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?
Shame, they make the all too common mistake of seeing every crisis being used as a tool by capitalism, that they can't see the crisis in question within for what it is and its own causes, history and such that they end up falling into the trap of serving the bourgeois' desires.