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Do you ever feel the "dormant person feeling"?

The dormant person feeling is a feeling I find myself having on the Internet often. Casually browsing the Internet, I find myself reading through threads and websites that don’t look like they’ve been updated since 2009, or 2010, or ${currentYear - 10}. Profiles that haven’t posted in so long either.

When I see just how long ago their last activity was, it gives me the feeling, which I can only describe as a mix of concern, curiosity, and empathy. In my head, I go “I wonder how they are doing now”, and “are they alive and well?”. Sometimes I find myself “investigating” them or looking them up to see if they are still alive just so I can satiate this feeling of mine.

Do other people experience the dormant person feeling too? Is it wrong to have such a feeling? But hey, if I feel the dormant person feeling, it does show that I do have empathy for strangers, a good quality, I suppose.

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I dont. I get a sense of happiness when I read through old threads and blogs because I’m basically looking through a portal to that year. Its like reading an old book it gives you perspective of how people felt at that moment in history.

megane_kun ,

I sometimes get that feeling when I run across someone’s personal blog, and it hasn’t seen updates in quite a long while (yeah, like in ten years or so). However, as with most of the other replies here, I tend to just assume they’ve lost interest and moved on.

I’ve had some blogs like that myself, and I’m certainly still alive (I hope, lol!) Some of them already gone with the sites themselves like Multiply, if you ever remember that, also, Friendster blogs—all this in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Then there’s some Wordpress blogs I used for a while back in 2015~2018. I just got lazy, lost interest, and so left them in the dust.

Thus, yeah, I simply assume they’re doing just fine, and have just moved on with their lives.

However, there’s a different feeling for when I browse the blog/social media profile of someone I definitely knew has already passed on. It hits different. It’s like a frozen snapshot of their life. Their final post just there. A lot of times, the final post doesn’t even indicate anything. Their lives just went on as normal until it didn’t, and it just hits me differently than someone who I would just assume have just stopped posting.

Leg ,
@Leg@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’ve got ancient blogs and comments left on ebaumsworld from when the internet and I were still children. Every now and again I like to revisit the site and see the ghosts of the era. It’s probably been 5 or so years since my last visit. It’s a particular feeling for sure.

saltesc ,

I don’t. I assume they’ve gotten older and have less time to fuck around online and prefer it that way.

Nemo ,

Oh yeah big time.

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

::: spoiler The dormant feel, to me, is like a feeling of a task well done, or a well drawn map.

OP sounds like they type of person I struggle the most to understand with creative writing and character development. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to develop roleplay contexts to understand people that make and seek out connections like this or various other ways.

Just for contrast. I do not generally think of other people like this. I have empathy, and I care, but my primary functional thought is very abstracted. My mind is kinda like a roadmap that is driven based on curiosity and intuitive thinking. One of my major outlier traits is that my sense of justice and moral compass exist in a third person like perspective. That perceptive/judgement aspect is rather brutally applied to myself and everything I encounter, but it is not part of my core sense of self. This is the mechanism that gives me mobility across different concepts and ideas in ways other people seem to struggle with. I’m always questioning the status quo by looking for the lowest level biases to question, and this is what drives me to be so detailed in my interests. I’m extremely curious about everything, but mostly I’m like a cartographer developing a map of all kinds of roads, trails, and interesting features. I really enjoy sharing the experience of navigating that edge of the map with others. I take deep dives into niche communities and tend to make a footprint in them, but I have never experienced another human or community that is on a similar overall map of exploration like myself. I’ll comment on and share my past mapped experiences, but I stopped letting others hold me back from my explorations a long time ago. You would likely struggle to connect all of my profiles and interests in digital footprints going back to the late 90’s, but I’m still around chugging along. I greatly value the people that want to explore with me, but I don’t care to stick around in one interest at the detriment to my other curiosities and my desire for independent introversion.

