Everyone here is so young??

Question

I've been lurking on spacehey on and off for a little while and I can't quite fully gauge what the website is looking like in terms of peoples general age and if its worth sticking around.

I was happy to find this place, as someone who grew up in the early 2000s, and having this nostalgia for the old internet and places like old facebook and myspace. But when I'm here I notice a significant amount of younger people, like really young. I guess we've gotten "old" and our youth has become an aesthetic for younger people now. It feels so strange. I figured there would be a lot more people my age (~low to mid 20s - 30s) on here but I'm mainly seeing a younger generation here, or at the very least they seem to be the loudest.

It just feels a bit odd, of course I dont mind what age people are in online communities but I dont think I want to be on here if essentially all posts are made by people who are under 18?

I just miss how the internet used to be, now everything is too clean and pristine, chock full of bots and advertisements.

spacehey seemed promising but I dont think I can use it if only such young people are using it? I dont know how to describe my feelings better on the situation, but I want to connect with people and read posts from people my age on a website like this so we can all be nostalgic together, it feels weird when everyone appears to be under 18, like I shouldnt be here.

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I feel the same way as you, when I first joined I was also expecting people in that age range. There's a hand full of older people on here, you just gotta be on the look out and add them and hang out in the bulletins.

But I understand being off put by so many younger people, it makes me feel like I can't be as open as I want to, especially when they're mostly used to that squeaky clean internet culture we have now. Not that I'm saying I want somewhere like 8chan, just would prefer more mature and chill people who can freely post whatever without people getting upset over it sounding too mean.

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There's a bunch of us old farts around, but you have to do some digging. I'm not too worried about it.

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sup one of the younglings you're talking about, I hope you don't mind but I might be able to give some insight to why there's so many younger people on here

1. straight up, yeah it is definitely an aesthetic to some. I mean people my age grew up with an entirely different internet, of course there is gonna be a fascination with the old Web. it happens with most eras, I mean people romanticise and aestheticise the 1950s, despite all the terrible parts of it.

2. hatred for the new Web. now I don't mean actual hatred, but newer social sites and apps can be exhausting. partly due to the perfectness you are expected to display, partly due to advisement and bots, and definitely due to the amount of hate. places like tiktok, instagram and twitter are chock full of hate. while spacehey seems to be more of a 'leave it alone' type place. you don't see people making posts or blogs about hating a user (or atleast I haven't seen that) and you can't comment on people's profiles unless you're friends, which is wayyyy better then other social media.

3. genuine interest in the old Web. I think there's probably a fair amount of younger people who are just interest in old Web stuff, and it can be fun to interact within it even if it's just a recreation. this probably ties back into aesthetics a bit, but the older Web is so much better for just having your own little corner of the internet. a decentralised internet is a great place to just. exist. a lot less worry then other social places. with websites like neocities and spacehey they offer much more customisation aswell as a bigger sense of community wherever you've found yourself. with places like tumblr it's very easy to access any part of its user database and be a dickhead in it, but with neocities for example, you can still search things up but you won't really know the people in that community or corner of the internet unless you stick around. atleast that's what I think.

all for all, I can understand why you're uncomfortable with all the younger people, but I'm sure you could find more adults :]

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I'm 22 and I joined when I was like 19. Don't sweat it, we're certainly around! But you're right, they are the most prominent voices. I'd attribute it to them simply having more free time to futz around with things on this website than many of us adults. Composing a post here usually takes up more of your time than an Instagram post or a tweet.

Also, many of us younger adults aren't quite as used to this kind of social media as you seem to think. I never used MySpace at all back in the day - I was too young! - so this been somewhat new to me, even though I perused video game forums as a kid. I'm here because I figured more emos would be here (I was right :D) and because I love how everyone's page can look different, and also just the nature of this place is much less cold feeling. Besides. I miss my forum days. xD

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i get it. at the same time, ive been able to find a number of people in that age range (im 25). i just be mindful of who i might be talking to and stay away from minors personally

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I feel exactly the same, I was very excited about this website but after creating a profile I feel like every single post I read is written by minors. I will give this an opportunity and try to find adult users but this is uhh... disappointing, this place seems very dead.

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I can relate. I'm in my 50s. Which it seems, in SpaceHey-years, to be 95.

I appreciate SpaceHey for being free from bots, algorithms, ads, etc., but it feels like there are probably only five people on the site who are older than, say, 35.

It also seems that many join, create (beautiful!) layouts on their profiles, and then never come back again. Admittedly, my own engagement on this platform has been minimal, but I'm trying to change that.

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"It also seems that many join, create (beautiful!) layouts on their profiles, and then never come back again."

That's because there's nothing to do in this website.
As it currently is, the only appeal is to create a nice profile and discover other cool profiles. But without an advanced user search even discovering other profiles feels like a chore.

Then we have the forums and groups.
The forums lack a lot of essential features, like for example I can't even quote you right now and when I send this message you won't receive any notification at all, and this thread won't even be bumped. No wonder the forums are so inactive.

Same thing with groups.

The only appeal is having your circle of friends on this website and actively using the bulletin and blog (you can also find a lot of random people here who use the bulletin regularly, it's pretty fun). As well as linking your spacehey to other social media and using it as a blog. But even the blog doesn't have an optional dark mode, so it doesn't even look good.

So much freedom of customization but then we can't do much to interact with other users, this website has a lot of potential, but in its current state people just make a nice profile and at some point never open the website again because at some point it gets boring.

Was myspace this lackluster in features back in the days? Honestly I don't remember, I was too young. But even if it was that doesn't mean we shouldn't have QoL features.

It's great to keep the essence of old social media, but also to keep technological advancements that are essential to make a social media engaging. And don't get me wrong, I love that there are no likes.

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I've had my account for 3 years here, but I finally have come back and this is what I've noticed too.

On one hand it feels empty of things to do, and on the other hand it feels like there's a lot of younger people here for the aesthetic.There are older people here but they're on it way more infrequently than the younger crowd and that's to be expected and I think it depends on what time of day.

Even I am here and link to my other social media sites or my XMPP account for people to mostly reach me.
Perhaps the lack of constant scrolling and no algorithms to spoon feed us content is why people 20+ aren't on here, if THEIR friends aren't here then they aren't.

I don't think we are accustom to just checking a website every now and then, we've gotten used to the constant dopamine hits instead of mostly static web pages.

I'm on here more often and can start releasing more blog posts frequently.

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