When I was a kid, around the early internet era I'm assuming everyone had similar experiences of the social internet. Specifically forums, built around a particular topic, or just literally chat forums where you'd create an account and interact with the same people regularly. (Bonus points if you could create a cool looking "sig") those people were always popular.
Facebook obviously killed forums off, but I'm spending a lot more time on the same forums, and interacting with the same people over and over again. Which I've come to the conclusion is actually a fairly good defense against Bots as you have a general idea of someone's normal behaviour.
Heck even Facebook, what originally killed off forums, just doesn't seem to have much use anymore. Most posting is in groups, which are essentially just forums.
Are we finally seeing the overdue devolution of the internet back into specific communities? This is great IMO by the way as places like X will always be common areas but places like this are great refuges. As long as intro threads don't make a comeback. Those things were always terrible.
How much time do people spend on single interest forums these days?
Some of never left forums. This place is a forum. I still peek into ar15.com, and I have accounts at overclock dot net, and most of the gun forums (TheHighRoad dot org, m4carbine dot net, lightfighter dot net)
Then there is my Arstechnica account, which I have had since July of 2000. I was a paid subscriber there until 2016; Trump absolutely broke everybody there, and I couldn't stand it anymore.
Of course forums are making a comeback. When Dom or Antonio chastise me here it is for good reason and I listen to the reasons why and am able to question if I find there to be reason to. On Reddit or other social media I'm being blanket banned from areas I wouldn't go to by people who won't justify their actions.
I'm not the worst Internet user and am seasoned enough to not foul up by accident but there are plenty of people still exploring who their online personas are and they need to experience embarrassment and humiliation in order to be the best them.
Forums, and good moderators, are a tried and tested method of allowing that to happen and you can joke without it seeming like you've committed a unforgivable crime.
Interesting idea I never considered. The moderated board structure forces you to adapt and grow into group of users. Maybe there's another forum you'll fit in with better, but being a lone wolf doesn't work unless you only want to lurk.
Social media must be the opposite extreme. Everyone can be their most badass narcissist self and eventually get praised and "affirmed" by someone somewhere in the world for it.
If that's true, let me know where you're finding 'em.
I assumed everyone was on discuck or similar chatting servers or something.
Forums are a indispensible source of info. Reddit is nice too. Unfortunately.. discord is where knowledge goes into a blackhole and lost.
I'm pretty much exclusively on forums and always have been I do think you're right with your points. Bots are definitely a factor I bet loads of people are fed up with the total inaction of social media sites when it comes to dealing with them. Groups give you a hell of a lot more control over who you let in and so on.
This is something I had an epiphany with RL and I've been trying to make this point to boomers I know who keep getting 90% scam calls on their phone lines. I have not bought a phone line, it used to be necessary for an internet connection back in the day as anyone over 30 will remember but nowadays it's totally unnecessary. I have a love/hate relationship with mobile phones but the fact that you can have a contacts list on them and you know when you get a phone call you can check it's somebody that matters is pretty nice.
I brought up phones, because I think the internet is the same way, it's all about how you use it. The only issue with communities and groups of course is tranny mods and mods in general having a power trip. I've ranted in the past how I had people who used to be quite good friends for awhile turn into massive weirdos over nothing. Even the people that knew them longer than me met round the back and basically confirmed yeah they just stopped being fun to hang out with.
Every method has it's negatives, I know the older generations especially shit on young people over not being able to form 'real social relationships' but at the same time how the fuck else are you supposed to meet people with the same interests? I think the biggest issue for younger people is often social mobility. Which is getting a hell of a lot more difficult these days. If you're surrounded by leftists and normies like I am you can't exactly go out and shoot the shit with people at random because not only do I have very little in common with them they'll get triggered over the most minor things I say.
I do like alt-tech, that's one thing I will point out, it feels much like old school internet where it's a gathering of nerds and autists which explains why despite everything I can shitpost here along with everybody else. These are corners of the internet that aren't necessarily private, just like 4chan they're too autistic for the average normie to even conceive and leftists immediately get frightened away after about 5 seconds because of 'mean trolls'.
What I've seen is everyone has their own Discord server. Which I guess is kinda like a forum (probably a bit more like IRC since it requires a separate application).
no, not everyone. not everyone wants to waste their time on a tranny grooming chat platform.
That I can confirm, then again if you go hunting in old code project they still use IRC rather than discord, but everyone else seems to move to discord and not forums.
reddit sucks for casual discussion. and most forums allow for more specific discussions without fear of being bumped down by that upvote system, and most don't have the retarded post upvote function at all.
I stumbled on Agora Road forums and joined them recently. It's for 'Vaporwave' discussion on the face of it, but the essence of the community seems to be fairly redpilled zoomies all harking for a past that they weren't a part of (hence the retro schtick). Made me want to jump in the mix.
I can't seem to get back into the ol' habits of forum checking and posting that used to come so naturally though.
I've noticed this too.
...I miss ps3hax... that was a great place for softmodding...
The nice thing about forums was/is that most weren’t up/downvote machines. I’ve come to loathe the mechanic.
People can cite factual evidence for an argument and be downvoted because they just don’t agree with it. Others can express a puffed up opinion and get upvotes by the hundreds. It is telling people that opinions are superior to facts.
Forums allow for discussion even with disagreements. Neither side is automatically judged by the number of votes they have. They stand on the merit of the words they say and not on votes.
Which forums do you recommend?
I don't recommend any.