this is an interesting question i’ve had banging around in my mind since well before Reddit’s implosion (and Discord’s enshittification), but which seems really worth asking now.
you can’t blame Reddit and Discord or their imitators entirely for these going out of style, but they’ve sure put the dagger in a lot of remaining ones, and i kind of wonder if they’re just in an irreversible and terminal decline a la USENET. i can only name two or three i even consider checking anymore, and i’m not sure how sustainable any of those are long-term.
I have fond memories of belonging to Harry Potter forums in my teens, writing forums in my early twenties, and other random homemade forums with barely half a dozen users. I do miss the sense of community, the little dramas, the signatures and avatars, the trolls and the darlings, the colorful CSS, and the overall coziness of logging on and seeing what was happening today. It was really exciting to be on Mugglenet the week before or after a new Harry Potter book was released. And I got some good support on some of the smaller writing forums. But discover-ability was rough. Better as a memory, perhaps.
