Forums as an alternative for social media and discord.

[Inkingsama]

My only complaint about forums is that you only have said users on there, and if they dislike modern social media and said forum site is gone, there's no other way to find them. It already happened once to me. Discord is my primary form of communication but I think that forums gotten their own merit aswell.

I was thinking about that just a moment ago. What if this place shuts down out of nowhere? Then we would lose our little community here and we would never see each other again :(

 

[Yousef]

And remember…
Forums add mustard race, social media needs to ketchup.

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

Anonymous forum boards are becoming a dying breed and sometimes I don't want to socialize somewhere that has my personal info/face on display. Also social media has become a huge toxic mess full of political posts and witch hunts for people who don't share the same opinion as them. I know old forum boards were also prone to being toxic but not in the same way.

 

[mollieifusco]

No harshities here, homie, just something more personal: conversation like this' a weighted game I prefer not to indulge in. Credence to similarity calls via comparison between the two were often a foot-in-door tactic for undermining forum structures to begin with. Varying incentives - sometimes for havoc; other times moderation effort for pooling more users - but the question alone's something I don't willy-nilly into with bleeding heart. Even for cause of sentimentality: it's just a different flavor of saccharine that I'd prefer in more defensible a position rather than bared out for manipulation.

Again, no mark against you. I understand what's being asked. Just what came to me when asked this question on a place that I'm comfortable enough in. Don't net yourself a 'gotcha' either by calling me out for the hypocrisy on display of baring my heart out! I'll turn you into Idiot Meat and leave you for the Grotesques~!

Truth enough? It's nice to be back on forums again. There's annoying call-backs to the monocultural technostate here and there - and those'll pave Hell before they go away - but better them call-backs than being the one dunked into that miasma. I'd take the userbase-communal imperfections of forums as a whole nowadays than going on Twitter/Discord again and seeing the worst part of an IRC chat group repeated ad nauseum forevermore.

Forums, image boards, social media and messaging clients like discord can all be used responsibly and they largely depend on their communities [...] nothing is truly safe from unhealthy behavior or unhealthy habits.

Word of truth; none can contest. But inclines can - and do - exist. E.N.E.M.Y Mindz (Every Negative Environment Manipulates Your Mindz), y'know?
Onus of responsibility's a tricky call to pin down. Often times, it can be manipulated into a grand-scale conversation of culpability. I.E: plausible deniability; the person themselves are at fault instead of holding themselves to better standard in whichever way, which is its own can of worms (by design). At some point, the conversation's better to be had about stopping before one starts rather than going to bat for a whole host of nuance that's there just for sake of argument.
Coincidentally, that's where healthy engagement lies for stuff like you mentioned. Knowing where to cut off is bar none one of the best habits you could cultivate during your time, besides simply not using them to begin with...

Peace to the rest of your statement, though preach to your last:

This is being said not to regurgitate the truth, but to highlight the critical issue that true alternatives don’t always exist, and it is possible to mis-use any platform be that as it may by.

I'd be the one saying something to this effect if you hadn't, especially after all that momentum above. Here's to you, homie. ?

 

[ciro64]

My only complaint about forums is that you only have said users on there, and if they dislike modern social media and said forum site is gone, there's no other way to find them. It already happened once to me. Discord is my primary form of communication but I think that forums gotten their own merit aswell.

I've thought of the following options:

1. Make a discord server exclusive to active forum members so they can keep in touch
2. Make a neocities RGT fan page and use that as a way to redirect members to somewhere else in case a disaster happens

 

[DragonMals]

Make a discord server exclusive to active forum members so they can keep in touch

A lot of people here were against tthe idea for doing that.

 

[mollieifusco]

1. Make a discord server exclusive to active forum members so they can keep in touch

Mentions were made of a Discord server come and gone already. Not in good respects.

2. Make a neocities RGT fan page and use that as a way to redirect members to somewhere else in case a disaster happens

A much better practice - one with history from the olden days. Web-rings were what they were called. These still do exist, in a manner of speaking. Just incorporated to point towards one's account in the social-media conglomerate rather than their own personal-craft websites or blogspots.
Undertakings on this defer more to the person and whom they're interested in rather than group detailings courtesy of admins, though. Still, I've seen things like this happen before for a places' anniversary before. Could still be on the table, provided time.

I will blame phoneposters for the actual state of all social media.

Phoneposters get out. Forums are only for pc users as God intended.

