Getting into forums

I’ve been an internet user for more than 25 years, I went through the early 2000s online with dialup, then dsl. I dabbled in making my own webpage early on. I think it was Lycos that I used, then I gave Geocities a try but I was never artistic enough to even bother getting past adding an “under construction” gif onto a page and calling it a day.

But I was never that big on forums. I knew what they were and I knew that they were the place for people to hand out and discuss topics for what they enjoyed. But I was never an avid user. Is it possible in todays internet to become a forum dweller?

I was big into console modding when I was a kid. I use to host hacked lobbies on Halo 2 (I got my main account banned and use to get 2 month trials instead) and I remember going on the forum like se7ensins and using xbins to get my mods. I got my dad to solder me together a usb extender cable to one of my Xbox controller breakaway cables (the Xbox pad was just a proprietary port but used usb under the hood). With this, I could use a USB memory stick as an Xbox memory card once formatted and I was able to transfer save games over from the pc. Splitercell was bought for a couple of quid at blockbusters and then that was it, soft modded Xbox. All of this was because of forums like se7ensins.

My next major forum usage was XDA. Throughout the years, I have modded multiple phones with custom roms. It started with the HTC HD2, a legendary phone for custom roms and I bet it’s still getting roms to this day. I loved early Android roms, such as CyanogenMod. The ones for the HD2 made it top of the line functionality wise.

I always lurked though, I never really contributed and I would just asked questions. I was never interested in the community or helping out. I’m not sure why, because I don’t mind helping out and I do like to give back. I guess this has developed as I got older.

Nowadays, I look at the indie web and the forums of today and you can tell things have gone south very quickly. The decentralised nature of forums (a great positive aspect) is no more; a lot of what would be a dedicated forum is now a subreddit. Centralised and commodified into a feed of other information scattered between ads and more ads and then some ads for desert. LLMs make this shit worse.

So I am going to start lurking and maybe posting two forums. 32bitcafe and Agoraroad. Why? Dunno, they just seem like my people.