It's rare to stumble across unplanned-for things like that nowadays.
The phrase "stumble across" made me think of StumbleUpon. And StumbleUpon made me think of HN.
I think we still have serendipity, but there's almost always some implicit popularity or recommendations filter. Hard to sample uniformly at random from the internet. And there doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for that, either.
Probably the best argument for readers sampling uniformly at random is actually on the supply side. It'd be better if content wasn't so optimized for popularity.
Comments
The phrase "stumble across" made me think of StumbleUpon. And StumbleUpon made me think of HN.
I think we still have serendipity, but there's almost always some implicit popularity or recommendations filter. Hard to sample uniformly at random from the internet. And there doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for that, either.
Probably the best argument for readers sampling uniformly at random is actually on the supply side. It'd be better if content wasn't so optimized for popularity.