THE WORD RIGHT HERE
THIS SHIT'S CHURCH​

 

[SuperOkay]

I've never liked conventional social media. It's either a complete echo chamber or engagement fueled rage bait. Massive waste of time. Short form video is where art went to go die.

The golden age of forums was back before the great divergence of NeoGAF. After that, you had the side that just wants to cry about everything (ResetEra) or the side that became pretty much a Neo-Nazi haven (NeoGAF).

This place is actually pretty refreshing.

 

[Boscobilly]

Something Awful is still my favorite place to post although I use Twitter a lot too since I have an absurd, and frankly undeserved amount of followers. (Not revealing my accounts on a piracy website, sorry.)

 

[RageBurner]

My take is that forums are more laid back, slower paced and with a stronger focus on permanence (memory and meaning dissolve quickly in a large server with hundreds, if not thousands of people talking at once.

It's the difference between exchanging letters (forums) or trying to scream your thoughts through the din of a fish market (IM programs).

 

[Ain_Gamer]

As the title says, i'm curious to see what you people think of the difference between the two and also ask why you people are drawn to a place like this.

I've been taking myself off of social media as of late for self improvement and have found that i typically have a better out look on things ever since, while social media is convenient, it's often a political nightmare and an addiction center for doom scrolling.

I feel forums are a lot more laid back and actually focused on realistic topics, it really makes you realize that social media is smaller then you think, and what you see really is curated to just get engagement unlike in forums, where its just real people talking with real people.

They are both good for different reason and you correctly pointed out why, I am a bit of zoomer, so this is actually the first forum i serious use, tho I am not extremely active here, and use social media more for it's convenience , there's a certain charm in having to sit down on my PC and using my laptop to use a forum.

Social media is a nightmare for politics but it's a even bigger for gaming TBH, in gaming social media people get mad at the smallest thing, like gaming graphics or whether his childhood franchise is alive or not.

In politics people get mad for things that affect the real world so it's understandable.

On bluesky people are more chill but it's just boring, part of what social media great is conflict and shitpost, when you don't have that social media is just a repetition of people saying what they like and eventually some news.

 

[Deleted member 231262]

I don't think there's inherent value in any specific method of communication online. The only reason this forum is as good as it is and not another 4chan is because of the community and the moderators. So be nice to the mods every once in a while and be thankful for their hard work.

bro give it a rest for 5 minutes, this place is never gonna be 4CHAN, just relax and enjoy this site. : )

No harshities here, homie, just something more personal: conversation like this' a weighted game I prefer not to indulge in. Credence to similarity calls via comparison between the two were often a foot-in-door tactic for undermining forum structures to begin with. Varying incentives - sometimes for havoc; other times moderation effort for pooling more users - but the question alone's something I don't willy-nilly into with bleeding heart. Even for cause of sentimentality: it's just a different flavor of saccharine that I'd prefer in more defensible a position rather than bared out for manipulation.

Again, no mark against you. I understand what's being asked. Just what came to me when asked this question on a place that I'm comfortable enough in. Don't net yourself a 'gotcha' either by calling me out for the hypocrisy on display of baring my heart out! I'll turn you into Idiot Meat and leave you for the Grotesques~!

Truth enough? It's nice to be back on forums again. There's annoying call-backs to the monocultural technostate here and there - and those'll pave Hell before they go away - but better them call-backs than being the one dunked into that miasma. I'd take the userbase-communal imperfections of forums as a whole nowadays than going on Twitter/Discord again and seeing the worst part of an IRC chat group repeated ad nauseum forevermore.


Word of truth; none can contest. But inclines can - and do - exist. E.N.E.M.Y Mindz (Every Negative Environment Manipulates Your Mindz), y'know?
Onus of responsibility's a tricky call to pin down. Often times, it can be manipulated into a grand-scale conversation of culpability. I.E: plausible deniability; the person themselves are at fault instead of holding themselves to better standard in whichever way, which is its own can of worms (by design). At some point, the conversation's better to be had about stopping before one starts rather than going to bat for a whole host of nuance that's there just for sake of argument.
Coincidentally, that's where healthy engagement lies for stuff like you mentioned. Knowing where to cut off is bar none one of the best habits you could cultivate during your time, besides simply not using them to begin with...

Peace to the rest of your statement, though preach to your last:

I'd be the one saying something to this effect if you hadn't, especially after all that momentum above. Here's to you, homie. ?

TLDR. : )

 

[ciro64]

bro give it a rest for 5 minutes, this place is never gonna be 4CHAN, just relax and enjoy this site. : )

Why are you assuming he's nervous

 

[Ravl]

I will blame phoneposters for the actual state of all social media.

