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I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

blog.danpetrolito.xyz · 1,307 words · saved by 1 readers

This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day. A year or so before COVID, our friend group dispersed across the world - I moved to Vancouver, one friend moved to the UK and another one moved to the United States. The rest of them still lived in Melbourne. Once COVID hit, like many others, we looked to find a way to keep in contact and still hang out. We have always been a big gaming group (both board game & video games) so moving online seemed like a logical choice. We had always used Discord so we started to ramp up our time there. Over the next year, our group chat (in Signal) was drowning in notifications. A mix of general chit chat, talks on the ever changing news of COVID and the most important - when can people play games and chat. It really annoyed me when people would post on "hey anyone wanna play [game] in 15 mins?", for it to be buried in another 5 messages. The message

This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day. Update (2/7/2025) : I'm genuinely blown away by the response to this post. This hit the front page of HN - there is some great discussion over there. A year or so before COVID, our friend group dispersed across the world - I moved to Vancouver, one friend moved to the UK and another one moved to the United States. The rest of them still lived in Melbourne. Once COVID hit, like many others, we looked to find a way to keep in contact and still h

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