"we're just in the midst of another generational shift"
Most people think of the web as a magical other life, as someplace else and not, in point of fact, real. That’s bunk.
Por razões óbvias seguimos o História da Web nas suas instalações periódicas – abrir uma das suas newsletters é como abrir um velho álbum de fotografias cheio de memórias que se revivem. A última dá-nos o toque necessário para complementar o registo anterior aliado a tópicos recentes. Comunidade atómicas e conservadorismo, o impulso criativo e o poder destruidor de redes sociais que promovem o passivo... Same ol', same new part II.
A comunidade web como o era na década anterior, todo um outro milénio passado.
Communities tend to cluster together around ideas, and form microcosmic subcultures in the process. Web communities come in different shades, there’s hardly a mold that can contain them. They are at once strange and wonderful and anarchic and structured and an important fabric of the web.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
Mais do que o texto notamos as escolhas, e queremos que notem nessas também. Para o ilustrar, o autor escolheu o Newgrounds, o DeviantArt, e os FFFFOUND! e MLKSHK que já tínhamos abordado antes a propósito de comunidade e arquivos digitais.
Destas, quick recap, destaques nossos:
Newgrounds, allowing anybody to submit and post content to the site - games, artwork, and videos. The community grew together, and users learned from one another, even informed one another’s style.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
Nota de destaque às animações em Flash, hint hint.
A true niche with budding amateur animators experimenting with Flash for the first time leading a new animation revolution, quite a few professional animators that got their start posting to Newgrounds
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
DeviantArt, users had flooded the site with submissions from across the creative spectrum, from comics to drawings to animation.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
FFFFOUND! An image bookmarking platform years before Pinterest or Tumblr. Posts weren’t linked by rigidly defined categories, but by ever-evolving subjectivity (a concept which appears to allude modern day image platforms)
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
MLKSHK allowed users to post images up and share it with other users on the site: the site gave the user’s a format, but the user’s gave the site a purpose. They created avenues for discovery and etiquette for interaction. At the heart of the matter was an exchange, of ideas and of content.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
O que têm estas comunidades de comum? O impulso criativo. Antes de Facebooks e outras plataformas estupidificantes que promovem entre os seus utilizadores o voyeurismo numb, a web nos seus primórdios fervilhava de autores, cada qual imensamente investido na produção de conteúdos próprios. É certo que hoje há mais criadores online, mas são abafados pelos milhões que scrollam infinitamente entediados pelas suas linhas de tempo em modo automático. Proporcionalmente, há apenas uns anos os criadores perfaziam a quase totalidade dessas comunidades, mesmo nos late comers que apenas partilham imagens, esse acto era orquestrado como meio de criação de um novo sentido ou comunicação entre pares.
E depois, o cataclismo.
As of this post, in mid-2017, both MLKSHK and FFFFOUND! have announced plans to shut down. Newgrounds is still very much in operation, but its staff and audience are a shadow of what they once were. Pretty much the same is true of DeviantArt.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
Ie, chegaram as ditas redes sociais.
Community goes mainstream
As the web has grown, online communities have become centralized walled gardens à la most modern social media sites. Places where ideas mostly spread from the top down, rather than the center outward. It’s left an unfortunate vacuum of creativity and expression where we are left to simply shout into an indifferent void.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017
Aqui podem acusar-nos de nostalgia, mas não o confundam com conservadorismo.
My point, if there is one at all, is that there’s room for all sorts on the web.
Funneling all of the web’s thoughts into one of only a few options has smoothed out a multiplicity of voices into a monotonous tone. There’s an alternative, and the early web showed us the way. At their very best these communities are about finding meaning in something you didn’t even realize a whole world of people were already interested in. A group eager to root for you and grow with you and learn from and with you. A community of peers that can’t be measured by impersonal metrics and canned statuses. And perhaps most importantly, each different from the next, grounded in a different perspective and inclusive of thoughts from outside.
So I guess what I’m saying is, if we wanted it to be, the web could be a conversation. We need only to look to the past to see how.
in "A Sense of Community: From Newgrounds to MLKSHK"2 out 2017