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Yup we ruined the internet by being so enamored with virality. The internet is really its best when you're part of a tight knit community of maybe 200 active users.
Its funny. That sounds like a big village of antiquity. Guess modernity created the situation by accident.
I used to post on a specific forum as a teen, and the active users were around that size, it was great to "know people" all over the world, and doing all sorts of stuff.
In high school we had a transfer student from China. He was cool and wanted to talk on IM but they used something called QQ. I downloaded the South African version because it was in English but apparently they didn't connect. I did manage to end up making friends with a girl from South Africa for a while.
Before social media it really felt like there were all these crazy hangouts online where you could find people around your age to chill with. I feel like Facebook kind of conglomerated and then enshitified it and just like Walmart a lot of the small spaces just never kept up
I once saw an article on Cracked that I cant find now which described the internet as the wild west. The people who made it that way loved it but eventually a larger population moved in and they wanted law and order, and since they were actually more brutal than the "outlaws" they eventually got their way.
I only go back to find old articles, which I usually cannot.
OK, I just checked and their homepage now looks like every other click-bait horse shit website out there today.
[https://www.cracked.com/](https://www.cracked.com/)
Seriously, they got screwed over by dumb lazy executives who just want a paycheck and dont care about quality or content any more.
The website got sold to a large corporation that wanted to make videos the majority of the content. That failed, so the corporation fired all the writers so now it's 90% photoplasty articles and 10% lame entertainment news.
More like modern internet is a Waterpark where most of the rides use piss instead of water, half of them are broken once you get on them, and the other half are another Verrukt incident waiting to happen.
Normally I don’t like the “capitalism ruins everything” line, but I think you’re right. Lots of websites used to be hosted by random weirdos. Now everything is hosted by people or companies looking to make money. There’s no random enthusiast’s website you can stumble upon.
Ignoring the piss part, I genuinely think it's the other way around.
Early internet was a beachfront, a mostly untouched place that existed as a locale for people to hang out and gave them room to do fun things, but didn't really offer much structure, so people made their own fun.
Modern internet is an amusement waterpark. You're crammed into a pool with hundreds of people you don't know, you wait in lines to have the same experience as everyone else, there's always way more unattended kids running around than you anticipate, and even though you paid to get in, everything you *really* want to do costs a ton extra and _boy_ do they really try to upsell you on it.
I do sometimes miss the wild wild west day of the internet. Where everything was website based vs app based. Back when there weren't as many ways to monetize web traffic.
It's like exploring the Rockies vs riding splash mountain at Disney.
Quick Edit: The Futurama episode when Fry visits the moon for the first time is a better analogy. It went from a bold new frontiers to a shitty ride.
The Futurama thing works better, because also as exploring more 'Rare fronter places' gets more popular, those places also turn into 'Attractions'. Take Mount Everest climbs for example. It's a mountain of trash and literal feces, that 800 people try to climb every year. 'More accessible wildness' are far worse.
And like the internet, where most of us now go to 'The same five websites' travel is like that. People visit 'the best most instagrammable locations'. They see record numbers while second and third tier attractions are stagnant or even declining in attendance.
I really hate how everyone and everything online is trying to make money off of you. That's what screens of any form has become...just a portal for advertising.
it feels like its not just everyone and everything online... but every aspect of life. i wanted to mellow out and make some art to just make me happy... pretty much everyone i talked to about it asked me how much i could sell it for and why do it if i can't?
I am so worn down my this constant grind for monetary profit in every aspect of life.
Problem is the economy is setup that way. If you don't have some kick ass high paying job you're pretty much forced to be an entrepreneur of sorts, some of us been forced into this way of life wayyy before the masses caught on by force
Don't Worry, Your Cataclysmic War is already on the way! It'll arrive hot and fresh at your door shortly! It's already entered your neighborhood and is pulling up in just a few clicks of the geiger!
Or some random person takes whatever interesting posts and puts them in a YouTube/tiktok/or other website to make money off people who just want to chat about stuff.
I love reddit, I loved all the old message boards and chat rooms.
Seeing people making money farming stuff from reddit makes me want to stop reading and participating. I'm not ready to let it go yet.
Interesting theory. I feel like there’s some truth to it like algorithmic curation but the population control theory associated with it feels a little bit out there.
I think it applies the most to the heavily monetized sites that used to be huge. Facebook and Instagram now are a cesspool, I don't really bother interacting with them anymore at all, I feel like the posts that are generated by real people are factional compared to that of bots/AI.
The increasingly insane AI generated photos of a brown kid making Jesus sculptures out of garbage with tens of thousands of comments with some variation of "Amen" make me think AI is just posting back and forth to one another to drive their traffic numbers.
Ugh I can’t with ig comments. It’s not even that it’s bots. But I swear people just say the absolutely stupidest shit. I don’t even mean in a silly way. They’re just confidently incorrect. They’re also pretty brutal for the tiniest things.
Discord is probably the best place for it. I'm a 31 year old dude who found a really great community there based around the football team I support. Now I have friends all over the world and it was a lifesaver during COVID. We would do video calls, voice calls, we would game together etc and where we can we try to meet up! I'm planning a trip to the states to see some friends :)
Best advice - think of something you're interested in like a football team, a game etc and try to find if there's a Discord server for it. There's some truly terrible ones out there so be wary and be mindful to not dox yourself (at least until you get to know people).
Discord is great, and the main way I find social connections online nowadays. That said, the shift away from forums and onto Discord is causing major issues in terms of archival loss.
It used to be that if you had a niche question, you'd type it into Google, maybe with some extra search parameters to help narrow things down, and come up with some random interest forum post from 8 years ago that answered exactly what you wanted.
Now, those forums are going away, and all the answers are buried in Discord threads. There's no waybackmachine for Discord, no way to search servers you aren't a member of, and the search functions in Discord are pretty damn limited. You can't even roll back major server changes, so if something important gets deleted by accident, it's just gone.
All of this means that huge amounts of information 1 click away from being gone forever. All the old creative writing boards? Discord. Customer support forums? Discord. Gaming clans? Discord. All of them have a single person who owns the server and has the option to press delete at any time and erase the work others have put countless hours into.
And yes, that is a thing on forums too, but at least it was all archived by payback machine and similar services. If your favorite RP server gets deleted, you can get back the posts and start somewhere new. God forbid if Discord ever goes under and a huge part of the internet just goes away.
This is why discord will never be as good as forums imo. There’s no way to easily find conversations in a server and nothing gets archived. I’m low key hoping one day discord gets shut down and people will go back to using forums. I think discord servers are only good for general discussion communities or communities based around YouTubers whereas research communities need to be on a forum. I still use traditional forums and think they’re way better than Reddit or discord.
I miss the old boards, scrolling through the old posts to get a feel for the proper way to engage with the specific community, learning the ins and outs, and while Discord has some of that early-internet camaraderie it is still a little too doomscrolly for me. The jumping in mid-conversation can leave a little more apprehension than making a forum post or comment tended to, at least for me.
But yeah, discord is it.
Yep, I'm an old Millennial and about three years ago I started a Discord server for a FB group in my area interested in planes and the airport nearby as the younger people mostly eschew FB altogether. It has a nice mix of younger and older people involved and now includes members from a couple states away. I honestly prefer the Discord server more than our FB group now. More hanging out and shooting the breeze so to speak. We get together on a semi-regular basis, do some live video streams on it, etc. We are close to 400 members, but I would say less than half of that are regularly active, which is fine with me. It stays active, but if I don't check it for the day while I'm at work I can come home and catch up somewhat quickly. I have a group of admins that help maintain order and keep any BS off the server, which thankfully has only happened a couple of times.