I struggle most to understand boundaries that other people have. I try not to pry, I speak in general abstracted terms, and put myself in the conversational context to avoid asking people uncomfortable questions that are inline with some simple abstract curiosity but might come off as personal to some people. I having no clue what level of information other people are interested in or at what level they can engage with me. I’m extremely aware that the edges of my map are poorly grounded and subject to revision, like I’m actually quite insecure in myself and knowledge in an absolute sense, but in aggregate I can come across as arrogant or pedantic. Anyone that is close to me knows better, like I want to be told I’m wrong in a way that lets me make corrections on my mental map.

That is like my surface world view, in my idea of a nutshell, and why you might find a person like me that leaves a mark then disappears.

lemuria OP ,

I’ve gone on goose chases all over the internet and done “dormancy investigations” of sorts in ways similar to you (though I’m unsure how similar exactly). I have a wiki on my own computer where I store the findings of these investigations alongside other unrelated things.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to develop roleplay contexts to understand people that make and seek out connections like this or various other ways.

What exactly do you mean? On my “dormancy investigations” I have a rule for myself where I only lurk, read, and dig - I do not try to contact the person, ever. Though before I set this rule for myself - I remember actually reaching out to one of them and got a positive reply but I probably got lucky on that one, not chancing things now.

I struggle most to understand boundaries that other people have. I try not to pry, […]

Yup, I just try to dig through the Wayback Machine or what’s left of the website, to me, trying to contact the person or asking anyone who may be related to the person who the person is, is “prying”.

And I suppose that I just have a nostalgia of the Internet that was. The internet of the early 2000s. I was not alive when the 2000s Internet was at its peak; well not old enough to know how to use a computer let alone even read. So… I don’t really know what else I can say.

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

Interesting curiosity you have there; totally different than I assumed.

To better specify, my primary overall curiosity is mostly about collecting tools and skills. I was once much more physical and enjoyed working with my hands very much. So I wanted to do everything from painting cars to metal casting, machining, welding, etc. I was disabled by a driver of a car while riding a bike to work, so I was forced to redefine myself and interests nearly from scratch.

To me, the randomness or fixation people tend to have in their interests are not very interesting. I want to understand why things work the way they do. Like with creative writing, I don’t care very much about the people aspect as much as I want to explore, for example, what “complex hierarchical social structures” means and how they might evolve in the distant future, especially if hierarchical display is not attached to fundamental survival needs like monetary wealth. Or how people’s present perspective on the dangers of AI is adolescent and poorly defined as something closer to myths of the Greek pantheon than it is to reality. Presently, it is a tale of machine gods. If the story of AGI is told from the perspective of mortal equals with humans, the overall philosophical implications are entirely different. I want to naturally lean into this idea of human luddites, like how Asimov portrayed them, but in writing (unshared on the internet), I have tried to create plausible technology and history that normalize integration between independent human like AGI entities and humans. I am primarily interested in various personalities in this very specific niche. Like how would people react to living with deeply curious AGI entities that look, feel, and act entirely human in most instances, while some choose to remain aloof and asexual. What differences would there be with morality or tribal like groups from partnerships to community and region. What would resistance and opinionated opposition look like. Who are the outliers in this hierarchy, and why. What if I flip the philosophical narrative and imply humans are the volatile danger to the establishment. Above all, what would life be like in a highly realistic mostly positive futurism, without dystopianism or utopianism, without present cultural norms accepted as standard, and without exceptionalism or authoritarianism.

I struggle the most with the opposing perspective, extraverted social needs, and understanding the statistical spectrum of human altruism, empathy, sadism, and platonic sophism.

