Small-Web Talk
If I read the title of this post to my grandparents they would most likely assume I'd be referring to they types of interactions that can be had on the innumerable different social-media websites, or maybe even an instant messaging app. If I read it to a gen-Z-er, their imagination might fire off into various directions, envisaging streaming, ai or gamefied interactions that can be had online.
But actually the conversations I am referring to are those that can be had in the quiet places of the 'small web.'
Funnily enough, these types of conversations seem oddly real in a way that my experience using big-web platforms just simply cannot mirror.
Congeniality
For instance, I'll place what in hindsight turns out to be a very inconsequential thought - thought it may not have seemed so upon posting - in such places and get actual high quality feedback. Those folks seem genuinely interested in ideas as opposed to whatever it is that people look at on big web platforms (incendiary political speech, violence, tits and asses and so on.) Most of it is stuff you didn't actually set out to see but you're looking anyway because you were too lazy, perhaps, to find something better - aside from the other deeply psychological reasons people watch/spend time looking at such things.
Small? Appealing?
Internet conversations that happen with strangers on the small web, it could be argued, have the appeal of authenticity that is hard to match even in real life. What is felt when blogging or commenting in such cyberspaces is that you've touched someone who might really share your level of enthusiasm in whatever have you, be it cats, bitcoin, cyber-security. These connections are fewer and far between in our physical lives.
Illustration
There's other reasons, such as fewer distraction from advertisers. Think of it like this. Would you prefer to live in a tranquil home that served all of your needs, accommodated your family and even a few guests, is easy to maintain, free from unwanted vermin or solicitors, even if it were a bit small? Or would you prefer a mansion in Beverly Hills that comes with a maid that doesn't clean but instead invites all of her maid-friends to come and stay over, use the pool, wash in the shower and then after all of that they invite their friends who happen to be sales people who never stop soliciting you to buy their wares?
My internet conversations as of late have been of the first variety, in the quaint country cottage, producing insights that I wasn't able to gain in physical spaces and had none of the perverted nonsensical chaos of the Beverly Hills mansions.
(With this closing, I'll follow the lead of another blogger by inviting comments and feedback on a preferred forum of mine)
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