<story><title>How to run a small social network site for your friends</title><url>https://runyourown.social/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drorco</author><text>This has been like that with many multiplayer games to some extent before the age of matchmaking. Someone sets up a dedicated server with certain mods&amp;#x2F;game configuration, and that would be yours and other randoms favorite server. Over time, you&amp;#x27;d actually become a community.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve gone back to play Unreal Tournament 2004 this past year in such dedicated servers, and it made me realize how badly matchmaking ruined the sense of community in MP games.</text></item><item><author>hemloc_io</author><text>I have what I think is a unique perspective on this.&lt;p&gt;Private small self run social media already exists. It&amp;#x27;s personal Minecraft servers.&lt;p&gt;When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I&amp;#x27;d say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consistently.&lt;p&gt;It was great, and better than social media or even game for hanging out with your friends IMO because it emulated synchronous human interaction instead of just setting up feeds where everything has to be &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It was easy enough for a 14 year old to setup, and administer. Mods made it hackable and fun.&lt;p&gt;I guess the metaverse was already a thing back then huh?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>np-</author><text>That’s actually interesting—I used to really be into multiplayer games when I was a teenager into my early 20s, and have some great memories of virtual hangs with friends both real and offline. My interest in online gaming basically dropped to zero (or even negative) after that, which seems to coincidence with when matchmaking started becoming a thing. I think it was it Halo 2 that was the first big matchmaking game that I played and I just really couldn’t get into it at all, I just more or less assumed I was just getting older and losing interest in childhood hobbies but never connected it to the loss of community in my head. Thinking about all those multiplayer lobbies from yesteryear gives me pangs of nostalgia.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to run a small social network site for your friends</title><url>https://runyourown.social/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drorco</author><text>This has been like that with many multiplayer games to some extent before the age of matchmaking. Someone sets up a dedicated server with certain mods&amp;#x2F;game configuration, and that would be yours and other randoms favorite server. Over time, you&amp;#x27;d actually become a community.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve gone back to play Unreal Tournament 2004 this past year in such dedicated servers, and it made me realize how badly matchmaking ruined the sense of community in MP games.</text></item><item><author>hemloc_io</author><text>I have what I think is a unique perspective on this.&lt;p&gt;Private small self run social media already exists. It&amp;#x27;s personal Minecraft servers.&lt;p&gt;When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I&amp;#x27;d say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consistently.&lt;p&gt;It was great, and better than social media or even game for hanging out with your friends IMO because it emulated synchronous human interaction instead of just setting up feeds where everything has to be &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It was easy enough for a 14 year old to setup, and administer. Mods made it hackable and fun.&lt;p&gt;I guess the metaverse was already a thing back then huh?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brnt</author><text>Perhaps it isn&amp;#x27;t surprising that when interaction is designed to be disposable and replaceable, i.e. matchmaking, no real community can form.</text></comment>