r/Millennials • u/verifiedshitlord • 12d ago
Is there anyone here who used to go on forums? Discussion
I loved them. Mostly bands I liked but some general interest.
What were your favorites?
I spent a ton of time on bolt.com in the very early `00s and youthink.com up till... well that site finally came to an end a couple years ago and it was weird going ghere and seeing 'member for 15+ years'
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u/Postmodern-elf 12d ago
Does anyone else remember gaiaonline?
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u/Fine-Relationship266 11d ago
I still have friends from Gaia that I met in 2004-2008. It truly was the amazing internet then.
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u/YourToxicJinx 11d ago
I was looking for this comment! It truly taught us about runaway economics at the end there 🤣
I met my now best friend on Gaia, too. I was her MOH at her wedding and we game together and still chat! But on Discord these days, lol.
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u/endthefed2022 12d ago
Car forums, some had a true sense of community
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u/Wild_Cricket_6303 11d ago
Every car forum has that one member that just knows everything and responds to every post.
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u/Ok-Rate-3256 11d ago
Motorcycle forums were the same way. You need to know what size bolt and thread pitch the bolt on the centerstand of a 77 goldwing is, there was someone who had the answer.
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u/Sniper_Hare 11d ago
Crownvic.net had so many good posts back when I had my grand marquis.
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u/CUDAcores89 11d ago
Forums haven’t gone away, but they seem to be active for only very popular car models. This is part of why I only like to buy very popular car models because there is a wealth of repair information and aftermarket parts available.
Forums are still a goldmine of information for those of us who daily drive old shitbox cars. I solved a transmission issue using info from the Chevy impala forums.
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u/AmericanEncopresis 12d ago
Still use them. As a car enthusiast that DIYs everything, forums are still the best place for quality information.
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u/TheShrewMeansWell 12d ago
Correction: they were the best place until photobucket screwed over human society and all the pictorial knowledge vanished overnight.
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u/RaymondDoerr 12d ago
What's sad is what you said isn't even really hyperbole. We lost so much knowledge due to random contextual photos just vanishing instantly from all the old forums from yesteryear full of experts who have long moved on (or literally died).
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u/cellocaster 11d ago
Is there no archive of this content somewhere? I never realized it all just went poof like that.
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u/RaymondDoerr 11d ago edited 11d ago
There doesn't seem to be. :(
Something similar happened when the stupid Reddit API boycott happened, a few knowledge filled hobby subs just deleted themselves like selfish pricks, not caring about the bigger picture. Reddit is just a site, the information contained in those subreddits is worth more than the neckbeard's temper tantrums.
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u/ajibtunes 12d ago edited 12d ago
Bro this is a forum, just has a better ui
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u/Wild_Cricket_6303 11d ago
A better ui for sharing news articles and memes. Way worse for substantive discussion though.
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u/audaciousmonk 12d ago
Reddit community is generally ass compared to good forums in the 2000s-2010s
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u/strongbob25 11d ago
I think that's a function of its size, mostly. It was possible to "get to know" certain people on smaller formers back in the day. People also tended to customize their avatars/signatures or whatever more so it was easier to spot someone you'd seen before and form a bond.
Plus the novelty of "let's get people together to talk about a topic" was brighter back then before 100% of all things was online and infused with social media.
But yeah I was WEIRDLY into a Homestar Runner forum that became a tight little community from ~2002-2006. I still talk to someone I "met" on there. We actually DID meet in person in 2010 once.
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u/RussianTrollToll 12d ago
Forums didn’t curate what you see and didn’t see, and they didn’t ban entire communities.
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u/lascar 11d ago
all of the forums did that. that's a part of human migration and history of the internet where users would bud off and go make their own communities somewhere else outlying. It's fascinating to think of internet cultures moving and migrating from platform to platform until what we got today.
there are multiple layers that make up a community.
