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Your anecdote about forums really hits home. I went to a small, private elementary school with a class size of about 30. We were the only friends we had. When I was in fourth grade, I created a forum for my classmates to use when we got home and couldn't communicate with each other in person (this was before it was standard for kids of this age to own a mobile phone). It was a hit. I made separate boards (aka subreddits) for things like sports, video games, and even just general chat. It was a huge hit in my class. I had people begging to be moderators and asking for improvements. Delegating the moderator title was serious at that age, as everybody wanted to feel like they were contributing to our forum. I felt like a CEO of some fourth grade startup.

In a weird way, reflecting on this, it really says a lot about who I am as a person to this day. Thank you for influencing this memory to come out of my repository tonight.

Isn't Whatsapp/Snapchat today's alternative to that?

Sort of yeah. Semi-hidden/private groups on IM apps can be really good.

> It's far to easy too game larger social media networks and make it seem like the consensus.

That's how it was growing up though, right? Avoid the popular stuff, find the group you feel accepted in, that's what the internet was to me growing up, found my place on it for some time being, hopped around here from there.

Sometimes I just pretend that astroturfers are the bullies of the internet, and I try to figure out new ways to be both lazy and smart in how to not succumb to that sort of influence. It's somewhat demeaning to basically be considered an information carrier to spread the message of some new shiny thing to buy. Ads. Ads make and break the internet.

When people push money around that way, I dunno. Seems short sighted. People purchase quality products and services, quality products and services are hard to make. Word travels naturally for things that are of intrinsically high value, overvalued things eventually have their bubble popped.

Even when things seem like the consensus though, I try to put on my 6th grader hat and remember what it's like to have an interest in the information people are offering, but also be skeptical and discerning and true to myself about my own feelings, before trying said service or product, and after.

Ads sort of treat people like once you get them hooked, you have them for good. And that's clearly not the case. Or it doesn't matter, because there's always another new set of people available to fool.

Internet has become the place to make money and find status. That's the opposite of what it was growing up and I think that is why it sucks. We all need to make a living, but all that stuff isn't life. Having the internet shift from being the place to escape to, to the place I want to run away from, eh. That's why I come here though. Reminds me of usenet and slashdot. I'm still on reddit, just, the only subreddit I'm subscribed to is programmerhumor.

>People purchase quality products and services,

Sadly, I don't think that's true. The overwhelming drive behind most buying decisions is price. That's why there are entire categories of consumer goods where you literally can't buy something well-made. Try to buy decent aligator clips, thumb tacks, a well made oven - the list goes on. Cheap and shitty drives good and well-made out of the market every time.

I agree, but when I wrote this I did write it with the intent to say 'there exist some people who purchase quality products and services'; I honestly didn't mean it as a statement of the majority.

Maybe you're not appreciating how much more mainstream the internet is now compared to the late 90s, early 2000s. Sounds obvious but that has implications.

The proportion of geeks —and I mean as an entirely positive badge of qualification— has been very much diluted by all the other people who just want to take photos of their dinner and children in exchange for likes, shares, views, fame.

There still are geeks out there. They're still creating their own forums. Hell, the forum software we used as children 20 years ago is still out there. I refuse to believe that there aren't just as many miscreants chiselling out their own place on the web, eschewing Facebook and Snapchat and all the other dross that the rest of Generation Z are using.

It's impossible to quantify and so much harder to appreciate with all the noise on the internet these days but it's still there.

You should probably consider that there are plenty of geeks on Facebook and Snapchat and likewise 'dross', and that some of them even also take photos of their dinner and children. There are legit geeks in Generation Z. Probably, I don't even know what that is. Everything after X is just riding our trenchcoat-tails as far as I'm concerned.

One of the things the web has done is disassembled the social and cultural barriers separating subcultures. "Geeks" and "people with lives" and "young people" and "people who use social media" are not separate and isolated sets, they do overlap.

And sure, there are people creating their own forums. And people creating their own forum software. Both get posted here from time to time. But as with the anime community, we really need to get past the elitist attitude that one cannot be a "true" geek, nerd, whatever and still interact with the mainstream. At this point that's like saying you can't be a science fiction fan unless you only read books published before 1975.

While I think we ultimately believe the same things, you're arguing against things I don't believe and don't think I've said. I think you've misinterpreted the tone and content of my post. It's certainly a more aggressive reply on more points than I expected. I don't want to get in to an exhaustive definition argument but I feel I should say something.

I never discounted that Facebook (et al) users also include geeks. We have friends and family too. Never suggested that there aren't geeks in all generations. There are, that was rather my point! They still exist, they're just dilute. Didn't suggest that geeks can't also be popular. Never suggested anything about "true" geeks, that's between you and your anime community. I did actually stress that by "geek", I meant the sorts of people likely to be able to do and enjoy this sort of development.

If it's the only way you can read it, /s/geek/people willing to learn and get stuck in/i

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as combative, maybe I misread your comment.

These threads pop up every few weeks now and it's getting aggravating. Here we are living in the promised land, as far as geek and tech culture are concerned, and people keep complaining that it's not hip anymore.

I think it's also become normalized. I'm both very far on the geek-side of the spectrum in interests, but I also spend a lot of time with people on the other end. The kind of interests I can openly have today would have probably seen me ostracized in previous generations. I got a rug printed for my kid that's the floorplan of a 4004 - and nobody even mentioned how absurdly nerdy it is to be making ICs into furniture.

> Forums are the biggest thing I'll miss

I miss Usenet :-) Back in the day, any FAQ posted to Usenet was gold. I always wondered, "How do these brilliant people know to make a FAQ and why do stupid people never make FAQs". And recipes. Every recipe posted to the internet was amazing.