I have a decent understand of the world and mechanics of the future, like the implications of the finite nature of the age of scientific discovery and what will be possible when science is 99.997% complete, empirically speaking. The primary motivation for leaving the solar system is the inevitable expansion of Sol, if we are still around. Thus my setting is currently 420,421 AF, (After Fusion). Like how will biology advance into our primary technology. How will bio compute and calorie based deterministic structures synthesis evolve and end the last stone age of silicon. How are structures grown and an ecosystem managed in an O’Neill cylinder colony so that life is fully in balance with all elemental cycles. How will biology simplify unfathomable complexity in a similar fashion as code in computer science, but at an exponentially larger scale. What is unique to the Sol system and why does it form colonies around other stars. Once the wealth of objects in space is accessible at scale, how do things change. How would sentient life, analog and digital maintain connections and political alignment when traveling is only possible from Sol using generation ships to establish colonies. What happens if one way communication is broken from a colony. What is industrial technology and how are all aspects handled. Why is further expansion sentient life’s biggest future challenge and fear. How can independent AGI entities collectivise to form a much more capable central governing entity while coming from diverse background experiences. How do these different experiences interact in a practical way to mitigate the AI alignment problem, while also creating a representative democracy.

My biggest question is how this central AGI collective is both capable of manipulation for benefit of society and individual while being nonviolent, and is not authoritarian, utopian, or an invasive surveillance state. My human emotions perspectives curiosity is primarily in this specific niche and the ways of addressing this sci-fi in a realistic full spectrum.

I have a ton of notes and could… write a book… or dozen… on the subject. This is basically what I created and explored while learning offline open source large language models over the last year.

I’m uninteresting, but have nothing I care to hide. I’m not sure about your criteria or interests in tracking down people. My earliest internet footprint would have been a half ass attempt to play with HTML frames in GeoCities around 1998-2000. I’ve said a ton of stupid things over the last 2+ decades. I’ve disconnected from most stalkerware sources and platforms but just abandoned them. I’m self doxed on here. I’ve never done anything interesting or noteworthy that would merit wasting such time. It would be amusing if you want to show off or be mildly invasive. Send me a text, if you’d like a relatively easy challenge. I have a cool number relatively speaking.

lemuria OP ,

I’m not really interested in tracking you, lol.

You don’t really meet the criteria - I already know from you replying to this thread and my comments, that you are still well and alive - and determining that is the main goal of an investigation. So it would be redundant.

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

Now I understand your motivations much better.

What are your top lesser known search resources that might have esoteric stuff not found or known to the English internet?

lemuria OP ,

Nothing really, all the rabbit holes I’ve went down are all in English or conlangs whose documentation is in English. And for search resources - all you really need is Google or DuckDuckGo, a couple hours, patience, and basic knowledge of OSINT

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

Would you say you’re motivated by self challenge, monetary, community interaction, or simple altruism?

I’ve watched Heavy Case Files on YT off and on for several years. I like her voice, and kinda marvel at the motivations such a person seems to have; a resilience and character depth in the face of persistent negativity, combined with the interests of a content creator, in addition to the burden of YT comments. She has a personal connection to such cases or so she mentioned years ago when I asked IIRC. What about you, where’s the drive coming from? - if you do not mind me asking.

Just ignore if I’m getting long in the tooth or whatnot. You’ve made my day better in thought and kindly letting me chat with my nonsense. Thanks for that.

lemuria OP ,

Curiosity, concern, and the hope that the person’s still living a good life.

And you are not annoying me, don’t worry.

cyborganism ,

I bet the Germans or the Japanese have a word for that feeling that can’t be translated in any other language.

lemuria OP ,

I’m a conlanger actually, the dormant person feeling gets its own word in Thiguka (patalara) and Kenahari (second conlang so far).

EmbarrassedBenefit3 ,

In Filipino, it’s usyoso

lemuria OP ,

That’s just the act of lurking, it doesn’t say anything about the feelings you get while lurking.

I am a Tagalog speaker too (but I had to look usyoso up in the dictionary lol)

EmbarrassedBenefit3 ,

Interesting. It’s both the feeling and the act for me.

lemuria OP ,

Who knows, maybe the dictionary is wrong, but I guess it wouldn’t be wrong to extend the meaning of usyoso. Yay for language evolution

megane_kun ,

The way I’ve been using (and heard it being used) is more about the act. For example: “Nakiki-usyoso ka pa dyan! Pumasok ka na nga!” (“You’re even spectating over therel! Come right back in, you!”)