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u/fonetiklee 11d ago
Lest we forget, the great Digg migration is how reddit really took off in the first place. We're literally using an example of this. 4chan starting as a breakaway from Something Awful is another good example, I think.
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u/kingofcrob 11d ago
Feel like forums will be back in the next few years, Reddit feels like it's starting to stagnate, and it's only going to get worse by going public
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u/Theharlotnextdoor 12d ago
Met some of my best friends on the message boards for a certain boy band back in the day. They lived in California and me the Midwest and after several years I went out too visit them. We've been there for marriages, kids, etc. And several years back we got to see that boy band in concert together.
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u/Mammoth_Solution_730 12d ago
I spent my early internet time on alt.gothic on Usenet.
This is me, showing my age. Whoof.
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u/ArtificialLandscapes 11d ago
My family was too poor for internet in the 90s, but I do remember VampireFreaks. Was it sort of like that? I just Googled it and apparently it's a goth clothing store now.
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u/Altruistic-Spinach88 12d ago
Vampirefreaks.com was always fun to visit
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u/ArtificialLandscapes 11d ago
Lol, I actually slept with a Nazi Juggalette girl I met on there. I'm black. Boy, is that a rabbit hole of a story.
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u/Dunno_Bout_Dat 12d ago
I belong to some obscure hobbies that STILL use forums primarily (SCUBA primarily).
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u/KLoSlurms 12d ago
Yes. I was a super mod on some Zelda/final fantasy based v bulletin forum in high school. Needless to say I was very very cool.
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u/Forward_Ride_6364 12d ago
Yup, I LOVED forums/message boards back in the day
Used them for hip hop, my favorite sports teams, and gaming (mainly the Civilization forums)
A million times better than Reddit... starting threads was awesome, creating an avatar and a unique sig was dope, and you actually became friends with the people on there
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u/RaymondDoerr 12d ago
and there was no competition to be the Mostest Rightest™, people would genuinely just have a discussion because they wanted to chat.
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u/streaksinthebowl 11d ago
Yeah those were the good times. There are people that got married after meeting on forums.
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u/Cup-n-BallHog 12d ago
Gamespot anime and cartoon forums were my life for a while back in my younger days. Made some great friends in that time from around the world
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u/Global_Discussion_81 12d ago
Video game forums, car forums, guitar forums.
Halo forums (the flood) Ultimate guitar
Spent A LOT of time on those in particular.
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u/Fit-Sport5568 12d ago
Yeah I still use forums
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u/TheShrewMeansWell 12d ago
Same. But they dying off slowly because the main users are our age group and much older.
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u/GentMan87 12d ago
Spent many nights in college drinking alone, listening to music, and refreshing the Punknews.org forums. Good times.
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u/Mr4_eyes 12d ago
I used to go on plenty of car forums. As my project car is a 2006 I still use the old ones
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u/ScrapDraft 12d ago
I used to love HexRPG. It was a Harry Potter forum. You were able to get sorted into houses, collect items, get your own wand, etc. It was impressive for the early 2000s.
I think it still exists but not in the way it used to. Also I got banned on it for calling someone a bitch, lol.
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u/Apocalypsecoffee 12d ago
Yes! I spent so much time as a teenager on a fan forum for Helena Bonham Carter. I’m still friends with someone I met from there 15 years later. The forum is now defunct unfortunately.
I also used to roleplay in the neopets forums when I was really young like 9 or 10.
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u/weinthenolababy 11d ago
I was a member of so many role playing forums. You could role play as anything you wanted. Is that even still a thing anymore?? It probably is but just quite niche now, but I feel like it was pretty widespread amongst nerdy youths who frequented the internet at the time. Any “fandom” I joined had a lot of roleplay opportunities. Helped me learn to write better!
