hi i know this is mostly a relaxed kind of jokey space, but i was wondering if anyone would like to talk a bit more candidly about their relationship with forums, or the orb specifically (as opposed to other places to 'post' online)? forum sites are a dying breed but it still seems like there's a lot of aspects of them that don't exist in more modern online communication? i know im about to write a lot, so i guess feel free to respond in whatever capacity you're cool with, no need to go over everything here. also in advance sorry if none of these things end up as actual questions - im just looking to start a conversation i guess
- forums as communities
this concept is pretty interesting relating to the orb? a lot of my knowledge is secondhand - i come from the 'second wave' of twitter2 as it were. the orb is definitely not the first site whos origin is the ashes of another, but whats interesting is how shortlived the 'original' was? the orb doesnt really have a central topic or theme. twitter2 was a 'big bang' where a lot of things good & bad were thrown around but the spaghetti that actually stuck in the end was this largely positive (and largely lgbt?) site here. i know a lot of things have changed and some bad actors have been pruned, but having that 'common story' kind of connects people?
- escaping other platforms
theres obviously a lot of talk online right now about what sites people are going to relocate to from twitter, but the orb predates that conversation by a pretty good margin. the two most popular solutions to that are to either move laterally to other social media(tumblr, cohost), or retreat inwards to more private spaces (Smash Mouth groups). forums are pretty different from both those options, but i dont see them talked about as much. Is this 'escape' part of anyones motivation here?
i also know some less savory groups move to forums because its an 'unmoderated' space where they can plan out harassment or whatever without fear of TOS violations. its possible that the reputation of forums is lower nowadays because of sites like them.. though ironically now that twitter1 is becoming one their efforts i guess were in vain
- dedicated space online
kinda related to the above bit - forums seem pretty attractive to me because they are spaces online that get made by and for the people who actually use them? im pretty hesitant about a lot of the places people seem to be relocating to online because really how different are they all under the hood? theres some security knowing when im talking to people on one its not because ive been gamified into creating 'content' or handing out data on a daily basis..
- nostalgia device
theres a ton of users here that use aseprite (or similar) to dither their profiles, and the default css layout for the site is pretty geocities, so theres some clear love for the 'old' web here. is posting on a forum mostly considered an act of experiencing nostalgia? I know its not directly related but there are movements like the Yesterweb making their way around
I more or less come from the time on the net between forums and other platforms. I was around a couple rpgmaker sites and starmennet as a teen - and i wasnt around them long enough for it to be too formative, but other sites (or later apps) were so new i was skeptical of them being for me. i personally dont seek out trying to relive those days, but it seems like most up-and-coming forums are based around it. Is posting about experiencing a certain 'aesthetic' - as in does it feel different to post on a site like this?
- layout of content
its nice to have a site that is not just feeds based on an algorithm. do you find it more convenient to be able to use threads/topics to organize conversations? do you like seeing when a thread gets to 100 posts because its been going on for years?
- long standing public-ish spaces
ive always found it pretty neat that forums are very public online, yet they dont really cycle through people that fast. you get time to build rapport with folks, and instead of villain of the day situations you see antagonists and factions form over time. forums dont really get celebrities but they do get casts of characters? kind of boosted by the fact that you get to set a bunch of things on your profile and have a signature, that sort of thing. it does have problems though, because you get a lot of people who see a longer history of a forum and say 'id never get accepted to be a part of that'. it takes a lot of time and dedication for it to come together into a story like that so its pretty daunting from an outside view
anyways id really appreciate it if you have anything to say/add to this, or if theres something else about forums/this site that you are a fan of :3
edit: i was not paying attention to my post count, this is not a good look lol
Last edited by dimes on 19 May 2023, 21:04, edited 1 time in total.
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