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Seriously! I've been here for a year and still haven't wrapped my head around it, there's like 9 different tabs for it yet none of them seem to be the "main" way to communicate
What tab did the spacehey devs intend for you to use to hold conversations with people? Bulletins? The IM feature? Blogs? Forums? Groups? Maybe it's all of them? I don't know!
Well, I know it's not bulletins, those are for a limited time, the bulletins in the bulletin tab are shown only to friends, people on that tab or people who find it in the group so unless you've been shooting out friend requests to everyone you've seen 5 days a week like you're, erm idk. Then its likely that your bulletins tab is pretty dry, a lot of the posts [at least in my bulletins tab] there dont even have comments enabled since they're mostly announcements. Yes bulletins are featured in groups but you'll see why I don't count them
The IM feature suffers from the same problem, its essentially useless unless you already have heaps of friends and the method of getting friends is pretty dang awkward, I'm not my dad and I hit teenagerhood right as the pandemic started so I've basically never initiated conversation with a rando on my own so I CAN NOT send out friend requests to 150 random people, gather the ones who accept into an IM chat and meekly state "nice weather we're having :3" expecting conversation to happen. I'd simply perish.
Forums seem perfect, I'm comfortable with forums and how they work, I've had heaps of conversations and beef on forums so this should be easy! Except there's no reply function so there's no notifications or an easy way to track down who is talking to who or to even let ppl know you've replied. Its a bust for more than leaving a passing comment.
Groups seems like the answer, except its just grouping together bulletins and forum posts yet somehow more fractured? Bulletins like I said, expire and are splintered off into sub-sub categories, it certainly does not feel like the main way you're meant to communicate and I've alr expressed my thoughts on the forums. Groups are weird and a potential missed opportunity to actually have a non awkward or clunky way of getting a gaggle of people to converse with one another instead of ping ponging clumsy replies. Especially if you're in an even slightly niche one since the well of users dries up due to how many groups there are
So.. Blogs! I deduced blogs are the "best" way to engage with other people on this site but they're still not perfect, most blogs often get washed away in the sea of blogs with little interaction and the same 7 blogs stick around at the top for what feels like too long, I've been thinking while writing this [shocking ik] and blogs are probably the most popular part of the site yet I only started figuring out they were the main attraction yesterday.
They further fracture the userbase since you can make a forum post in the supernatural category, a bulletin post in the supernatural category and a blog post in the supernatural category and they'll all be completely separate things, with blogs being totally isolated from the groups tab despite having the same topics! Its definitely confusing for new users, especially younger ones like me tho I imagine it feels like home for the og MySpaceians which is why I'm assuming things are the way they are, after all this is a legacy site catering towards them and not the 17 year olds larping as them who came here from twitter. I came from irc chats and discord so I'm completely out of my depth here.
Uh yeah, ik this is a dumb and definitely objectively bad take but its how I and I'm sure a good few ppl feel abt the site, I'm definitely a little salty since I still cant wrap my head around what you're actually meant to do here. The fracturedness might also have something to do with the lack of a real feeling of a community? Maybe I just haven't interacted enough, maybe I'm misusing the site entirely, spacehey may look like a yapping site to those unfamiliar with it but at its core may just be a blogging site where you send your posts into the ether and see what happens, maybe reply to the odd reply under your post or someone elses but nothing really more than that? I am still not sure.
nice weather we're having :3
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ziv⊹₊⟡
The progression I’ve seen so far is:
1. Post blog/ read blog.
2. Interactions happened, check the account out.
3. Cool person! Let’s send a friend request.
Or through the browse feature:
1. Browse accounts randomly.
2. Find a cool looking profile/ someone with similar interests.
3. Friend request them!
Lastly, through existing friends:
1. My friend posted a bulletin! Let’s check it out
2. Oh wow, what a funny and witty comment, let’s see their account.
3. Friend request :p
I mostly interact with people on their bulletins tho, idk how your bulletins are dead :(
𝐻𝒜𝐼𝐿𝐸𝒴 𝒢𝐿𝒪𝒪𝑀𝐼𝐸
welcome to the old internet lol
Word, finding the balance between "not so easy to use that its basically crack" and "so hard to use that it becomes a Sisyphean task wherein it takes 1 year of learning the site to figure out how to talk about fumos or something" is difficult nowadays. Though I don't want to stick to discord and IRC since I've been pretty inactive there too, going through few month bouts of being gone but idk what to replace it with!
Maybe I'll be like patrick and live under a rock with no socials, most of my socialization is just texting a few of my irl friends anyways so maybe I'm just not built for the niche internet microcelebrity grind especially on spacehey. I still want to be online though, there's stuff I'm interested in that my friends aren't that I would like to share with ppl y'know? Aughhh, plugging into the modern social media matrix is so tempting sometimes! I know it would fry my brain tho
by whoah; ; Report
The fun part about a site like this is that all of the fun IS the internet surfing and exploration.
by 𝐻𝒜𝐼𝐿𝐸𝒴 𝒢𝐿𝒪𝒪𝑀𝐼𝐸; ; Report
Holster
Yea that's a problem
Over choice
But look at it this way
The forums, groups and it's are pretty much dead so the main way to find new ppl is friend request and blogs
The bulletins only work if u have at least 100 who are fairly active
But if u wanna find ppl to talk to it what h should do is try to be more active on the newer blogs
Yk
Mabey u get someone to comment and then rest is history
It kinda sucks that the sait meant for friend finding is kinds confusing to find such friends
Speaking of (shameless plug) u can IM if u wanna talk
Excuse my typos I'm on my phone
by Holster; ; Report
Yea, I figured groups and forums were dead. Its strange because by all metrics this is booming, there's like a million users and a millions posts made every seconds but there's not many people commenting on anything or interacting rlly. This furthers my beliefs that intentional or not, this is a blogging site. A virtual diary that you'll sometimes get some input on, potentially what myspace would've been if it never got so popular that the sheer amount of people who had either migrated from friendster or never used a computer to socialize learned to overcome its core faults and turn it into a social sphere. Spacehey seemingly does not have that kind of user volume, adaptability or courage so its just a blogging place.
I'm not sure what I'm gonna do here after this, maybe I'll blog or something tho I doubt I'm an interesting enough person to keep fueling that too often. IM'ing is hard! How I'd start yap in IRC and Discord is to wait a few hours looking at the chat, getting a feel on the vibe and how other users interact and then if I gel with that kinda vibe then I stumble in, after a few sessions if I still feel comfortable then I can start yapping easily whenever I want. IM is different, it's cold starting a convo between 2 strangers with vaguely similar interests, its so tricky and awkward at the beginning. Idk
by whoah; ; Report
Yeah I get it
I mean I wouldn't mind this turning into a blogging site but it sucks that the layout ARE STILL CLOSED like cmon
What sucks about this is there aren't that many sites like it. The only one I can think on the top of my head that isn't dead is FriendProject but the UI is so confusing.
This site has potential I know it and don't worry about making boring blogs as long as u make a unique blog abt something cool or obscure I can probably get it to top blogs
Yea this sites need an overhaul and An to put his shit together
by Holster; ; Report