Making friends online used to be easier?

Yes, It seems that way. Lots of younger people out here now a days though. They aren't as social as my generation is. Offline, or online. 

Plus it seems people mostly just post photos, memes or short posts. Not like in the old days of forums where people would engage in long discussions and debates.  

I AGREE 100%!! i think about this a lot and it makes me sad. i dont think theres anywhere that i know of where i can get together with people and feel like i belong - not even on the internet anymore... it's just so commercialized and mainstream now, used as more of a distraction than a  method of genuine communication. now that it's been exploited and capitalized off of, we're all just perpetually-scrolling consumers. GIVE ME BACK MY OLDTERNET!!! :(

In my case, I blame modern day politics for this. This is the main reason I use Spacehey, both my Facebook and Twitter timelines/status stream became political commentary mostly and it gets tiresome sometimes.

I think spacehey is doing a great job at bringing that back.. i find it impossible to interact, let alone make any genuine connection on corporate, algo-driven social media. spacehey makes discovering content intentional (you only see mostly what you choose to find) and it really seems to foster that 1-1 interaction (e.g. adding profile comments)

"Now, I feel so much anxiety trying to interact with people on social media sites that I usually just don't bother."

truuuuth. even on spacehey i'm having a hard time, just because interacting with people online is something that's just been drilled out of me the past 10 yrs

i'd guess part of it is because there r so many more ways that people can entertain themselves online now including video games, youtube, other streaming services, etc. that wasn't as readily available when ppl had flip phones and older computers. interesting observation tho

it's cuz we lost forums 

For some reason finding IRL friends is easier on IG than in real life itself.. maybe it's because you litterally give each other your insta when u like each other and text later on.

I still have like 4 old interent friends on my IG, but I talk to them rarely. I have actually no idea how to find internet friends nowadays. It's strange to slide into DM's sometimes

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. 

I grew up on the newer side of the internet, but I still managed to make a good amount of connections. As a kid I had a small circle of online friends, most of which I met in online games and talked to through youtube. In middle school I found another circle of close friends by writing fanfiction in a small fandom. I met people there who I ended up talking to for years, and while we've long drifted apart by now, I have plenty of fond memories of them. I could give a few other examples, but the point here is that I was meeting people through common interests, whether that be video games, or art, or whatever nerdy thing was occupying my brain at the time. 

That's exactly why the loneliness of modern social media is strange to me, because our feeds are more curated to our interests than ever before. I can log onto Instagram or Tiktok and view an endless stream of posts about my favourite things, and those same posts are being shown to countless others who share that same interest. And yet, I have little to no way of connecting with them.

I agree it has changed. I remember how different it was 10 years ago. Back when I was 14 and began exploring more sites on my old tablet. Search results answers to questions changed as well. Now it's more of Reddit and Quora for getting answers to a lot of things. Before that you had yahoo and others sites. 

the comment on here earlier about "comment section etiquette" is something that i really agree with. tiktok in particular is quite bad for this, the two hashtags you put in can be the difference between a small amount of really nice comments, or a plethora of abuse by little 12 year-olds.

i also think that the idea of the "influencer" has changed stuff. people dont put themselves online to gain mutuals, they put themselves online to gain followers. you can give them any nice comment or dm even, and at best you just get a "thanks hun xx" back, theyre not gonna bother checking out your profile in return.

TL;DR

• no comment section etiquette
• people want followers, not mutuals

"There's also an interesting conversation to be had about people who grew
up with the internet and making internet friends, having that weird
hollow nostalgic feeling when you log into old accounts and find convos
and accounts of old friends long abandoned. It's eerie."

oh that's too real. the nostalgia gets really hard sometimes. i miss having online friends, or just friends in general really. everything feels so hard now.

Honestly I found it way easier to make friends when I was 14 rather than now. Not to mention SpaceHey kind of makes it difficult to know exactly who you’re talking to and ways to talk to them, that’s just my opinion tho. I am kind of a new user so I guess it’s a lot to adjust to

i mean it's probably for the best - almost everyone ik has had some experience with grooming etc. and it probably is better for kids to be taught to not post too much revealing info online. but ough everything's so antisocial these days, no comments, just likes and blasting thru an algorithm.

I totally agree, even during more recent years like 2018-2020 was easier to make friends for me. back in middle school, I was online almost 24/7 and it was just so much easier to have a conversation with literally anyone. I can't help but notice, in that these past 4 years have been much much more hostile experiences for me. And don't get me wrong, I know the early internet days were fucking ruthless to a lot of people, but I think that came with the fact that everyone was willing to talk to anyone. Now, nobody doesn't really want to talk to anyone. Spaces are a lot less open than they used to be. I can understand why, with like internet safety, but I just can't seem to make the type of friends I did backing junior high.

THIS 100%!!! i remember when i stopped regularly leaving youtube comments probably back in 2015-2017-ish because ppl were just becoming so hostile to each other and i didn't want to be in the next cringe comp. like sure people weren't always great before either, and 12 year old me can attest to being sexually harassed in youtube comment sections, but it didn't feel like the whole world would turn and laugh before then. idk

theres probably a boatload of reasons for this but the 3 that come to mind for me are...

- shorter form of content. everything is blink and you'll miss it. really hard to curate friendships but super easy to find info or knowledge its a give and take

- more hostile internet-scape. i guess this also goes to the shorter forms of content but a lot of spaces (especially in the dreaded comment sections) are just very reactionary. very hard to bond when most people are just looking to consume content and make jokes or start arguments.

-increased internet safety. arguably one of the better reasons as its always better to be safe on the internet, but i guess this kind of got misconstrued as to being totally closed off from everyone online. i do think young kids shouldn't be on the internet unsupervised regardless but i wonder if this were enforced more, would we still have this problem at all?

i blame tiktok and twitter tbh

Social media is kind of anxiety inducing nowadays. It feels like anything you say, no matter how innocent, can set someone off. That even someone you get to know and enjoy talking to can turn on you in the blink of an eye for the most simplistic things. Happened to me a couple of times and it sucks.

Back in the day though, I always had fun talking to my online friends. It's always fun to read some of my old messages. Current day discussions are just hard to deal with.

Dude, I think so, too. When I start thinking about it, it just destroys me from the inside out. I love going through old sites and social networks, finding old profiles of people from 15-17 or even 20 years ago. I am excited (in a good way) by this extraordinary feeling of 2000 right down to the goosebumps. The Internet was just beginning to emerge as a social space (at least in my area where I live), there was not so much censorship, people were like a discovery and there were so many more possibilities :/