i miss the good ol' days of foruming

[ReturnofMCH]

I first joined in 2011, and first experienced forums in 2008 even if I really shouldn’t have back then.

Even then I just miss having 100 accounts instead of the one you need for reddit. It was outdated, but it was more fun to keep track of old usernames on many different aspects.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Here yet again at this ever-so-popular, ever-so-relevant thread, haha, mostly to follow up on my comments from March about That-Site-That-I-Won’t-Name-But-You-Probably-Know-What-It-Is-Anyway, and some insights that I’ve had about that and other related things since then.

I remember visiting That-Pokémon-Forum-That-I-Won’t-Name-But-You-Probably-Know-What-It-Is-Anyway back when I was very young, including its fanfic section (it’s the same site that you might remember me mentioning on one of my previous posts here). I mentioned before how it was kind of obvious how many of the writers of said fanfic section skewed young because of the average quality of writing on display, as well as the average reaction to the mods’ policing of their often rule-breaking nature of said quality. And that, of course, is to say nothing about the average reactions to other topics on that forum (~cough~ anime ~cough~ shipping ~cough~).

Meanwhile, I’ve kind of reminded myself now that Pokémon was still a relatively young franchise back then, and that those of us who were hardcore enough into the series to join a forum about it were probably still around adolescent age, if not even younger than that. With said age being, of course, fairly close to the target age demographic of the series. And while I’m sure that Pokémon had a not-insignificant periphery demographic (that is, adults) even back then, I also suspect that a good amount of the periphery demographic that exists for the franchise now are those who, for lack of better words, never “grew out” of Pokémon (as if anyone should to be expected to, but you know what I mean, haha) and have been in the fandom — including forums — for a very long time. And many of whom, I suspect, have either traded forums for what we know today as “social media”, or are active on both but simply prefer the latter over the former, or (in perhaps many more cases than we recognize) simply don’t have any online presence in the fandom at all anywhere.

(Note that I could be completely off base with a lot of that there, so please let me know if I’m wrong or if there are any other anecdotes that should be considered here!)

I say all of this because I suspect that the above might have a lot to do with the less-than-pleasant experiences that we often associate with “social media”, in the case that said social media might skew… younger, let’s just say, it indeed being the younger generations’ preferred way to communicate with each other about anything and everything, Pokémon included. They’re essentially the older generations’ equivalent of forums (very roughly, of course, for reasons already discussed at length by us here). Where I’m getting at here is that, well, I can’t help but draw parallels between the worst that I’ve seen as a very young person on Pokémon forums and the worst that I’m seeing now on social media. Which makes me wonder just how much us being adolescents back then affected our behavior and outlook on things, and just how much that was of a predictably immature manner given just how young we really were back then.

Now, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to make age — physical age, that is — the number one universal factor of why social media sucks or anything like that, because that’s obviously ridiculous. There are plenty of ostensibly grown-ass people who have the emotional and mental maturity of a very, very troubled child of single-digit age, or worse; the kind of immaturity that even other children see as such. And those are in fact the worst kind of immature people, I’d argue, as those are the type of people who are more likely to hold power versus children, and to be more likely to be considered “mature” precisely because of people’s general inability to distinguish between physical and mental age, and their subsequent giving such people the benefit of the doubt — and thus, power — based on status and privilege rather than merit (perhaps the idea of “growing out” of supposedly childish media, and its popularity versus “growing out” of actually toxic and destructive behaviors, is a symptom of that). But when the kinds of things that I see in social media are the same kinds of things that I remember seeing at That-Forum-That-I-Won’t-Name-But-You-Probably-Know-What-It-Is-Anyway so long ago in those nascent years of the Pokémon fandom, I do think that age is a factor, singular, and one that should be considered when discussing why the worst parts of social media are the way that they are. People aren’t perfect — with children most definitely not being so — and I do believe that most people do try to be good, not just for the sake of following rules but for the sake of being good, because for the most part, they are good. But I also believe that people can be misguided by their own naïveté, or, perhaps more kindly (and accurately), simply by the fact that they still have a lot to learn about the world and how to deal with people, whether said people are bad-faith actors who, whether they’re literal children or children-in-all-but-name, will always exist, or if they’re simply people who believe that Ash should be with May instead of Misty or something, haha.