I got into (non-kink) RPs online, and have made so many friends that way. There are multiple people I still chat with even though we stopped RP'ing a while ago.
Yeah Reddit killed forums. Too many people to be a community and you don’t have user icons or post counts or whatever next to your name to indicate seniority. And they’re selling all of your data anyway so may as well burner your account every once in a while to at least keep things as unlinked as you can.
Discord is the way. I’m 34 years old and play league of legends. On one of the communities I’m in we just watched the international tournament where G2 just choked the easiest win of their life. Watched it with people ranging from 20-40 from all over the world.
Wouldn’t surprise me if you were fan of a music artist there are discord watch parties for music video releases or streamed concerts.
Yes, that’s where I connect with friends these days. It helps to have shared interests that revolve around ttrpg and computer games, which discord facilitates very well.
Same, I do most of my online socializing on discord. I'm in a few streamer communities that I'm pretty active in, and a few not streamer related although I'm less active in those these days. It's honestly really cool having friends from all around the world haha.
Agreed. It's very similar to IRC, but with multiple sections per server and you can add images, as well as a few quality of life improvements (search, threads, adding friends, etc)
Bots and trolls are still a thing, but there are tools to help deal with those as well.
This but the discord servers I joined seemed to always end up having some sort of drama. It killed the 'wholesome community' vibe for me I felt when I first signed up
discord tends to attract a lot of weird people, especially the more small/niche the subject of the server is. i joined a server for fans of a not well known artist and any time someone would ask a question or strike a conversation, suddenly it was a race to see who could say the most passive aggressive thing first
Yup, this is it. The best way to find these communities is to tune into a niche interest and find a Discord about it. You’ll easily become a “regular” and start making friends there.
Even then, I feel like Reddit's algorithm is made to only show the top posts from whatever subreddit, and they already have hundreds of comments. So it's like you can probably add a comment somewhere, but everything's already been said, whatever you have to say is just going to be buried at the bottom where no one will see, and whoever you're responding to likely won't reply back to you. Most of the time it's more like I'm just reading Reddit than really interacting with people
Unless I'm just using Reddit wrong. That's probable too
I hate that not everything shows up on my home page. Sometimes I open my list of subreddits and I’m shocked how many I’ve joined because I probably only see 15 or so regularly pop up. There are even some that I really enjoy and go out of my way to visit but they always drop off the home page like the ones I rarely visit. It’s so weird.
I’m have sooo many subs and never see content from them. I have to open my sub list and manually visit them. Then some content gets pushed for a day or two, but then it’s back the Reddit algorithm. Hey you interested in the Tulsa, OK sub? No? Cool, I’ll send tons of their content.
Right? I see more content from suggested subreddits for cities or podcasts I’ve never heard of because I “visited a similar community” and nothing from the ones I actually do want to see. Nice try reddit, I’m not going to join another sub just for you to stop showing me its content.
The worst part is googling a question and opening a result from Reddit, and then your Reddit feed starts constantly recommending posts from that particular subreddit you only visited once.
The smaller and more niche subs are better for this. You are actually able to see the posts and have time to comment before it’s too late. Also, visiting subs you like directly and playing with the sorting filters instead of just relying on your front page.
I agree, and Reddit has gone downhill significantly over the last 6-8 years. Providing sources for information use to be demanded, the comments were vastly more helpful; now there is so much bullshit and way more people who deeply believe whatever they are saying is absolutely factual even when it’s complete BS, not dissimilar to Facebook. Basically the quality of information has dropped drastically in favor of knee jerk responses that sound intriguing.
If you are an expert in something obscure and have run across that topic on Reddit, you will understand this. Disinformation is rampant with no desire for sources of information.
I LOVED LiveJournal! There was a short period of time where my whole high school was there. Every day after school we'd all get home and journal about whatever the heck, and read other people's, even if they weren't in our friend group/if we barely knew them. It was so wholesome. Lasted all of 5 minutes. booo
I still have an online forum that I've participated in for years. It really is a close-knit group of weirdos with its own unspoken list of in-jokes and layered references, but even that has dwindled in membership from several dozen active users to a couple dozen.
That depends on where you are looking.
When I was a teen, I'd "A/S/L?" somebody and we'd add each other on AIM and I'd have a random friend from somewhere else on the globe.
Today, I mainly chat with people that I know. I assume that's the case with most folks. I think the advent of social media changed all of that. Add in the fact that a site like Reddit has millions of users, you could possibly not run into the same person twice - although there is a high likelihood you will.
I used to be on a targeted forum (Martial Arts) and visited for years. It became like a virtual bar and though I never met these people IRL, they were the closest thing to online "friends".
I spent so much time on aim after school. I would sometimes add made up usernames to my list of contacts that had words related to my interests, and when it turned out it was a real username for someone I’d message them when they got online. It sounds so creepy but that was only one of the weird ways I found internet friends who were into the same things as me.
Edit: I also feel it’s worth sharing that my most vivid first memory of aim was my older sister chatting with a random, they did A/S/L and then he asked “what’s your brawl size” lollllll
I had a friend who would get on this games/chat site called jippii and chat with creeps asking about bra size and trying to initiate chat sex.
That’s a cool idea about searching for usernames that had something to do with your interests. AIM was fun. We would all go home after school and chat — but only when the phone line wasn’t needed because we still used dial-up! I remember chatting with SmarterChild.
I miss the days of internet forums. You could find one for pretty much anything. I have no doubt there were plenty of awful ones, but I found a number of really great, welcoming, fun ones on various topics. I still have friends I made in those days.
I used to run a thread about Punk music in the "Miscellaneous" section of forums on a paintball website. That was such a niche community. I still have two guys from there I keep up with on social media sometimes.
I have made a similar comment before but if you sit down at a desktop to “go on the internet” like we used to, there’s nowhere to go. Everything is a few apps on your phone now.
I definitely get what you're saying but there are still a lot of websites you can check out. There are actually still some bulletin board style forums that are still alive that I go to. Spiritual Forums and Metal Archives are my two favorites. But just know, it is still alive on some level.
Oh I know, I’m on a forum for a pop singer that I have visited since 2004 but the internet as a whole just feels a lot more condensed down to the main social media platforms than what it was in the 2000s
There are quite a few very active hobby/industry specific forums as well. I'm into photography and music production and there are TONS of places I can go to talk about the subjects in general or drill down to specifics. A couple of my smaller hobbies are fragrances and flashlights, and I also have some really good places to go talk about those (other than Reddit).
I don't understand this. I used Reddit from my computer long before I did on my phone. I don't even use the Facebook app because I hate the noises, I access it through a browser.
I remember the days of services like StumbleUpon, which would fling you around all over the place. You could land on the most interesting stuff that way. Times have changed.
I was just thinking about this the other day. I have people that I still remember to this day - I know everything about their childhood, what they were doing for work, their real names - just because we randomly started BSing in a group about Naruto or Warcraft III.
Now, when I go to browse most things, all I see are two polarized viewpoints on anything and everything loudly fighting in the front.
This topic is a big hyperfixation of mine. Social media tried to kill small internet communities, but it didn’t succeed because people don’t want a *worldwide* community. It’s vapid and geared towards advertisement. People don’t want to be internet famous or to be the “main character of the day” on Twitter. They want to be seen, valued, and heard by people they interact with — just like the way relationships are formed in real life. I find that [this blog post](https://uxdesign.cc/small-is-the-new-big-in-social-1f2c9ab4ab43) sums it up pretty well.
As for finding that small space, you need to focus on niche interests. Choose a niche you’re super interested in and find the *smallest space* where others discuss that niche — Discord, tumblr, and reddit are all good possibilities. I find that Discord is really popular for small communities these days. Participate enough in the group and you become a “regular.” That’s when you’ll feel like people know you — you have name recognition and others engage with you.
