Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD

I find these old school forums fascinating. How does that even work, to have a thread of 192,211 posts about Qualcomm?

https://www.siliconinvestor.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=36035

Suppose the average post is about 1 paragraph long. One paragraph is about 150 words. So 192211 * 150 = about 29 million words. For comparison, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is only around half a million words.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are more words about Qualcomm in that thread than the total amount of internal and external documentation and financial guidance that Qualcomm itself has ever produced.

Surely users aren't expected to read the entire thread before adding a post? But I think I remember seeing old forums where that basically is the expectation. And honestly... that's pretty cool. It seems better than the new social media, where we keep having low-effort recurring debates. I like the idea of adding to an enormous pile of scholarship in cyberspace. A Ship of Theseus discussion which may outlive any individual participant, but has a semblance of continuity all the same, like an undergraduate college society with a 100+ year history.

Time for a cyberpunk revival. Retro-cyberpunk, we could call it.