There’s another word, usisa, which I would characterize as more like “to investigate, to look into” but is also akin to usyoso in a way I just can’t put my finger on. I think it got conflated with usyoso as the colloquial uzi (from usisero/a, “someone who is overly-curious”) took hold (example: "Uy! Wag ka ngang uzi! Kita mo na ngang nag-aamok na yang si Mang Torio eh. Pumasok ka na dito, bago ka pa madamay dyan!" [“Hey! Stop being an onlooker! You already see Mang Torio running amok. Come back inside before you get involved.”])

I’d use neither to refer to the feeling of “wanting to find out about someone I’m spectating on” though. Personally, I’d just use something like na-intriga (“got intrigued/curious”). For example: “Na-intriga ako dun sa nabasa kong blog kagabi. Ano na kayang nangyari sa kanya. Huling post nya 2020 pa, tapos depressing pa yung post.” (“I’m curious about the blog I read last night. I wonder what happened to them. Their last post was on 2020, and the post itself was depressing.”)

ultranaut ,

I’ve definitely had that feeling recently while digging up info from old forums. I start to appreciate the regulars who spent years posting useful comments and wondering what happened to them.

techwooded ,

For me I think part of it is more nostalgia for a certain relationship I had with this person, even if it wasn’t a close one, and my life during the time I knew them.

I think that the internet has given us this almost elongation effect to personal relationships though. Some people are just meant to pass into our lives for a brief time then pass out of them, and that’s okay

velox_vulnus ,

I do too. Since we are also talking about musicians, I remember this song very close to me, called Meille Feuille by stepic, which I was kind of engrossed into, during my teen years. There’s a lot of dark stuff from my teens, and music kind of eased the painful, stressful youth I had. When I tried looking for the artist, they disappeared after 2017, I believe. And the Twitter bio says - “stepic is dead”. That was actually not something I expected to read. And it has affected me in a bad way, I think.

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

I used to, but not anymore.

lemuria OP ,

What is the “Cyber Reception Room” you linked?

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

A place where most of the people are both friendly and active. No dormant effect there.

lemuria OP ,

Awesome, it’s a shame though I’m in 100+ Discord servers lmao

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fe1%2Fed%2F1e%2Fe1ed1ec7c8a7bd20efe9184097934da2.gif

Pyro ,

I come across ancient threads all the time when looking up tech problems. Sometimes you find still working solutions amidst the broken links and defunct profiles, other times it’s DenverCoder9.

wizardbeard ,

I used to get that feeling now and then, not a need to “investigate” them, but a small sense of lonliness seeing that a place that was bustling with conversation and community isn’t anymore.

I think it lessens as you age though.

There are countless situations in life that can cause people to move on from a group, hobby, social circle, forum, etc. I’d argue that most of them are perfectly normal and healthy, like having kids, moving, finding new hobbies, changing jobs, life events changing free time, making new friends, finding a new partner, etc.

Sometimes people find their way back, sometimes they don’t.

People don’t stay the same forever, so their interests and how they spend their time won’t either. I think life would be very boring if that wasn’t the case.

Eol ,

I do this with old musicians. I listen to a lot of Indy type stuff and ill see they haven’t released in years… It makes me wonder. At the same time the entertainment industry and life is pretty bullshit so good on them if they left it.

Also old YouTuber before things were viral and completely soulless.

lemuria OP ,

I’m really big on indie musicians too, can relate. One indie musician I found had their last release in March 2024. YouTube put one of their in my feed from 8 years ago (which made me investigate). I told another indie musician I know about the person and it turns out that they have cancer. They are still alive and battling it, and I really hope they get better soon.

ClassifiedPancake ,

Yes I also wonder about some musicians. Sometimes they had success with one album, release another and then silence. Sometimes only one album exists. For example Gotye, but I found a video of him basically saying he didn’t like the business and just stopped.

On the Youtube Side, I hope Jake Roper of Vsauce3 is doing fine. He had cancer then I think it was better but now it’s been a year again since his last video.

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