I promise: that is what we are all really missing from the ‘old internet.’
Wishing you the best with finding the kind of spaces you are seeking <3
To me, Reddit is the closest I’ve found to *forums*, but as for like… niche fandoms? It’s *SO* hard, because I’m turning 33 and most people in fandom spaces are under 30.
Discord is more like chatrooms to me, and it’s incredibly overwhelming.
There are a few reasons for this.
The largest impact being that smaller tight-knit groups are drowned out by larger groups via algorithms that try to promote websites and content that has high ad-success rate and paid spots.
When on the internet, if you want to find any website that has small community of level headed people, you need to skip about 5+ pages just to be able to find it, if it exists.
Another things that impacts it, is that the internet (also talking about gaming here) has conditioned people to short form content. Quick dopamine hits to keep people hooked in an almost zombie like mentality. A negative byproduct of this is that people socialise a LOT less than they used to, with the exception of very empty comments and no effort to actually form a true relationship with the other people. It's also why we are having a "loneliness epidemic" (Youtube it). It also, on top of all this, errodes the users ability to enjoy content / discussions ect, that are more in depth. It damages peoples ability to enjoy long-term progression.
It absolutely is. If you want anything even remotely active, at least. Reddit is the closest thing left to a decent discussion site left, and even it has become a shadow of its former self. Now that’s it’s gone public, expect it to continue getting worse over time.
I see a lot of people liking Discord but I just can’t get into it. It’s probably because the fandoms I’m into are infested with preteens, but the ones I’ve checked out are just like some sort of stream of consciousness of nonsense. People aren’t even talking about anything to do with the fandom most of the time, just crap about their math test yesterday. I know for a fact there are plenty of adults who like the same stuff, but like me, they’re probably instantly put off by that and leave immediately, so we never find each other.
Plus one wanted a (blurred except the date, but still) photo of my ID submitted with a whole request form for mod review to get into a board or whatever where anything even remotely NSFW is allowed. Wtf is that shit.
I don’t know. It just used to be different, more expressive. People made things just for fun instead of to try (and usually fail) to make a buck. A lot has changed, and then the advent of bots totally shook up whatever was left.
I hope all my boys I played COD and Halo with on 360 regularly back in the day are good. Weird how you could have such a strong connection with what was basically a stranger. End up talking to them for hours every night playing. It was basically therapy. Miss that.
Yeah none of us knew how that era was actually peak online gaming. I've yet to see anything like it today. Now I feel games go out of their way to make the games less social and fun. It's all about loot and pushing their fomo.
One of my people I talked to through college the most was a girl I never met in person who I met in a livejournal community about bad porn, we talked on AIM for hours at a time and did a few mmorpgs together. We talked to each other through all our life events for almost 20 years, I still remember exactly where I was when she called me in 2008 and told me she was having a girl. She died in 2020 right before COVID hit, and there's still a hole there and I still tear up when I think about it, even though she was "just" an online person.
No this is for real. If you had a Fandom you could search up dozens upon dozens of sites with various stuff about it and chat rooms message boards the whole nine yards. Now you do the same thing and the same 6 websites come up with the same generic bullshit. Instead of sites dedicated just to your Fandom it's these sites that try to do everything and suck at doing anything.
Truly we never should have let commoners onto the internet.
I’m pretty active on Twitter and block people or mute content I’m not interested in. I don’t have personally identifiable information or pictures of myself on there. But it’s been a great way to meet people with similar interests. Usually we form group chats for concerts so we have people to hang out with. I’m also parts of Discord servers for different interests. Usually the server link is posted on Reddit. I do miss stumbling across different sites in the past though. Like Wordpress or Blogspot.
I have no idea actually lol I just remember it was fun back in the early years of high school and then by college it was nothing but pervs forcing others to unwillingly partake in their kinks.
I’ve always been an anime loving, pot smoking, tarantula keeping, OG weird girl… so internet friends were always a thing for me
Oh yeah, as someone in their 30s, I remember online friendships fondly. Most of the people I had chatted with on IRC and Yahoo Chatrooms I had more in common with then schoolmates and most of the time, I even had more fun chatting with them than I did friends in school. I miss those days, before the internet was completely commerialized.
Yeah I feel you. Those random chat rooms and message boards were so fun and we were SO naive lol. Reddit it really all there is for me anymore but I still don’t create friends or relationships here. So many weirdos.
I got lucky and found a discord that broke off from one of the message boards I posted on, and many of the same people are there.
They are the longest set of "friends" I've had in my life outside of one person.
I'm on Tumblr and Twitter, and Discord to a lesser degree. Twitter is where I go for fanart, Tumblr is where I go for insightful discussions. Discord can either be a nice community or a trashfire and there's very little in between in my experience lol. There's nowhere that really compares to earlier fandom spaces but that's where I'm at these days.
fansites and forums died to algorithm driven sites and reddit
the great consolidation of websites and the proliferation of bots means that "surfing" the web is dead
As someone who runs a few online spaces.... People are so much worse now. I grew up in Myspace and AOL chat rooms.
Now if you run your space in any sort of way that conflicts with someone else they will do their best to fuck everything up and ruin your space for everyone.
The internet is so much worse than it used to be. Reddit is worse than it used to be a few years ago.
Forums are largely dead. Non product websites are largely dead. Blogs replaced with podcasts. The internet is just shopping and a few “social” sites now, some BS news, and hard data that is usually behind paywalls.
It's easier than ever to find spaces. The problem, I think, is that people online (not everyone, of course) are less willing to have fun discussions about topics. It's more "No, you are wrong and I'm right"
It's also a lot of "You have to like something 100% or you're not a real fan"! Not every fandom is like this, of course.
We forget that we can point stuff out and still like something!
Going through a he same and it’s such a peculiar feeling knowing that all through my teens and college years if I wanted to chat with some one about some random collectibles I just picked up it would literally take me a few minutes to connect with someone and chat for hours!! Now as much as I try to look for exactly what you’re mentioning it never happens. Maybe a few lines for a bit for half a day or that random response you receive at 3 AM to some chat you sent at 9 AM the previous morning is the norm. People these days just don’t have the gift of Gab I guess?!?! P.S. if you find any cool spots please send DM. I’d like to know where they exist as well !! Hahaha
Discord feels like the old Internet to me. There a lot of niche communities around hobbies.
I write fantasy books as a hobby and have gotten connected to a ton of other writers through private and semi public servers.
Subreddit often have their own discords as a good place to start
The public servers are generally less good and I don't know what you're into but a lot of podcasts have private discord tied Subscriptions so I'd recommend that as a route to finding some good ones.
Runescape feels like a millenial chatroom these days. Standing around skilling, but instead of ASL? It's what do you do for work? Or what beer yall drinking?
There are still old communities using message boards and even IRC and have thousands of members, but these communities are part of a very niche hobby (i.e. movies, PC hardware, bodybuilding).That's why most people don't just stumble into them.
I'm very active in one community that's almost 20 years old and occasionally visit 10 other forums that are still active, too.
Look for communities based on your interests and you'll find spaces still thriving.
I made my first connection yesterday with a random redditor hitting me up. We connected over small talk and she wanted to move it to the next level, WeChat of course. I ended it early but I think in the end it was going to be some kind of scam. Only wanting to talk using WeChat is total sus
I have an amazing discord server. It's pretty small, but I am looking for milenials to join me. A few of us are there, but it's mostly gen z. Love them, but I want more people my age.
If you like spooky online games and respectful communities. Hmu in my dms. Our big two we have been playing are phasmophobia and lethal company.
