I do miss forum culture; large chunks of digital history have been erased as forums vanished.
Culture on the web has changed as well; it has moved from communication with elements of performance, to performance with the illusion of communication.
Anon can't go home again
Submitted 1 day ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to greentext@sh.itjust.works
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/922143ba-79f4-415a-a9d6-9f7cb212aee4.png
Comments
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 1 day ago
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 day ago
that’s a fantastic way to characterize the the 2020s internet.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
I feel like there are still many active forums around, it’s just that more generic spaces like this one are even more prevalent.
There were loads and oodles of dead forums around back in the day.
I also think we should differentiate between dead and just slow. Most forums are unlikely to be as lively as a social media thread.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There was this forum I used for a decade. It was a support group for a few specific related medical conditions (I will lie if you ask. It was the fatal butt disease. The condition isn’t the important part), and after a couple years as a user they made me moderator over a small subforum (like fifteen of us were in the smaller group) for a medical research group. They were some of the closest friends I’ve ever made.
I’m the only person still alive in the research group (benefits of getting sick young I guess) and the last time I checked the forum, the latest post was ten months old. I owe them confidentiality, but with día de los muertos coming up I find my mind lingering on them more than usual.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It was unfortunate watching our forum die. It was a pretty busy space, lots of gaming info, participation and all that. The main damage was caused by our preferred game series studio killing private servers and mods with the next version of the game in favor of dev company paid servers with limitied and company approved mods. Pretty soon the seconday games we played followed suit. That caused a lot of the group to look for other games to play, modding was what we were all about. The forums were a lot of fun. A lot of people learning how to use the graphical tools for games and personlize their forum presence. I just looked at the wayback machine and it was a real blast from the past seeing all the names, all the servers, the activity…it was a good 5-8 years of my life.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
This prompted me to look for mine and incredibly it’s still online and essentially unchanged.
But it has had barely any activity since 2022. But I’m surprised it survived this long.
The feels, man
nullspace@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Similar feelings for a few communities that have existed since 2000. The posts are all there, but the people are all gone.
radix@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Every few years I check in on an old message board I was active on between like 1999-2010. It’s still there. Gets maybe 1-2 posts per year these days.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Those years line up well with SETI@home?
naughtlemming@fedinsfw.app 1 day ago
Isn’t SETI dead now? Atleast you can not fetch ans New workunits in boinc.
wookiepedia@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Huge flood of nostalgia for my folding team on the [h] forums. Thanks.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Same for me, mine is skyscrapercity.com Still going strong, surprisingly!
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Although looks like they’ve migrated from PhpBB to ‘fora’?
csolisr@hub.azkware.net 1 day ago
Inb4 Anon buys the domain and turns it in a Threadiverse instance for the lulzUnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve documented exploits like you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships that clip through space in Masters of Orion. I watched the six hidden cutscenes in Baldur’s Gate. All those moments will be lost in time…
Time to die.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
I used to be much more of a hardcore archivist. Nowadays I’m glad some of my most prolific years’ output is just gone, never to be seen again.
saldek@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Wait, hidden cutscenes in Baldur’s Gate?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m just riffing off the original lines.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 day ago
old forums i use are still around and active.
the users are all like 50-60 though. nobody under 50 uses them and nobody under 30 even knows what a ‘internet forum’ is.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We are on a modern Internet forum right now though. It just works a little differently.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 day ago
reddit style stuff was never a forum. it’s a link aggregator that had a discussion on top.
forum structure is way more specialized and it’s not threaded, because each post is it’s own thread.
kionay@lemmy.world 1 day ago
RIP old school game shark forums
KingOfTheCouch@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
I went back looking for mine to make sure the shit I said back then was good and deleted. “Site can’t be reached” Thank god!
Now I just need to go burn down the internet archive!
underscores@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
how did people in the 2000s afford web servers and domains ?
it seemed like everyone had their own site, my idiot child mind thought that it must be free
Im_old@lemmy.world 1 day ago
it was free. Geocities was free. Domains were (still are mostly) cheap. For simple web hostings there were (and still are) lots of free options
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Now you could host a website on a pi zero if you wanted to. Well, you could if you make a proper website and don’t just download every JS library you can find to add a button.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
And having some web space is not that expensive either. I am not even close to using the cheapest options, but it costs me about 80€/year to run the space I use for my small hobby forum (I will not doxx myself), and some other things. Depending on what your income, and other hobbies are, that is peanuts.
NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Domains are cheap but I swear they have the most fuck-ass interpretation of inflation out of any product. My $3CAD .live domain is now nearly $50CAD/yr. Still cheap but why
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Not free, but not expensive either.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 day ago
they cost like 10-20 bucks a month to run
llii@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
It wasn’t that expensive if you used shared hosting.
alt_xa_23@midwest.social 1 day ago
I’ve been keeping a list of interesting niche websites I’ve found since around 2018, and it’s been sad seeing them gradually go offline and disappear into the void.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Every article that has resonated with me, had a clever turn of phrase, good artwork, whatever. I used to bookmark every single one (I have a process for my [recipes to try] bookmarks. Once I try them, if they’re good I type them out in a text editor and save them on my computer. Then I move the bookmarks I’ve tried to either [yeh] or [bleh] subdirectories. Just as an example.) but like, seeing half of my old favorite recipes disappear because of website redesigns? That hurts me in my heart and, more importantly, stomach.
weps@lemmy.world 1 day ago
gamefaqs walkthroughs
Romkslrqusz@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I am grateful that phwonline.com got a solid eulogy
Shame that Facepunch forums are gone
Glad we’ve always got Archive.org
stickly@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I’m sure this already exists but someone should make a forum aggregator. Read only with an open standard and make an account to join the discussion on the site. Basically just a fancy rss feed.
Creating a healthy new community takes a huge amount of activation energy or an incredibly long time. Why not just transplant the mature communities to more fertile ground? Bonus: it’s much harder to astroturf an entire forum than a few high visibility accounts.
I’m sure some forums wouldn’t want the extra traffic with no ad revenue. But discoverability would be a huge boost now that search engines are trying to be a black box Ai MitM. Anything other angle I’m missing?
Evotech@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Anyone
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Sad mp3 syncing noises
stoy@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I used post on a mobile phone forum called Lasyk, this was some time in 2004-2006…
The forum is long since dead and erased, but it was a huge forum with 100k members, subforums for just about any mobile phone made by mainstream manufacturers.
I remember managing to create a huge thread over on their misc forum, where I asked other users to post a screenshot of their desktop.
It just kept going, and I think it became a staple thread with 80-100 pages or so…
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
RIP Abandonia my beloved
Quokka@quokk.au 1 day ago
My niche forum split off from a comic about RPG games, eventually they moved to a FB group to keep contact but I stopped using FB. I dreamt about them a few nights ago, I miss the community we had.
SailorFuzz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
everynow and then, I log back in to GaiaOnline… see how it’s doing…
EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I could go, but… Would I dare gaze upon the visage of my most teenage self?
SailorFuzz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
treesapx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you don’t cringe you haven’t improved. I have to chant that when I look at anything I wrote when I was younger.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Would you recommend it?
SailorFuzz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
not really. It’s a shadow of itself at this point. The most noteworthy thing about it is the trivia knowledge that it sparked many research papers as a model of hyperinflation. But the forums themselves are dead. The minigames were entertaining at their inception, in the days of Shockwave games… but nowdays… you’d be more entertained just pulling down Terraria or something
Feddinat0r@feddit.org 1 day ago
Lets see what happend to gamespy
zenitsu@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
GotFrag 😢
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 day ago
When I think about those old forum friends, the ones I’ve lost touch with (or worse, just lost), I like to listen to this song. also singshouting I’m doing this for revenge with 3,000 other people is one hell of an experience
Sarothazrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Vizzed Board, those were the days 😭
blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
There’s still some good forums about.
I used to use MDOCUK.co.uk when I had my L400.
Now I use sprinter-source.co.uk for my van
Handy for mechanical tips etc
The forums for the first silk road was pretty fun too
tmyakal@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Anyone remember BIGmog?
Klanky@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Techreport.com 😢
binarytobis@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I typed in a random string of words in the early days and added “.com”, and I ended up on some forum some random guy in Texas hosted for him and his friends. I was obviously a decade younger than everyone else, but it was the best of the internet. We knew each other well, the link sharing was top notch, no one was making money off of it.
Checked it recently and it’s been down for a long time. The internet archive caught one snapshot of it in time. I can see my username in the homepage like looking at my own gravestone.