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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

We are pack animals, it is why dogs evolved in to our family. Isolation is a severance from our natural social state and is hurtful. I think one of the great benefits of the internet is that it is possible to meet and befriend people outside of the normal social routes. It is not a cure for isolation, but friends you game with or chat with or share stupid stories with is a help.

The problem is that reddit and digg killed the conventional forum, so no one really cares who you are any more (unlike when people would start to 'know' regular posters on forums). Now it's a crapshoot of random people and a smattering of comment replies if people vote on your comment. No personality, no real interaction.

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traditional forums still exist

the problem with reddit is that there is too much news, outrage, and hype there.

They still exist, but they have been dying. There are a few niche forums that still hold on to users, but the proliferation of subreddits leaks people away.

I visit no forums today, whereas when I grew up it was a majority of my online-life.

I agree with this wholly. I used to play chess on a service called FICS and it had a decent social scene in some ways for someone who was growing up geek in a town that wasn't really giving avenues for it (I grew up in the rural Midwest...it's no rural south but it's not great either) I went back recently and it's usershio is wwaaaay down

Well, I think like every other loosely federated communication system from the 90s (except email), the scene has moved on to a couple proprietary platforms providing a better user experience. lichess.org and chess.com have pretty good scenes now, and you can still make friends there.

Thanks for those recs I'm checking theM out now!

That's interesting now that I think about it....I do still belong to a few forums for dedicated topics, and they are always such friendlier places than reddit.

Depends on the subreddit. The smaller ones still have strong community. I know lots of people from /r/mechanicalkeyboards for instance, many of whom are local. I think it helps a lot that users organize a TON of meetups all over the world so people have faces to put to usernames.

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