 

[Pyrax]

I appreciate that I can browse any forum without an account, even Bulbagarden if I wanted to. Most of today's websites push you to create accounts just to browse, it's so annoying and clearly a way to sell your data. Additionally, there's a higher sense of anonymity in that there's no real need to share so much about oneself.

I also prefer forums to social media, the main reason being the later's immediateness. In social media, lots of interesting topics are covered, but unless you post your opinion on a post less than 3 hours later it will become obsolete and no one will read it. In the forums I can have some time of processing my thoughts and the confidence that even a casual reader could read it, getting likes 1 week after the post is done is not unheard of, and you have easy access to all your opinions.

This reminds me. I've had likes from posts that were several months, if not years old. This thread I made in 2009 is still getting replies as recently as April 2023. Outside of Tumblr it's practically unheard of to reply to posts more than a week old - I'm pretty sure Reddit auto archives threads after a month (or 6?) without replies, for example.

 

[Kanjouhi]

this is basically the only dedicated forum i'm on rn, tbh after about 2018 or syo i stopped really going on forums (besides gaia online, though that isn't really a dedicated forum, nyeither is everskies which is a site i currently use) since that's when i got onto discord (and eventually social media in 2019). tbh maybe that's just due to a lack of active/extant forums for things i liked at the time though

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

Just want to highlight this post, because it is exactly how I've felt for quite some time now:

This isn't "herpderp me old, young people evil, the Greeks/Romans/Victorians complained too, old man yells at cloud", it's that the internet itself has morphed around being advertiser-friendly rather than human-friendly. Same as how sites will censor common profanity/"potty words" to be more attractive to advertisers, but will look the other way when it comes to hate speech and threats because they can still make money from the lowest-common-denominator engagement that it attracts. It reduces communication to people screeching fallacies at each other ("ur mad so u wrong", "you didn't get enough Internet Stranger Upvote Points so my argument wins", [insert forced, unfunny, beaten-to-death meme followed by 50 emojis here], etc) and people who want to have in-depth discussions can rarely find anything of interest there.

Sure, stupid people have always existed and new users who don't read the rules have always existed, but it's only over the last decade or so that the internet has become so bite-sized, hyper-centralized, and utterly plastered with intrusive marketing to the point that it's a chore to socialize or find meaningful community that is 1. active, and 2. not full of unmoderated hordes of people like that. This isn't unique to any one age group, there's a whole genre of "Why isn't the internet fun anymore?"/"Where have all the forums and personal websites gone?" thinkpieces and they all come to similar conclusions about how corporatized it is now.

Now for my own words:

I miss forums so much. They were a foundational part of my existence and youth and I despise what the internet has become since then. There were two major ones that I became a prominent member of, and whilst there was a lot of teenage drama, I can't imagine my life without them. If I were younger, if I had to navigate today's internet... I doubt I'd ever have made any friends or even gotten married. Yes, it was due to a forum that I met my husband.

It's all deeply impersonal these days. All you are on social media is numbers. Nobody cares about you - you're just a voice screaming into the void with tens of billions of other voices. I never feel motivated to post or have a presence there because of that, because what's the point? I have fond memories of posting my art on those old forums and getting so much feedback from people I actually knew and recognized. People I admired. They were communities, and what you did mattered. It felt like interacting as humans were meant to do, even if it wasn't physical. We are meant to create smaller groups with recognizable personalities, not to be thrown into the meaningless ocean of the global noise. Nowadays, nobody gives a toss about what I post. I'm just pissing into the wind on Twitter and DeviantArt is basically dead. Sigh.

Because I have ever had trouble making friends in real life, that was how I reached out to others. I never really fit in, honestly, but it was something. Now that it's been replaced by this soulless corporatized nonsense, I find it all but impossible to make new friends. Everything moves too quickly for my ancient self, I suppose. This is no longer my world - it is the world of the next generation, and I wish them a lot of luck navigating this chaos.

