(I wasn't sure if I should post this in ~talk or ~tech. I went with ~talk because I feel like I'm about to spend a whole lot of this post rambling. Also, be warned: This is a long post.)

A summary of this post: My personal decision to try to preserve my own online privacy, the chaotic equilibrium that is me attempting to make sense of my feelings towards AI and the current zeitgeist, and the tiny concessions I've had to make in navigating all of this makes me feel, at best, tired, and at worst, a crazy person. I am tired of the direction the internet is going, I am tired of the endless discourse about AI, and my chronic tiredness is all marinating together into a tired admixture of tired chicken soup.

First of all, hi everyone. I don't post here as often as I maybe would like to. Randomly chiming in with a big ol' post like this a bit daunting. Participating in an online community isn't a muscle I flex very often nowadays, which is actually relevant to what I'm about to talk about.

Lately for a long fucking time now I've just been tired of the direction in which the internet, specifically the "corporate web", has been heading. This all started when I first joined Tildes; around that time was when the big Reddit API fiasco happened, leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and it was not long after when AI started to become A Big Thing. If you had asked me why these things had left a bad taste in my mouth back then, I wouldn't have been able to respond with anything articulate, just "big tech bad".

In the three years that have passed, I've developed enough of an opinion and have gone through enough soul searching to give a more concrete answer to why I don't like how things are going:

• Everybody wants my data, and I'd rather not give it to them
• I am tired of finding figurative AI hairs in my figurative sandwich
• Every company wants infinite growth at the expense of everything that made that company good, if it was ever good
• It's really hard to find a third space on the internet these days
• Almost nobody I know cares about any of this

Among privacy-conscious folks and small internet communities like Tildes, none of the above are particularly novel thoughts. And yet I think about all of this frequently enough that I felt the need to post a topic here for discussion. In this post, I'm going to get on my little soapbox, recount how I got to this mind space, and attempt to explain why I find all of this both endlessly tiring and constantly present in my mind.

Everybody wants my data, and I'd rather not give it to them (and almost nobody I know cares about any of this)

In the past few years I've taken the steps realistic for me in order to protect my online privacy. Why? Well, I hate being advertised to. I hate the idea of surveillance-as-a-service. I'm fortunate enough to be able to just pay for, or configure/self-host, things that do the thing they're supposed to do without knowing that I'm a 512 year old nonbinary alien from like, Nova Arrakis Prime the 2nd, Esq. or something (I am not that old, that is not how I identify, and I'm obviously not from there). I just don't buy the idea that everybody on the internet is a consumer who needs to accept this compromise in order to participate. Again, this might not be novel for a lot of you reading.

For me this has involved switching away from Gmail as an email provider, ditching Windows for Linux everywhere, cancelling my YouTube Premium subscription, deleting Facebook/most Meta stuff, browsing behind a VPN, etc. Some things I'm working on going further on; some things, like deleting Instagram, I don't want to do because that platform is how I connect with a lot of my friends. Essentially I've done what's realistic for me.

All of this has worked out fine for me. My quality of life has not measurably changed as a result, other than maybe the fact that it's slightly inconvenient to open up a new browser session and log in to my otherwise-abandoned Google account just to interact with a random Google Sheet someone sent me.

The first bit of mental friction stems from discussions I've had with my partner on this topic. She's also privacy-minded, and so isn't against the idea of taking very similar actions. But she's not in a place where she can just do so as easily as I did, either because it's massively inconvenient for her (all of her data is holed up in Google services), would require a very large mindset/workflow shift (She is not technical enough to switch to Linux without a ton of friction, for example), or would damage her relationships (It's completely unrealistic to get everybody she knows to switch to Signal tomorrow - hell, she doesn't even want to do it herself to message me). I want to be very clear that none of this is inherently bad or a stain on her character or whatnot. My point is that privacy looks different for everybody, especially over time.

