It is interesting that forums had less people but felt very active and didn’t need the millions of people that places like modern day social media do.
And I think big part of it is the presentation of material with threads that get bumped up when people comment and can keep going on for years.
In reddit type social media a thread is considered dead after like a day or less, so needing a new one even if it is the same topic to start up conversation again. Even more the case for one off comment type social media like mastodon.
mr_jaaay@lemmy.ml 19 minutes ago
I used to spend tons of time on forums 20 or so years ago. Social media killed many of those off, but there’s no reason that something else can’t do the same thing - be it Lemmy communities or something else.