I've touched on this
before, but, for me, the best thing about forums is that they provide a space to develop a sense of personality that other kinds of social media – especially from the sites we're all thinking of – simply don't facilitate. I
like that, here, I have the space to write a ton of bullshit, or pepper my posts with stupid jokes, or include images and .GIFS wherever I want to, or comment on individual elements of what other people write, or bold/italicize certain chunks of text. That gives what I – and what you! – post here a unique, individual
identity.
So much of the modern Internet is just people communicating through memes or low-quality nonsense – 99.9999% of it isn't in any way witty, interesting, or noteworthy, and in the rare case that it is, it's only because both people interacting recognize the same insipid image macro or catchphrase. There's nothing
valuable about it – it could all just be generated by AI, perpetually, forever. A constant stream of textual garbage, dotted with aggressive, cruel political arguments where one empty-headed drone uses copy-pasted rhetoric to gain imaginary superiority over the other.
Forums have space for context. They have space for detail. They let you
breathe – to momentarily lift your head above a sea of low-quality slop and get your ideas out there, and see other people's ideas.
Not the ideas of "influencers" on Twitter endlessly repeated by a legion of worshippers –
real ideas, made by
real people who don't have an image or a brand to protect, and who don't need to rely on snide, passive-aggressive garbage in the pursit of e-popularity.
You don't know me IRL, but I like to think that you know a bit about who I am, how I think, and what I value through what I write here. By reading my posts (or just skimming them, because I never know how to shut the F up), I hope you understand some aspect of my own personality – of my likes and dislikes, or what I find funny, or what I'm interested in. I certainly like to think that, when I read your posts, I know a little more about what matters to you.
I don't want this place to be Twitter, or Reddit, or 4chan, or YouTube, or Tumblr or NeoGAF, or ResetEra, or Discord. I hate those places – I really do. They ruined conversation on the Internet! And yet, I can't escape from them. But here, I
can! I don't have to worry about tripping some imaginary landmine that will make everyone hate me. I can joke around with you, and you with me, and we'll both just be having a good time! Even when we're arguing about Japanese-to-English localizations, or Nazism, or the questionable canonicity of Sonic the Hedgehog storylines – even then!
This isn't my forum, so I have no impact on what its "ethos" is, but if you asked me what
I'd like it to be, I'd say
different from everywhere else.
With a major influx of new users to a forum, you always get individuals trying to be as shocking and hateful as possible!! Hopefully these users get weeded out over the coming days, my thoughts go out to the moderators. People can be a headache! As long as we focus on community and our shared love for gaming, we can create a tight knit, kind space here.