Extrapolate that friction out to people who aren't as close to me though, and it feels somewhat like dying by a thousand cuts. Not in the sense of mental anguish, just general fatigue. Over 50% of my communication with my good friends takes the form of them sending me memes on Instagram. I react and reply because I'm not just going to ghost them because of muh privacy. But there's that like 1% of my brain that goes "yeah I wish you wouldn't do that". I have not bothered to ask them to stop, because I don't (yet) care to proselytize to them in the name of privacy at the risk of shutting down what is effectively one of their love languages.

The thing is, they either aren't aware of the degree of data collection going on on every major internet platform, or they don't care. I do not believe myself in the slightest to be superior to them because of this. I don't fault them for either, and I, again, don't care to intervene because I don't want to be the person that gatekeeps the entire internet from them in the name of rebelling against big corpo.

So yes, I would say the majority of my friends are not as opinionated on this as I am. Because of this, I sometimes feel I'm a little crazy whenever I propose to my partner the idea of self-hosting our own file storage, or when I happen to say "Yeah, I try not to use Google Maps really. Why? Oh, I just don't want them to know where I've been". But then I talk with those of my friends who share this mindset, or browse online communities which do, and I feel normal again. And then I bounce between these circles, and I feel, I dunno, weird.

Interlude: The AI bubble and my pride as a software engineer

Frankly, I don't know how to feel about AI. This is compounded by the fact that I am a software engineer both by trade and as a hobby.

As a cultural phenomenon, I am pretty sick of it. I cannot stand AI-generated ads, AI-generated media, AI-generated writing, AI-generated whatever. I also cannot stand ads about AI-generated ads, AI-generated media, AI-generated writing, or AI-generated whatever. The last time I was spoonfed information about a topic to a remotely comparable degree was back when crypto/NFTs were the monster of the week. This round of industry hype has felt orders of magnitude more prevalent and exhausting.

As a software development tool, it's... fine. I was pretty against AI-assisted coding at first, but after having learned how to properly utilize it (whatever "properly" means), I've found it pretty helpful as of late. I'll usually hand-write the code and patterns I want the LLM to use, tell it "ok, now do this everywhere", approve/reject its output, and it gets a lot right with an acceptable amount of post-fact correction from me. It's also been useful as a learning tool: These past few months I've been working on a project that involves data mining/parsing a proprietary encryption/encoding format for a reasonably popular video game. I was not comfortable working with binary formats to this extent before, but after several back and forths with Claude and an earnest effort to understand just what the fuck it was writing to my codebase, I feel somewhat more knowledgeable now.

The tension I've had to balance given my above stance: I work at an AI startup.

Everyone around me is AI-pilled out the wazoo. This isn't meant to be an insult. They're all great people whom I get along great with, and I like my company/don't hate our vision enough to jump ship (inhales copium). It's just that I constantly have to deal with stuff like:

• Vibecoded PRs, which I have the wherewithal to push back on when appropriate, but in so doing must balance maintainability vs. urgency (and all that other pragmatism crap that comes with being a software engineer)
• AI-flavored communications - I do a mean ChatGPT impression. "That's an excellent observation. The tension you're feeling isn't imagined. It's real. If you want, I can break down the reasons why people tend to pour the cereal before the milk—just say the word."
• Building the meta-inference layer through a combination of carefully curated ground truths, a robust evaluation pipeline, and a multi-step, quantized agent selection algorithm that's resilient to both external disturbances and continuous platform evolution (this is basically a real sentence I had to read in an engineering strategy document someone put out)

And so, similar to the privacy dilemma I spoke about earlier, I find myself constantly doing mental gymnastics while working here. I am one of a few cynics in a room full of zealots (Again, I'm not trying to paint myself as some pariah here - I'm in this situation by choice, I'm just trying to note the juxtaposition). It would be easier if I just flat out hated the idea of AI to its core - I could just leave and choose not to engage with AI anything - but no, I use it, and I find it useful. In fact I enjoy applying software engineering principles to AI, because it's an interesting set of problems to wrangle.

Again, death by a thousand cuts. Firstly, I hate the prevalence of AI in mainstream culture, and I hate how it's being pushed as a panacea in my industry. Secondly, I don't hate AI as a tool. Thirdly, I'm surrounded by the first thing. Fourth: I have to explain my job to my friends and family. Doing so usually results in them asking me surface-level questions about AI (which I don't mind entertaining), them relaying how AI is god/the devil because it made them look like a Disney character (which I am tired of dealing with), or them asking me what my opinion on AI is (if I were to give them the whole story, it would be this entire post, so I just go "eh, it's fine").

My point with this section: I feel I am constantly doing mental gymnastics to justify the attitude I have towards AI. My stance is somewhat neutral. I read a blog post absolutely glazing it, I roll my eyes. I read a blog post absolutely trashing it, I roll my eyes. I think about AI, I roll my eyes. It's all just so tiring.

And also, as is evident by now, I have an Opinion about all of this. Am I crazy? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if I could just roll over and accept AI for what it is?

Turbo capitalism has fucked up how I navigate internet communities (and almost nobody I know cares about any of this)

The most recent development that's caused me to think about the topics presented in this post is Discord's recent rollout of its identity verification system. There has been plenty of discourse on this topic as of late, so I won't go on about too long about it here.

I view this motion by Discord as the next step in the enshittification of that platform. Given my views I've shared on surveillance capitalism as well as AI's effects on the industry and the garbage shoveled into the world by its most annoying proponents, you won't be surprised that my reaction to this news is negative, and I am currently deciding on whether or not to divest myself from Discord completely.

This decision is a small dilemma for me. On the one hand, muh privacy. On the other hand, I am part of a server centered around that one video game for which I'm working on that side project, and leaving the platform means severely reducing my participation in that community, because there's no way in hell they're moving that server off Discord. I don't know which way I'm going to go. This is also the same dilemma that occurred when I decided to partially divest myself from Meta and the like: Do I care about my relationships with my friends/family more than I care about muh privacy? (Yes).

(I feel like I'm finally getting to the point of my own post here...)

I'm very tired of the fact that these small dilemmas and points of contention have been popping up for me fairly consistently over the past few years. If we all just held hands and prayed I'd have it my way, I wouldn't have to choose between being an outsider in X community and *~\muh privacy~*, and I'd be 6'3" and jacked. But the way the corporate web is developing towards the endless rat race of turbo enshittification, I feel the rate at which I'm going to have to make these kinds of choices is going to be as consistent as it is now, or it's going to go up. Probably until I die.

Epilogue: The side project I was working on

I mentioned I was working on a video game side project. I feel it encapsulates the gripes I describe within this post pretty well, because it contains the following elements:

• Parsing binary data of a proprietary encoding/encryption format (I previously didn't know shit about how to do this, so I used AI to help me do it/learn more about the topic)
• A website which acts as a game database/search tool for in-game entities (I wanted to contribute to a community I'm currently deciding whether or not to somewhat isolate myself from)
• A Discord bot as an alternative method of interacting with the application/a way to submit drop table information, all of which must be crowd-sourced (Discord Bad. I figured I'd just stand up an authenticated REST API and let others do a Discord integration if they want, but still, I wish I wasn't about to force myself to cut this out of my roadmap.)

If you managed to read through all of that, thanks. I've been writing for like an hour, and I feel my ramblings have become more nonsensical than usual.

A summary of this post (copied from the beginning): My personal decision to try to preserve my own online privacy, the chaotic equilibrium that is me attempting to make sense of my feelings towards AI and the current zeitgeist, and the tiny concessions I've had to make in navigating all of this makes me feel, at best, tired, and at worst, a crazy person. I am tired of the direction the internet is going, I am tired of the endless discourse about AI, and my chronic tiredness is all marinating together into a tired admixture of tired chicken soup.

