Thoughts on the Historic Role that /R/HomeNetworking played during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Today, June 15, 2021, is the day my state (California) has lifted most Covid related restrictions. It's not a particularly noted day though. People here were already relaxing on Social Distancing and outdoor mask wearing. The number of vaccinations have increased throughout my state and country these past 3 months, so it's not as remarkable a day as it might have been.

But California was the first state to announce and enforce a lockdown and mandatory work-from-home, which became a trigger to it happening everywhere. So the official lifting of these mandates seems to be at least a turning-of-the-page to a new chapter, for my state, my country, and hopefully the whole world soon with this Pandemic. The freeways are jammed again, face-to-face meetings are happening, and a sense of normalcy is slowly returning.

But by no means is Covid “over”; India, Uganda, and so many other regions in the world are still suffering horrendous deaths. Our friends in the UK still have 4 more weeks of lockdown restrictions. Japan, Australia, and South Korea are just starting to roll out vaccination plans in their countries. And just recently the CDC is calling the Delta variant of the virus a “variant of concern”. Many are predicting that Covid and it's variants will be with us for quite a long time, much like a seasonal flu, and that booster or new vaccines might have to be taken annually. The future is still unclear.

So I realize that “celebrating” in the face of others' ongoing trials and hardships can be seen as blindly distasteful, if not extremely self-centered. I realize that this sub and Reddit as a whole leans towards being “America-centric”, and that is not my intention here at all.

My intention is simply to find an opportunity to praise and thank the members of this sub. I'm just choosing this day to do it, coinciding with the official lifting of Covid restrictions locally, because what other arbitrary day can I choose to do so, and it would make sense to the world? So I'm just going to do it now.

I'm not at all exaggerating when I say that, overnight, Covid-19 related lockdowns and the immediate and sudden shift to work-from-home caused the biggest boom in interest in Home Networking in *human history*. Never has a fundamental change in society happened so quickly while having so many homes connected to the Internet, and so dependent on it. The last time a pandemic occurred, physical mail was the dominant form of long-distance communication.

And as many of the regulars here know, there were just so very many people who are completely lost when it comes to understanding and implementing Home Networking technology. The surge in desperation was palpable, and immediate. We went from a smaller, somewhat intimate group that squabbled with each other about Ubiquiti and seeing only around 20-30 questions a day to suddenly being completely flooded with endless questions about everything.

Very often during this time, I would estimate the number of posts on this sub by sorting by “New”, and then counting the number of pages of questions that happened within a 24 hour period.

This sub quickly went up to 150 posts a day during the first weeks of lockdown, then 200 as more people searched and found /r/HomeNetworking, and then regularly 300 posts a day for months, with occasional days of 4-500 posts. It “slowed down” somewhat during the summer months to “only” 200 or so, only to peak again back to 300+ in August / September 2020 when online schooling was the new standard, and a whole new wave of worried parents found this sub again. Posts were happening so fast and furious during these peak panic times that it was impossible to read all the topics and responses on this sub, when before you could read them all easily in under an hour.

And the members of /r/HomeNetworking met that call, and did our best to help as many people as we could, selflessly and consistently.

We had the long-time regulars who are always present, starting way before I did on this sub, who played to role they always played before, just to newly unprecedented demand. These are the “backbone” members who still play that role today.

But we also gained so many new voices and helpers, some that have come and gone, others who are still here. Steady Eddies that would take a few questions a day, every day (my model), whenever they felt they could. New advisers that would log in during a specific time and just bang out questions on their “shift”. A few “supernova” types, who would come on, answer questions non-stop for a few weeks and then burn out and retreat. Even guys that would answer one question and never be seen again.

And all of us, each and every person who took the time to try to help someone else in their great time of need, should be very proud of the work we did here during the Pandemic. We changed lives and gave people a pathway to stay employed, an avenue to entertain themselves and their families safely, and a gateway to continuing education in wretched times.

A cosmic collusion of circumstances provided all us Home Networking Nerds the opportunity to take our hobby (or profession) that was niche and seemingly only important amongst ourselves, and have it suddenly become the hottest topic in the world, and our advice and expertise now seen as precious gold. It's almost like a exaggerated Hollywood movie, where the forgotten misfit becomes the crucial hero in the story. And it played out for real, right here on this sub.

And we met that challenge, head-on. Realize that each time you helped someone, you helped one person immediately, and dozens more silently, who were either lurking and too afraid to post, or others who found your answer in a future search and didn't need to post again. Your answers and helpfulness echoed throughout the Pandemic, affecting multiple people who you'll never know, and will continue to echo on in the future too. It's hard to say exactly how many people we reached with this echo effect, but hundreds of thousands world-wide seems reasonable, and millions isn't too big a number to be correct, given how long the stay-at-home order lasted and how pervasive it was. I wonder what others on here think is the number of people we reached could be.

And we did it without prejudice, or judgment. In America, we were going through one of the most divisive and fractured times in recent history. We had multiple cultural protests, marches, and outbreaks of violence reflecting our political divide. We also had perhaps the most contentious Presidential Election in recent memory, that played on those differences and pit us against each other even more during the harsh political season. All during the heart of this pandemic, causing stress levels to go through the roof.

But none of that influenced this sub, or our willingness to help *anyone*. I think it's fair to say that a rural user using a WISP has a strong chance of being politically different than the 1 Gbit user from a major city. But all questions were welcome, and politics and culture wars never played a part in answering them. That aspect is not only commendable, but perhaps hints at a better future, where we clearly see we really are more alike than different. We all just want good Wifi (but, of course, Ethernet is better).

I wrote to the Reddit bigwigs and Admins about our little sub while all this was going on, and how we were perhaps second only to /r/Coronavirus in helping Reddit users directly during the Pandemic. There were some really dark times of loneliness and hopelessness during Covid, and /r/HomeNetworking was a consistent bright spot that showed the best of humanity daily. I told the Admins of Reddit they should promote our sub (make us a Sub of the Day already!) and that the message of “we are in this together”, and how we can treat each other decently across all our differences, and focus on things that matter to us all were never more exemplified than it was right here on /r/HomeNetworking. It was truly a beautiful thing.

But they never responded. We never got any official recognition from them. That's OK, I guess, but kinda lame, really.

So that is why I'm recognizing what we did, and how important and impactful it was, even if Reddit does not. I realize it's a bit self-congratulatory, like giving an award to myself in a small way, but I don't care. It's the truth.

We played an important role in the history of the Pandemic. When others were in great need in our specific knowledge, suddenly and out of nowhere, we did our best to bring happiness and stability to everyone. So whenever you look back at this memorable time, if you ever took the time to help another human here on /r/HomeNetworking, you should remember it and be proud. I applaud you, I thank you, and I'm proud to say we did our job here and did it well.

And if the Delta variant of Covid-19 becomes a future problem, or another pandemic strikes, /r/HomeNetworking will be ready and willing to help anyone, once again.

That's what we are known for.