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I am not joking when I say that I thinked for hours about how do people find each other in 2025.

Currently, the world is in very weird state. People online are either using social video platforms or they are reading news or lurking in online forums in it's different shapes and forms.

Most chat platforms that I know had shut down and most alt social platforms are almost dead. Even Hackernews had started to see a lower amount of comments compared to previous years.

I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?

I am not joking when I say that I thinked for hours about how do people find each other in 2025.

Currently, the world is in very weird state. People online are either using social video platforms or they are reading news or lurking in online forums in it's different shapes and forms.

Most chat platforms that I know had shut down and most alt social platforms are almost dead. Even Hackernews had started to see a lower amount of comments compared to previous years.

I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?

It remains unclear exactly what, precisely, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is. The Trump administration first described this Elon Musk-led project as a non-governmental advisory entity, then presented it via Executive Order as a technology-focused office inside the White House (a repurposing of the U.S. Digital Service) and simultaneously a new governmental Temporary Organization.[1] Since then, Musk’s amorphous DOGE has sent detailees (some very young and inexperienced)[2] into various departments to seize reams of data or to embed themselves inside the agencies, worked to unilaterally dissolve key agencies, and facilitated the reckless slashing of staff throughout the government.[3] DOGE is carrying out its destructive rampage under the guise of targeting “inefficiencies,” but in reality Musk and DOGE have gutted essential government services that everyday people rely on, ignoring actual inefficiencies.[4]

The makeup and mandate of DOGE may be murky, but one thing is abundantly clear: Elon Musk has leveraged the project to ascend to power within the federal government.[5] President Trump and the administration have hemmed and hawed about Musk’s exact role while serving as a “special government employee,” but he quite plainly has been driving the DOGE agenda.[6]

Yet even while functioning as the most powerful actor in the federal government outside of the president, Musk has continued to lead multiple large companies that contract with and are regulated by federal agencies.

Reportedly, Musk is slated to soon take a step back from DOGE.[7] As he is potentially on his way out of the Trump administration, it is useful to mark the departments and agencies that his DOGE project has targeted during his tenure, and which overlap with his personal business interests.