Yesterday I did something stupid. I went to reddit and responded to a comment. The comment in question was talking about how popular the PS2 was because it also functioned as a DVD player. I pointed out that few people would have bought a PS2 because it was more expensive than a standalone device, and didn't come with a remote. People often get confused about this because the PS3 basically fit this description: it was one of the best and cheapest blu-ray players for quite a while. Naturally when I went back to look at reddit today I found a bunch of people saying "nuh-uh" and my response had negative karma.

There's a lot of revisionist history when it comes to video games. For the earlier generation, there seems to be this idea that the Sega Saturn couldn't do "real" 3D graphics and the Playstation couldn't do "real" sprites - in spite of a massive library of titles that directly prove that they both draw 2D and 3D graphics just fine - heck, there's a bunch of people out there who think Symphony of the Night on PSX is one of the best pixel art games of all time.

I don't really care much about these specific examples, because they're ultimately meaningless. It's not remotely likely that these "factoids" will make a difference to anyone's life. What I do care about, however, is what it says about society. We already know reddit is an echo chamber, but if we can't figure out what the actual truth of history was, we're doomed as a species.

I just remembered this site from a few years back, maybe during Covid times? Clearly at some point the decision to delete my account history was made...

The state of the internet now makes me so deeply anxious. Scrolling Instagram makes my head feel like sludge. I stopped using reddit about 7 years ago. Never really found my crowd on IRC. So back here I am, hoping to find some signal in the noise and to calm my mind.

Has anything changed much here? What should I check out?

not sure if this is the appropriate sub group for this question or if its even allowed but figured I'd try.

I am curious the demographics of tildes users. You can be as specific as you feel comfortable.

I am in a dude in my 30s in Canada who works in software development.

Hi Tildenauts,

There's a custom at Tildes, that sort of grew organically out of "what should we call ourselves?" threads, to refer to fellow Tilderians in ever changing ways. This happened because there was no obvious, non-cringy answer and anyway who cares? That's my read on it anyway, I didn't follow closely. Plus the idea of online in-groups is kinda cringy itself, but also inevitable because we're humans. The whole concept begs for ironic resignation.

Anyway, fellow Tildinites, it occured to me that I've been coming here on and off for a long time. Since not too long after it launched I think. And it's been great. I consider Tildes a huge success in its mission, or my interpretation of it: be a comparitively intimate forum where people are thoughtful and less reactionary than elsewhere online. Throw in a (just) large enough userbase to include a wide variety of life experience and perspectives and you've got an oasis in an ever more polarized and reactionary internet.

Tildes reminds me of earlier internet forums, when the tone, pace and motivations for online communication were less capitalized, in various senses of the word. Niche subreddits during Reddit's golden era are another example. It's a better vibe. I'm guessing that, during the various Reddit exodii, a fair amount of people who share that nostalgia ended up here.

I even have some nostalgia for the early days of the platforms. MySpace! Early instagram was gorgeous. Even Facebook had its moments. My social media participation has always been below average, unless you count the years where any online socializing was unusual in the general population, but it's been a semi-consistent part of essentially my whole adult life both personally and professionally. Thinking about online socializing, it's funny how it's sort of its own thing. Kind of in its own social category, a new one that we recently invented. Maybe, in part, it's because the internet is a sort of buffer, and in those buffered interactions we're all a little different. In both good and bad ways. Lately it feels unbalanced towards bad, but perhaps it will swing back.

It feels like the Tildian moderation strategy, and guidelines, have successfully created a culture that's now self sustaining to some degree. And I think that culture is pretty great. It's not perfect, in the way that nothing people do can ever be perfect, especially where communication is concerned, but it's beautiful and I'm grateful it exists.

So, cheers to Tildes! I'd love to hear what other Tilderianites think about Tildes.

It transpires that after the first time changing my username, I didn't learn my lesson about using a possible deadname in an online identity. Well, I changed my name in real life for the second time earlier this year, and now /u/deimos has helpfully changed it for me here. When I was at Uni, my friends and I had a long conversation about what our Matrix-style hacker names would be. I picked Hex back then, and it feels fitting to bring it back in some form now. So with that in mind: Howdy, I'm h3x :)

If you were a character in the Matrix, what would your super cool hacker name be?