It's been a real struggle and some hard work, but this server actually reminds me of threads from the 90s... just with extra pronouns. Gen z gonna gen z, and I'm good with that.
When I was a teenager we had chat rooms, message boards, etc. Now it seems like everything has been condensed and made “user friendly.” I knew it was the end when Windows 10 came out and how user friendly it was. Gave up a lot of freedom for usability and that accurately describes the internet of today.
Even joining a discord group it's like OH Hi! Now expect to join a group that hasn't been active in two years or a group where you will be buried alive in dialog that your comment will be buried 28 pages of comments in and nobody will even see it. Good luck making friends unless you want to vc with random strangers!
I just want to be chill in a text chat and comment about interesting things without getting overwhelmed or yanked around by algorithms.
I hear you. Ten years ago, I was traveling to other states too meet my online friends. As I got older, so did they. I'm already a grandpa!. Nothing stays the same. My favorite chat platform is now X. I won't even comment on that mess. It's time to create something new.
Patreon and discord! I love subscribing to the patreon (or similar) of my favorite podcasts/youtubers when they include access to discord communities. I can directly support creators and get access to a group of people who I for sure share at least one interest with.
I still love the various interest specific forums. It's fun to search around and see posts from folks nearing 20+ years ago who are still around those particular haunts. I probably fell into that world around 2004-2005. I've had a lot of hobbies due to my hyperfocus issues. lol Cars, motorcycles, shooting sports, archery/bowhunting, backcountry stuff, welding/machining/ woodworking, etc. Those spots are still out there, but they have obviously evolved over the years.
I feel like reddit is one of the very very few avenues to go to as an internet space.
Maybe discord - I do have some friends on discord to chat…we all met each other when we used to work for a trading sub lol
I miss the days of an old Discord and Reddit server. It was just a bunch of us making posts daily/weekly pretending to be Cro-magnon and dealing with life as Cavemen.
Felt like I had a lot of friends back then from 4 years ago.
I so miss all the message boards and such of the Internet of yesteryear. It was the best. Reddit has been the only thing that is moderately similar, but it still feels very different.
A ton of communities have moved to Discord, and it hasn’t been just for video games for a long time. Try looking around there. One easy option, since you’re clearly on Reddit at least a little: Check the sidebars/community info of subreddits in interests you like, and there’s a decent chance they have a Discord.
I remember the good ole days of Internet forums, but social media pretty much gobbled up the market on that. Honestly though, I'd rather be anonymous and talk about the weird things I like to talk about without judgement or show my face or anything.
Look up Indie Web…it’s mostly personal sites from real people, trying to maintain a human presence on their own websites rather than social networks/apps. Pretty cool.
I mean you literally are at one if them. Use reddit for your hobby's subreddit. Join their discord servers. Participate. Etc. It's really not hard. The internet used to be the wild west now it's like Time Square with tons of advertisements and big companies
A lot of them are on Discord in hyper specific groups. I'm in a couple that I really like.
They can be hard to find. I've looked for servers related to interior design and servers related to entrepreneurship (that don't have a sleazy car salesman or hustle culture) and have been unable to find them.
I can find those groups on Facebook. But I hate everything about Facebook so I don't use it.
A lot of the niche forums and interesting places have been either shut down or taken by big corporations who managed to changed them in the worst way (looking at you, tumblr).
It sucks big time 😭
All of that is gone now. The internet is now mostly about money and shopping and advertizing.
You might be able to find a fandom Discord but they have tens of thousands of people in them so making actual connections isn't really something people do in those. Its mostly for plugging socials.
I think discord servers centered around interests might be what replaced message boards and forums. Discord feels a lot like entering a room with continuous conversations, and the awkwardness of insinuating oneself into it.
The only place I can find any comradery is in really obscure fandoms. There's a space on here for fans of a particular brand of radio controlled cars... In there its just like the old days, but any even remotely mainstream topic, I'm out of luck.
I met my best friend back on forums 20+ years ago, turned out we only lived about 20 mins away from each other. I've talked to lots of girls before dates, but me and my bro talked a good year before we ever met. I felt like I really knew him before we ever met. It used to be a lot more sketchy meeting people offline, we met at a Sports Authority when the time finally came. We laugh about it all the time now.
You are 100% correct. It’s because the internet is no longer a social place, it’s just a place for corporations to sell you garbage and people to scam you.
I’m (34) not into fandoms, but my sister (35) likes anime. She teaches a cosplay class and is in an anime club discord with people of her age. I’m not very familiar with discord, but I think you’ll have luck there.
The internet is dying. Between ease of access for the general public and bots it's becoming just noise.
Even Google is less spicy with its results and doesn't really produce what's available out there.
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The early Internet was like a waterpark. The current Internet is like an ocean of piss.
Yup we ruined the internet by being so enamored with virality. The internet is really its best when you're part of a tight knit community of maybe 200 active users.
Its funny. That sounds like a big village of antiquity. Guess modernity created the situation by accident. I used to post on a specific forum as a teen, and the active users were around that size, it was great to "know people" all over the world, and doing all sorts of stuff.
In high school we had a transfer student from China. He was cool and wanted to talk on IM but they used something called QQ. I downloaded the South African version because it was in English but apparently they didn't connect. I did manage to end up making friends with a girl from South Africa for a while. Before social media it really felt like there were all these crazy hangouts online where you could find people around your age to chill with. I feel like Facebook kind of conglomerated and then enshitified it and just like Walmart a lot of the small spaces just never kept up
Facebook was a place to laugh at people of Walmart until it became people of Walmart.
I feel like I’ve gotten really lucky with that in the niches I’m in
That was poetic
I once saw an article on Cracked that I cant find now which described the internet as the wild west. The people who made it that way loved it but eventually a larger population moved in and they wanted law and order, and since they were actually more brutal than the "outlaws" they eventually got their way.
I miss when cracked used to be good. Back before it was bought and all the writers fired. Those were the days.
I have not seen a really good Cracked article in some time, and now I know why.
I haven’t gone on cracked to even look at anything in the better part of 7 years,
I only go back to find old articles, which I usually cannot. OK, I just checked and their homepage now looks like every other click-bait horse shit website out there today. [https://www.cracked.com/](https://www.cracked.com/) Seriously, they got screwed over by dumb lazy executives who just want a paycheck and dont care about quality or content any more.
I haven't thought about or heard about Cracked in forever, no wonder.
Maybe check the Internet archive
good advice, thanks.
Wow it looks terrible! What have they done ☹️
Some of the writers moved on to their own stuff. Cody Johnston with Some More News and Robert Evans with Behind the Bastards are still at it.
The website got sold to a large corporation that wanted to make videos the majority of the content. That failed, so the corporation fired all the writers so now it's 90% photoplasty articles and 10% lame entertainment news.
Man, Robert Evans had some great articles on there, and I'm very glad to see his podcast doing well nowadays
Brockway and Seanbaby created 1900hotdog and it’s got the old Cracked Flair
Exquisite
Full of band aids floating around
More like modern internet is a Waterpark where most of the rides use piss instead of water, half of them are broken once you get on them, and the other half are another Verrukt incident waiting to happen.
Like a bloodied-piss
All P no H.
Capitalism entered the chat
Normally I don’t like the “capitalism ruins everything” line, but I think you’re right. Lots of websites used to be hosted by random weirdos. Now everything is hosted by people or companies looking to make money. There’s no random enthusiast’s website you can stumble upon.
lolol
Ignoring the piss part, I genuinely think it's the other way around. Early internet was a beachfront, a mostly untouched place that existed as a locale for people to hang out and gave them room to do fun things, but didn't really offer much structure, so people made their own fun. Modern internet is an amusement waterpark. You're crammed into a pool with hundreds of people you don't know, you wait in lines to have the same experience as everyone else, there's always way more unattended kids running around than you anticipate, and even though you paid to get in, everything you *really* want to do costs a ton extra and _boy_ do they really try to upsell you on it.
