Internet Forums Are Basically Dead

Internet forums are basically dead and that's a big loss 👑 Opinion I'm 21 but using the Internet since I was 8 I was able to witness the last period of life of Internet Forums which are basically died to social networks and other forms of online communication and I'm missing them. I'm not a Luddite: I love Facebook and Instagram (when used mindfully to build and/or maintain relationships and to gather information about topics you're interested into and not just an empty pursuit of dopamine/validation in form of likes and follows), I'm a fan of Telegram and I think that they provide their unique benefits which forums couldn't but even forum had unique benefits. The first which comes to my mind is an improved preservation of "historic" conversations: unlike subreddits or Discord servers forums were well divided into sections which often were themselves divided in subsection. This allowed to the most important conversations to stay "alive" and evolve even for years and not disappear like Reddit posts after few days or conversation in a big chat which usually lasts hours or minutes before being oust phased, this conservation of topics allowed a way bigger variety of topic to discuss, I was into an Anime/Chinese Cooking forum but there I had the opportunity to talk about Death Note, Linux and in general any interest I shared with at least 2/3 other members and a deeper exploration of the topics since chat messages and posts on subs tends to repeat themselves periodically but each time the conversation starts from scratch leading after a while to repetitive answers (r/childfree starts to get old after the 1500th topic about an out of control kid at the mall and r/gaming gets boring too after 3000 EA bashing topics all the same, predictable answers) and I can say the same of chats where usually the set of rotating topics is very narrow and most of the messages consists of "How are you?" "Fine, thanks" (obvious answer since if I want to give a deeper answer I can't then 50 people are in the chat and while I write a longer message the topic has already changed 2 times). Another benefit of forums which Reddit preserves but Discord and Telegram fails to is the conversation pace, on big chat groups the pace is very high and this makes difficult to discuss a topic or know each other in depth because you have very little time to answer (otherwise the topic changes) and that causes users to write shorter and less meaningful messages which makes most conversations boring and predictable. This is annoying even from a professional standpoint: I tried to join some programmer's Slack group to network and learn but I was quickly turned off by the pace of discussions and the attention required to keep track of everything so I just left and decided to rely more on Reddit, Stack Overflow and on events/conventions. Being a software developer I tried to think how it could be a platform which combines the convenience of Discord with the more in depth conversations allowed by forums but I failed so I accepted that forums are gone and they'll never return anytime soon so I started to left most of the big interest based chat groups which I've joined in 2016-2018 hoping to find the camaraderie of forums again and started to focus more on one to one connections with persons who share my interests, the Internet for me is still a wonderful system to connect people (I'm not like those boomers who screams about the old times) but after years from my first login I had to relearn how to use it.

A Reddit screenshot shows a long opinion post arguing that traditional Internet forums have largely been replaced by social networks, Discord, Telegram, and other fast-paced chats. The author says forums preserved historical discussions, encouraged deeper conversations, and supported niche communities better, while modern chats feel repetitive, rushed, and predictable; the joke is the exaggeratedly long, serious nostalgia post itself. EN: A Reddit screenshot shows a long opinion post arguing that traditional Internet forums have largely been replaced by social networks, Discord, Telegram, and other fast-paced chats. The author says forums preserved historical discussions, encouraged deeper conversations, and supported niche communities better, while modern chats feel repetitive, rushed, and predictable; the joke is the exaggeratedly long, serious nostalgia post itself.

• @gentoomemes / 13244 2024-09-09