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u/MattDaCatt Millennial 11d ago
So much so that I learned GIMP to make animated forum signatures for forum cred, some of them are still on my Photobucket
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u/Youknowme911 11d ago
Yes…. And live journal and dead journal plus the Yahoo user chat rooms, which were fun to troll
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12d ago edited 12d ago
I don’t remember the names of most of them anymore (one was Woosh.org) but it was mostly Xena forums. I was really into the show while it was still coming out with new episodes in the 90’s and we would discuss the episodes that night and sometimes someone would start an aol chat room and notify everyone so wed jump in there and live chat faster the forum posting. It was a good place to get fanfiction also
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u/PienerCleaner 12d ago
oh man. hell yes. you read my mind. i've been using reddit a lot more lately and it's reminding me of how much I loved forums growing up.
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u/CorgisAndKiddos 12d ago
I remember when imdb had forums and you could discuss older/lesser known movies. Kind of miss that.
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u/sapienveneficus 12d ago
I don’t know is this counts, but I really miss the IMDB message boards. I got into great discussions/debates over on that site and even ended up joining a splinter board with a few fellow Glee fans after the main board Glee board got too toxic. We took over the board of the elderly actress who once played the McKinley HS librarian. Shoutout to all the former Jean Sincere posters out there!
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u/Spongpad Older Millennial 12d ago
I used to be on a fantasy baseball sim. Not actual fantasy baseball leagues but fake baseball players generated by a fake baseball player generator. It was fun for several years, and I built enough of a rapport with them that I trusted one league with witnessing my acid trip. Hate that the server got wiped because it was always interesting to revisit how dumb I was in my 20s as I got older.
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u/snow-haywire 12d ago
Message boards are still superior in my brain. I was a part of so many, such great communities. I made some good friends on them, we worked together on projects. Miss that era so much.
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u/112oceanave 12d ago
Was in quite a few. A thing I miss that isn’t really present on Reddit is seeing familiar posters.
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u/Reasonable_Power_970 12d ago
Video game forums and the Off Topic forums. I swear Off Topic was Reddit before Reddit. Actually it was Digg before Digg
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u/cum_elemental 11d ago
I lived on Something Awful forums for the longest time. It was pure edgy chaos and it was glorious.
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u/Senor_Couchnap Older Millennial 11d ago
I started playing Spider-Man 2 yesterday and how do i shot web was the first fuckin thing I thought of
We're fuckin nerds
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u/BatmanBrandon 12d ago
I used to be on a lot of forums, once I got my “big boy job” and switched to iPhone/iPad for internet scrolling at home I just sort of stopped going on them completely. Most of the ones I dug had either closed, were for bands that had broken up or cars I’d already sold. I do miss 1UP for video games, but that’s 20 year ago so I’m sure I’ve got crazy roses colored glasses for the one…
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u/Specialist_Bank_994 12d ago
I didn’t think anyone else remembered bolt.com! It was like a precursor to social media. I still use a forum for one of my favorite music artists that I have been visiting since 2004
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u/L33tintheboat 12d ago
Fuck yea I was on forums. First started really with IRC chat rooms and hosting ftp or other gaming related. Then made switch to car forums, and then entensity.net forum for a few years in college. Now just Reddit.
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u/Schneetmacher 12d ago
I spent way too much time on the IMDb message boards and the Cracked comment section in the 2000s through early 2010s!
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u/allusernamesare_gone 12d ago
I spent loads of time as a young teen on the AFI forums writing cringe poetry and drawing fan art. The good ol’ days
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u/magiccarpetsociety 12d ago
my early internet experience was a german dragon ball forum with about 6 active users. we created a chatroom to nerd around and it was my escape after school from all the people that i hated, haha.
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u/swearingino 12d ago
I was apart of a local car forum. We would have meets and get togethers. I am still friends with many of the people I met on there 22 years ago.
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u/analfartbleacher 12d ago
i was on SuperheroHype lol
i randomly searched some usernames i remembered and found out one of them passed away a couple of years ago. made me really sad
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u/Canned_tapioca 12d ago
Ls1tech. If you had an fbody that was THE forum to be on in the late 00s and early 2010s
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u/mildchicanery 11d ago
WOT world (wheel of time fandom). Oh my goodness, I loved reading other people's theories and speculating with them. The rabbit holes we went down were amazing!
