For me, it would have to be 2008-2011 era DeviantArt! A lot of my nostalgia is really due to the fact I was a teenager and a part of me misses having no worries outside of videogame bosses and homework lol, but I genuinely feel like it was a great place! I used to spend hours browsing art, talking to people, making friends… Of course it wasn’t perfect, there were creeps (one time a grown ass man tried to convince my then 15 year-old friend to partake in a diaper fetish roleplay… Jesus Christ) and the kind of stupid drama you can expect from teenagers. But even with that, I’m glad my teenager internet experience was there instead of Twitter or TikTok haha
More broadly, I miss forums! I remember spending so much time getting good at using GIMP to make graphics for roleplay forums I was on. Which in retrospect were ugly as sin LMAO because I was a teenager slapping every effect I could on crusty jpeg anime screenshots… It was a simpler time (❁´‿`❁)✲ﾟ
Some forums are still around, but they have fewer active users than your average social media community. I’m thinking of the competitive scene of an old game I used to play. Those guys still use the forums to this day.
Definitely!! There’s a few I frequent too (funny enough mostly attached to virtual pet sites lol), but it’s sad how many communities have moved to Discord. Which don’t get me wrong I like Discord, I’ve been in really fun servers and use it to talk to my friends, but it sucks for archiving purposes and is just not a good replacement for forums imo
Maybe that could be somewhat revived as a pixelfed or lemmy instance?
There already are art/gallery sites that look and function like old DeviantArt! Albeit not on the Fediverse, though I recall seeing someone mention a Pixelfed instance for artists once
Gametrailers. It was fun to watch all the 360 vs ps3 flame wars happening on videos’ comments, as well as the occasional delusional n64 diehard thread that insisted it was the absolute perfect console of all time
Oh man that unlocked some memories I hadn’t thought about in 10+ years!! I never participated in the PS3 vs Xbox360 arguments myself, but as a teenager who loved me some drama I spent more than a few hours reading through strangers’ flame wars lmaooo
I was always a PC gamer, so I always enjoyed the endless fighting from the sideways, with bits of flak thrown my way every now and then. I still distinctly remember some idiot who commented “gay game its gay GoW (Gears of War) is better” on a video and instantly became a joke. I wish I could remember what was the game he commented on, likely a ps3 exclusive
I also remember all the people complaining of favorable bias towards 360 games, with one user-made video showing some glaring discrepancies in a review of a multiplat racing game, saying the physics on the ps3 version were “wonkier” or something, but driving head on against the rails.
Old gamespy forums
God I miss GameSpy.
Kinda miss old MMO or other social dressup game things
MundoRPGMaker. It was a big RPG Maker forum in Brazil which I spent a lot of my tween years contributing to, but now it’s lost forever
Debate forums I fucking loved them. I grew up in them, they’re a big part of them
“Miss” as in it should be created now, or as in it used to exists but not anymore?
Oh I meant miss as in you’re nostalgic for it! So it could be something that doesn’t exist anymore or something that changed a lot over time
Spacedicks
Xenforo-based Minecraft server forum
They do still exist, but all of the forums I used to go to are gone.
