Forums and the Internet of Days Past
written november 25, 2022

As an internet user born in the late 2000s, with parents who highly disliked technology (read: hated), I was never part of the forum scene. When I was old enough to be allowed to use my dad’s desktop, Instagram and Facebook were the reigning monarchs of the internet. I had known about forums in theory: a place where people came together and talked about niche interests, a precursor to modern-day social media.

After stumbling onto a forum called Forum Forum (seriously!), I was naturally fascinated. I wondered about the logistics of getting into a forum. How would you find one? What type of people would you find in a forum? How would you make connections if everyone was a literal stranger? I was so used to the social media giants that suddenly not being able to see everyone was a shock.



After lurking and browsing the whole forum (it was a new one when I found it) I found that I really liked the idea of it. Everyone just seemed so… happy? Or maybe carefree is the right word? Anyways, I didn’t dread diving into threads. I wanted to know the people and what type of world they lived in, but they never felt staged. Like these people genuinely just wanted to share themselves here. There were only a few people active in forum forum, but it never felt lonely.

Performative authenticity is something I’ve been interested in after watching this video by amandamaryanna on YouTube. Her video talks about BeReal and how this era of social media ushered in an age of “authenticity,” one that’s ironically even more curated than ever before.

I think that forums, with their niche community-focus is really the opposite of social media. Forums encourage users to be themselves, to share what they’re interested in: what they’re listening to, interesting quotes, and other things that at first seem quite mundane. But I don’t believe that anything about a person can be boring. Especially since social media is so focused on appearances and aesthetics, forums provide such a refreshing perspective on the lives of people as people. Not as content creators, but as real human beings. Social media tends to turn otherwise normal people into content, something meant to be consumed by an audience.

The thing about social media is that everyone knows its curated, but its easy to forget. That “effortless” mirror selfie probably was one out of a hundred different takes. It’s easy to blame influencers, but would you post a photo you took during a bad day?

One of the things I like about forums is that likes aren’t a big deal. The like count on the Forum Forum page is a tiny little “(blank) people liked this” on the bottom-left of a post. It easily escapes your attention (I didn’t even notice it the first time I found the page) What’s more important are the replies, a way for people to voice their opinion or maybe just share a thing or two about themselves.

I also like how small the forum is. At some point, I did run out of things to read, but I realized just how cool that was. Social media constantly bombards you with pages upon pages of content, you’re basically drowning in it. The fact that this space existed at all is a blessing in an otherwise barren, lifeless plane of curated posts and pointless arguments.

An oasis of comfort, a space to be your weird, unique self.

Why not try sharing what you saw today, just for the fun of it? Forum Forum is waiting for you!