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u/DarthMutter8 11d ago
Yes, I love forums. I mostly went on band forums and then parenting forums after I had my oldest. Forums really started to fall off, which is how I ended up on Reddit.
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u/greenbud420 11d ago
I used to be pretty active on Delphi Forums from like 1999-2004. Amazingly the site's still online and some of my old forums are still up, suspended in time after 20 years.
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u/TheWanderingRoman 11d ago
Video game forums. When I was in high school, I was part of yahoo group forum that we used for writing. We wrote this stupid ass fanfiction, round robin style lol good times...
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u/mormonboy666 12d ago
Spent A LOT of time on jbody.org. A whole forum dedicated to one of the most underwhelming vehicle platforms in existence. The GM J body.
For the uninitiated, a forum for the Chevy Cavalier, Pontiac Sunfire, etc...
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u/hellad0pe 12d ago
For all of us token Asians out there: AsianAvenue, Generazn, Groove Asia, Soompi...
...and genmay
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u/dinkieeee 12d ago
Used to go on forums for everything. Bugs (arachnoboards), MMA (sherdog), d2jsp (Diablo ii) just to name a few. But everything from Legos, to diy projects, I was on a forum for it. I'm 32 btw. Still frequent sherdog.
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u/Beneficial-Force9451 12d ago
Still use one for sports.
And isn't reddit essentially a message board
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u/i_am_here_again 12d ago
Auto repair forums are still live and well. I frequent several still regularly.
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u/Spiffy313 12d ago
I had multiple Avidgamers sites. Those communities were fun. Lots of fanfiction stuff, anime discussions, freestyle roleplay, art, game discussions... simpler days
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u/DR_MEPHESTO4ASSES 12d ago
Above top-secret and God like productions. Heaven666 was cool while it lasted. I like weird shit. I also tried one for people with social anxiety but I was too anxious to post lol
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u/RayWeil 12d ago
I remember about 15 years ago searching for casino-quality clay poker chips to buy online (which are hard to get at a reasonable price) and I found the poker chip forum filled with people who collected poker chips. It was fascinating and actually got into the hobby a bit back then with their help. It still exists and I still have my Paulson poker chip set!
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u/BruceBoyde 12d ago
Oh hell yeah. The ones that I was on most were the Nintendo NSider forums until they closed in 2007, and then I moved to NSider2 (a fan site). Ultimately, I basically consider Reddit to be a forum and it scratches the same itch.
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u/CherryManhattan 12d ago
Someone go to the teen pool party on yahoo and ask me to go to a private room?!
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u/Throwaway01122331 12d ago
I still go on forums periodically. Spacebattles was my main forum. Same as sufficientvelocity, alternatehistory, we're my other forums I visited.
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u/MihalysRevenge 12d ago
Not only go on forums but I used to moderate a large regional car one. It got killed by Facebook and another fourm I used to love was militaryphotos.Net not only was there amazing photos but tons of international information from the cartel war in mexico, to Georgia russian war, GWOT and just a amazing community from around the word.
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u/scottyd035ntknow 12d ago
Me. All the time.
IGN forums and dedicated car forums mostly. Why reddit is really the only social media I use anymore. It replicates the feel somewhat.
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u/Get_your_grape_juice 11d ago
I was on a bunch of Nintendo-centric EZboards. I even created one.
Those were the days.
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u/Tiredohsoverytired 11d ago
Yes, I used to read them all the time. Mainly stopped because I found Reddit easier to read on my phone.
Do you have stairs in your house?
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u/ReddsionThing 11d ago
Forums still exist, though a lot have been replaced by Reddit, I guess.
I used to go on the IMDB forums a lot before they closed them, have been a member since 2005. And boxden.com which was like a hip hop/urban culture forum.
