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In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Quiet World”I first encountered this poem on a pamphlet handed out at my uncles funeral. It has remained one of my favourite poems of all time.
When I was younger it read as a sad poem about loving someone more than they love you. Now that I'm an adult, it feels more like a similar vibe to what I experience when I save the energy to make dinner for my partner when they get home from work.
I always wondered why the poem wasn't one hundred and sixty-seven words long. Perhaps this was all he could save for us.
Thats why some languages started to join multiple words to one word. Like German (Schifffahrt), Russian (Белэнергоремналадка) or Lithuanian (Daugiaaukštis). I'm sure more languages has this.
This was the first comment I favorited on HN, many years ago.
This reminds me of the "The big word factory" interactive story, where words must be bought (or found) in order to say them. It is a very well made and extraordinarily beautiful app for small children.
Beauty is best served with a tinge of melancholy.
this is great. thank you
Wonderful
I get the poetic license part but why the hell can't she text back?
I love this as an idea, but I suspect as a user, I would use either zero or one posts.
I do like the idea that the platform can actively disrupt the "addictive" patterns that develop elsewhere. Other things I've wanted:
- Instagram with an ML layer that auto-rejects pics with faces or text. Landscapes, vistas, animals, architecture etc all would be welcome.
- high latency Twitter, where no post is viewable until at least 2 weeks after it's published. Bickering threads become impractical. People learn to post stuff that will be worth caring about later.
- Clearly just for entertainment and not information Facebook alternative, in which GPT bots produce a significant fraction of posts, impersonating users and making stuff up. Everyone quickly learns you can't trust it, but it can still be cute/fun/humorous.
This product seems to combine a few unrelated ideas. No monetization, reverse-chronological feed, no notifications: sweet. Easier to have cleaner, more meaningful conversations with people, hopefully. In short, a nicer, ad-free, less-harmful Facebook. How will you pay for it if it ever gets popular?
I'm not sure how limited posts play into this. I think the intention is to make users really think about what they're posting. But the arbitrary, "nice, round number" limit just feels existentially dreadful at best, and like a headline-generating schtick at worst. Surely there's some other mechanism that can nudge people towards more thoughtful, less self-promoting posts (or whatever the goal is); maybe limiting posts to one a day?
I wonder what sorts of social media we'd see if it wasn't dependent on selling ads. The need to drive engagement and sell things to people tends to limit the types of social media. It's nice to see an experiment like this but I don't know if it will go anywhere.
I was thinking the other day of an idea where you take turns with people in your circle to become a 'star' for a period of time(day, days, week, hour, whatever) every so often. During that time you get the limelight, and become the focus of the group. Imagine that, during that tie period, you're encouraged to share more of the boring details of life. Like 5 minutes of every hour or two maybe.
Something like this appeals to me because I feel like I don't really connect with my friends on social media the way I would in real life. If I hung out with a friend, I'd experience more of the banalities and have a more complete picture of what their day to day life was actually like. Obviously that's not something you want to get blasted with every day in your feed, and it's not something you want the responsibility to produce every day, but let's say it happens once a year for each person.
I just feel like the Facebook/Instagram model promotes a focus on curated highlights of a persons life, which is fine, but doesn't really feel like friendship. I want something that replaces the experience of spending a day with someone. With all the distance between us these days, either from economic migration, the pandemic, or whatever, I really feel like I'm losing touch with my friends. Seeing their highlights on my feed or even communicating with them via text/im/voice just doesn't cut it. How can we provide that sense of connection remotely?
It's neat but seems ephemeral. Maybe that's the point.
I had a not similar but related idea, basically borne from my hatred of Twitter. Basically, you'd only be able to make a comment if you have a credit. Credits would be time based, probably 1 or 2 a day. The only other way to get credits is if the person you replied to likes your comment. Basically, the idea being to quit getting people being so controversial and argumentative.
