186: Am I Being A User Right Now

July 5, 2022 9:01 AM

It's episode 186 of the MeFi podcast, with Jessamyn and I...and loup! Who joined us to talk a bit about their experiences with internet past and present and their last couple of years as they've been working here. The three of us have a long and winding conversation about community management, internet ethics, MeFi in particular, the recent transition process, etc. Runs about 90 minutes.

• play
• pause
• stop
• min volume
• max volume

Helpful Links

Podcast Feed
Subscribe with iTunes
Direct mp3 download

We were so busy just talking about Stuff that we did very little of the normal thread review this time, so the notes are real short. We mentioned in passing:

- jessamyn's adventures with the filtering Facebook
- the latest Transition Team update
- goofy amazon reviews e.g. this old post

Music

- On The Blue (With Apologies to John Coulton, Valve, Et Al) by cortex
- Make it Out Alive by Maaik
- A Conversation by thatwhichfalls

posted by cortex to MeFi Podcast at 9:01 AM (21 comments total)

loup it is such a surprising treat to hear you voice, it is like I suddenly know you... Hi there!
posted by Meatbomb at 9:16 AM on July 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

Hello, hello 😅
posted by loup (staff) at 9:50 AM on July 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

It’s great to hear from you Loup! Will this be a one time thing or will it be on a (maybe not every time but) regular basis?
posted by one4themoment at 2:55 PM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Will this be a one time thing or will it be on a (maybe not every time but) regular basis?

You tell me, I find myself to be rather boring... BUT I'm totally up for it if you want me to.
posted by loup (staff) at 5:25 PM on July 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

I always really enjoy the link-recaps, because there are things I miss and I'm interested in what other people are interested in, AND I loved this episode as you three dug into how online communities function (or don't).

re: sci-fi: if you play games, please check out Citizen Sleeper. It's IF with some minor game-y aspects. It is deeply, deeply affecting. Not quite scifi-western but definitely some frontier aspects to it.
posted by curious nu at 7:22 PM on July 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

It would be great to talk with loup on a regular basis, so I think it's a thing we can do. Maybe a link-recap episode!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:59 PM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed hearing from loup. I'm surprised to realize how little I knew about them, aside from the fact that they were smart and thoughtful. As a listener, I thought the conversation really flowed naturally in a way that often doesn't happen with guests on a podcast.

On the traveling to a city thing - I had the opposite experience. I grew up in the country but I've been living in the densest parts of cities my entire adult life. I've only had one real trip in the last three years, briefly visiting the southern edge of Puerto Rico. It was a real shock to be in a rural place again. There's fruit just hanging off the trees everywhere! Roosters in the morning! People offer rides to strangers! You can walk for an hour and not see anybody! I'm not keen to ever move anywhere more than three blocks from a subway station, but I sure do miss the opportunity to visit such places.
posted by eotvos at 8:21 PM on July 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Still listening so will check back in at the end but just wanted to say hi loup, so nice to hear from you!
posted by ellieBOA at 4:28 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hey it's loup! You have an amazingly relaxing voice, it's just great to listen to and put me in a good mood. Please do appear on more podcasts!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:43 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also, cortex's initials for his government name are JEM, which immediately makes me think of JEM and the Holograms, which is utterly delightful

And technically Loupe's name is pronounced "Loo," no 'P'!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:32 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well, I'm a regular listener which means I already liked the podcast which is even better now. Hurrah!
posted by kingless at 7:22 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, cortex's initials for his government name are JEM, which immediately makes me think of JEM and the Holograms

A fact which, when it very occasionally comes up these days, I will lean into with one or another joke about e.g. the degree of outrageousness involved. But when I was like eight and the cartoon was a well established cultural force I for whatever dumb reason found this distressing to the point that I insisted my name be initialized including my birth certificate name so that it'd be the meaningless and unscannable JEDM. There was a space quilt my mom made for me at some point that had that initialism on it, which I think was the major prompt for me voicing my opinion on the matter.
posted by cortex (retired) at 8:57 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't know what's going on, but this podcast has like the fifth Bob Seger reference I've heard in a week.
posted by michaelh at 9:27 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

loup, I disagree, Metafilter is gamified, at least for some people. You can hide favorites when reading the comments but there's no way to hide favorite counts on your own profile page.
posted by aniola at 12:25 AM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

This will be a running commentary kind of listen as it takes me a while to get through podcasts currently! Loup, since I read Mefi from France I’ve read your name as wolf since you joined! And Jessamyn, I describe myself as an outgoing introvert which confuses people sometimes.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:18 AM on July 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

The favorites thing is interesting. The controversy was resolved (or abandoned) before I started paying attention. I do notice favorites and am a little sad when a post on the blue gets 4. But, it is also true they if I talked to people at a party about something cool and was told 4 people actually read the thing and liked it, I'd be avery happy. I try to keep that in mind.

I am very glad favoriting is subtle and there are no down-votes here. I certainly value having an easy way to say, 'this is great but I have nothing meaningful to contribute."
posted by eotvos at 5:15 AM on July 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

I am a periodic listener rather than a regular listener. That said, I thought this episode was slamming. Hope to hear loup on the podcast again. I think it would also be cool to hear Brandon and/or other folks who are on the transition team. Y’all wouldn’t even need to talk about the transition team work necessarily (that would be cool, too). I like hearing more about the people who are a part of the community and people on the transition team are clearly invested in the community in a significant way and I would love to hear more from them and about them. Again, not necessarily about the transition work but perhaps also. Just a thought.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:12 PM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm trying out a couple of different ways of automated transcription.
* here's the otter.ai transcription, the first 30 minutes.
* here's the vosk transcription of the full episode; I was able to run this on my computer.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:09 PM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

It was great to hear from loup, who I've only seen communicate in a really careful and professional manner before! (Which is good in the contexts that I see it in.) And it was a good conversation in general, which happen to help me to peel away from obsessing over some hyperlocal drama that happened recently.

BTW, A Conversation is misattributed to me. I only made a comment about it. That was thatwhichfalls's work.
posted by ignignokt at 8:46 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thanks, fixed that.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:10 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Otter's done the full episode now; I've added some custom vocabulary, so it knows "Metafilter" now. I did some fixup, like "loop" to "loup", though I punted a bit with the pronunciation bit.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:49 PM on August 7, 2022