Insert Credit has become my favourite place to hang out when I‘m online - for that, I’m really grateful to everyone here! Thank you!
But, since I work from home and sit in front of a computer all day, I eventually get to the point where I've read everything new on this here forum, and I can only handle so much twitter and reddit in a day (a capacity which I tend to reach within minutes).
I used to sometimes go to a forum called Talking Time, but I stopped going there.
So, does anyone here know any other welcoming, fun online communities? Non-video game related is totally fine with me. I'd be just as happy to talk about sports, books, family foibles, food, "culture." Definitely not politics though (especially the American kind).
Really, it's the folks that count, as in all things. I guess there probably aren't too many places like this one, but I figured it's worth a shot.
@whatsarobot#7810 These forums have been a bit of a blessing, right? I‘ve been roaming social media so long that I forgot how great a good forum is. Where folks just talk about shit they like, and everything isn’t an attempt at snark or a hot take.
Sorry, though. I've got nothing. All the other forums I poke into are either dead or matured passed that tipping point where a lot of it has turned negative. :(
@sosadillatron#7812 Totally agree about this place being a blessing and a refuge. Posting here has encouraged me to “unlearn” a lot of what social media discourse participation teaches you, and that has felt like a good detox.
It's up to us to make sure that this place stays positive and inclusive and comfortable. :)
There area number of virtual gravestones I could point to towards. Ghost towns. Places dying lingering deaths. But no, not really other currently active forums.
I was a 7chan.org moderator for over a decade. I haven't contacted the staff there in years, they probably think I'm dead. And that place is so slow now it basically just runs on autopilot. But it was ultimately good while is lasted, even if now imageboards as a whole all carry the cultural stigma that comes from being even tangentially associated with 4chan and its modern ilk.
I used to use reddit way more than I do now. Gave up on it maybe a year ago. There are still some legitimately good subreddits over there for some real niche communities! Now I am content to scream into the void on twitter, mostly. But would love a resurgence of more traditional forums, which is why I started being more active here.
One of the main reasons I decided to check out this forum was the discourse on the podcast that would send most people into a rage (almost performing sacrilege to be hyperbolic), and doubt they would ever consider collaborating with the avid listener - which indeed turned out to be the case. It's still shocking how many do not attempt to accept an opposing viewpoint on most interests with games being a prime target due to their exclusivity, cost and probability for childhood attachment.
Anywho - yeah I don't do much stranger socializing outside of here. I follow like 30 people on twitter and usually do not engage with them due to being ignored, which sucks because that's the allure - I can interact with people I like that I will never possibly meet (a big thanks to Brandon for actually hanging out with us!).
One site I've always thought about participating in is [Kindertrauama](https://www.kindertrauma.com/). It's a website centered around sharing stories about things (mostly movies)[ that scared the crap out of you as a kid](https://www.kindertrauma.com/category/traumatizers/). The guy who runs it, Unkle Lancifer, is super great and has written a ton of entertaining reviews that offer a fun yet reflective take on the subject. See this example of 1963's [The Haunting](https://www.kindertrauma.com/the-haunting-1963/). The comments section on posts is actually worth reading too(!) with the same regulars usually offering their insights to the point where Unk gives them a chance to write a post.
[366 Weird Movies](https://366weirdmovies.com/) is also worth checking out.
Other than that it's keeping up with Youtube (RedLetterMedia mostly - all of their stuff is great) and Last Podcast on the Left, but just as a consumer.
Discord seems to be the modern frontier of reasonable human internet communication. I know more than a few people here, myself included, spend a lot of time in Tim‘s server, and there’s plenty of other communities out there that seem welcoming. Nearly every content creator, game studio, and whatever else has their own server.
Yeah, I guess discord is kinda it these days - for someone like me who wants to have online hangouts at certain times of day, or very briefly, and can't stay in a chat for long, forums are ideal… and I started this because most of them are gone!
There are plenty of dead or dying ones I visit every couple days, but nothing I'd recommend. So yeah, I guess I created this forum because I was having the same issue!
