't going to be banned from Twitter/Facebook anyways. If the site gets really bad, it will just become another /b/, a worthless porn dumping ground populated by people abusing the lax rules. Sorry Fediverse, you're just another gimmick.
Discord's server system can be peaceful but only because everyone is relatively segregated. It's a fairer system than most but its just a guaranteed echo-chamber. It has similar problems as skype with glowies getting interested as it grows. Also, prepare for an inevitable server purge once discord gets blamed for hosting extremists unsupervised.

The only way to make a popular website that appeals to everyone is for it to be be focused on a niche or hobby first with "free speech" just being part of it. There are many niche-specific forums that have a diverse community because the users are united by a common, non-political, interest. Super users are kept to a minimum so people's voices are still heard rather than some users have more authority on a topic than others. However, these sites can't make much money since they do not attract businesses that want special privileges so it's typically a labor of love with minimal monetary gain or a fucking corporate sponsored hellhole plastered with ads.
The main reason why the farms has a "decent" community is because the forum was designed as a lolcow website first, not a free speech haven. Everyone with an interest in internet spergs have an interest in the farms. Nothing can even compete with its sheer volume of content specifically on lolcows. Sure, Null is almost always given a highlight when he posts but that's not because he's a verified blue kiwi-mark that gets put on the front page whenever he posts. Also, Null's broke and can't pay the dowry for his Serbian mail-order bride.

tl;dr Free speech websites are echo chambers and niche-forums don't make any cash.

 

[Toolbox]

No. This is what made me give up on Reddit a few years back. Once a community becomes sufficiently bloated, the old guard who made actually on topic content and most importantly quality material get pushed out by a torrential rain of new users who have no idea the original goal of what the community is, or simply do not care and just want to post whatever comes to their mind all the time. It's especially obvious when the community starts going woke, though this is not necessarily always the case, and in rarer cases it's to the farther right as was the case here. Reddit is of course one of the worst platforms for this reason, since the entire adminship is biased towards far left viewpoints, but it's apparent on any site that has no gate keeping towards any obsessive push for political content, or off topic content in general.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

you act like this is a problem that can't be solved. The solution that no one seems to care for is blocking people who you don't like, therefore you engage in that part of the community you enjoy

 

[Dom Cruise]

Youtube is a weird example because there's still a lot of great content, but there's also a literal sea of garbage, so it makes random browsing a lot less fun than it used to be.

 

[Bongocat]

Youtube is a weird example because there's still a lot of great content, but there's also a literal sea of garbage, so it makes random browsing a lot less fun than it used to be.

That's actually an interesting example that I didn't think about. Youtube itself, despite a myriad of technical problems, has not actually exhibited the same kind of user corruption that other social platforms have... at least in a way that's blatantly obvious. I think this might be attributable to the fact that the focus of the site is on the content and not on the users themselves. Interaction between users is minimal, if it happens at all. That makes it hard to get off topic even if you try.

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

Nothing can. The more people that show up, the more things start to suck. That's one of the primary reasons that I'm thankful that all of the games I enjoy and all the communities I'm a part of are largely under the radar, wildly unpopular, or have such a steep learning curve that almost nobody bothers to show up.

The broader a community becomes, the more it's going to attract people who don't show up out of passion, but out of popularity. This eventually causes a diluting effect that happens over and over and over again until you're eventually left with people who showed up purely because a friend of a friend to the 10th power is the reason they wound up dragged over here in the first place.

Similarly, the easier that a game or a platform becomes to access, the less of an obstacle it becomes for deeply uninteresting and unintelligent people to find their way through the front door. Complexity is anathema to the retarded. Sometimes I wonder just how many boring people we've kept away from the Farms purely due to their inability to quote Alex Jones.

That is one of the reasons why I have because disenchanted with the comic book "fandom" that exists on YT/Facebook/the Twittersphere in recent years. As you said, popularity brings in bad actors and many of them came in when the MCU took off and acted like they were always part of the community though they knew jack shit about the source material. I have come to dislike 80-90% of the creator/influencer community and try to keep to myself rather than engage with these chuckleheads. However, I do like to engage in conversation with people at the comic shop because--let's face it--none of the people who yell "OMG! I fucking love comics!" would never be caught dead in one.

