r/forth is a subreddit - so https://<reddit url>/r/forth
Also ...ycombinator isn't exactly just a community run bulletin board either. Although HN not being ad infested is absolutely amazing. Also the simple design.
Sure, I'm not really using this as a web forum, I'm not here for the community.
I certainly get that itch sometimes after the person at the coffee shop asks me if I've downloaded the app for the 50th time. No, I don't want 45 apps on my phone just so I can get a tiny discount or a free coffee each year.
Regarding the comment on asking friends. I think that has some value, but it assumes that you know someone for everything you're interested in or that they have the same kind of purchasing power or ideas as you. The Internet can be helpful there if you're interested in the best bang for the buck for a newbie, or the best product period once you've spent more time.
However, most weekends I travel to the forest with my family and we spend some time walking, cooking and hanging out in a distinctly analog setting.
No, it doesn't. It assumes they might know someone who knows someone that has valuable input. Doesn't require that they have direct experience either, it's usually enough that they have adjacent experience. And then there's books, when _I find myself to be the unique snowflake in my social network there's always someone who wrote a good book or more on the topic. By now my physical library is quite large and covers a large portion of occidental modernity, both fiction and the sciences.
The Internet is nice and all, and sometimes there's good advice in contemporary web forums, but it's also pretty young and lacks both the depth and width of the last few centuries of dead tree storage. These days people also throw second hand books after you if you say you're interested, or they charge a euro at most unless it's something collectors might find valuable.
I quite enjoy computers and computer networks, though. It's mostly the social and entertainment industrial side of it that I find unsatisfying.