This forum is the final bastion of those days for me, but I know they are long past gone. At least it's something, even if it's paltry in comparison to what I once knew.

 

[c la fet]

Whenever I log onto Twitter or any social media and try to do something other than just look at people's pictures, like actually be a part of a community, I end up feeling completely empty (and sad).

Social media are not made for me, I prefer forums.

 

[KOT0NE]

i initially made liek a super long essay on my experience with the net as a whole buuut thats liek way too long so ill probably dump it on my blog instead and put a more general thing here since i do have liek a Bunch of thoughts on this topic.

so essentially as an incredibly dumbed down version of what i was gonna say before, i started using the net in liek around 2012. so for context im from a third world country so the concept of the internet and anything ""modern"" was super new 2 me so id often end up engaging with older stuff thinking its super new so that heavily added 2 my disconnect from liek modern sites.
liek 4 context i had the nes during the 2010s and thought it was liek the pinnacle of gaming then saw . mario 64. of all things online in 2013 and thought that was the coolest newest thing ever.

i wasnt rlly on liek traditional forums as a kid but i only rlly started engaging with liek...the Big sites from liek 2020. prior to that my social media experience was deviantart, amino and an art app that felt moreso liek it came out of 2002 then it did 2012. there were more sites but these were the most prominent 4 me and out of this 2/3 had no algorithm whatsoever.

so liek fast forward to 2020 that was when i started engaging with bigger social media since all the other people i knew online had already shifted 2 them. i mostly only posted art which initially was fine but beyond that it was just dull.
liek maybe its just me but its just painfully difficult 2 talk to anyone on them and theres so many weird unspoken rules and u need to constantly promo and be active and present liek a certain ""image"" and fit liek certain ""groups"" and both everyone sees you and nobody sees you and it's all so fast paced and just a pain. it's too much pressure which when i tried engaging beyond just posting art it ended up becoming too much for me to handle and eventually even posting art became too nerve-wracking so i just quit for the most part.

its just a weird lack of community and moreso a feeling like a presentation and everyone is incredibly overly critical over everything. ill see more callout threads in communities than i will liek actual appreciation or discussion for whatever game the community is meant to geek over.
ill see threads even from like 2009 still active here but liek twt or insta if a post is more than 5 days old at best then it's practically dead and you best move on and it's just sad idk

i try curating my web experience to be as further away from that sort of experience as i can. trying to run my own servers hanging around communities liek these but its just sad to see these places die out in favor of more sanitised monetized experiences.
on the topics of servers disc doesnt rlly do it for me either. big servers are a pain to feel involved with especially in ongoing convos and messages i dont think can rlly replicate the feelings that threads and blogs had. liek if i dont feel liek i belong in literally any thread here whatsoever i can just go and make my own thread but usually i can just leave a reply without any worries. i dont need 2 wait ages to post my art or worry about it getting posted over because i can make my own art thread. liek that essentially. i dont think disc servers are bad just that they're their own thing and that bigger servers can't rlly replicate that sense of community due to how fast paced they are and already having liek pre established cliques and such

idk this is very rambly i just cant adapt to bigger sites whatsoever despite trying for years now while i very much felt at home here right away . it might just be a me problem

 

[skynerel]

I dislike twitter (X) for pokemon discussion so much. Only the big accounts get attention and every conversation has to revolve around the content they decide to post. In the forums everyone is equal and it is easier to engage in conversation and bring up discussions that might get ignored otherwise.

 

[Princess Viola]

the modern internet sucks ass and i genuinely feel bad for younger folks who only know this bullshit corporate sanitized advertisement-filled* internet where most people just browse a small handful of sites and that's it.

there is, quite literally, no actual sense of community on any of the big social media sites. none. doesn't matter which one there is. sure, i'm not saying you can't form friendships or interact with others on the big social media sites, you can, but there's no overall community.

forums are just inherently better to any shit like twitter, instagram, threads, reddit, discord, etc. they just are.

*the internet has always been filled with advertisements but it's gotten so much worse nowadays and it's why i feel that browsing the web without an adblocker is just irresponsible these days. 'oh but these sites need to make money', well that ain't my problem, is it?