 

[theshitposter]

memento mori

there are two types on communities. one whose experience enhances with increasing userbase - like live sports discussions, live event commentary. if the event has short half life, the more users the better.
but for other communities, there's threshold after which it turns into pure-circlejerk. things only address the common denominator. imdb for example. usually at this point the community splits and new fresh subcultures start. used to happen on reddit. but now the admins automatically ban new communities for potential 'ban evasion"

conclusion - jannies suck, they ruin everything

twitter can be usable -> you just have to follow the right people, not the bumbling schizos. have a separate account for that. also there's the lists feature

 

[Dom Cruise]

That's actually an interesting example that I didn't think about. Youtube itself, despite a myriad of technical problems, has not actually exhibited the same kind of user corruption that other social platforms have... at least in a way that's blatantly obvious. I think this might be attributable to the fact that the focus of the site is on the content and not on the users themselves. Interaction between users is minimal, if it happens at all. That makes it hard to get off topic even if you try.

Youtube is a unique case because there's such a massive amount of people and content on there and there's tons and tons of garbage, but at the same time some of the best content I've ever seen on Youtube has just been over the course of the last 4 years, so it's far from totally ruined.

Another unique case was the imdb message boards, there were tons of users and a lot of idiocy, but there was also a lot of valuable discussions, generally the boards for lesser knowns films and things were interesting, but the more populated "general" boards or boards for really big current movies were garbage, so it all just depended on what specific message board you were looking at and not the site as a whole, I'm still very sad they shut it down 4 years later.

 

[Bongocat]

Another unique case was the imdb message boards, there were tons of users and a lot of idiocy, but there was also a lot of valuable discussions, generally the boards for lesser knowns films and things were interesting, but the more populated "general" boards or boards for really big current movies were garbage, so it all just depended on what specific message board you were looking at and not the site as a whole, I'm still very sad they shut it down 4 years later.

It's really interesting to watch the process happen on 'micro' and 'macro' scales. Some places can gather a million users without a problem and others can't handle 50. There's so many variables that go into it that it seems hard to even fathom a rule of thumb. Likely depends a lot on the mods and how well focus is kept on the purpose of the site.

 

[It's HK-47]

That is one of the reasons why I have because disenchanted with the comic book "fandom" that exists on YT/Facebook/the Twittersphere in recent years. As you said, popularity brings in bad actors and many of them came in when the MCU took off and acted like they were always part of the community though they knew jack shit about the source material. I have come to dislike 80-90% of the creator/influencer community and try to keep to myself rather than engage with these chuckleheads. However, I do like to engage in conversation with people at the comic shop because--let's face it--none of the people who yell "OMG! I fucking love comics!" would never be caught dead in one.

One of the worst ones for me was The Elder Scrolls hitting the mainstream to such an absurd degree that even Tibetan monks probably know about Skyrim. I'm an absolute fanatic when it comes to Morrowind--which was thankfully largely untouched due to how heavily you need to mod it just for it to look presentable, and due to people not understanding why they can't smack a mudcrab with a mace if your dumb ass picked Assassin at the census office because you're an edgy boy--so when people came piling into The Elder Scrolls due to the astronomical success of Skyrim, it was always a bit disheartening to see how many of them were put off by how Morrowind looks at a glance.

The upside is that I'm not perpetually assaulted by the 36 Sermons of Trans-Vivec and why he's totally gender-queer, even though the swit is literally hermaphroditic, much to the joy of Molag Bal. Also I talked about Morrowind, so I think I'm contractually obligated to summon @Professional Lurker

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Popular ≠ good

It also means the same thing when you decide to join a new space and new members become old members and decide to force you to leave.

 

[Darksy DePhil]

>people using a forum dedicated to making fun of weird, exceptional people bitching about "normalfags"
???

Jokes aside, though. I think aside from politics and superficial attention seeking faggots progressively ruining sites as people mention, the problem also boils down to the speed of communication that comes with a massive userbase. I still remember a time when a lot of sites actually had a minimum character limit for posting, at least before Twitter autism appeared and basically gave everyone using the internet ADHD.

To not be a doomer, i must say that i like how the personal internet seems to be be having a small, niche comeback. Old communication software like Windows Live Messenger has been "revived" by fans, Blog platforms like Blogger or Livejournal haven't gone anywhere, and people are now making their own sites with things such as Neocities or Github Pages. The only real problem is exposing them with most big social media platforms being around, and seeing how many people are jumping ship from these sites to smaller freeze speech alternatives like Bitchute or Parler, it might not be that big of a problem. And much as mentioned by others ITT, maybe it's a good thing that these alternatives aren't that popular.

 

[Someone Awful]

Nowadays, no way.

