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GeekNights Thursday - Off the Grid Geeks

MrPeriodMrPeriod
edited December 2012 in GeekNights

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the strange yet common case of very geeky/nerdy people with deep interests who, for whatever reason, seem to have zero connections outside of a tiny, single community related to said interests. They love games, but have never heard of PAX. They love anime, but don't know anyone else who does. They attend one fan convention, and don't know others exist anywhere. They're super into Advance Wars, but didn't know any sequels ever came out. But, before that, in... The Lounge... we consider a tale that hearkens back to The Bamboo, a new subway tunnel(pre-grime), and Google Maps on the iPhone.

Also, ConnectiCon 2013 Panel and Workshop submissions are live! And, we launched a new show! GeekNights Presents.

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Comments

  • RymRym
    Yeah, I uploaded this a day late.
  • Jordan O.Jordan O.
    The Kung Fu panel has been submitted, we are bringing it back better than ever for this year.
  • GeoGeo
    I have just submitted my first ever panel to ConnetiCon. Here's hoping it'll be accepted.
  • GregGreg
    Wow . The NYC subway without grime still doesn't look as good as any of the Euro-subways I've been on with grime.
  • AprecheApreche
    Wow . The NYC subway without grime still doesn't look as good as any of the Euro-subways I've been on with grime.
    It still has to be compatible with the century-old subway technology still in use.
  • GregGreg
    Wow . The NYC subway without grime still doesn't look as good as any of the Euro-subways I've been on with grime.
    It still has to be compatible with the century-old subway technology still in use.
    I'm talking about architecture and aesthetic, not anything that matters.
  • ColdguyColdguy
    Yes star trek catan is out as a target exclusive, it adds captains each of which have a unique ability but the board is fixed. Now if they rereleased satrfairers of catan (same idea but with more shit to do like explore and attack) that be cool.
  • Totally GuyTotally Guy
    Was so certain the bad smell would be Rym's lost banana. :p
  • InvaderRENInvaderREN
    Was so certain the bad smell would be Rym's lost banana. :p
    That banana is in orbit between Earth and Mars, and you can't prove otherwise.

  • MattMatt
    If this turns into a game of "find Rym's banana," I'm out.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    edited December 2012
    Find the banana is a safer game than hide the banana =)
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • J.SharpJ.Sharp
    I'd be interested in reading a formal study that compares internet surfing and community participation behaviors with other psychological markers.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    There are some amazing examples of off-the-grid jugglers. And juggling is a participation hobby. A guy who I juggled with quite a bit, and broke some world records with, was at university with a guy who could also juggle 7 balls. The other guy knew Ben could juggle, but never thought to bring up the fact that he was, by any metric, a very good juggler too. It just didn't occur to him that another juggler would be that interested. Many people first got into juggling after being taught by someone, and that person never thought to mention the entire juggling world.
  • KieyKiey
    I just listened to this episode today (I'm obviously a bit behind.)

    Anyway you missed a more likely explanation for why people ask the forum they go to their question rather than the forum that is all about the subject. Basically people put more stock in information they receive from people they know from strangers, because they trust people they know more than people they don't know. It makes sense to a certain extent, but is clearly not always the best way to get the information you need.

    Also the reason people don't visit keep up with all the things likely isn't tied to how fast they can read. In terms of community involvement, and even news feeds they keep up with, it's probably more of a Dunbar number situation. Where people are only able to manage only so many active relationships at once, and so it can be difficult for people to engage with or even just read a lot of websites simply because it can feel overwhelming.
  • the_sloththe_sloth
    it's probably more of a Dunbar number situation
    That combined with the fact that I spend so much time reading and responding to email at work makes keeping up with N other bits of community feel a little un-fun.

    One thing I've often wondered: so many forums are based on the same frameworks (phpbb, etc), is there any software that can aggregate conversations across a bunch of different forums and give me a single view of everything? Think Google Reader for forums and comments.
  • AprecheApreche
    edited December 2012
    it's probably more of a Dunbar number situation
    That combined with the fact that I spend so much time reading and responding to email at work makes keeping up with N other bits of community feel a little un-fun.

    One thing I've often wondered: so many forums are based on the same frameworks (phpbb, etc), is there any software that can aggregate conversations across a bunch of different forums and give me a single view of everything? Think Google Reader for forums and comments.
    That would be a wonderful thing. Imagine if you could create a single forum that was actually a collection of all the Minecraft threads from every other forum. This is actually a genius and do-able idea. A single federated universal discussion forum.

    EDIT: You know what that is? It's Reddit X Vanilla + Federation. I could actually make that pretty easily.

    Post edited by Apreche on
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    edited December 2012
    Sounds like fidonet/Usenet and other pre-internet message systems .
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • MattMatt
    Catching up on a ton of podcasts and just listened to this one. I have encountered so many of these off-the-grid people it makes me want to cry. When you find normal, sane, connected people, DO NOT LET THEM GO.

    My Wed night game group is not so convenient to go to anymore, but I'll be damned if I stop going. Everyone there is intelligent, connected, and to tie in another recent episode, very capable at playing games.
  • RymRym
    What I find interesting is that many of the people I meet who fit into the "off the grid" category don't seem to have a lot of connections elsewhere: the Dunbar Number doesn't seem to apply.
  • GauntletWizardGauntletWizard
    EDIT: You know what that is? It's Reddit X Vanilla + Federation. I could actually make that pretty easily.
    I started code somewhere to parse the Vanilla forum into a chat/IRC stream, I should dig it out and try again.
  • the_sloththe_sloth
    edited December 2012


    I started code somewhere to parse the Vanilla forum into a chat/IRC stream, I should dig it out and try again.
    This kind of scraping is inherently fragile and doesn't scale well. There will always be more kinds of forum software that such a system doesn't understand, and the ones that it does could change their formatting in a way that breaks the parser at any time. None of these are fundamental reasons not to build such a system, just details to consider. However this is probably easier than the alternative...
    Sounds like fidonet/Usenet and other pre-internet message systems .
    This is going the opposite direction of scraping, more like building (rebuilding?) some common federated infrastructure for having structured discussions on the web. The problem you have with this approach is adoption ... you'd need to have every forum owner take some action in order to integrate with the open protocol. Maybe there are fun ways it could be integrated into common open-source forum stacks, which might make the transition easier.


    tldr: You could scrape existing forums or build an open protocol; scraping sounds easier but has inherent limitations.
    Post edited by the_sloth on
  • Hitman HartHitman Hart
    Pro wrestling fans are pretty much all off the grid geeks except for the relatively few on message boards. There is a decent sized community of wrestling fans who I talk to at work and in other online communities and they don't watch anything but WWE or maybe TNA. They do not watch Japanese wrestling or independent wrestling at all. I try to bring this awesome sauce to them but they usually do not accept the sauce.

    On the topic of posting about things which are not specifically the purpose of the forum, I post about wrestling and racing here to interact with this community of people because I know you're all fairly smart and won't say terrible, racist things. Most pro wrestling boards I've seen are either racist, sexist, or worse than 4chan in their crazed small community memes, such that they are completely incomprehensible. Also, I would have never discovered V8 Supercars if Churba hadn't posted about them in my racing thread, so there's that, too.
  • ChurbaChurba
    V8 Supercars are boss. It's like Rally and Nascar had a baby, then had F1 as a wet-nurse.
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