local dial-up BBSs sharing gif and wav clips and chatting about anything that you felt like at the moment AOL chatrooms free hosted forums on Anglefire and Geocities Larger forums(SA, Fark, etc) FB/instagram Lemmy/Piefed

I think that would be my path as it relates to communities where I actually ended up having a social community involved. I would say that it also is a direct increase in toxicity as it works downward. I find Lemmy/Piefed just as toxic as any other platform but the lack of a forced algorithm lets me basically mute all of the negative content sources and it’s niche enough that you can actually mute the negative influence, which makes for a pleasant experience.