Casual Conversation

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Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.

RULES (updated 01/22/25)

Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.

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Found my oldest extant (and underwhelming) contribution to the interwebs. (groups.google.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Teenage me in 1994 trying to combine helpfulness and knowitallness. Some things never change.

I hope Rudy got that Ultrastar and other cool stuff too.

And I was SOOO close to truly being a part of the original hordes of eternal September, but I was really about 9-12 months too late.

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[–] connect 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I was fascinated by Usenet, having grown up so isolated, but I was too scared to post. I was at university, and I think my biggest fear was that fellow students there would see my posts and take them as an opportunity to bully me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I was, and still am, very introverted and, around people I don't know well, very reserved as well. I found that first AOL and USENET, and then the web provided a safer space, where just that veneer of anonymity was enough of an excuse to engage more readily, and with people whom I knew, based on the literal names of the communities, would share at least one interest, LOL.

Glad to see you eventually found avenues for self-expression.