Phoneposters get out. Forums are only for pc users as God intended.

This is correct, I saw it as it all went to shit and I can assure that the internet would be a far better place if the only way to access it was a desktop computer.

 

[Deleted member 231262]

Why are you assuming he's nervous

you should see his messages, in my experience, he almost always brings up 4Chan without promt, and yapps for hours about how bad it is and how this site is gonna be just like that, blah blah blah. ( " _ " )

we still cool tho.

 

[SuperOkay]

4chan is awful, but so is reddit. Gotta call out both

 

[Tonberry]

I like that the forum format invites to discussion first and foremost. At least that’s how I feel.

On faster sites, like Twitter/4chan/Reddit for example, the pace and generalized space (as in you can access every sub/board/whatever directly, you don’t sign up for a specific interest) means that there’s much more room for antisocial hit-and-run behavior, which almost always stifles discussion and lets the troll/toxic person off scot-free because they’ve already left when you’re done reading their post that makes you feel bad or second guess yourself. That being said, I’m not saying you can’t still find good conversations in such spaces. I just don’t prefer the format anymore.

As others have said, you should always take things in moderation, though.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

As the title says, i'm curious to see what you people think of the difference between the two and also ask why you people are drawn to a place like this.

I've been taking myself off of social media as of late for self improvement and have found that i typically have a better out look on things ever since, while social media is convenient, it's often a political nightmare and an addiction center for doom scrolling.

Hadn't considered forums as a form of social media. But i suppose that is true. Except instead of endless feeds from everyone completely unrelated to any topic, instead you have threads where things are generally contained. (Going off topic or getting political will happen from time to time).

But compare to say Facebook or Twitter where it's closer to TV (aka, you get a constant feed of information) instead it's the inverse and you have to seek out what you want (more like youtube, unless you just auto-play all day).

Maybe it's that attention seekers have much more trouble blasting out a message if they can't forcefeed it to everyone. And when they do it's easily identified and squashed.

Or ignored.

I feel forums are a lot more laid back and actually focused on realistic topics, it really makes you realize that social media is smaller then you think

Much smaller. 3/4ths of Twitter was probably bots, and that's probably how Facebook is right now, mostly bots (so they can milk advertisers for how many 'views' it gets, that or scammers). I think people are tired of the fake social media. Though i wonder how the kids growing up on TicTok will react to when they find out everything they watched was a lie in 20 second clips of insanity.

Bots on forums tend to just be spammers (or like on GoG, dozens or hundreds of zombie accounts to downvote people certain trolls don't like) or post dozens of threads on the latest voodoo phone sex call viagra crypto mining 1000% real get-rich-quick scams before staff inevitably remove them.

and what you see really is curated to just get engagement unlike in forums, where its just real people talking with real people.

Mhmm... read/reply to what interests you and it naturally gets put back on top. Natural grass-roots replies and conversation (for the most part).

 

[Prism_Red]

In my opinion, forum forces us to read the other parties piece of mind before we can express our own. It's different from a chatroom where everything is spontaneous and any single paragraph will be drowned in a matter of seconds. You can't interrupt someone in forum.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

They are bloated as hell, forget trying to enter with a slow connection or computer.
They are too impersonal and prone to the "hive mentality".
Abundance of rumors with no research to back it up.
I could go on.

 

[Kyyo]

I actually prefer forums over social networks or Discord, not only for the aesthetics but also because generally due to the lack of longer posts and stricter rules, you can find more quality discussions without the nonsense that you can find on social networks.

 

[SpaceCadetGenocide]

As the title says, i'm curious to see what you people think of the difference between the two and also ask why you people are drawn to a place like this.

I've been taking myself off of social media as of late for self improvement and have found that i typically have a better out look on things ever since, while social media is convenient, it's often a political nightmare and an addiction center for doom scrolling.

I feel forums are a lot more laid back and actually focused on realistic topics, it really makes you realize that social media is smaller then you think, and what you see really is curated to just get engagement unlike in forums, where its just real people talking with real people.

the difference between social media and forums is that forums filter out normies (IE, more complex than scrolling endlessly and more discussion based) and social media was made to cater to normies

Post automatically merged: Mar 4, 2025

And then forums lack a lot of the things that blight social medias, like likes, you might get reactions but there's no incentive to post besides for the love of the game and wanting to discuss topics earnestly with likeminded people. Not in a reddit way either