"Free speech" websites are only populated by social media refugees since they're the only ones in the market for that kind of product. So, inevitably, these kinds of websites become an echo chamber for typically right-wing ideas which makes it completely intolerable for more moderate or left leaning audiences. Look at BitChute. While it's a free speech friendly website (forthe most part) it's populated by nothing but right-wingers. Artists and meme accounts common to Twitter don't spring up because the audience will be smaller and they weren't going to be banned from Twitter/Facebook anyways. If the site gets really bad, it will just become another /b/, a worthless porn dumping ground populated by people abusing the lax rules. Sorry Fediverse, you're just another gimmick.
Discord's server system can be peaceful but only because everyone is relatively segregated. It's a fairer system than most but its just a guaranteed echo-chamber. It has similar problems as skype with glowies getting interested as it grows. Also, prepare for an inevitable server purge once discord gets blamed for hosting extremists unsupervised.

The only way to make a popular website that appeals to everyone is for it to be be focused on a niche or hobby first with "free speech" just being part of it. There are many niche-specific forums that have a diverse community because the users are united by a common, non-political, interest. Super users are kept to a minimum so people's voices are still heard rather than some users have more authority on a topic than others. However, these sites can't make much money since they do not attract businesses that want special privileges so it's typically a labor of love with minimal monetary gain or a fucking corporate sponsored hellhole plastered with ads.
The main reason why the farms has a "decent" community is because the forum was designed as a lolcow website first, not a free speech haven. Everyone with an interest in internet spergs have an interest in the farms. Nothing can even compete with its sheer volume of content specifically on lolcows. Sure, Null is almost always given a highlight when he posts but that's not because he's a verified blue kiwi-mark that gets put on the front page whenever he posts. Also, Null's broke and can't pay the dowry for his Serbian mail-order bride.

tl;dr Free speech websites are echo chambers and niche-forums don't make any cash.

You hit the nail on the head.

The right is fighting the battle, as usual, the wrong way. I had hoped that with Trump's election in 2016 that they were finally starting to understand culture since Trump was the first candidate since Reagan that understood anything about how culture worked. But the response to Trump's defeat have shown that they have ignored Andrew Breitbart's message that culture is downstream from politics. The response is,

• Run away to centralized servers like Gab, Minds, and Parler that will get struck down when Biden's administration strikes down Section 230
• "We'll take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and win with a Trump-lite candidate in 2024 in Ron DeSantis guys!"
• Supporting fucking Section 230 repeal because they're too stupid to realize that it will only kill the alternatives and smaller websites they want to promote

There's no serious movement to decentralized platforms like Pleroma and Matrix occurring, there's no discussions on how they are going to deal with the banks that enable the cancel culture they hate, there's no plans on how they are going to infiltrate modern culture. It's all politics but no culture. When Section 230 gets repealed, it will totally crush the right and any serious counterculture movement will have to start literally from scratch with zero advantages on its side. It's disappointing to see Richard Baris - who otherwise is right on a lot of cultural issues - shill for Parler.

No counterculture against wokeism can succeed until it becomes more than a right-wing political movement. Leftists are successful because they know how to appeal to people that are not only left-leaning, but also the moderates and apoliticals that believe in the decency argument, equality for all, and conveniences. It's why wokeism is mainstream even though that anyone can look at SJWs and realize that any actual "equality" they work towards is a race towards the bottom. The average left-leaning moderate or liberals are not SJWs but they can be manipulated to supporting heinous abominations like minor sex reassignment surgery, the assumption that non-binary or genderfluid identities exist, that anyone can wake up and be a tranny, and eventually pedophilia.

Any successful conservative counterculture will take a lifetime to work to achieve. The right has to remember that culture is a marble cake, not neatly divided into the "left" and the "right". That means making extremely subtle movements into institutions dominated by the left and sneaking in conservative themes in popular culture that won't immediately be seen as political but at the same time gets people thinking about alternative thoughts they otherwise will not get exposed to. They have to appeal to people's desire for a stable family structure, hope, belonging, and localism.

Until the right learns how to fight correctly, everyone should focus on their family and friends and figure out how to help them out in the dark times we live in. That's all we can do in light of the monster that is wokeism.

 

[Snusmumriken]

More users means more website staff, which increases the chance of corrupt individuals on either side. I think every good thing has its end, and personally I’d rather have a cool underground site fade into obscurity than blow up, get overrun by normies and groomers, and then fade away.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Would it be possible in general? Yes
Would it be possible in the current culture? No

Popularity brings normies. Normies are neither good nor bad, but a product of the culture they originate from. If the culture is shit, the normies will be shit. If the culture is good, the normies will be good.