That is a cute idea indeed,
Lamia.
I do often think it is sad that most forums are limited to a specific content. I for my part love it to follow some train of thoughts, and get from the hundredth to the thousands, and with somebody likeminded very interensting insights can appear - it's the same as would naturally happen when you sit together somewhere in leasure.
But in (non-technical) discussion forums such endeavors get killed when they leave the topic of some specific thread; so it doesn't work. And in technical forum like here, things are mostly limited to the issue. Issue gets solved (or not), and that's it. Nothing further happen, the people are just names on some technical issue, or maybe authors of some software - but not much of human beings.
Looking back to the beginning, we had the mailbox scene, and we were kind of freaks, as nobody else would yet understand what computers do. Back then it was very clear that online communications cannot be a substitute for real-life meeting (and I don't think this has changed only because we now have colored chats and can send videos).
Then, I for my part could never get much from people who were considered "normal"; I always tried to venture into the not-so-normal areas where people tried to take responsibility for themselves instead of following conventions.
But nowadays computer users are no longer freaks with an unusual hobby. The old economy of the wallstreet oligarchs has been challenged by a new economy arisen from the Internet; and computer people are now considered part of this new game, this new strive for money and career and "web business", no longer taking responsibility for themselves, but playing according to the rules made by others - just like the "normal" people always did.
And, worse than the old economy, this new-rich economy does not respect people, does not respect anything beyond their own greed - they perceive the skillfull ones only as exploitable ressources, and the rest as "functions" that should click and deliver money.
Given this, it appears to me somehow difficult to reformulate the idea of user groups forming due to a common special interest. Because, what is the "special interest" that slaves would be proud to share?
I for my part was always desperate to indeed and really meet people face to face, wherever possible. But, in most contexts this got ever more difficult. People started to make it a secret where they live, and they would only tell a cellular phone number. Later on, they would no longer tell any phone number. And, during the last decade, they tend to also make their E-mail address a secret as well, and one might instead only get offered a "facebook account" (whatever that is).
So it seems, people want to limit their social interaction to not just online-only, but probably facebook-only.
(Concerning me, you can easily find some reference from here to a mailing-list or bug-report; there you find my mailaddy, and if then you do some search, you will come across my old address and phone number, and maybe even my current one. So it's not a secret.)
When you ask people what does all this mean, have they become strictly anti-social or what is going on? you get told about those "criminals" - terrible criminals and all kinds of dangers that appear to be everywere ("das Böse ist Immer und Überall").
Obviousely, for consumers to be properly kept in their cages, they must fear the outside.
But, I must confess, I am no longer a person that is easy to cope with. I always had a deep confidence that all is basically all-right. This has failed me and fallen apart during the last years of madness, when I had to realize how powerfull that new economy actually is, and how ruthless in their effort to transform human beings into very much this:
You know, when I grew up, there was a whole couple of really brilliant ideas getting around. One of them was the computers. And there was space travel. But there were also equivalent developends in other realms, like new understandings of humans and society, more respect for individual qualities, freedom of expression, and also a new and broader understanding of the spiritual realm, of the relation of humans to creation.
Obviousely it took me quite a while to grasp all this and figure it out, and then I got more and more confident that mankind would look into a bright future when only all these developments were brought together and pursued onwards - and what else should be supposed to happen?
But now it is very clear that nothing of this is going th happen, all our so-called values are just empty words, there is no advance, not even reconciliation, things are going drastically backwards instead, ans the major question seems to be: how can one plunder the most and get away with the most impertinent lies?
So I am more and more asking: what am I doing here? Why should I continue to live on this planet? Indeed, I'm seriousely depressive.
Chatting beyond this forum could be beneficial to the mental health of members involved.
It depends much on who defines mental health.
I for my part do agree with this. But current commonsense says otherwise; it says mental health means to stay in your cage and fear the outside. Because when you do not dare to go to the neighbour and ask to borrow their power-drill, then you have to mail-order your own - and that is good for the new economy. And appropriate scientific proof that social deprivation is actually very healthy to humans, will then be provided by the political scientific lobbyists.
