I’ve been a fan of forums for years (decades, even…) going all the way back to BBSes and newsgroups. However, in recent years, I’ve noticed that more and more discussions have been moving to Reddit and Discord. While I understand the appeal of subreddits covering nearly every conceivable topic, I struggle to see why Reddit, in particular, has become so dominant. It lacks many features that decent forums take for granted, yet it seems to be steadily wiping out independently hosted forums. Am I missing something obvious that explains its popularity?
It has everything in one place. You can find communities for everything from skincare advice to discussion of that obscure '90s TV show that you watched as a kid that no one ever talks about elsewhere or even knows about. And I’m not sure I can think of what features from old forum sites Reddit is missing. From my memory, before social media, forums were just posts one after the other in a straight line.
And if you responded to something relevant to you but old (based on a timeline that only the forum moderators know), some moderator would come along and go “Necroposting. Thread locked and removed.” So you were still limited to only interacting with the latest hot topics. In fact I’m pretty sure forums still operate like that. Meanwhile, Reddit stopped putting old posts into read only mode long ago and you can in fact respond to ancient things if you like.
I also used to use forum sites before Facebook and shit. And from my perspective as a user, Reddit style platforms are superior in every way.