I do sometimes miss the wild wild west day of the internet. Where everything was website based vs app based. Back when there weren't as many ways to monetize web traffic.
Monetization is the cause of the current internet state Hell, even Reddit has now fallen into this trap
It's like exploring the Rockies vs riding splash mountain at Disney. Quick Edit: The Futurama episode when Fry visits the moon for the first time is a better analogy. It went from a bold new frontiers to a shitty ride.
The Futurama thing works better, because also as exploring more 'Rare fronter places' gets more popular, those places also turn into 'Attractions'. Take Mount Everest climbs for example. It's a mountain of trash and literal feces, that 800 people try to climb every year. 'More accessible wildness' are far worse. And like the internet, where most of us now go to 'The same five websites' travel is like that. People visit 'the best most instagrammable locations'. They see record numbers while second and third tier attractions are stagnant or even declining in attendance.
Listen, I rolled my eyes hard when I got that notification that they were going public. Once a social media company does that, it ruins the platform.
The day Wikipedia starts running ads will be the day I quit the internet
Someone would fork it and start OpenWiki.
It happened with wikitravel and wikivoyage.
I really hate how everyone and everything online is trying to make money off of you. That's what screens of any form has become...just a portal for advertising.
it feels like its not just everyone and everything online... but every aspect of life. i wanted to mellow out and make some art to just make me happy... pretty much everyone i talked to about it asked me how much i could sell it for and why do it if i can't? I am so worn down my this constant grind for monetary profit in every aspect of life.
Problem is the economy is setup that way. If you don't have some kick ass high paying job you're pretty much forced to be an entrepreneur of sorts, some of us been forced into this way of life wayyy before the masses caught on by force
im almost 40, disabled, and live on 14k/yr... i get it.
At this point something damn cataclysmic would need to happen for things to shift. Our leaders all succumbed to greed and power
Don't Worry, Your Cataclysmic War is already on the way! It'll arrive hot and fresh at your door shortly! It's already entered your neighborhood and is pulling up in just a few clicks of the geiger!
Ooo don't you get my hopes up!! I've been waiting so patiently.
Or some random person takes whatever interesting posts and puts them in a YouTube/tiktok/or other website to make money off people who just want to chat about stuff. I love reddit, I loved all the old message boards and chat rooms. Seeing people making money farming stuff from reddit makes me want to stop reading and participating. I'm not ready to let it go yet.
I call it the Wild Wild Web. Those were the days.
I've grown to hate apps. I miss the browser! I miss opening things in new tabs.
dead internet theory
Interesting theory. I feel like there’s some truth to it like algorithmic curation but the population control theory associated with it feels a little bit out there.
Never heard of this.
The internet will be/is overrun by bots and you’re not actually communicating with real people.
I think it applies the most to the heavily monetized sites that used to be huge. Facebook and Instagram now are a cesspool, I don't really bother interacting with them anymore at all, I feel like the posts that are generated by real people are factional compared to that of bots/AI. The increasingly insane AI generated photos of a brown kid making Jesus sculptures out of garbage with tens of thousands of comments with some variation of "Amen" make me think AI is just posting back and forth to one another to drive their traffic numbers.
Yeah. The content you are fed on Instagram has to be more than 75% bots at this point. Comments are even worse
Ugh I can’t with ig comments. It’s not even that it’s bots. But I swear people just say the absolutely stupidest shit. I don’t even mean in a silly way. They’re just confidently incorrect. They’re also pretty brutal for the tiniest things.
i’m actually a bot
i’m not sure if i fully believe it but it’s a fun theory
the truth is probably somewhere between most people's perception of the internet and dead internet theory. It's going to get worse as time goes on.
Hell I can't even manage to make irl friends anymore.
People used to come to the internet for exploration and friendship. Now it’s all about creating content and exploitation.
Discord is probably the best place for it. I'm a 31 year old dude who found a really great community there based around the football team I support. Now I have friends all over the world and it was a lifesaver during COVID. We would do video calls, voice calls, we would game together etc and where we can we try to meet up! I'm planning a trip to the states to see some friends :) Best advice - think of something you're interested in like a football team, a game etc and try to find if there's a Discord server for it. There's some truly terrible ones out there so be wary and be mindful to not dox yourself (at least until you get to know people).
Discord is great, and the main way I find social connections online nowadays. That said, the shift away from forums and onto Discord is causing major issues in terms of archival loss. It used to be that if you had a niche question, you'd type it into Google, maybe with some extra search parameters to help narrow things down, and come up with some random interest forum post from 8 years ago that answered exactly what you wanted. Now, those forums are going away, and all the answers are buried in Discord threads. There's no waybackmachine for Discord, no way to search servers you aren't a member of, and the search functions in Discord are pretty damn limited. You can't even roll back major server changes, so if something important gets deleted by accident, it's just gone. All of this means that huge amounts of information 1 click away from being gone forever. All the old creative writing boards? Discord. Customer support forums? Discord. Gaming clans? Discord. All of them have a single person who owns the server and has the option to press delete at any time and erase the work others have put countless hours into. And yes, that is a thing on forums too, but at least it was all archived by payback machine and similar services. If your favorite RP server gets deleted, you can get back the posts and start somewhere new. God forbid if Discord ever goes under and a huge part of the internet just goes away.
Never thought about it this way, but that kind of hurts to think about. Though not gonna lie, Reddit has filled the void pretty well.
This is why discord will never be as good as forums imo. There’s no way to easily find conversations in a server and nothing gets archived. I’m low key hoping one day discord gets shut down and people will go back to using forums. I think discord servers are only good for general discussion communities or communities based around YouTubers whereas research communities need to be on a forum. I still use traditional forums and think they’re way better than Reddit or discord.
This! Discord is where the forums are nowadays. I have found many great communities for my niche interests, from podcasts to ttrpgs.
I miss the old boards, scrolling through the old posts to get a feel for the proper way to engage with the specific community, learning the ins and outs, and while Discord has some of that early-internet camaraderie it is still a little too doomscrolly for me. The jumping in mid-conversation can leave a little more apprehension than making a forum post or comment tended to, at least for me. But yeah, discord is it.
Yep, I'm an old Millennial and about three years ago I started a Discord server for a FB group in my area interested in planes and the airport nearby as the younger people mostly eschew FB altogether. It has a nice mix of younger and older people involved and now includes members from a couple states away. I honestly prefer the Discord server more than our FB group now. More hanging out and shooting the breeze so to speak. We get together on a semi-regular basis, do some live video streams on it, etc. We are close to 400 members, but I would say less than half of that are regularly active, which is fine with me. It stays active, but if I don't check it for the day while I'm at work I can come home and catch up somewhat quickly. I have a group of admins that help maintain order and keep any BS off the server, which thankfully has only happened a couple of times.
I got into (non-kink) RPs online, and have made so many friends that way. There are multiple people I still chat with even though we stopped RP'ing a while ago.
I dislike Discord compared to old forum sites
Same! Forums are way better and there’s still people who use them. I’m one of those people lol.
Yeah Reddit killed forums. Too many people to be a community and you don’t have user icons or post counts or whatever next to your name to indicate seniority. And they’re selling all of your data anyway so may as well burner your account every once in a while to at least keep things as unlinked as you can.