 

[carpology]

as everyone else in this thread i miss forums a lot too... i wasn't truly around in The Forum Era, since i'm a bit too young, but i was regardless pretty active on forums in middle school and elementary school (far too young, haha, but what can you do)--in elementary, i spent a lot of time on a warrior cats roleplaying forum, and in middle school an animal crossing forum, and throughout both times a game i liked to play had a forum of its own attached to it as well so i frequented there too--and i've always looked back on those times very fondly, though of course with the tinge of embarrassment that comes with remembering your younger self. despite forums being on their way out at the time what with twitter and such on their ways to becoming bigger things, i still felt like i could often find all kinds of forums for just one topic that were at least decently active. despite the fact that i was probably very obviously younger than what i pretended to be, people were friendly to me and i never really worried about things like 'popularity' or whatever--i was just me, having fun. poisoned by social media now, it's a time i desperately miss.

nowadays, being more aware of who i am (that is, a very queer person), the internet is a more dangerous place to me, so even though i have come across other forums a few times, i've been reluctant to join them for fear of what has become the usual way of internet interaction and discussion (poisoned with irony, sarcasm, and rarely capable of genuine feeling, or at least that's how it seems to me) and fear of receiving bigotry for being who i am, since i don't really want to hide it. bulbagarden is special to me in this way because so much of the userbase itself is queer in some way, and if not then at least accepting of it, and there is real dedication to keeping any bigotry out, so i am genuinely comfortable here in a way i feel it would be hard to be elsewhere.

in general, though, i feel like the slow whale-fall forums are experiencing is a loss for everyone. as other people have mentioned, it was very useful to be able to find answers to questions you had in random forums: not the best example, but i've found myself frustrated recently having questions about fan-games i've played but unable to ask or find answers because the only 'community' for it is a discord server, which i'm personally not capable of speaking in due to anxiety. more than that, though, i feel like it's a loss of patience and thoughtful communication... though i appreciate instant communication sometimes, because i like being able to talk like i would IRL (as close as texting gets to that, anyway) with certain people, other times i really hate it and i wish it was more common-place and acceptable to take your time to respond, and to not be available at every moment of the day. those kinds of things aren't accepted with social media, which you're expected to be checking all the time, at work or at home or with friends. i feel like forums inherently don't have these kinds of stressors--there's a sort of implied agreement between everyone that uses them that this is a hobby, somewhere you visit when you have the free time, and that you'll get back as soon as you're able. and, it's a lot more commonplace to give long, thoughtful responses that take time than it is elsewhere--though there's a large number of posts that are short and to the point (not that that's necessarily a bad thing), there's just as many that are longer and more detailed. in short, i feel that forums are a lot more conducive to thoughtful, respectful, and healthy discussion than elsewhere, and it's a real loss that we've moved so far away from it. (forgive me if someone else said all of this already, i did not read too closely through the other replies...)

 

[Princess Viola]

i've found myself frustrated recently having questions about fan-games i've played but unable to ask or find answers because the only 'community' for it is a discord server

The biggest fucking problem with replacing forums (or FAQs, guides, walkthroughs, etc.) with Discord servers is that Discord servers are not indexed because they're not websites.

Forums (and anything else that exists as an actual website) are discoverable, you can google how to do something in a game and you can find guides on forums, Reddit, YouTube guides, fan wikis, etc.

But Discord though? You have to actually know what server to be in to even begin searching, that is such a goddamn awful way to find any information at all that I am completely baffled that people find it usable. And while a fan game might just have the official Discord server, what about a massively popular game that has tons of official and unofficial Discord servers for different aspects of the game? How do you know which one to join to begin searching to try and find out how to do something in the game?

 

[Greninjaman]

The biggest fucking problem with replacing forums (or FAQs, guides, walkthroughs, etc.) with Discord servers is that Discord servers are not indexed because they're not websites.

Forums (and anything else that exists as an actual website) are discoverable, you can google how to do something in a game and you can find guides on forums, Reddit, YouTube guides, fan wikis, etc.

