Online Homes

[Maypews]

Something that I've recently become fond of is the concept of an online home. For me, an online home singifies the site you check on the most. For some that may be their homepage, but I guess to me my homepage carries a sense of loneliness with it. Since you know, it's a personal site, so I'm not really going to be interacting with someone on there unless they just so happen to pop into the chat at the same time as me.

For me an "online home" must be a community, whether it's a forum or a chat room. I've had a few over the years, my earliest was probably some combination of old YouTube and a flash games site I was a regular on where we'd roleplay in the chatbox. Then it became a MMO that I played, in the later parts of the 2010s it was a Discord server, and eventually I ended up becoming something of a regular on a forum for a local sports team that I was a fan of where I felt very at home. But I ended up leaving the latter behind due to complicated reasons, reasons that were no fault of the site itself.

Since leaving that forum behind, I'd been "homeless" for about 3 years. I searched and searched, yet it seemed that it was to no avail. I found some sites that I liked, but felt that I wasn't a 1:1 fit on. Sometimes I'd come across older forums that I'd have probably loved had I joined a decade ago but by the time I found them they had dwindled down to a small base of regulars who didn't post very often.

Even if I did find a site I liked, there was always something seemingly that put me off about the place. It certainly does not help that internet centralisation has greatly shrunk the amount of forums that you can now find. Beforehand you'd have had 5 different forums for one topic that all had their own rules and such, nowadays you're lucky if 1 is still up.

And that, dear reader, is what inspired me to make this very site you're browsing right now. This forum, Deluoode, is my new online home. And I do hope that it may become yours and many other people's as well. But such things take time to develop, and so in the meantime I ask you; what happened to your old online homes? Do you know where the regulars went and keep in touch, what was the site like in it's prime? I'd love to hear all about it.

[Parzival]

I never had a name for this concept, but I would say I've been digitally homeless for a while now. Growing up I had a wide assortment of different online homes. DeviantArt, YouTube, I was part of forums for 3 of my favorite childhood book series: Skeleton Creek, Animorphs, and The 39 Clues. We'd do RPs and just, shoot the shit about life and ideas we had. Things we wanted to do. I think eventually I got more into gaming and more internet specific culture once my family got a PC that I could game on and use more regularly than the computers at the library. I joined IRCs, chatrooms, and forums for Pokemon and Zelda, got into MMOs like Maplestory, Ragnarok Online, and Pirates of The Caribbean Online. I also got into a few h4xx0rman spaces, I was too young but I wanted to be a part of stuff like Occupy and the Arab Spring in some way. Classic case of a kid wanting to change the world, but I was just a skid, and the experience mainly just served to open the gateway to more homegrown internet culture. Imageboards and all that. Eventually the forums started dying, the chatrooms and IRC channels started disappearing, and the MMOs began shutting down or sucking to much to keep playing. Discord was my home for a while starting in the mid 2010s, but those servers all fell apart for a myriad different reasons. I guess Discord still kind of is my home, if you count my server. But everyone has their own lives to attend to. Work and/or school, bills, their own desires and dreams, relationships, etc. It's not the same as when I was younger and I and my old friends were on Discord talking all the time, about anything and everything. Science, news, the latest anime, older anime, the latest gaming news, retro games, movies, daily life and daily stressors, family struggles, personal struggles, the things we loved, the things we didn't.

I miss how things used to be, when people could be more present, and open. Willing to actually make and be friends. Now people kind of just scream into the void in what little free time they're afforded.

I've checked. Every passing year more of the old forums and chats disappear, the MMOs that remain are all centered almost solely around a singer player experience and no one talks to each other. I don't know what happened to most of the people I used to talk to all the time, for years of my youth. I can only hope they're ok, out there, wherever they may be. I'll probably never see them again, but I have a lot of fond memories with them, and maybe that's enough. The few that I still know and talk to are all on my Discord server, though most are not from the pre-Discord days.

I do hope this forum takes off. Our Sunday Gikopoi Watch Parties are really fun, and really remind of those old days on the classic net just shooting the shit with cool people about the stuff I love. I hope people have the time to post more on here and really make this place feel like something authentically classic. My time with all those old friends may have come to an end, but I can have hope that I can make new good memories with new good friends here, on Deluoode.

