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?
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.
If rational you mean whatever CNN says then yeah forums are definitely good for that.