Hey tilderinos,

Self-described resident roboticist here, Not really sure if this is needed, but as people tend to quote/@ me on threads semi-regularly, you might notice @drannex has disappeared, but you can find me at @macleod now. Thanks @Deimos for the change!

Drannex is a really old username that I've never really enjoyed since I stopped being twelve a rather long time ago, much longer than joining here. So it's dead now.

I'm most known online as tumblr user @macleod anyway, and my website is macleod.ee to match. Homeowner has a meow in it? Glitter coffee? the dress meme? yeah, that was me (or partially). I'm sorry. Plus, it's my irl name anyway and I rather like it (muh-kloud).

Anyways, consider this a reintroduction or notice that my username has changed.

cheers, and remember, there can be only one ⚔️.

(Information Superhighway, for you youngin's, was a term that was thrown around quite a bit in the early days of the internet. See also: "world wide web" and "cyberspace")

I'm writing this post to say thanks to the developers, admins, and moderators of Tildes. This is one of the few corners of the internet that hasn't been completely taken over by bots, trolls, shills, or astroturfers. This is a tight-knit community of folks who are good at disagreeing with each other respectfully. It's the way the world should be.

I'm thankful that I can come here and talk about things that I'm uncomfortable discussing elsewhere on the internet or even in the real world.

I came from the great Reddit exodus of 2023. For a while, when I was actively watching the Tildes User Growth chart, I started to worry when it looked like user registrations were stagnating. I even created a post asking the community if it was time to accelerate growth. Thankfully, there was pushback from Tildes veterans who understood that bigger is not necessarily better. I now agree with that sentiment.

Be human, everybody!

The recent history of social media has made me interested in the factors that make online communities successful/healthy, or toxic etc.. This is one of the appeals of Tildes for me. I'm also emotionally invested in seeing a healthy future for the Irish language, which has seen some interesting developments in the internet age but remains in a precarious position as a community language in the country. You can see how these two interests dovetail together. At the moment this is a thought experiment, but later, who knows...

Tips I've got so far:

I've heard that some barriers to entry can increase group loyalty by making members feels slightly "invested" by earning a place in the community

I've also noted that some of the most persistant subcultures operate online but also have a strong in-person element (eg: furries)

There's also the common observation that good moderation is crucial to user experience and therefore group cohesion

Then I got some pointers from the Tildes docs:

• Trust by default, punish abusers
• Focus on user experience, not growth metrics
• Favour deep engagement over shallow/clickbait
• Empower members to make choices
• The golden rule (apply charitable interpretations, don't tolerate bad actors)

So, people of Tildes: what factors do you see as crucial to building and maintaining a strong cohesive online community?

Hello Tilderinos! As I am finally entering the holiday slowdown, I wanted to express my gratitude for the community here.

I ended up migrating here from Reddit during the Apocalypse. Before that time, I would have told you that Reddit was a pretty good place, but after having time to detox and spending time here, I realize it was just better, but still pretty awful. With a few exceptions (like r/3Dprinting), the negativity I would get hit with when posting anything was pretty toxic.

I also set up Lemmy Sync on lemmy.world, but it's pretty much only good for scrolling shitposts and memes. Which sometimes I want, but if I dig into the comments under a topic, the noise factor is so high that it's usually not worth it.

Tildes is really different. The intentionality that people post with, the quality and positivity of the discussion is all amazing. One thing I enjoy especially is seeing reasonable people express views contrary to my own, and being to learn something from them.

This year has been a year of big changes for me. I left a 10 year run at a startup that was starting to lose the plot, becane a stay-at-home Dad to relaunch my wife's career, and wrestled with major health issues. All of that has been pretty isolating, but Tildes has been a bright spot of connection for me.

Sorry if this comes off as excessively cheesy, but I feel like it's a good time to take a moment and say "Thank you!" I am hoping that if something was really helpful to others, that they will take a moment to share it here.