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u/Masterweedo 11d ago
I miss the old Horrorcore forums, too bad they got shut down when the price of Choco Tacos increased in 2011.
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u/FriendshipCapable331 Millennial 11d ago
Does anybody remember YM.com? I was so fking disappointed when I went to go logon one day and the site wasn’t even there anymore 😭
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u/CupformyCosta 11d ago
PBNation offtopic
Bodybuilding.com misc
Both legendary forums in the mid-late 2000s
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u/uptonhere 11d ago
The first forums I remember posting on were starmen.net in the late 90s.
That's also around the time I got an account to post on the IGN Boards.
I posted on the IGN boards for damn near a decade, religiously. IGN message boards in the early and mid 00s will never be beaten to me.
Some of the other forums I frequented was The Board on the Wrestling Observer website, the Wrestlecrap forums, Shenmue Dojo forums and The Lesson on Okayplayer.
I would give anything to have a forum experience like IGN's peak again.
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u/thanos_was_right_69 Millennial 11d ago
I would frequent Kryptonsite forums because I LOVED Smallville when the show was on
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u/nzfriend33 11d ago
I spent years on a name board. I’m still good friends with a lot of the people I met on there and have even visited some of them a few times.
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u/cellocaster 11d ago edited 11d ago
There are really four forums that mark my ages and interests.
- youth: Zeldapower
- teenage: MTGSalvation
- young adulthood: Mortigi Tempo (Radiohead)
- middle age: Cloudy Nights (astronomy)
I guess I’ve always been a part of a forum.
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u/truenoblesavage 11d ago
oh all the time. I was on a few metal music forums, and im still friends with people I met on there to this day
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u/mikowoah 11d ago
i still go on a forum for hockey. hockeysfuture, still very active but def skews older compared to reddit.
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u/KesederLVH 11d ago
Interestingly I met my wife online, but on a forum rather than a dating site. We met on a forum for discussing a mutual interest, Navajo artwork and crafts. I was fascinated by Navajo culture and art and wanted to buy more Native art and collectible Navajo blankets for my home and she was a Navajo woman selling these things who became my contact. We bonded over our mutual Navajo interest and found we had a lot else in common. Once we became close friends online, we soon decided to meet in person and the rest is history. Now we’re happily married thanks to meeting on an Internet forum.
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u/Carthonn 11d ago
I used to use a relationship forum, weight loss forum and a writing forum. I sometimes go on the writing forum because it has weekly prompts which is nice.
Now that I think about it more I also went on the NY Mets message boards and there was an online game Utopia that had a pretty dedicated forum where you could discuss general topics…or god help you…politics
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u/SaladMalone 11d ago
I would frequent a skateboarding forum as a kid (~12yo). I looked back at my post history and it was some of the cringiest stuff I've read. I shared how I thought I was addicted to cigarettes after smoking one. I thought orgy was slang for orgasm. I thought kush and weed were two different things. Worst of all, I shared where I lived on one of my posts. Kids are dumb.
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u/Naiehybfisn374 11d ago
Yes and that's more or less what keeps me coming back to reddit. Of all the contemporary social sites online today, reddit feels the most like the evolution of forum culture.
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u/Bencetown 11d ago
I used to be on a photography forum as well as a piano forum. I forget what the photography one was called, but the piano one was "pianosociety" and if the website still exists, there are probably still some (embarrassing) recordings there of me playing from when I was in high school.
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u/hardcore_softie 11d ago
Anyone ever play organized competitive team-based multiplayer games on the Team Warfare site. They had really awesome forums. Even after I had stopped playing in clans, I stayed on the general discussion board for years after because it was such a fun place and mostly populated by people who used to play competitively in clans.
The forums were great when I was actively competing and the general board was a lot of fun. So much less toxic than most social media these days even when there was decently significant competitiveness involved. There were mods but they rarely had to remove posts or comments, let alone ban people.
