Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

We learned on the discord that popular youtuber Whang mentioned us. You can see the video here. At 9:18 we are mentioned.

I am definitely not posting on the forums for the first time since 2019 because Rangers51 asked someone to post it.

Moderator Edit

This seems like an oversimplification. -R51

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 14th June 2024 13:59

I'm surprised that more newbies didn't show up here as a result of the video. His videos tend to send thousands of his viewers rushing to any online location he speaks of. I registered on the 14th and I'm still the newest member. I'm curious as to whether there was a spike in server utilization from people visiting the site when the Whang video dropped.

I'm not surprised. I'm sure the video generated some curiosity in the site, but it was only a mention in passing. Social media have swallowed up most fandoms away from fansites like this one; hell, there's probably a lot more hot CoN action taking place in Discord right now than here in the forums. It's just so much more consolidated and convenient.

That said, I have the feeling it's only a matter of time til all of that collapses in on itself, and people start flocking back to sites like this one. Ya never know!

This post has been edited by Galsic on 18th June 2024 10:56

--------------------

Console RPG Cliches

Quote (TimberManiac @ 17th June 2024 15:47)

I'm curious as to whether there was a spike in server utilization from people visiting the site when the Whang video dropped.

I had the same curiosity and set myself a reminder to check after a couple days had passed, but no, overall site traffic was well within average range over that time. We got a little bit of notice on Twitter from it (including a follow from Whang himself), but again, nothing really translatable. C'est la vie, amirite?

Quote (Galsic)

That said, I have the feeling it's only a matter of time til all of that collapses in on itself, and people start flocking back to sites like this one. Ya never know!

I definitely feel like traditional socials are diminishing as a good location for fan communities, but I also think that communities around personalities that also connect to fandom are the new normal versus sites like here. For instance, I didn't really realize that FF-tok was a thing until asked in Discord last week; obviously that's going to get a lot of attention from people who use Tiktok versus coming here to post stuff. But even ignoring that, Reddit has a stranglehold for centralized community, and I certainly can't compete with that - though maybe someday we could make this community more Reddit-like. It's been on the pipe dream list for ages, like so many other things!



--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 18th June 2024 17:56)

no, overall site traffic was well within average range over that time.
...
But even ignoring that, Reddit has a stranglehold for centralized community, and I certainly can't compete with that - though maybe someday we could make this community more Reddit-like. It's been on the pipe dream list for ages, like so many other things!

I feel that I should specify (because I forgot to in my post above) that I'm not here from the Whang video I wanted a sticker!

Anyway, I appreciate the site not being Reddit-like. Turning it into Reddit-lite wouldn't serve too much of a purpose because...what would be the difference from just turning this place into a real subreddit then? I'm here because it's not that. Being an old-school forum certainly holds back user engagement, but it has qualities that can't be replicated elsewhere. There's fleeting nature to modern social media that makes the conversations feel cheap to me...kind of like a chatroom? Posts beyond the most immediate 3 or 4 page scrolls are irrelevant/forgotten, like the 10th page of Google.

I hope Galsic is right and newer social media collapses a bit to bring people back here. I doubt it, but it would be nice. Too much creepy stuff goes on on Reddit/Discord for my liking. I've lost 2 forums I was very active on to Discord in the past. They fully shut down and moved to Discord, and within weeks were unrecognizable.

[rant]

Social media is seriously overcentralized these days.

The fact that Twitter is still in use despite a large series of major controversies and massive technical problems and the rise of multiple competitors speaks volumes. And there's also other longtime large platforms like Facebook (for real-life profiles) and Reddit (for more internet-based socializing), which have had their shares of controversies already even without having total nutcases in charge, and there's Discord, which is newer and thus has had less opportunity to be mired in controversy but is similarly massive and centralized.