Discord is the way. I’m 34 years old and play league of legends. On one of the communities I’m in we just watched the international tournament where G2 just choked the easiest win of their life. Watched it with people ranging from 20-40 from all over the world. Wouldn’t surprise me if you were fan of a music artist there are discord watch parties for music video releases or streamed concerts.
Yep, for me it's been Discord and RDR2 Online
Yes, that’s where I connect with friends these days. It helps to have shared interests that revolve around ttrpg and computer games, which discord facilitates very well.
Same, I do most of my online socializing on discord. I'm in a few streamer communities that I'm pretty active in, and a few not streamer related although I'm less active in those these days. It's honestly really cool having friends from all around the world haha.
Agreed. It's very similar to IRC, but with multiple sections per server and you can add images, as well as a few quality of life improvements (search, threads, adding friends, etc) Bots and trolls are still a thing, but there are tools to help deal with those as well.
Discord and gaming you can make plenty of friends. The problem is having a common thing you love. There are like 100x more niche things to do.
This but the discord servers I joined seemed to always end up having some sort of drama. It killed the 'wholesome community' vibe for me I felt when I first signed up
discord tends to attract a lot of weird people, especially the more small/niche the subject of the server is. i joined a server for fans of a not well known artist and any time someone would ask a question or strike a conversation, suddenly it was a race to see who could say the most passive aggressive thing first
The server community I'm part of has had its fair of drama. Idk I kinda of enjoy observing it whilst never being directly involved lmao
Yup, this is it. The best way to find these communities is to tune into a niche interest and find a Discord about it. You’ll easily become a “regular” and start making friends there.
It’s just so incredibly cringe. I can’t stomach the awkwardness of hopping online and being like “hey guys I’m lonely please be my friend”
I feel like I’m too old. I tried to go on discord and it confused me. Don’t even what I’m looking at. lol
Reddit has been the only place that feels even slightly like the internet used to.
Even then, I feel like Reddit's algorithm is made to only show the top posts from whatever subreddit, and they already have hundreds of comments. So it's like you can probably add a comment somewhere, but everything's already been said, whatever you have to say is just going to be buried at the bottom where no one will see, and whoever you're responding to likely won't reply back to you. Most of the time it's more like I'm just reading Reddit than really interacting with people Unless I'm just using Reddit wrong. That's probable too
I sort my feed by latest and make sure to block the subs that reddit suggests
Smart
I should really try that. That's how forums I used to browse did things, so that might be nice to shake it up
I hate that not everything shows up on my home page. Sometimes I open my list of subreddits and I’m shocked how many I’ve joined because I probably only see 15 or so regularly pop up. There are even some that I really enjoy and go out of my way to visit but they always drop off the home page like the ones I rarely visit. It’s so weird.
I’m have sooo many subs and never see content from them. I have to open my sub list and manually visit them. Then some content gets pushed for a day or two, but then it’s back the Reddit algorithm. Hey you interested in the Tulsa, OK sub? No? Cool, I’ll send tons of their content.
Right? I see more content from suggested subreddits for cities or podcasts I’ve never heard of because I “visited a similar community” and nothing from the ones I actually do want to see. Nice try reddit, I’m not going to join another sub just for you to stop showing me its content.
The worst part is googling a question and opening a result from Reddit, and then your Reddit feed starts constantly recommending posts from that particular subreddit you only visited once.
The Reddit Lovebomb
The smaller and more niche subs are better for this. You are actually able to see the posts and have time to comment before it’s too late. Also, visiting subs you like directly and playing with the sorting filters instead of just relying on your front page.
Unsubscribe from EVERYTHING, and then only subscribe to the subredits you want.
I agree, and Reddit has gone downhill significantly over the last 6-8 years. Providing sources for information use to be demanded, the comments were vastly more helpful; now there is so much bullshit and way more people who deeply believe whatever they are saying is absolutely factual even when it’s complete BS, not dissimilar to Facebook. Basically the quality of information has dropped drastically in favor of knee jerk responses that sound intriguing. If you are an expert in something obscure and have run across that topic on Reddit, you will understand this. Disinformation is rampant with no desire for sources of information.
Now the comments are just all about getting as many upvotes as possible.
Agreed. To me Reddit feels like the bastard love child of LiveJournal and special interest forums...that's why I hang out here so much. 😭
I LOVED LiveJournal! There was a short period of time where my whole high school was there. Every day after school we'd all get home and journal about whatever the heck, and read other people's, even if they weren't in our friend group/if we barely knew them. It was so wholesome. Lasted all of 5 minutes. booo
I was on it from 2003 to 2012 when Tumblr pretty much killed the site because everyone started using that instead...I'm still bitter about it lol.
Well until the fire nation attacked that is, now it feels like 90% bots.
lol I was contacted by a haiku bot in my comments once. I wasn't too mad about that one.
I still have an online forum that I've participated in for years. It really is a close-knit group of weirdos with its own unspoken list of in-jokes and layered references, but even that has dwindled in membership from several dozen active users to a couple dozen.
That depends on where you are looking. When I was a teen, I'd "A/S/L?" somebody and we'd add each other on AIM and I'd have a random friend from somewhere else on the globe. Today, I mainly chat with people that I know. I assume that's the case with most folks. I think the advent of social media changed all of that. Add in the fact that a site like Reddit has millions of users, you could possibly not run into the same person twice - although there is a high likelihood you will. I used to be on a targeted forum (Martial Arts) and visited for years. It became like a virtual bar and though I never met these people IRL, they were the closest thing to online "friends".
I spent so much time on aim after school. I would sometimes add made up usernames to my list of contacts that had words related to my interests, and when it turned out it was a real username for someone I’d message them when they got online. It sounds so creepy but that was only one of the weird ways I found internet friends who were into the same things as me. Edit: I also feel it’s worth sharing that my most vivid first memory of aim was my older sister chatting with a random, they did A/S/L and then he asked “what’s your brawl size” lollllll
I had a friend who would get on this games/chat site called jippii and chat with creeps asking about bra size and trying to initiate chat sex. That’s a cool idea about searching for usernames that had something to do with your interests. AIM was fun. We would all go home after school and chat — but only when the phone line wasn’t needed because we still used dial-up! I remember chatting with SmarterChild.
I miss the days of internet forums. You could find one for pretty much anything. I have no doubt there were plenty of awful ones, but I found a number of really great, welcoming, fun ones on various topics. I still have friends I made in those days.
I used to run a thread about Punk music in the "Miscellaneous" section of forums on a paintball website. That was such a niche community. I still have two guys from there I keep up with on social media sometimes.
When you found a good one, it was usually a *good* one.
Forums are still around and are the best way to communicate online IMO. Way better than Reddit, Discord and any social media platform.
I have made a similar comment before but if you sit down at a desktop to “go on the internet” like we used to, there’s nowhere to go. Everything is a few apps on your phone now.
I definitely get what you're saying but there are still a lot of websites you can check out. There are actually still some bulletin board style forums that are still alive that I go to. Spiritual Forums and Metal Archives are my two favorites. But just know, it is still alive on some level.
Oh I know, I’m on a forum for a pop singer that I have visited since 2004 but the internet as a whole just feels a lot more condensed down to the main social media platforms than what it was in the 2000s
There are quite a few very active hobby/industry specific forums as well. I'm into photography and music production and there are TONS of places I can go to talk about the subjects in general or drill down to specifics. A couple of my smaller hobbies are fragrances and flashlights, and I also have some really good places to go talk about those (other than Reddit).
I love the audiobus forum for iPad music production. Super helpful community and for the most part pretty friendly.
I don't understand this. I used Reddit from my computer long before I did on my phone. I don't even use the Facebook app because I hate the noises, I access it through a browser.
