How long have you been using forums for?

[NatalieZaki]

Used to use the RateYourMusic forums a ton. Made a lot of lifelong friends on there. Then I got my account banned for shitposting too much on there. I just realized that this site has forums too, so I'm gonna be trying to chat here. hi :) i will not shitpost as much again ive learned my lesson.

 

[ciro64]

Toribash forums was my first forum experience at 10 years old or something

I got banned for a week then my account got deleted

One of my achievements was creating the giant penis mod

 

[Deleted member 231262]

i been lurking 4Chan a bit (its not as good as a few years), some digimon forums, i was using NeoGaf until i got banned (LOL) and my main stomping ground, FunnyJunk.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

I would've had to have been around 7 or 8, it was around 1998 when the Dreamcast was new I discovered and joined the old Gamewinners forums. I've been on a bunch of others since and never really stopped. It's been such a delight finding a very active forum in this day and age.

 

[medisinn]

It was 2002 for me, some sort of RPG Maker forum that I've long forgotten the name of. I did make a couple friends there, but the most quintessential forum for me was Fated Circle. Another RPG maker site, it seemed to be fairly large and used the coveted vbulletin software. I joined there in 2003 and made a bunch of friends that I'd regularly talk to on messengers, some of us would play Diablo II or Ragnarok Online together. Lost touch with pretty much all of them save one but those were fun times. And of course we'd make our own crappy forums with barely any activity, that would use whatever the free alternatives to vbulletin were.

It's interesting to look back and see the different phases of internet participation. In the late 90s and early 2000s, anyone could have a free basic Geocities/Angelfire/etc. site, so many did. Then a bit later it was the same with forums. Then came Myspace pages. After that I don't feel like it counts as much, Facebook and Twitter don't let you personalize your page/section at all beyond links and brief descriptions. Maybe Discord servers are somewhat of a return to form in that sense, but you still are very gated on how you can customize them. The internet and these portals where we are encouraged to scream every thought into the void just feels so sterile.

To me, a forum is the perfect middle ground. It's anonymous if you choose, but you still see avatars and signatures, so you get to know people more than you would in a reddit community. You can personalize and customize what people see with your posts, but it's not something that can mess up the whole viewing session, like going to a Myspace page where there are 4 songs playing at once and a bunch of glittery blinking GIFs lagging your browser. And most importantly, if someone gets out of hand, you can count on a moderator taking care of it, unlike Twitter or Facebook, where no one is willing to turn off the sewage pipe. Also, you just leave when you want to and it doesn't follow you with notifications on your phone. Maybe if you enable email notifications, but that's it. I think that aspect of being able to disconnect is healthier than other social media.

 

[Vetusomaru]

I started using forums since early - mid 2000s. One of the first forums I ever joined was a Greek one for graphic design. One of the first ones I've been active at a lot was a Greek one for anime. However I've been using the internet since mid - late '90s (although I finally started using the internet from home at early 2000s). Therefore it took me years to discover the existence of forums and start using them.

 

[Aisf]

About 3 months. I'm very new to forums

 

[Kid Dynamite]

I'd say roughly, a little north of 16 years.

 

[DragonMals]

Idk if I had said it on here, but I started using fourms as early as 2018 with the Terraria Community Forums.

 

[Another Iori]

When I discovered the internet, I didn't even know about the existence of forums or chats, since my main source of interest was visiting the sites branded on official products, portals that functioned as storage archives and of course also the porn, however, things changed around the 201X, because a container site, which at the time was even bigger than RGT, imploded due to the forced shutdown of Megaupload/Megavideo.

Therefore, I helped out through my profile by republishing some of the lost material (mainly games and comics that were already completely off the market at the time), but the founder of this portal was incredibly stupid, because he also uploaded material that had just been released, like brand-new PS3 games from Sony or animation DVDs that had just become available after their theatrical run, furthermore, it was monetized through public ads on the uploaded material, so in the end it was shut down.

But my journey a forum user was unlocked and continues to this day (especially because before Wikis, knowledge of certain information was confined to shared messages on the forums, which were found randomly through search engines).

 

[Bomberman]

Futurama forums in 2004, gamefaqs 2005.

 

[GardeniaSky's icon GardeniaSky GardeniaSky]

My Gaiaonline account is about 20 years old.

 

[Questless Knight]

Man Gaia online I remeber that shit still around which suprised me but I guess the people there has becomes as rotten as all of Reddit.

Anyway I been using forums or BBS sense the 90s.

 

[TacoMeister]

I was on the Metroid Database forums in 2008 or 2009.
I remember being a really cringy teenager back then...

Now I'm a cringy adult here!!!