So where are we all supposed to go now?

As far as how humans connect to one another, what’s next appears to be group chats and private messaging and forums, returning back to a time when we mostly just talked to the people we know. Maybe that’s a better, less problematic way to live life. Maybe feed and algorithms and the “global town square” were a bad idea.

Discord is probably the tool best-suited to capture users’ social needs right now. It’s definitely the best Reddit alternative we have. It’s a clever mix of chat app and broadcast tool, a place where lots of like-minded people could conceivably hang out and connect. But, uh, have you ever been in a Discord with thousands of people? It’s pure chaos, and requires you to either devote your life to keeping up or resolve yourself to missing everything. Discord’s moderation tools are a mess, too, and everyone’s still mad about changing their username.

Speaking candidly, I've recently shied away from Reddit and the bird site myself, returning to places like 4chan, the Fediverse, and especially various Discords. Small ones, the kind you can catch up on in one night.

Perhaps Lewd will rise again, yet? ... I'd say it'll rise, if we lift it.

    Backlash Heh, one can dream~

    I hope so though. The benefit of sites like Reddit is that you have so much information on pretty much any topic imaginable all reasonably neatly organised in one place. Forums like this will always be somewhat niche in the face of sites like that.

      twitter is horseshit now. everyone knows the algorithm so all content is perfectly tailored for it, all replies to every somewhat popular tweet are twitter blue accounts trying to grow their own accounts.

      i don't really like using reddit.

      discord is making weird changes, hoping it doesn't become awful.

      tempted to code a twitter clone but adhd brain prevents that/i doubt it would get much traction. i do have ideas for how to make a twitter clone that isn't just a twitter clone though (like threads/mastodon).

      i miss small forums like this one.

        malmon i'll try. but here i feel kinda obligated to work on the site and help get it active again and i don't really have that energy anymore.

        prob the only way i get to that point again is by making lewd 4.0 and even then that would prob just turn into another year long project.

            clare That's pretty fair tbh. Hmm, how did Lewd attract people in the first place? Like, I followed an ad on uh... I think it was pomf.io? I doubt it's the same from day 0 though.

                malmon people came from a lot of different places.

                it started off as just like a few friends from a tech forum and their friends, then people came from all over the place. like:

                • i brought in some friends of mine from a site called player.me
                • i overpaid on humblebundles to get our link in the top donators until they stopped me from doing that
                • we got some ads on 4chan and 8ch.
                • our affiliation with lainchan brought in a few people until i was weirded out by their new owner during their weird civil war thing
                • i bought out a couple of similar forums and merged them with this one
                • we had some advertisements on big general forums

                and probably a lot more things i don't really remember

                    clare Ah, so money. ^^'

                    i overpaid on humblebundles to get our link in the top donators until they stopped me from doing that

                    Heh, really? One would think they would be grateful for the extra donation!

                        malmon Ah, so money. ^^'

                        @clare doesn't know this, but I've expressed my willingness to pay cash to get ads for the forum.

                        As for placing a link somewhere visible, I'd be open to ideas.

                            Backlash
                            As would I, however, even if we do get ads out there, we'd need some activity to be here for the newcomers, right? I probably wouldn't have stuck around much if this place had only one or two posts a day max. when I joined.

                                malmon
                                Hrrm, true... I wish I had friends I could convince to join the site, like Clicky did initially. The past two years have done their damndest to isolate me.

                                There's gotta be some way we can drum up activity, though. Maybe asking @Steph chan to come back, and start posting again? Timezone differences mean I can't talk to her, but a forum like this would be a great way for us to communicate.

                                    Backlash Timezone differences mean I can't talk to her

                                    If you can talk to me, you can talk to-- oh right, she's in Germany now >_< Well that's only an hour ahead of me ^_^'

                                      i think advertising only goes so far though. i think a large part of lewd's initial success was because i was perma on here working on it so much that i would just instantly dm most new members and try to make friends with them.

                                      but also on that i think appearing more lively helps a lot. like if someone joins and sees last post 7 days ago, they would prob presume dead. will try to make more of an effort of replying to stuff every day.

                                      I try to reply to as much as I can too, I'm just not very good at starting conversations >_<

                                      In an effort to though... A while ago, against my best judgement, I bought a BMW E36 328i!

                                        malmon one of the guys at work owns one of these and he perpetually has issues with it, hope yours runs smoothly besides the alternator!

                                            clare Cool! Fortunately this is the only thing that has gone wrong with it so far ^_^' Aside from the AC not working, but that was the case when I bought it. Any horror stories from your colleague?

                                              It always seems so sudden when the days get shorter. It feels like winter again.