For the big social networks, I'm hoping that the "federated" platforms, i.e. those that have smaller and "more locally"-hosted instances which then interconnect with each other, eventually outlast the big ones. These include Mastodon (and other things like Misskey) for Twitter, Lemmy (and Mbin) for Reddit, and Matrix for Discord. Growth is slow and takes time, but the fact that these platforms present smaller, individually-managed instances makes them more resilient to centralized problems of both technical ("site is down") and social ("owner/CEO is a horrible a-hole") kinds.

Something I really like about smaller communities, or even just separate instances that federate, is that they tend to allow more focused user experiences. When I come here to the CoN forums I know pretty much exactly what I'm going to get -- not the exact content of posts, but the general topics and the general feel. This was true back when the forum had more activity, and it's still true, even if that feel has changed over time. One reason that I had a Twitter account but never used it much is because it basically felt like the entire world was in one room, with regards to the "hats" I "wore" in a social sense.

lol this was like totally unrelated to youtube or Whang

Heh, I'm not sure what it says about me that I don't know who Whang is and hadn't even heard of him. I'll give this video a watch though.

Then again I don't really actively explore gaming vloggers/streamers. There's just a few I follow for specific types of content, where "follow" basically just means I have them bookmarked (I do subscribe but I also don't regularly browse YouTube with my login so the subscription is pretty much purely to +1 their social profiles if I like them enough).

Incidentally I was actually thinking about the story of Final Fantasy VI like last night or the night before, thinking about at what point it becomes clear to a fresh and non-spoiled player who the ultimate villain actually is. Just random shower thoughts lol

Meanwhile I guess I'm still sitting in my own little corner playing my own games. Heh.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 29th June 2024 19:03

--------------------

current games (2024-08-02):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokemon Perfect Crystal
Dex

finished so far this year:
Tower Hunter: Erza's Trial
Giral
Aggelos
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins, Dark Devotion

Quote

For the big social networks, I'm hoping that the "federated" platforms, i.e. those that have smaller and "more locally"-hosted instances which then interconnect with each other, eventually outlast the big ones. These include Mastodon (and other things like Misskey) for Twitter, Lemmy (and Mbin) for Reddit, and Matrix for Discord. Growth is slow and takes time, but the fact that these platforms present smaller, individually-managed instances makes them more resilient to centralized problems of both technical ("site is down") and social ("owner/CEO is a horrible a-hole") kinds.

Thanks for mentioning these other platforms! I do exist on a Mastodon instance, but I prefer Bsky. I'll check out the others you mentioned.

I know someone who's been in the social media business for a LONG time, and trust what she has to say. She herself prefers Bsky to Mastodon, and has pointed out issues with the Terms and Services of various new social media. IIRC, she feels that Mastodon has its own set of problems, and indeed, I've seen friends "lose" their home on it due to the instance shutting down or the instance becoming overrun with bad actors.

It certainly will be interesting to see what happens with social media in the future. I kind of agree with you that HUGE centralized sites aren't always so great; see the issues that are happening with Archive of Our Own (AO3). A friend of mine is making smaller fanfic repositories, using AO3's open source coding but limiting the sites to a narrow scope, and I think this might be the way to go for the future. But we shall see.

This post has been edited by AltheaValara on 30th June 2024 23:25

--------------------

Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays & Thursdays: Final Fantasy VII -Rebirth-
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail

I'm pretty much only on Mastodon, with multiple accounts -- a bit of a useful accident, since I didn't quite understand how it worked at first, but this turns out to be somewhat of a good thing since it allows for better compartmentalization of my various interests while still allowing me to cross-communicate when desired.

Funny thing is that I basically wasn't much of a Twitter user before Twitter went to hell, but now I'm actually more active on Mastodon than I ever was on Twitter. (and more consistently...albeit still not that consistent lol)

I've had my qualms about Bluesky, knowing that Dorsey has some questionable views himself, and I personally prefer Mastodon for being fully open-source and also interoperable with other platforms (e.g. Misskey) via ActivityPub federation. I've actually had a couple accounts on instances that shut down...though this also taught me that the software has a feature to save a record of one's stuff and to port one's connections to a new account.

