I hate everything about the modern internet with a passion and dread the fact that I have to type in "reddit" whenever I search something to find anything that resembles a human (which doesn't even work most of the time). All the major social media platforms (including , and especially, reddit) are completely unusable, which makes it even more saddening that all internet traffic has been concentrated to mainly those places. I miss the days of niche hobby forums and small, tightly-knit communities where you recognized most people there and at least knew you were talking to a human behind the screen.
So basically what I'm asking, are you aware of any alternative social media / boards / forums / anything that managed to survive this gentrification and are at least somwhat active? Are forums even still a thing? Are there even any humans there on the internet anymore? Tbh I'm asking because I had saved a bunch of links to pretty niche, obscure communities to relive that mid-to-late-2000's "wild west" internet feel, found on here and on /leftypol/, and it seems I lost them, can't find them anywhere in my bookmarks and the "Saved" function on this site is fucking broken lol. I remember being in awe that old BBCode forums were still a thing and genuinely pretty active to boot
The closest I've gotten to that old internet is browsing neocities pages (which is fun!) and lurking obscure alt-chans which tbh are mostly filled with rightoid garbage and probably not a good use of my time. Are there any, and I mean ANY of these types of websites even left?
I go to an IRC channel for people who used to go to totse and have become normal now (as normal as you can get I guess)
I'm in some touhou communities and sometimes it still feels like 2006 in those (for better or worse)
I still follow some blogs from the blogosphere days but they're just so milquetoast sometimes. Lots of academics though talking about their fields and that can be cool.
:kaguya-sleep: