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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2189 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 13, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Wow. It's been over a year since I posted on the Motte or even Reddit; I came back to find this place is definitely... different. It seems much smaller, a bit more subdued, but possibly better. I know a lot of the reason I stopped contributing then was the Reddity feel of the place. But I remember the Friday Fun Threads were always pretty cool.

Who do you think has been left behind? I'm asking in terms of demographic shifts. Are there fewer younger posters? Hotheads? The general consensus seems to be this place is much more conservative, but I don't know if I've seen that, yet.

The geniuses.

The Motte is still relatively smart. Maybe 125 avg. But I don't think the outlier 150+ folk stuck around . I remember reading some /r/themotte comments and getting the impression I'm in the presence of a 1000 year old vampire. I haven't gotten that feeling as much after the move.

Comments in general are.. more political, more nitpicky, more missing the pointy, etc.

I don't think it has anything to do with the forum getting more "conservative" the smartest people are usually too heterodox to classify anyways. I think its more to do with the lack of dynamism of this forum. Even after we have a website, we don't have the stomach for a bare link reposity? Are you kidding me? We don't have a new user pipeline anymore to keep things interesting (by asking naive but nevertheless amenable to good discussion questions), and we won't make one either.

I do feel like the place has lost a lot of fire in the last year or so, and especially on leaving reddit. I don't mind so much, but only because in my contrarian nature this has made me more fiery, and I think it has otherwise made it somewhat worse.

I almost feel that there are fewer conventionally successful people around nowadays, but that could just be a case of fewer people mentioning personal details. I'm certainly not helping that figure, however.

Focus has definitely gotten tighter onto whatever issue is popular on X, which saddens me. My favorite posts have always been those from the public defender guy about law, or foreigners about their local issues, or other topics I would never have discovered.

Overall though I'm impressed how things have kept on chugging along. I was worried about total death on moving.

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