
Special.fish - daddy_drank
https://special.fish/
======
gpiancastelli
The first time I stumbled upon Special Fish was in the first comment on
another HN thread titled "Rediscovering The Small Web" [1], so if you find
Special Fish interesting you may also like some other things mentioned there.

I spent a couple of hours sufring the site and various personal pages linked
within some profiles. From my small sample, it seemed to be popular among some
sort of lo-fi designer/technoartist crowd. It was different enough from my
usual intake of the web to hook me up for a bit.

I was tempted to register an account, but gave up after reading the pitch:
"Special Fish is a place for exploring logs and lists." I mean... I've done
blogs (on both home-made and stock tools), tumblrs, micro-blogs (Twitter and
Identi.ca), small project-based websites, you name it. What is left to explore
on the logs/lists space, especially given the simple pages I've witnessed
across the site (and the simple tools given to authors, I guessed), that
signing up would be compelling? What are the results of this exploration on
Special Fish that are worth mentioning?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326329)

~~~
cookingoils
Thanks for the feedback. This is something I've been thinking about a bit
since launching it. I don't think SF necessarily does anything new or hooks
users and I'm okay with that. I actually intended the site be more focused
around the lists, but people really seem to enjoy logging their day-to-day
lives. Personally, I like reading these automatic thoughts from strangers.
Many people talk about quarantine routines, life goals, and ongoing projects.
It's cool to see all this overlap in how people are thinking right now. So
again, nothing new here, just a slightly different approach to a community
website.

I totally understand your hesitance on registering an account. There are so
many ways of blogging/journaling on the web already. I actually think it's a
good site to browse without ever needing an account. I'm looking at added RSS
soon so you won't even need to really visit and can use something like
Fraidycat to check in.

Also, SF was mentioned on Kicks Condor recently [1]. I like how they talked
about the site... "but it hadn’t even occurred to me to make a social network
that is just a directory". I hadn't really thought of SF as just a directory
either, but I like the idea that its only purpose is to be a directory of
people doing DIY stuff on the web.

[1]
[https://www.kickscondor.com/special.fish/](https://www.kickscondor.com/special.fish/)

------
cookingoils
Hey there, sorry that the site is down! Looking at getting things up and
running asap. Special Fish is a small community website so it wasn't built to
scale lol. For now, as mentioned by @bertman, you can browse an archived
version:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200420171359/https://special.f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200420171359/https://special.fish/)
Thanks Wayback Machine!

~~~
cookingoils
Cached version of the site is up again. Working on clearing up auth issues
now. Stay tuned...

Update: Okay we are back! Implementing more caching but should be working for
now.

~~~
gpiancastelli
Is Random now cached? I always stumble upon the same guy.

~~~
cookingoils
Thanks for reporting. Should be fixed now.

------
bertman
Archive version:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200421005016/https://special.f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200421005016/https://special.fish/faqs)

    
    
       Special Fish is a place for exploring profiles and lists. 
       You could think of Special Fish as a public word processor. 
       Usually rtf/txt files just sit on a user’s computer. 
       SF is about making those documents into a social network.

~~~
kickscondor
If you’re still confused, click on the dot in the upper left corner and you’ll
be on the home page. Each of those squares is someone’s profile page. Many are
just made of random lists or links. Others are detailed journals.

I think it’s turned out to be a great place to discover new people and as a
portal to unfamiliar places on the Web.

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johndough
Seems to be dead.

    
    
            °
           °
            °
           °
          <ₒ))><
        ~~~~~~~~~~

~~~
polycaster
Dead fish tends to float up. Just saying.

~~~
gorgoiler
Typical human cultural prejudice!

In fish culture “down” is of course the direction in which one falls, and this
is correctly depicted in the image.

It’s a common confusion, as Down vs Up is more nuanced in Fish culture. Fish
technology is extremely under developed: imagine inventing the screwdriver,
having it slip through your fins, and it immediately floating “up” into
oblivion.

Debate is still ongoing as to if this is why fish do not use screws, or if
it’s the other way around — if lack of screws was the reason they never
invented screwdrivers.

~~~
penagwin
This genuinely looks like it could have been generated by GPT-2 and now I
can't tell.

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jdironman
I actually really enjoyed this site. It was interesting driving into different
people's headspace or at least that's what it felt like.

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hymnsfm
It's a good day to visit Hacker News. Lots of interesting and insightful
submissions, including this one.

I especially get a kick out of creative domain names. This is one of my
favorites.

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nonbirithm
special.fish commercial:
[https://youtu.be/BAS-70KpNNA](https://youtu.be/BAS-70KpNNA)

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pandatigox
This is very interesting. Does anyone else have concepts for anti-social
networks?

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ghostpepper
What is this? Just a strange color theme for someone's blog?

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einpoklum
This had better be a story about food!

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mfrw
Failed to open :( ::<>

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thirtythree
Last time this was posted I took a look. It's a lot of gibberish and spam.

~~~
thih9
This seems subjective.

I’d use the same words to describe some other social networks.

~~~
thirtythree
You may, it doesn't change my comment though.

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_tk_
.......what....?

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pretzel_boss
what a fun website

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ComputerGuru
Connection times out.

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dstroot
Special fish died

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thescribbblr
Didn't open

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kalium-xyz
Its dead jim

