Subject: The Other Problem
Author:
Posted on: 2019-10-09 00:35:00 UTC
The Other Problem, the sort of meta-problem if you will, with that issue of not making our existence known is that the PPC fundamentally doesn't mesh well with the internet at large. The forces that created us are mostly dead or diverged from the mainstream and we're left with an internal culture that is likely gonna be very left-field to a lot of newbies.
Culturally, we're closest to Usenet and Forum discourse, as we have the same sort of threading, which promotes topic-focused discussion, rather than the short-form memes and focus on personality that social media interfaces encourage. And we have a lot of expectations that date back to those historical influences, as well as a bias towards long-form posting, that is likely at odds with what any newbie will be used to.
This isn't really a fixable problem. The only way to "fix" it is to change who we are for the worse.
But... well, who's left? Livejournal is dead. The blogosphere isn't what it used to be, Tumblr's terrible threading system ensured that serious conversation would never be that platform's strong suit (even trying to comment on someone's post is a nightmare, just imagine what a discussion would be like...), usenet was on its way out when we were new, and forums just aren't the majority communication form they used to be (they're still around, just not as popular, and they were always fragmented by their very nature anyways).
Social Media won. Reddit is the closest thing now that's still massively popular and the timbre of the place is fundamentally different -- I think all of us know we could never survive as a subreddit. Only the young and naive would even suggest it.
So yeah, we do need a replacement PPC space. Problem is, there's absolutely nowhere suitable to host it.
...that was depressing to write. I'm gonna go write about... I dunno... dragon romance or something to cheer myself up...