I agree completely! IRC/Discord chats are great, but the pace/UX of the client lends itself to a very specific kind of conversation and makes thought-out responses hard. I was surprised/disappointed when I brought this up to some of my IRL friends and they didn‘t seem to miss forums at all. That was a bummer, but then again, all of us are under 25. I don’t come here as often as I do certain discords, but I love that this place exists as a little haven. I used to spend some time on subreddits, but quickly grew tired with Reddit commenters pretty much on the whole. Upvote/downvoting is also a failed social experiment on the whole, IMO.
@neuroshmancer#7864 Yeah, as you say, forums are for a specific kind of interaction, and it might be that some folks just don‘t want or need that. But enough of my pals missed being able to really get into something that I felt like it’d be worth it. of course only one of them even posts here, but WHATEVER!! All of you showed up and I'm grateful for it.
@sosadillatron#7891 Yeah pretty much, I got three separate lifetime bans at Neogaf. No such luck at Resetera yet. There is this mod there that follows what I do and deletes my threads before another mod can ban me.
Kind of a unorthodox recommendation but I like macaw45‘s Twitch channel a lot. He’s a streamer entirely dedicated to obscure retro gaming and I have lost count of how many games I have discovered there. He has a good community behind him and also a Discord server that is pretty active and knowledgeable. It was my go-to place before I discovered this forum, so yeah, it's a cool internet corner, come say hello!
I‘ve never found another place online with people who I even remotely understood. Like, the people who post on twitter and Reddit feel like aliens to me. They just don’t make sense.
You know, with this place, I barely know what anyone is talking about half the time when it comes to the specific games, but I know what they are talking about in that I understand the Feeling they have for games. Perhaps I would describe it as a sort of a "critical love." And a lot of people here like to do creative work, and have hobbies/interests outside of games that make for a more expansive breadth of discussion.
Also, love forums! I like the pseudonymity, where you don't have to bring your Real Life self, but you still have to be aware that each time you speak you are building a sort of reputation, and you get to know the other people without thinking about who they are in Real Life.
I've gone to to other forums about games, or subreddits about mecha or about literature or w/e, and while I shared interest in the same Thing, I didn't share the Feeling. We were talking about the same thing but I didn't know what they were talking about!
So, my answer is nowhere! If I ain't here, I'm just sitting on the balcony staring at the birds who play in the trees behind the parking lot. I understand their tweets better than I understand any human on Twitter!!
@wickedcestus#7912 Just wanted to say thank you for articulating so nicely a couple of phenomena I've long felt, but never quite been able to explain.
I'd always blamed myself for my inability to "fit in" with folks online, but felt sad about walking away from internet communities altogether, because clearly, with so many humans in the world, there must be a way to communicate in a way that feels supportive and interesting and challenging! That's what makes a good community offline, so it makes sense that a similar balance works well in a forum like this one.
Maybe that's what sets this place apart. The fact that it feels like a conscious effort to build a community, rather than a place that's going to exist anyway, regardless of who chooses to congregate there at any given time.
The other part of the early internet (and Insert Credit) that I really miss is big ol’ blog posts that aren’t really about anything. It feels like no one just has a long form publicly available diary anymore. The blogs that do exist all have to be about something, like game reviews, movie reviews, tech news, etc. Some of those are nice, but sometimes I just want to read a stranger’s hyper-personal self-analysis, or just their random meandering.
The big issue with modern social media is that everywhere feels like a public place now. There’s no room for real ownership of any of your profiles — just a default layout with _maybe_ a few spots where you can change the pictures around — and there’s never anyone who is actually in charge. It’s like if the whole world was just taking the subway. There’s nothing outright wrong with the subway, but it’s this place that is simultaneously sterile and filthy, meant to accommodate as many people as possible, and when someone does something bad there’s really nothing you can do except confront them and hope they don’t pull out a knife and stab you. The old internet felt like it was filled with cool specialty shops where, sure, anyone is welcome to come in, but there was always a culture and set of norms unique to the store, and if things got out of line the owner always had the authority to throw people out. There were obviously a lot of websites where it didn’t really work out that way since the people in charge relegated their duty, or the site got too popular too quick, but it felt like it was a lot easier to form a good community if you really tried. It’s still possible now of course, just a lot harder.
