I typed in a random string of words in the early days and added “.com”, and I ended up on some forum some random guy in Texas hosted for him and his friends. I was obviously a decade younger than everyone else, but it was the best of the internet. We knew each other by name, the link sharing was top notch, civil conversations, no one was making money off of it.

Checked it recently and it’s been down for a long time. The internet archive caught one snapshot of it in time. I can see my username on the homepage like looking at my own gravestone.

I do miss forum culture; large chunks of digital history have been erased as forums vanished.

Culture on the web has changed as well; it has moved from communication with elements of performance, to performance with the illusion of communication.

Every few years I check in on an old message board I was active on between like 1999-2010. It's still there. Gets maybe 1-2 posts per year these days.

Inb4 Anon buys the domain and turns it in a Threadiverse instance for the lulz

It was unfortunate watching our forum die. It was a pretty busy space, lots of gaming info, participation and all that. The main damage was caused by our preferred game series studio killing private servers and mods with the next version of the game in favor of dev company paid servers with limitied and company approved mods. Pretty soon the seconday games we played followed suit. That caused a lot of the group to look for other games to play, modding was what we were all about. The forums were a lot of fun. A lot of people learning how to use the graphical tools for games and personlize their forum presence. I just looked at the wayback machine and it was a real blast from the past seeing all the names, all the servers, the activity…it was a good 5-8 years of my life.

There was this forum I used for a decade. It was a support group for a few specific related medical conditions (I will lie if you ask. It was the fatal butt disease. The condition isn't the important part), and after a couple years as a user they made me moderator over a small subforum (like fifteen of us were in the smaller group) for a medical research group. They were some of the closest friends I've ever made.

I'm the only person still alive in the research group (benefits of getting sick young I guess) and the last time I checked the forum, the latest post was ten months old. I owe them confidentiality, but with día de los muertos coming up I find my mind lingering on them more than usual.

I've documented exploits like you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships that clip through space in Masters of Orion. I watched the six hidden cutscenes in Baldur's Gate. All those moments will be lost in time...

Time to die.

RIP old school game shark forums

I am grateful that phwonline.com got a solid eulogy

Shame that Facepunch forums are gone

Glad we’ve always got Archive.org

This prompted me to look for mine and incredibly it's still online and essentially unchanged.

https://www.otaku-attitude.net/

But it has had barely any activity since 2022. But I'm surprised it survived this long.

The feels, man

I've been keeping a list of interesting niche websites I've found since around 2018, and it's been sad seeing them gradually go offline and disappear into the void.

I used post on a mobile phone forum called Lasyk, this was some time in 2004-2006...

The forum is long since dead and erased, but it was a huge forum with 100k members, subforums for just about any mobile phone made by mainstream manufacturers.

I remember managing to create a huge thread over on their misc forum, where I asked other users to post a screenshot of their desktop.

It just kept going, and I think it became a staple thread with 80-100 pages or so...

In an interesting perspective, We're experiencing the first wave of collective library being attacked and distorted by ai. A collective history of digital art and entertainment throughout 5 decades or more.

Will we collectively preserve it or just join the ai wave?

Ironically, even current nostalgic trend is triggered by ai too.

Also would be funny if after all this is gone, there is only this last obelisk standing somewhere in the desert with dickbutt on it.

My niche forum split off from a comic about RPG games, eventually they moved to a FB group to keep contact but I stopped using FB. I dreamt about them a few nights ago, I miss the community we had.

how did people in the 2000s afford web servers and domains ?

it seemed like everyone had their own site, my idiot child mind thought that it must be free

https://www.gamereplays.org/

Anyone

RIP Abandonia my beloved

I went back looking for mine to make sure the shit I said back then was good and deleted. "Site can't be reached" Thank god!

Now I just need to go burn down the internet archive!

everynow and then, I log back in to GaiaOnline ( go-gaia if you're OG GD prommie).... see how it's doing....

gamefaqs walkthroughs

I'm sure this already exists but someone should make a forum aggregator. Read only with an open standard and make an account to join the discussion on the site. Basically just a fancy rss feed.

Creating a healthy new community takes a huge amount of activation energy or an incredibly long time. Why not just transplant the mature communities to more fertile ground? Bonus: it's much harder to astroturf an entire forum than a few high visibility accounts.

I'm sure some forums wouldn't want the extra traffic with no ad revenue. But discoverability would be a huge boost now that search engines are trying to be a black box Ai MitM. Anything other angle I'm missing?

Vizzed Board, those were the days 😭

Techreport.com 😢

When I think about those old forum friends, the ones I've lost touch with (or worse, just lost), I like to listen to this song. also singshouting I'm doing this for revenge with 3,000 other people is one hell of an experience

Anyone remember BIGmog?

Time to buy out the domain

There's still some good forums about.

I used to use MDOCUK.co.uk when I had my L400.

Now I use sprinter-source.com for my van

Handy for mechanical tips etc

The forums for the first silk road was pretty fun too

GotFrag 😢