The compartmentalization thing I think is something I like, in my experience as a Mastodon user, though obviously this is a potential advantage with a variety of arrangements. In your words, it limits things to a "narrower scope", and that's what I think makes it work. With different groups that federate with each other, there's a way to "turn off" things one doesn't want to see, such as by checking the local feed, or (since I have multiple accounts) checking different accounts' local and even federated feeds since different instances "see" different federated feeds. And that's actually healthy because people don't always want to engage in all topics all the time, and depending on which instance I'm on, I can see more stuff about, say, videogames, or science, or politics, and I can switch between them on my own terms. If I'm not in the mood to read about politics, for example, I can avoid most of it, and if I'm in the mood, I go back to it. And different places don't just have different content but different vibes, different cultures, and even different rules. That's a lot more tailored to individual community needs.



Okay, how do I pull this back to being about FF6 and CoN and Whang/YouTube...

I actually did check out an FF6 version comparison video semi-recently. Dunno if I'll get around to playing the game anytime soon, though, since I've been trying to finish other big JRPGs.

I do reference CoN every so often in the wild myself though.

--------------------

current games (2024-08-02):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokemon Perfect Crystal
Dex

finished so far this year:
Tower Hunter: Erza's Trial
Giral
Aggelos
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins, Dark Devotion

Quote

I'm pretty much only on Mastodon, with multiple accounts -- a bit of a useful accident, since I didn't quite understand how it worked at first, but this turns out to be somewhat of a good thing since it allows for better compartmentalization of my various interests while still allowing me to cross-communicate when desired.

I definitely understand compartmentalization! I had two Twitter accounts (well, I still have them but haven't logged in them for ages). One was a more personal account that followed a lot of social justice accounts, and I ending up abandoning it because it got exhausting. For my other Twitter account, I curated who I followed so the subject of tweets I saw was mostly about video games, with a few favorite authors like John Scalzi and Courtney Milan thrown in. I do think there's benefit to being able to compartmentalize things, and so your multiple accounts on Mastodon does make sense to me.

That said...

Quote

I've had my qualms about Bluesky, knowing that Dorsey has some questionable views himself

Dorsey has left Bluesky's board and is no longer involved with the site, though I don't know if he still uses it himself or owns stock. But he's definitely not in control of it any longer. I'm not familiar with Dorsey's views to know whether they'd be questionable or not to me.

I find Bluesky allows for compartmentalization as well. Maybe not in what YOUR account posts... like if I post about video games or mental illness or cute cat photos it's all on my account, but I can compartmentalize what I read, which I like quite a bit. Bluesky allows people to do a bit of programming to set up Feeds that other users can subscribe to. For instance, the feeds I most check are the Craftiverse feed (picks up anything with a yarn ball emoji in it) and the Quieter Posters feed (which shows you messages from people you follow who don't post as often as the heavy users). I also follow a Final Fantasy feed, and a FFXIV Without Gpose feed, but I haven't been checking those lately for fear of Dawntrail/Rebirth spoilers.

This works well for me, and I've been very happy on Bluesky. I don't *mind* Mastodon but I find it harder to find people to engage with there... it's possible I'm just not looking in the right ways, or not even looking at all. I have less impetus to spend time on Mastodon because most of my friends are on Bluesky, not the Mastodon fediverse, plus I also like the culture on Bluesky. But it's certainly not for everyone, and I'm glad we have alternatives where people can find their happiness.

--------------------

Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays & Thursdays: Final Fantasy VII -Rebirth-
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail

Speaking of Mastodon and the Fediverse...

https://canvas.fediverse.events/

This just ended.

I suddenly realized that we can do a shout-out to CoN on there next year. Like posting the logo or something.

This year, anyone with a Fediverse account (basically anyone using an ActivityPub platform) could participate. I think that might be the case next year too.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 16th July 2024 07:44

--------------------

current games (2024-08-02):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokemon Perfect Crystal
Dex

finished so far this year:
Tower Hunter: Erza's Trial
Giral
Aggelos
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins, Dark Devotion