[JohnTitor]

I am virtually homeless

[cidoku]

Sorry to be a downer, but I guess I'm somewhat of a digital nomad. I never last more than a year in a single place, so I don't have a stable home. I added a guestbook to my site hoping that people would want to contact me and make acquaintances with me, but it's only happened once or twice in the four years that it's been open, and they rarely stay in contact. My experience is that "communities" are always appearing and disappearing: there is drama, and there is controversy; there's lack of commitment, and there's apathy, and I'll inevitably have to leave. People rarely care and they rarely stay. In the end, nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

[Maypews]

Sorry to be a downer, but I guess I'm somewhat of a digital nomad. I never last more than a year in a single place, so I don't have a stable home. I added a guestbook to my site hoping that people would want to contact me and make acquaintances with me, but it's only happened once or twice in the four years that it's been open, and they rarely stay in contact. My experience is that "communities" are always appearing and disappearing: there is drama, and there is controversy; there's lack of commitment, and there's apathy, and I'll inevitably have to leave. People rarely care and they rarely stay. In the end, nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

Realistically I suppose I'm sort of the same, given that I've gone through many spots over the years. Of course there will always be the natural user churn and other things you mentioned to contend with. I do think it's possible to ward such things off, there are places that have been operating for decades but they are admittedly few and far between.

Perhaps the key lay in how these things are responded to; to ward off apathy, you must create. To ward off drama, try not to give it much attention. To ward off the user churn that's inherent to this sort of thing, have a constant stream of new blood coming in (this is probably the hardest part I'd wager, especially with the net being as it is now). It's not easily done given that we're talking about continually following these steps over a span of many years, but well, I don't think that means that you (non-personal) shouldn't try either. Your view is however a measured and honestly quite rational one, and I suspect you speak for many in this respect.

[JohnTitor]

Sorry to be a downer, but I guess I'm somewhat of a digital nomad. I never last more than a year in a single place, so I don't have a stable home. I added a guestbook to my site hoping that people would want to contact me and make acquaintances with me, but it's only happened once or twice in the four years that it's been open, and they rarely stay in contact. My experience is that "communities" are always appearing and disappearing: there is drama, and there is controversy; there's lack of commitment, and there's apathy, and I'll inevitably have to leave. People rarely care and they rarely stay. In the end, nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

I feel the opposite in my case; I don't leave communities, communities leave me behind. Without words, not even an apology. Just silent rejection.

Spoiler

Probably because I don't lack empathy, and somehow every social group has been defaulting to treating me with none whatsoever throughout my life. It really doesn't make for a healthy personhood.

[Amlux]

I love forums. Some of the most fun I've ever had online has been on forums. But I can never see a forum as my "home." Really, the name itself says it all: a forum was a PUBLIC place of meeting and action, and I see private sites as what should be our real "homes" and where we put projects that are meant to be accessed easily and consistently updated. Forums are great but I still don't think they're the ideal place to host some things like image galleries, lists, wikis, long-form writing, and so on.

[capstasher]

I love forums. Some of the most fun I've ever had online has been on forums. But I can never see a forum as my "home." Really, the name itself says it all: a forum was a PUBLIC place of meeting and action, and I see private sites as what should be our real "homes" and where we put projects that are meant to be accessed easily and consistently updated. Forums are great but I still don't think they're the ideal place to host some things like image galleries, lists, wikis, long-form writing, and so on.

This forum is my home and all of you are my housemates.

[Maypews]

I love forums. Some of the most fun I've ever had online has been on forums. But I can never see a forum as my "home." Really, the name itself says it all: a forum was a PUBLIC place of meeting and action, and I see private sites as what should be our real "homes" and where we put projects that are meant to be accessed easily and consistently updated. Forums are great but I still don't think they're the ideal place to host some things like image galleries, lists, wikis, long-form writing, and so on.

Hmmm.. in the case of very large general forums where a lot of the userbase has little if anything in common, I could agree that it feels more like a public place of meeting. But, at least from my perspective, most of the forums that I use today are much more tight-knit. There are less of those sprawling general sites than there used to be.

I suppose the contention arises in how the word "home" is defined. In my case, I mean in the same sense as perhaps how say everyone in a small town knows each other. The sense of homeliness that is fostered by shared experience and familiarity. Whereas my personal website feels much more like my room, something that reflects more of my personal side, messiness and all.

I love forums. Some of the most fun I've ever had online has been on forums. But I can never see a forum as my "home." Really, the name itself says it all: a forum was a PUBLIC place of meeting and action, and I see private sites as what should be our real "homes" and where we put projects that are meant to be accessed easily and consistently updated. Forums are great but I still don't think they're the ideal place to host some things like image galleries, lists, wikis, long-form writing, and so on.

This forum is my home and all of you are my housemates.

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[Blond]

I love forums. Some of the most fun I've ever had online has been on forums. But I can never see a forum as my "home." Really, the name itself says it all: a forum was a PUBLIC place of meeting and action, and I see private sites as what should be our real "homes" and where we put projects that are meant to be accessed easily and consistently updated. Forums are great but I still don't think they're the ideal place to host some things like image galleries, lists, wikis, long-form writing, and so on.

This forum is my home and all of you are my housemates.

So, does that mean that May is the landlord of the owner of the house?