From time to time I have the desire to discuss topics I am interested in with like-minded people, mostly stuff related to video games but different fields as well, and without having to be politically correct or having to call someone "they" or whatever the fuck. This seems to have become impossible on nearly all platforms.
Twitter? No comment.
YouTube? Heavily censored, nevertheless they are still allowing a few decent channels, but a lot creators have been forced to "self-censor" due to the ever present threat of demonetization.
Reddit? Some subs may still be relaxed, but KiA2 going private shows how dire the situation is, and it will only get worse.
Discord? Smaller servers can still be decent, but they hard to find and rare, the rest is full of woke normies and absolute filth. Even on gaming related discords one struggles to find decent people, and then there are still the moderators...
4chan? You won't get censored in most places, depending on the jannies of course, but most of the posts are of very low quality, a lot of spam, it is not a great experience for the most part.
I can't think of much else that is noteworthy, thus I'd like to know what you guys use and can recommend.
Sounds like somebody never used usenet.
You got that right, I am not that old and grew up in the late 2000s using TeamSpeak and 4chan, which (nowadays) is mostly low quality spam, with a few gems.
4chan has always been low quality spam. The site is usable because once you're accustomed to it your eyes just gloss over every spam post and pasta and you just read it like any other site