Being older, I blamed forums for the demise of the internet :-)

>I miss Usenet :-) Back in the day, any FAQ posted to Usenet was gold.

Got to agree (or most were, anyway). In an early company where I worked (large Unix hardware and software vendor), when I first got to know about FAQs and had Internet access in the office (initially via long-distance dialup to the head office), I must have spent tons of hours poring over many FAQs that I got by doing "ftp rtfm.mit.edu" and then going to the FAQs section, downloading and reading them.

I even bought a book about using the Internet (I think it was Internet for Dummies :), also bought Modems for Dummies, to learn how to use my dial-up modem at home with my PC) and from one of those books, found this great resource called "Accessing the Internet by Email". It had ways of doing searches and downloads (of Archie, Gopher, and FTP, IIRC) via email - there were proxy / gateway sites that let you do that - and getting the results in your email inbox. I must have used up a lot of bandwidth (of both kinds :) trying out most of those techniques and getting (and reading) many of those FAQs and other interesting tutorials, documents, etc. For multiple programming languages and other software topics, as well as other topics. It was huge.

Many of those FAQs are still available at www.faqs.org .

Also, just googled and found that the "Accessing ..." doc is still around. May still be useful to anyone who has limited Internet access or only email access, anywhere in the world:

Accessing the Internet by Email:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Accessing+the+Internet+by+Em...

2nd hit:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-services/access-via-email/

I think one of the biggest changes has been the visual deemphasis on individual identity in modern social media over forums, even on HN. Forums that allowed user large user avatars, flair, and the rest made it possible to easily visually identify back-and-forth between people, as opposed to reddit which deemphasizes usernames. This basically means that it’s harder to identify users across threads, and harder to “get to know people”. You may or may not have read my comments before, but you don’t instinctively make the connection between my past behavior and my present behavior unless you go look at my comment history or unless I’m one of the HN super-posters who gets mentioned by name.

Come check out https://hackerforums.co ! We have a nice old fashioned phpbb forum for ya

After the tenth email from haveibeenpwned.com, I swore to never hand over a username and password to another forum system. Even one run by "hackers" (in the positive sense). This holds especially true for phpBB.

Let me log in through an external service where I can control my credentials and factor count. Ideally a pile of established OAuth providers and an open OpenID box.

Use a different password for each phpBB and other forums. Manage them all using LastPass or some other password manager.

If they get hacked and you lose that password, so what? They can only impersonate you on that forum.

Great until the password manager has security issues. They're still passwords so even after they fix up shop, you still have to [very manually] go from site to site replacing your passwords. Until you do that, you, your data and your online persona may be vulnerable somewhere.

If an identity provider has issues, the window of opportunity ends with the rollout of a fix.

Not to mention that I trust the security of my identity provider a lot more thorough than Mr Bobbins phpBB instance. Audits automatically instigated by changes in country, ISP, device, browser. Logs kept. Dynamic secondary and tertiary factors.

It's toxic and unnecessary data. Let somebody else handle it.

Then only use that password manager for PhpBB forum...

You care way too much for an account that you currently don't even have... is is really necessary? Worse case, you lose it and you are back a your current state, doesn't seems so bad to me.

> currently don't even have

And won't have with the current login method.

I'm not trying to convince you to follow my path here, I've just been trying to explain why I do what I do, in an effort that the guy advertising a forum I'm interested in might improve things enough to let me (and those like me) in. I understand that there are ways to do this, and that my way is an active choice.

If it comes to it, I'd rather go without.

That’s funny, I would never trust an unknown site like this with my real OAuth or OpenID account. Too much risk of compromise or marketing or whatnot.

I use a system of unique ids for these sites.

This is very well said. I made a ton of online-only friends with whom I've since met up with over the years. These were enabled by old school phpBB forums, gaming clans, things like that. I don't feel that any personal connection is enabled by Reddit, or even HN for that matter.

Before forums bbs meetups were a great place meet like minded people. There were so few of us outside friends happened more.

If you want to relive the dial-up days, cap out your phone's data plan till it busts you down to 2G speeds. Now it's 48K :D

I recall it was pretty easy for people to just friend each other on MySpace. And to a lesser extent Facebook, but most people treat FB like a digital rolodex of IRL personal contacts and were more hesitant to just add any randoms to their friend list.

The only way you can get to be part of a community that feels intimate is where it is niche and hasn't become part of the internet mainstream. Forums centered around highly popular web figures are often very big.

But you can still find good forums. Forums that are built around very specific interests are more intimate and it's more conducive to comfortably talking to strangers and develop online friendships.

Also, this is just from my very casual observation, but forums built around interests that are not typically associated with more mainstream geek culture or tech culture, that are not privy to highly polarizing social views seem to have the air and attitude of the older internet.

Some example topics for such communities may be bird watching, crocheting, trade jobs like plumbing or modding/tuning for very specific older cars. These have a different demographic (usually skew older) and attitude towards conversation with strangers than the demographics that attract more people on topics such as gaming computers, comic books, anime, etc.

Maybe you just got older? I have those same experiences today moderating subreddits.

As someone who is even older and has seen these types of threads, I can say with some confidence that this is called nostalgia (phpBB was never good). Not to say the internet is not ripe for another decentralization of power. Lack of patience is an issue.

Going back farther, it would be easy to feel nostalgic about the BBS scene.

There were less people and it had a higher barrier for entry, so better signal/noise.

Now there's everyone and it's easy to participate, and the noise is defenning.

smaller subreddit = less noise

Something Awful and Metafilter still exist in remarkably unchanged form, although both are now facing existential funding issues. Lowtax's spine is gone, the Mefi peeps have a huge shortfall...

I still hang out on Something Awful and Resetera (videogame oriented, the follow-up of Neogaf after it imploded). Forums are so much nicer than Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.