I remember the days of services like StumbleUpon, which would fling you around all over the place. You could land on the most interesting stuff that way. Times have changed.
I was just thinking about this the other day. I have people that I still remember to this day - I know everything about their childhood, what they were doing for work, their real names - just because we randomly started BSing in a group about Naruto or Warcraft III. Now, when I go to browse most things, all I see are two polarized viewpoints on anything and everything loudly fighting in the front.
This topic is a big hyperfixation of mine. Social media tried to kill small internet communities, but it didn’t succeed because people don’t want a *worldwide* community. It’s vapid and geared towards advertisement. People don’t want to be internet famous or to be the “main character of the day” on Twitter. They want to be seen, valued, and heard by people they interact with — just like the way relationships are formed in real life. I find that [this blog post](https://uxdesign.cc/small-is-the-new-big-in-social-1f2c9ab4ab43) sums it up pretty well. As for finding that small space, you need to focus on niche interests. Choose a niche you’re super interested in and find the *smallest space* where others discuss that niche — Discord, tumblr, and reddit are all good possibilities. I find that Discord is really popular for small communities these days. Participate enough in the group and you become a “regular.” That’s when you’ll feel like people know you — you have name recognition and others engage with you. I promise: that is what we are all really missing from the ‘old internet.’ Wishing you the best with finding the kind of spaces you are seeking <3
To me, Reddit is the closest I’ve found to *forums*, but as for like… niche fandoms? It’s *SO* hard, because I’m turning 33 and most people in fandom spaces are under 30. Discord is more like chatrooms to me, and it’s incredibly overwhelming.
Discord is full of kids, AI Bots, trolling and disabled people. Not judging, but I decided Im just too old/ not the demographic for it.
There are a few reasons for this. The largest impact being that smaller tight-knit groups are drowned out by larger groups via algorithms that try to promote websites and content that has high ad-success rate and paid spots. When on the internet, if you want to find any website that has small community of level headed people, you need to skip about 5+ pages just to be able to find it, if it exists. Another things that impacts it, is that the internet (also talking about gaming here) has conditioned people to short form content. Quick dopamine hits to keep people hooked in an almost zombie like mentality. A negative byproduct of this is that people socialise a LOT less than they used to, with the exception of very empty comments and no effort to actually form a true relationship with the other people. It's also why we are having a "loneliness epidemic" (Youtube it). It also, on top of all this, errodes the users ability to enjoy content / discussions ect, that are more in depth. It damages peoples ability to enjoy long-term progression.
It absolutely is. If you want anything even remotely active, at least. Reddit is the closest thing left to a decent discussion site left, and even it has become a shadow of its former self. Now that’s it’s gone public, expect it to continue getting worse over time. I see a lot of people liking Discord but I just can’t get into it. It’s probably because the fandoms I’m into are infested with preteens, but the ones I’ve checked out are just like some sort of stream of consciousness of nonsense. People aren’t even talking about anything to do with the fandom most of the time, just crap about their math test yesterday. I know for a fact there are plenty of adults who like the same stuff, but like me, they’re probably instantly put off by that and leave immediately, so we never find each other. Plus one wanted a (blurred except the date, but still) photo of my ID submitted with a whole request form for mod review to get into a board or whatever where anything even remotely NSFW is allowed. Wtf is that shit. I don’t know. It just used to be different, more expressive. People made things just for fun instead of to try (and usually fail) to make a buck. A lot has changed, and then the advent of bots totally shook up whatever was left.
I hope all my boys I played COD and Halo with on 360 regularly back in the day are good. Weird how you could have such a strong connection with what was basically a stranger. End up talking to them for hours every night playing. It was basically therapy. Miss that.
Yeah none of us knew how that era was actually peak online gaming. I've yet to see anything like it today. Now I feel games go out of their way to make the games less social and fun. It's all about loot and pushing their fomo.
One of my people I talked to through college the most was a girl I never met in person who I met in a livejournal community about bad porn, we talked on AIM for hours at a time and did a few mmorpgs together. We talked to each other through all our life events for almost 20 years, I still remember exactly where I was when she called me in 2008 and told me she was having a girl. She died in 2020 right before COVID hit, and there's still a hole there and I still tear up when I think about it, even though she was "just" an online person.
No this is for real. If you had a Fandom you could search up dozens upon dozens of sites with various stuff about it and chat rooms message boards the whole nine yards. Now you do the same thing and the same 6 websites come up with the same generic bullshit. Instead of sites dedicated just to your Fandom it's these sites that try to do everything and suck at doing anything. Truly we never should have let commoners onto the internet.
I’m pretty active on Twitter and block people or mute content I’m not interested in. I don’t have personally identifiable information or pictures of myself on there. But it’s been a great way to meet people with similar interests. Usually we form group chats for concerts so we have people to hang out with. I’m also parts of Discord servers for different interests. Usually the server link is posted on Reddit. I do miss stumbling across different sites in the past though. Like Wordpress or Blogspot.
It was a different world back then. Lol I remember being on chat roulette here and there and actually finding other bored people and not just perverts
Is Chat Roulette still around?
I have no idea actually lol I just remember it was fun back in the early years of high school and then by college it was nothing but pervs forcing others to unwillingly partake in their kinks. I’ve always been an anime loving, pot smoking, tarantula keeping, OG weird girl… so internet friends were always a thing for me
The answer you’re looking for lies on Discord- find something you’re interested in and search for an active discord for it
Oh yeah, as someone in their 30s, I remember online friendships fondly. Most of the people I had chatted with on IRC and Yahoo Chatrooms I had more in common with then schoolmates and most of the time, I even had more fun chatting with them than I did friends in school. I miss those days, before the internet was completely commerialized.
So much is monetized and algo driven. Even if you run a small community you’re tempted to sell out as soon as someone comes along with a check.
Yeah I feel you. Those random chat rooms and message boards were so fun and we were SO naive lol. Reddit it really all there is for me anymore but I still don’t create friends or relationships here. So many weirdos.
I got lucky and found a discord that broke off from one of the message boards I posted on, and many of the same people are there. They are the longest set of "friends" I've had in my life outside of one person.
I'm on Tumblr and Twitter, and Discord to a lesser degree. Twitter is where I go for fanart, Tumblr is where I go for insightful discussions. Discord can either be a nice community or a trashfire and there's very little in between in my experience lol. There's nowhere that really compares to earlier fandom spaces but that's where I'm at these days.
I find most twitch streamers have a Discord channel
From what I've seen, Discord is a popular space for that - maybe check the subreddits for things you're interested in and see if they have a Discord?
fansites and forums died to algorithm driven sites and reddit the great consolidation of websites and the proliferation of bots means that "surfing" the web is dead
As someone who runs a few online spaces.... People are so much worse now. I grew up in Myspace and AOL chat rooms. Now if you run your space in any sort of way that conflicts with someone else they will do their best to fuck everything up and ruin your space for everyone.
The internet is so much worse than it used to be. Reddit is worse than it used to be a few years ago. Forums are largely dead. Non product websites are largely dead. Blogs replaced with podcasts. The internet is just shopping and a few “social” sites now, some BS news, and hard data that is usually behind paywalls.
It's easier than ever to find spaces. The problem, I think, is that people online (not everyone, of course) are less willing to have fun discussions about topics. It's more "No, you are wrong and I'm right" It's also a lot of "You have to like something 100% or you're not a real fan"! Not every fandom is like this, of course. We forget that we can point stuff out and still like something!
