Ask Lemmy

I miss them, too. I was a member of a writing forum. There were maybe 30-40 very active members. You'd come to know them even if you didn't know their real names. But you'd read from Flower123 in one post and then there was always a category for smalltalk and you'd recognize Flower123 when they wrote about being sick or their hobby. We even had regional meetings for a big poetry forums where 10/15 came to a café. There was just a feeling of being a community.

Unfortunately I am not sure if this would even work today, even if we replicated the forumstructure 1:1. People are more used to consuming media online. You can see that here in Lemmy, too. Many people complain about the lack of content, but not many post or engage. People want to consume, not take an active role in a community. The only reason reddit still kind of works, apart from the bot content, is that it has a giant, international user base so it still feels like a lot of content even if only 10% are very active.

The whole internet culture has shifted from a light-hearted playground to a consumption-based minefield. People use the internet for different reasons. It's a huge difference if I come home from school, ask my parents to use the internet for an hour, go on that one poetry forum that is 80% of my internet activities and interact with the same 30-40 people every day or if I have the internet with me every second of the day and have an endless supply of consumable content that is enjoyable without interacting. People don't really feel like they can/should be an active participant in the discourse anymore unless it's by posting their own, standalone content on platforms like tiktok. And then it's not really an interaction with other people, it's more like everybody is yelling into nothingness.