active conversations

@Linkshot

Hermit in the Highrise

he/him
github.com/HermitDreams

born 1990. very skittish. i play fighting games and randomizers. i also like to tinker a lot.

@Linkshot12/18/2023, 7:28 PM

X @xkeeper

X @xkeeper12/18/2023, 7:18 PM

one of the nice things about aim and other old im services were that you had to be online. if you wanted to have a conversation or talk, it had to be done while you were both online and using the service.

most modern versions removed that. you're "online" constantly now; in some cases maybe you can silence or otherwise go "hey, i'm not responding to messages right now", but there's no hard stop to sending them. that message will still be sent, and it will probably make your phone or computer ping even if you aren't near it.

this post isn't really going anywhere. i just miss the times where "online and active" and "offline" meant something.

#yelling at cloud

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in reply to @xkeeper's post:

muffin j lord @muffinlord12/18/2023, 7:23 PM

otoh i think it gave me a really unhealthy impression of how long it usually takes people to respond to things and if i don't hear back in like a heartbeat i start to worry people hate me and i've fucked it this time haven't i

X @xkeeper12/18/2023, 7:43 PM

for me it usually ends up in situations where

october 30th: friend: hi what's up

december 18th: me: sorry i only just now saw this message because i got yours at a point where i wasn't available and since it got marked read i never went back to it, oops!!!!!!!

muffin j lord @muffinlord12/18/2023, 7:45 PM

i mean if you really want that "you gotta be online for this" kinda feeling, there's always one place you can fall back to, ham radio

but i get it, it was a nice time when folks talked to you when you wanted to be talked to. i feel like it's gotta be possible to find a happy medium but i feel like most app designers don't build around the kind of terminally online adhd people who need 'em the most

X @xkeeper12/18/2023, 8:03 PM

or irc! for as much as it exists, still.

and i think it's just engagement minmaxing. they're not trying to make tools for people to communicate with, they're vehicles for money. it's just that we've figured out what to optimize with that (or at least, what they feel they can); so in addition to always-on messengers there's always more random features you don't want. look everyone, we reinvented stories from that other service. you want this, right? please love us

muffin j lord @muffinlord12/18/2023, 8:05 PM

yeah. i don't even know why discord shows an "offline" mode. if you're offline on discord you're fuckin dead, bud. phone croaked, you're in a ditch somewhere. should come with a free wellness check from your local social services

ela @eladnarra12/18/2023, 7:41 PM

Yeah I miss that. Logging on to AIM, MSN, or IRC was "hang out with friends" time. Most people in the conversations were actually engaged; and if they weren't, they'd mention if they were busy with something else or marked themselves AFK.

X @xkeeper12/18/2023, 7:44 PM

YEAH this. it meant for me that an active conversation was a window on my desktop that stayed open until the conversation was "done" or we went to bed, rather than just one more message in a queue of unread shit

PinballsWizard @pinball12/18/2023, 8:12 PM

friend is offline and you want to send a message anyway? we had a tool for that: it was called "email"

X @xkeeper12/18/2023, 8:20 PM

realtalk i have had multiple unread messages on discord piling up (the october ref above in another comment is not a joke)

some clown got banned on my forum by entering invalid credentials 5 times, where it says "send email for account recovery" (because there is no automated system)

i have a discord message request with "i thought this would be faster than emailing". buddy, you and the other 9 message requests will continue to sit and fester until i can get the spoons to deal with you

fictive @artemis12/18/2023, 8:26 PM

this is interesting. the only experience we had of specifically turning on a chat client because we wanted to talk to people, in the active way i think you're referring to, was teamspeak/ventrilo. We would specifically open it up and hang out in a channel when we were around and we'd close it or move to the AFK channel when we weren't

we never had this experience with text communication. we always had windows live messenger (later pidgin) on our computer open and connected to that chat service, google chat, IRC. we were never "offline" from text communications, so people could message us whenever.