I spontaneously came up with Tildesians, but I have seen others, including Tilders and Tildren.

Edit, I was hoping to surface a variety of nicknames, so thanks for your input, I like to play with language. It's fun.

I was part of the reddit exodus, and I just discovered that when I sign out of my account, I'm still able to browse RIF from my phone. But my feed was no longer curated by me, so I saw what most people see when they visit that site from the "sort by hot" option of browsing.

I was a bit shocked. Almost every other top post was something ragebait-y. Something filmed to get you upset, to get your heart rate up and release something pleasurable in your brain. The comment sections followed suit, with folks bashing people in the videos(deservedly most of the time) and hundreds of upvotes following.

I believe what I'm witnessing is the real life version of the "10 Minutes Of Hate" described in Orwell's 1984. People enjoy getting mad. We've all felt it - an increase in heart rate but something, maybe dopamine being released at the same time, and a need to share that anger with others.

I don't like it, and I don't see it stopping. An entire generation has been raised on videos and stories designed to upset them and evoke this feeling.

Where do you think Tildes will be in 10 years? Will it still be around? How will the world be different from today? Do you think the world will be a better place? Be as positive or morbid as you want. Or, just say something, share something, post a link, tell a joke, give some advice. Then in ten years we can all come back to this thread and have a laugh... hopefully.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've been on there way too much the last couple of weeks. I had always planned to use Reddit in my google searches because google sucks without it now, but I've been spending time talking there.

My niche interest in question is visual novels. There are very few places on the internet where you can discuss them. There was recently a final translation patch released for the Tsukihime Remake. I beat it and wanted to talk about it! Reddit has a Tsukihime subreddit. I don't know if there is any other English community on the internet that wants to talk about Tsukihime. It's niche enough that I know of no one in person who has that interest either. Without Reddit, where do you even look for an alternative?

I feel like I'm going continue being drawn back for similar things even if they are less niche than visual novels. For example, I wanted to talk about Final Fantasy XVI. I could have made a post about my thoughts here and maybe I would have gotten good discussion about it. Slipped my mind honestly. But I was drawn back to Reddit where there are thousands of people wanting to talk about it right this second. An alternative could have been Gamefaqs, but its a bit more toxic and I hate the style of forum (unthreaded, every post in chronological order, only way to follow conversations is with quoted text. Is there a term for that kind of forum?)

Does anyone else feel themselves feeling a similar pull?

I've been a reddit user for a long time, it scares me how big the number is (death is marching my way quickly).

Before reddit I was on digg, and before that, usenet (before google ruined it). God I miss usenet. I know it technically still exists, but it seems to be mostly binaries and spam.

But the new interface really stinks, and since they've killed .compact, I decided it was time to go. (There were dozens of us using i.reddit.com! Dozens!)

And like the title says, it's a lot like kicking smokes. I was pretty jonesd the first couple days, and the experience comes like an impulse (Brain: "I'm bored! Check Reddit!"), followed by my conscious, no thank you, followed by, "What? No! We have to check reddit! Have to! We must do it now! Now! NOW!" followed by a gradual diminution in intensity of that same message, then a period of life, then repeat. The repeats slowly diminish in frequency, duration, and degree, so that now, only once or twice to I want to hit it.

A couple exceptions: I still check my relevant geographic reddits once in a while, and if relevant, I'll add "reddit" to my google results. I also use stackexchange and wikipedia more for some of those informational reasons, but those two, due to their labyrinthine and fiefish rules constrain content. Another discussion. There are also certain, ah, visual distractions for which reddit is still a good source (and for that I use teddit.net, thanks friendly tilderino!).

To ease withdrawals, I've been clicking tildes a lot more, also slashdot, and fark, and also ibooks. I'm proud of myself, and happy I've done it.

