I actually only just discovered this place about an hour ago and loved everything about it straight away. What a breath of fresh air. I've been battling to find a decent online home for years now and I hope that this is it. No hand holding, no automoderators, no one to control the flow of information but yourself, for yourself. This is great. Years ago I used to use Reddit. Then certain news stories about Snowden and the NSA started disappearing from the front page for dubious reasons and I discovered Voat in the process. Loved Voat up until Reddit decided to Righteously purge itself of 'hate' subreddits and all of those fuckers came running to Voat, ruining it in the process. Since then I've just been using Reddit for one niche subreddit while every now and then wandering out of my safe space into the rest of Reddit, always horrified by just how much more batshit insane it has become since the last time I checked it out. Driving away the 'hateful' people has turned it into even more of an echo chamber than before (who would've thought that would happen) and it's created an environment where it's near impossible to discuss anything without being forced into being either for or against it. Well I've been vocal and critical in these moments (and I've noticed that from time to time these posts of mine simply disappear from the discussion but that's another story) and I guess it finally caught up to me because a couple of days after my last post (about pro wrestling) it seems that I have been IP banned from Reddit. Looking for information on this is what led me to find this place.. Anyway, I hope that this is the place I've been looking for all along. I'll probably be doing more following than being followed, I'm more of a commenter than a submitter but I look forward to being able to actually choose what I want to see and not see. I am from South Africa and my interests are games, modding, programming (absolute beginner), alternative music, politics and for good measure, some good old pro wrestling. Glad to have finally found this place!
Welcome to Hubski! It's a great place, indeed. Either commenting or posting is welcome, as they both could promote thoughtful discussion. I saw people welcome you here already, and I don't know how much they've told you, so I'm going to reiterate what I think is important to know here: Your name matters. Here, people are able to build genuine connection with each other due to the way conversations are ran. People will remember what you said, and you have time to think before posting. You seem like a reasonable person, but I'm going to say it anyway: take that time. The reason being... People are genuine here. Often enough, it leads to serious clashes even between friends. Sometimes, people will say things that will incite anger in you. Take the time to sit back or take a walk and think about what you want to say, and whether you want to say anything at all right now. If this is something you're not used to - which, coming from Reddit, you might not yet be expecting of yourself - it will take some effort. I'm sure you'll be fine in this regard, but, again, worth saying. If you need a place to start, there are a few tags you might want to participate in, commenting, posting or simply following. #AskHubski and #TellHubski are self-explanatory, and your topic doesn't need to be special to apply. If you notice a bug in how Hubski works, feel free to post the description to #bugski; the search is currently broken, with the devs working tirelessly to fix it. Site-wide announcements are made with #hubski and #devski, so you might want to follow those. I'm a Russian native, and this being a US-centric forum, people seemed to be interested in knowing what it's like to live in the mystical red land, so I post under #russiabynatives sometimes. If you're interested in the US politics and the shitstorm that's going on there, be sure to follow #sillyseason (about the silly part of it) and #seriousseason (about things not so funny). I'm sure you'll find a bunch of other tags to follow; just check the Tags tab. You might also find it interesting to follow the Hubski IRC channel, which you can access with the link below. There are quite a few dwellers, including myself, and people who visit sometimes (usually with prior announcements). Welcome to Hubski, and best wishes to your stay.
Welcome, welcome. TFG (ThatFanficGuy) seems to have got the ball rolling quite well. All I'd like to add is #newtohubski is a good tag to pair with any questions you have about the site itself if you're asking around in a post. Over time you may gravitate to following more tags than users, or vice versa - maybe even equally or not at all. I get the impression following people is more fulfilling as you can also fill your "chatter" feed and peek into different discussions. On a more serious note, it speaks more to ThatFanficGuy's point of building connections with other users on Hubski. That, truly, is where the fulfillment comes from. Anywho, there's a recent newcomer who got some great feedback on the culture of Hubski. So, if you're ever interested, then there's some nice posts embedded in this discussion: Enjoy your stay. :)