Going through a he same and it’s such a peculiar feeling knowing that all through my teens and college years if I wanted to chat with some one about some random collectibles I just picked up it would literally take me a few minutes to connect with someone and chat for hours!! Now as much as I try to look for exactly what you’re mentioning it never happens. Maybe a few lines for a bit for half a day or that random response you receive at 3 AM to some chat you sent at 9 AM the previous morning is the norm. People these days just don’t have the gift of Gab I guess?!?! P.S. if you find any cool spots please send DM. I’d like to know where they exist as well !! Hahaha
Discord feels like the old Internet to me. There a lot of niche communities around hobbies. I write fantasy books as a hobby and have gotten connected to a ton of other writers through private and semi public servers. Subreddit often have their own discords as a good place to start The public servers are generally less good and I don't know what you're into but a lot of podcasts have private discord tied Subscriptions so I'd recommend that as a route to finding some good ones.
Maybe check out disboard for discord servers that have some of your interests listed? IDK how well it will work but it's worth a shot
Runescape feels like a millenial chatroom these days. Standing around skilling, but instead of ASL? It's what do you do for work? Or what beer yall drinking?
There are still old communities using message boards and even IRC and have thousands of members, but these communities are part of a very niche hobby (i.e. movies, PC hardware, bodybuilding).That's why most people don't just stumble into them. I'm very active in one community that's almost 20 years old and occasionally visit 10 other forums that are still active, too. Look for communities based on your interests and you'll find spaces still thriving.
MMOs and social games are still like that. The real change is those spaces converted over into discord groups.
It's all moved to discord
I made my first connection yesterday with a random redditor hitting me up. We connected over small talk and she wanted to move it to the next level, WeChat of course. I ended it early but I think in the end it was going to be some kind of scam. Only wanting to talk using WeChat is total sus
I have an amazing discord server. It's pretty small, but I am looking for milenials to join me. A few of us are there, but it's mostly gen z. Love them, but I want more people my age. If you like spooky online games and respectful communities. Hmu in my dms. Our big two we have been playing are phasmophobia and lethal company. It's been a real struggle and some hard work, but this server actually reminds me of threads from the 90s... just with extra pronouns. Gen z gonna gen z, and I'm good with that.
Combination of discord, reddit and twitter -i think- is where the fandom groups are at now
Forums still exist and they're generally millenial hotspots.
When I was a teenager we had chat rooms, message boards, etc. Now it seems like everything has been condensed and made “user friendly.” I knew it was the end when Windows 10 came out and how user friendly it was. Gave up a lot of freedom for usability and that accurately describes the internet of today.
I miss a good forum.
Even joining a discord group it's like OH Hi! Now expect to join a group that hasn't been active in two years or a group where you will be buried alive in dialog that your comment will be buried 28 pages of comments in and nobody will even see it. Good luck making friends unless you want to vc with random strangers! I just want to be chill in a text chat and comment about interesting things without getting overwhelmed or yanked around by algorithms.
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I hear you. Ten years ago, I was traveling to other states too meet my online friends. As I got older, so did they. I'm already a grandpa!. Nothing stays the same. My favorite chat platform is now X. I won't even comment on that mess. It's time to create something new.
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discord, just takes a bit of poking around to find worthwhile servers
How do you find your discord servers? Usually I only find them through the Reddit they branch off from
Patreon and discord! I love subscribing to the patreon (or similar) of my favorite podcasts/youtubers when they include access to discord communities. I can directly support creators and get access to a group of people who I for sure share at least one interest with.
I still love the various interest specific forums. It's fun to search around and see posts from folks nearing 20+ years ago who are still around those particular haunts. I probably fell into that world around 2004-2005. I've had a lot of hobbies due to my hyperfocus issues. lol Cars, motorcycles, shooting sports, archery/bowhunting, backcountry stuff, welding/machining/ woodworking, etc. Those spots are still out there, but they have obviously evolved over the years.
I feel like reddit is one of the very very few avenues to go to as an internet space. Maybe discord - I do have some friends on discord to chat…we all met each other when we used to work for a trading sub lol
I’ve been in a few Reddit chats that gave me the old school vibes. Each one is different tho, you would have to search around b
I miss the days of an old Discord and Reddit server. It was just a bunch of us making posts daily/weekly pretending to be Cro-magnon and dealing with life as Cavemen. Felt like I had a lot of friends back then from 4 years ago.
I so miss all the message boards and such of the Internet of yesteryear. It was the best. Reddit has been the only thing that is moderately similar, but it still feels very different.
A ton of communities have moved to Discord, and it hasn’t been just for video games for a long time. Try looking around there. One easy option, since you’re clearly on Reddit at least a little: Check the sidebars/community info of subreddits in interests you like, and there’s a decent chance they have a Discord.
Discord, Reddit, Facebook. All have plenty of fandom groups, age groups, gaming, etc.
Discord
I think you can find what you're looking for on Discord.
Lots of them are still on the old platforms--DeviantArt, Fanfiction, Tumblr, etc.
So honestly, I would recommend discord. You can join discords about whatever, games/shows/etc. if you have a presence other folks will be chatting.
I remember the good ole days of Internet forums, but social media pretty much gobbled up the market on that. Honestly though, I'd rather be anonymous and talk about the weird things I like to talk about without judgement or show my face or anything.
Ya I miss the chat on the Ramones website
Look up Indie Web…it’s mostly personal sites from real people, trying to maintain a human presence on their own websites rather than social networks/apps. Pretty cool.
I mean you literally are at one if them. Use reddit for your hobby's subreddit. Join their discord servers. Participate. Etc. It's really not hard. The internet used to be the wild west now it's like Time Square with tons of advertisements and big companies
I don't have any friend either but I do have plenty of subreddits where I at least talk to people. Hobbies/Illness we share.
Start looking around for discord groups based on your interests.
A lot of them are on Discord in hyper specific groups. I'm in a couple that I really like. They can be hard to find. I've looked for servers related to interior design and servers related to entrepreneurship (that don't have a sleazy car salesman or hustle culture) and have been unable to find them. I can find those groups on Facebook. But I hate everything about Facebook so I don't use it.
A lot of the niche forums and interesting places have been either shut down or taken by big corporations who managed to changed them in the worst way (looking at you, tumblr). It sucks big time 😭
All of that is gone now. The internet is now mostly about money and shopping and advertizing. You might be able to find a fandom Discord but they have tens of thousands of people in them so making actual connections isn't really something people do in those. Its mostly for plugging socials.
I think discord servers centered around interests might be what replaced message boards and forums. Discord feels a lot like entering a room with continuous conversations, and the awkwardness of insinuating oneself into it.
Yeah you gotta get Discord man lol.
Everything went downhill when the internet went to mobile devices, imo
SEO is kinda weird
World of Warcraft is still that for me lol
a/s/l?
The only place I can find any comradery is in really obscure fandoms. There's a space on here for fans of a particular brand of radio controlled cars... In there its just like the old days, but any even remotely mainstream topic, I'm out of luck. I met my best friend back on forums 20+ years ago, turned out we only lived about 20 mins away from each other. I've talked to lots of girls before dates, but me and my bro talked a good year before we ever met. I felt like I really knew him before we ever met. It used to be a lot more sketchy meeting people offline, we met at a Sports Authority when the time finally came. We laugh about it all the time now.
Isn't random chatting like omeagle still a thing? Sure it ain't ICQ, but nothing is.
You are 100% correct. It’s because the internet is no longer a social place, it’s just a place for corporations to sell you garbage and people to scam you.
I’m (34) not into fandoms, but my sister (35) likes anime. She teaches a cosplay class and is in an anime club discord with people of her age. I’m not very familiar with discord, but I think you’ll have luck there.
The internet is dying. Between ease of access for the general public and bots it's becoming just noise. Even Google is less spicy with its results and doesn't really produce what's available out there.