A moment of reflection-why do I like these sites so much? And why not facebook, twitter, etc.? I do like to argue, occasionally even as a third grader, but facebook and twitter have plenty of opporunity for that sort of thing. No, the difference is that reddit (and tildes, and usenet) are structured around ideas, whereas facebook etc. are structured around personalities. I'm an introvert, smarter than most people I encounter (at least along certain axes, many of which may be of dubious merit), curious and interested. Interested in ideas. Which is not to say I do not find people interesting, or do not value close, intimate, personal relationships. But I like to talk about ideas, and most people do not, except on places like reddit and here.

Perhaps I will start my own substack now.

Someday when I leave for good, I'll very likely say r/politicalcompassmemes. The place has always had a right-wing presence but at some point pretty long ago it just became the dominant POV and the place is now solidly a no-go for minorities and 95+% of leftists unless they were turned into a term of 'endearment' on 4chan first like how 4chan users call themselves autists and whatever. The place is also pretty bad at sourcing the articles it posts about purported leftists doing ridiculous things. I have mostly looked at the place from the POV of "rightwingers saying stuff" for quite some time now, but I haven't gotten around for leaving for good because occasionally there's a moderately critical post of the sub and that I am accustomed to the jargon used more often there that's less commonly used elsewhere.

Hey all, I think we're getting a lot of new people over the past and next couple days thanks to Reddit's latest ideas of how to manage a social media website.

First of all, welcome! Tildes caught your eye probably partly because of its community / friendliness and we'd all like to keep it this way.

Recommended reading:

• All the documentation is on docs.tildes.net. Most of it is current.
• The philosophy page especially will answer some of your immediate questions
• Since you're here and like the site, think about donating :)

Some personal words: Tildes is not Reddit. But, at least if you're anything like me, it can replace Reddit as your own online social/discussion outlet.

Tildes aims to:

• Grow slowly, not exponentially.
• Elevate the discussion, not lower the bar
• Offer an alternative, not be the new Reddit

I don't think this has been much of an issue so far with this community, but I expect that with time people will be more and more likely to not read the linked article before commenting. We've become so primed in general to consume information on the Internet in a way that makes us feel overconfident in our understanding based on just a few details, that I think it would be useful to have a soft reminder to actually read and engage with the things you're responding to instead of offering a "hot take".

I remember I came across it here, probably posted by @Deimos in the course of a thread about Tildes' philosophy. The essence of the blog was that the truly nice, sweet people among us that make online forums a better place with their positive interactions are more sensitive to tensions and negative interactions than the average person, so they'd be likely to leave at a lower level of trolling than most of us would, resulting in a net negative for everyone on the site. Could have sworn I bookmarked it...

I just joined, and although it’s not extremely active, I love Tildes already! Firstly, the user interface. This is what the reddit redesign should’ve been. Clean, simple and lightweight. Loading a post on new reddit takes 10 seconds or so, because of all the useless JavaScript, but posts loads instantly here. And there’s no ads here, which is a nice bonus.

I also like the fact that it’s much calmer here, people focus on through-provoking discussion instead of attacking each other.

To everyone who works on Tildes, keep up the great work! I’m sure this has been asked many times before, but do you ever plan on allowing anyone to register in order to grow Tildes?

As the title says, thank you to everyone who participated in the philosophy thread that I put up the other day. It was really great to get to talk to people about interesting questions and see the different ideas have on issues like determinism versus free will.

I'm really loving this site because of the great, reasonable discussion that's been going on, and I hope that we keep it going!

P.S. If anyone has some more interesting philosophical questions, please make a post about it! Based on the response to the thread the other day, I think a ton of people would be interested in discussing with you. I know I would be.

I'm curious how many other furries (if any) have came here so far, and have a couple questions:

1. Which furry communities did you participate in the most on Reddit?
2. Which of those communities, if any, do you think would work well on Tildes?

Personally, I'm very partial to furry_irl, since there's a lot of friendly discussion in the comments, but I'm not sure the post content would fit very well here, unless fluff content was allowed.

To anyone confused, this and this are very brief introductions to what a furry is.