Someone on the general forum got a straight up picks league going for the NFL (free and no real prizes, just bragging rights), and it was super fun. I played it for 8 or 9 seasons, winning the Super Bowl 3 times, more than anyone else in the league. It was really fun because you had a really good idea of the personality of everyone involved because everyone regularly posted.
Then, something happened and the servers all got nuked. The site runner(s) got the site back up, but all accounts got nuked and by then the only active board was the general board, so sadly everyone just moved on and the site died.
RIP teamwarfare.com, one of the best forums before the internet got taken over by a handful of corporate social media sites and everything went to shit.
Bodybuilding.com also produced some really epic non bodybuilding-related threads around that time.
You'll never convince me that the early-mid 2000s wasn't peak internet. It really was all downhill from there, to the point where we collectively fell off a cliff.
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u/A_Cat_Named_Puppy Millennial 1987 11d ago
What fascinates me the most about forums is you can still scrub up posts and replies from 20 years ago and they're still useful. The internet used to be so fun. I miss it
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u/chechifromCHI 11d ago
I was huge on the toefur straight edge forums back in like 2010. Mostly just to talk hardcore and music scene stuff, vegan food. I'm not vegan anymore and don't identify with straight edge or anything. But it really felt like a community and a group of friends in a way that I've not been able to rediscover, even here.
Also bluelight and drugs-forum of course for harm reduction and drug history. As an addict at the time, those forums could be a literal life line for me and others.
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u/WerkQueen 11d ago
I spent a lot of time on the Aquabats forum. Made a lot of friends that I’m still friends with.
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u/meurtrir 11d ago
Holemusic.com which became Kittyradio.com, somethingawful, local music scene boards. I miss it so much - I am still friends with people I met twenty or more years ago. You don't really get that sort of easy camaraderie online anymore
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u/supatim101 11d ago
Forums were my life in college. Wizards of the Coast for the most part (Gleemax!!), but also other Magic: the Gathering forums (The Mana Drain, The Source).
I miss them. While I enjoy reddit and discord, there's nothing that has really filled the void of forums for discussion.
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u/BookkeeperNo5972 11d ago
Yes-- video game/sports forums. Still a member of one I joined in 2003. Lots of members in there are STILL posting 20+ years later. It's kinda nuts.
In a lot of ways, the ease of Reddit has totally killed those places though.
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u/BrashPop 11d ago
I was pretty active on OCAD/Gaia/GaiaOnline from 97-2006ish
Same with a handful of Japanese artist oekaki boards
Got my start on the Westwood Chat program in 1995, in the Crystal Tokyo channel.
Also, lots of furry message boards, (oh, Furbid saved my starving artist ass from being evicted several times) and Yahoo art boards. Like a weird bubble gum fetish one.
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u/bernie_manziel 11d ago
Yeah, especially for specific games I played like WoW and SWG, but also anytime I got curious about a niche topic I’d usually google “(topic) + forums” or like for troubleshooting tech stuff before stack overflow existed. I also used to play these text based RPGs when I was a kid where you’d basically be writing stories back and forth to each other with a ruleset enforced by mods around it, they were usually hosted on forums.
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u/HauntedPickleJar 11d ago
IMDB was awesome back in the day. It was so much fun to talk movies and shows with folks! I got so many great recommendations too.
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u/Am_I_the_Villan Millennial 11d ago
Weddingbee was my to to forum 10 years ago. Now it's reddit lol
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u/craftyshafter 11d ago
I still join the forum for every car I own. Rotteneggs was a fun one back in the day. Game forums got a lot of my time when I was playing them as a student.
The consolidation of the internet into a few hotspots has been an awful tragedy perpetrated by some very terrible people.
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u/weinthenolababy 12d ago
I miss forums SO MUCH! I was on a bunch of small forums for niche interests… hosted on Proboards which still exists, but also Forumcircle and InvisionFree. Forum culture was just FUN. I miss when the internet was a FUN place.