Edit:
I kept replying below describing some vision that doesn't exist, which I feel is rude to the OP and Minus, so I'll not reply further. As I have little intention in building anything at the moment, feel free to take anything you like from it, Minus et al.
10 years ago, I launched a small modification to a social network I was running at the time - you could only post once per day. The quality of the content went through the roof, but it turned the product into more something like Medium. It had some upsides, but also some downsides. It was amazing to see how such a simple change can dramatically alter the nature of the product.
Reddit needs this but for upvotes. Tons of low quality posts starting with a barely funny joke that goes 15 replies deep with almost the same joke but less and less funny. If you only have say 5 upvotes a day, you won’t contribute garbage to a barely useful thread.
I know, I know, this is more art than a serious social medium (if social media can be serious): but I don't think the concept is as clever as it tries to seem. A project like this, even as an objet d'art, ought to inspire someone to interact with it, to poke at it and see what happens — but would anyone really bother? The limitations would make you think carefully about what you share with the community, but that caution works against building any sort of community, even an ephemeral one. It's just not attractive or engaging, like a painting you'd see in a gallery and walk past after a glance.
Interesting idea, but what's stopping someone from creating a second account?
The artist has many more gimmick projects like this if anyone else is interested
There was a social network "this" some years back, the idea being that you could make just one post a day. I enjoyed it a bit, and IIRC it didn't do too terribly.
Predictably, it's now gone.
Monetization strategy: $10 for 100 more posts.
What's always difficult when trying out projects like this one is that none of my friends are willing to join it with me, so I have to either talk to myself or to strangers. And this weakens the feeling of engagement for me.
(Site is down)
Here's the intro video: https://vimeo.com/587261149
Sounds a bit like the dev got stuck in the childhood fear/fantasy of "what if the more words I speak, the sooner I die"...
An interesting concept. Are there limits to just creating a new account when the 100 posts are used?
It could be interesting to have an account with a maximum number of posts, use the last post to announce your next account and thus periodically it forces each of your followers to make a conscious decision on whether or not to remain following you.
Notable that you can edit comments after posting, which makes the number of posts you can make virtually limitless.
It strikes me as strange that "Social Networks" assume or differentiate based on "social media". Social networks moved from connecting people to posting to create an inventory where ads could fit. It seems like removing the posts from a social network could be an interesting unlock.
Yeah wordpress doesnt scale. hug of death
In my mind the best social network would limit people to 1 post per week (or month?). Then no one is creating more noise than anyone else, you get to what's really important, and you can actually catch up with everyone.
my biggest problem with this idea is that many people are already hesitant to write/post online. limiting the number of posts they are allowed to make might make their post anxiety even worse.
i do like the sentiment behind it though
It would be interesting to have a network with a time bank like BBSs were. You get x time every Y hours to read or comment. It would be like noprocrast but not configurable. I think I may make it...
I don't use social media, so I'm probably not the target audience anyway -- but I don't understand this at all. It just seems like an arbitrary and stupid limitation.
I would prefer if it was like 3 or 5 post a month.
Since that way you're never at the end of your line and it would still avoid a lot of the noise which I think this site hopes to achieve.
This comes from the same galaxy as https://www.yourworldoftext.com/
How about the last post being a redirect to new account?
How about I throw in a shitload of money only request is that you allow me to post regardless of that limit?
Concept seems flawed.
Hey, nice idea!
Not sure if that an expected behavior or not, but after login I get straight into WP panel.
The old "X" but with new cool restriction "Y" startup idea. Like Twitter or Snapchat.
That's such a lovely idea. Reminds me of a game made by one of my friends: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1-chance/id1529736678
The game itself seems pretty trivial. What makes it really interesting is that you get only one chance to play it.
This but limited to 100 friends.
Tangential plug, I launched my own social network without feed, notifications, or even a way to find people there.
It flopped everywhere I promoted it, but it is still online since I am on free tier of the host service.
If anyone wants to check it:
I'd rather it be: you post it, and others will see it in 100 days.
Is there no way to view the timeline without creating an account?