But Discord though? You have to actually know what server to be in to even begin searching, that is such a goddamn awful way to find any information at all that I am completely baffled that people find it usable. And while a fan game might just have the official Discord server, what about a massively popular game that has tons of official and unofficial Discord servers for different aspects of the game? How do you know which one to join to begin searching to try and find out how to do something in the game?

There's also the fact that the messages are being posted in real time, so it's harder to keep up with a conversation. Like, you could step away for a second and suddenly, thirty posts are made. Not so with Forums, I feel.

 

[FinnTheCookie]

There's also the fact that the messages are being posted in real time, so it's harder to keep up with a conversation. Like, you could step away for a second and suddenly, thirty posts are made. Not so with Forums, I feel.

The biggest fucking problem with replacing forums (or FAQs, guides, walkthroughs, etc.) with Discord servers is that Discord servers are not indexed because they're not websites.

Forums (and anything else that exists as an actual website) are discoverable, you can google how to do something in a game and you can find guides on forums, Reddit, YouTube guides, fan wikis, etc.

But Discord though? You have to actually know what server to be in to even begin searching, that is such a goddamn awful way to find any information at all that I am completely baffled that people find it usable. And while a fan game might just have the official Discord server, what about a massively popular game that has tons of official and unofficial Discord servers for different aspects of the game? How do you know which one to join to begin searching to try and find out how to do something in the game?

This is something that's bothered me so much. It's so infuriating that I have to turn to joining a Discord just to solve a small problem. I try to do my part in this by adding keywords/search tags along with the problem & solution I had in case anyone else has the same problem in the future so they can at least also search and find my solution. I like to think it could help ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[colours]

i wonder what's going to happen when the inevitable happens and discord collapses. all that information that's "archived" on discord servers are most certainly going to be lost, but there's going to be a weird, awkward, "what now?" sort of phase as i think people are probably going to go full circle into forums again for data preservation and community.

 

[Princess Viola]

i wonder what's going to happen when the inevitable happens and discord collapses. all that information that's "archived" on discord servers are most certainly going to be lost, but there's going to be a weird, awkward, "what now?" sort of phase as i think people are probably going to go full circle into forums again for data preservation and community.

Replacement platforms will exist to replace the functionality of Discord, it's happened before and it will happen again.

And there won't be a weird 'what now?' phase since these replacements will always exist before the main service that was used collapses.

Things like TeamSpeak, Mumble, and Ventrilo gave way to Skype which eventually gave way to Discord and Discord will eventually give way to something new.

Hell there literally already exist several FOSS alternatives to Discord right now.

 

[KOT0NE]

on one hand i want 2 see forums become more active but on the other hand losing all that information would be a pain... >< altho i think the effects of over reliance on disc for data preservation and such is already starting to backfire considering the stuff with the links from before. i still run into pages that used disc 2 host images occasionally that r totally broken now.

i partially agree with what viola said but also i cant rlly see the transition being super smooth if disc suddenly goes 2 hell but at the same time idk if such a big site would collapse without any major competition that people flocked to in the first place so thatd cut out the "what now" phase by a bunch.

i just hope that eventually even if not in the form of forums we'll cycle back 2 something similar at least but right now it sure doesnt feel that way

 

[Princess Viola]

i partially agree with what viola said but also i cant rlly see the transition being super smooth if disc suddenly goes 2 hell but at the same time idk if such a big site would collapse without any major competition that people flocked to in the first place so thatd cut out the "what now" phase by a bunch.

Yeah it's kind of like the slow death of Twitter, most of the alternatives people flocked to already existed.

While there were some new platforms created in the wake of Elongated Muskrat buying Twitter such as Bluesky and Threads, the other places people moved to were things that already existed like Tumblr or Mastodon (the best one, except for the weirdos who say they don't 'get it' lol).

 

[Sheep]

Forums are just perfect for me lol, Discord can be fun for live chats but sometimes I find that overwhelming and like to stick to my forum experience. Especially since it's easier to keep track of everything here, and you can look back on old content super easily. Thank you Bulba for the wonderful experience

I used to join like a million forums 10+ yrs ago lol