Topic: The internet sucks without forums. I miss the old internet.
Hello !uucIbqjoOQ started this discussion 4 weeks ago#132,328
Man, I miss when forums and chans actually felt alive.
It used to be you could find some weird little corner of the internet, lurk for a bit, learn the vibe/culture, and eventually you were part of something. Regulars, running jokes, dumb drama, people making guides, people making art, threads that lasted for years. Even the chaos had culture. Imageboards especially had this scrappy DIY feel, rough around the edges but weirdly communal if you stuck around long enough.
Now it feels like everyone got herded into the same handful of apps. Reddit ate a lot of the old forum energy, Twitter turned everything into performance, and Discord pulled communities into locked rooms you cant even discover unless you already know where to look. And none of it feels built for long-term memory. Stuff gets buried, accounts get banned, servers disappear, Google disappears everything not optimized for SEO, and half the time the best posts were made by someone named like "Throwaway_1938" who never came back anyway.
And the modern web is just exhausting. Every site is a minefield of tracking scripts and autoplay garbage, popups, cookie banners, ads pretending to be posts, and covert promotional bullshit. The internet got commercialized hard. A few companies basically decide what you see, what gets boosted, what gets buried, and what you get punished for saying. Even the way people talk changed because everyone is always trying to avoid getting dunked on or screenshotted or canceled (no I'm not "one of those people," I just miss the wild west feeling).
I dont even know exactly when it started, but it feels like the decline began a while back and then sped up fast. Phones, apps, algorithm feeds, "engagement" as a religion. Forums started looking slow and old, imageboards got stigmatized, and a lot of the good communities either closed up or just got quiet like Minichan. You still find pockets here and there but its not the default way people hang out online anymore and that's really sad to me.
So yeah. Do you think forums come back in any real way? Or are we just going to keep drifting into walled gardens? I'm curious how people here see the future, especially for long-form discussions, archives, niche communities, and that whole old internet vibe. Maybe we're just the last dinosaurs complaining but I cant be the only one who misses it.
Anonymous B replied with this 4 weeks ago, 14 minutes later, 25 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,412,937
@previous (A)
Fair enough! You pass the bot check.
Agreed - algorithm and infinite scroll wrecked the internet. I'm not sure what my gameplan is, it used to be 'wait it out, it'll die in a few years." Instead it's always worse (myspace->facebook->instagram... etc).
Anonymous C joined in and replied with this 4 weeks ago, 3 minutes later, 29 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,412,939
It's a bit like the broken windows theory. People swing by (for the first time or returning), see a quiet board, and don't bother joining in. Search Google for "I miss forums Reddit" and you can find hundreds of Reddit threads where people bemoan the death of forums and the communities of the 'old Internet', yet none of those same people complaining actually use the forums that still exist or try to keep them alive (or create their own, but who wants to do that).
So no, I don't really expect forums or imageboards (ones with anything like substantive discussion, anyway) to make a comeback. Not until people want them to, and are willing to accept a slower pace of communication. I can't see Gen Z ever embracing that en masse, so I think forums will become more and more obsolete, maybe with a core loyal userbase and (the apparently small number of) people who actually appreciate what forums offer. It sucks, but more or less everyone has embraced the algorithmic walled-garden Internet.
Anonymous C double-posted this 4 weeks ago, 2 minutes later, 32 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,412,941
@1,412,937 (B) > Instead it's always worse (myspace->facebook->instagram... etc).
I shudder to imagine what'll come after TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Those platforms already have 30-second videos that include Subway Surfers alongside or play two videos at once or whatever because the attention span of the average zoomer is so dire.
> It's a bit like the broken windows theory. People swing by (for the first time or returning), see a quiet board, and don't bother joining in. Search Google for "I miss forums Reddit" and you can find hundreds of Reddit threads where people bemoan the death of forums and the communities of the 'old Internet', yet none of those same people complaining actually use the forums that still exist or try to keep them alive (or create their own, but who wants to do that). > > So no, I don't really expect forums or imageboards (ones with anything like substantive discussion, anyway) to make a comeback. Not until people want them to, and are willing to accept a slower pace of communication. I can't see Gen Z ever embracing that en masse, so I think forums will become more and more obsolete, maybe with a core loyal userbase and (the apparently small number of) people who actually appreciate what forums offer. It sucks, but more or less everyone has embraced the algorithmic walled-garden Internet.
> It's a bit like the broken windows theory. People swing by (for the first time or returning), see a quiet board, and don't bother joining in. Search Google for "I miss forums Reddit" and you can find hundreds of Reddit threads where people bemoan the death of forums and the communities of the 'old Internet', yet none of those same people complaining actually use the forums that still exist or try to keep them alive (or create their own, but who wants to do that). > > So no, I don't really expect forums or imageboards (ones with anything like substantive discussion, anyway) to make a comeback. Not until people want them to, and are willing to accept a slower pace of communication. I can't see Gen Z ever embracing that en masse, so I think forums will become more and more obsolete, maybe with a core loyal userbase and (the apparently small number of) people who actually appreciate what forums offer. It sucks, but more or less everyone has embraced the algorithmic walled-garden Internet.
There’s an irony about bemoaning the death of forums on Reddit, which used fake posts and media hype to kill forums. There’s emergence of all of these platform companies, and Congress’s failure to regulate, ensured the rise of tech robber barons for a new Gilded Age. The “new new thing” became the same old shit.
Anonymous C replied with this 4 weeks ago, 18 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,413,244
@previous (F)
It is ironic indeed. Most people who complain about forums dying are active participants in killing them, it's just the way the world is going.
It won't be long before you can't access Reddit without logging in, like Twitter/X now forces you to do. Considering how many people append "reddit" to their Google searches to avoid SEO spam, I'm sure Reddit knows most people would cave and sign up. Walled gardens for everyone.