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wompt OP wrote

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Chairman_Meh wrote

That's the question, in physical spaces it usually takes some kind of organization and shared values of the locals and simply outlasting the influx of people until they get bored and move on, but does it do any good to want to hold/control a spot? The closest analogy I can think of to equate this or other online spaces would be squatter or houseless camps. The spot itself is 'valueless' in itself as they simply exist on it, not attempting to pull anything from it besides making use of it's natural features such as privacy, (un)desirability, (in)accessibility, and proximity to resources.

The analogy breaks down immediately though because none of those factors are relevant in an online space, and due to the nature of it's underlying technology the online space is a hierarchical structure by default, as only one person or group controls the existence of and access to the location, and has to pay others for accessibility to/from other locations, and the only way to 'keep' it is to employ those structures, and layer other ones on top of those to keep 'others' out or from overwhelming the place.

IDK. I keep trying to equate it to a real world environment but it's not. It takes resources simply to exist, and someone can come along to block or take up all those resources and knock it out of existence very easily. Everything else is basically secondary to that concern.

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