Thinking about this discussion board

[Rockysocks]

I can't remember when I originally joined, maybe around 2007. I locked myself out of my account at some point then created this one.

I went to a few of the meet ups and still have some of the people from here on my Facebook.

Thinking how particularly in my late teens and early 20s this was basically my only social connection outside of family and a couple of people. I spent hours and hours on here.

It sounds lonely and admittedly chronic loneliness seems to plague me no matter what my social life is like, but I used to look forward to logging on.

I'm 31 now.

[Dougella]

This forum has meant a lot to a lot of people over the years

[Mr. Nobody]

yeah,. it's been a game-changer for many of us,
went to quite a few meets myself too,.. best thing ever for kicking SA's ass.

it's just so different knowing there's lots of people caught up in this SA thing,
I used to think I was totally alone in having those issues,

[edbander]

it's happening on a lot of forums on the net.... I think people are moving away from 'global' forums, and towards 'own bubble forum's. so basically away from all-public forums (vbulletin & so on), and towards ones where people can create their own profile/group (fb, insta), and delete/control anything they don't like. also known as an echo chamber

twitter has been trying to do this with their 'limit reply' feature. twitter have obviously cottoned onto that people don't like "conflicting anyone-in-the-world" views, and are trying to create peoples bubbles for them. not creating a bubble.."allowing people to create a bubble". if someone doesn't allow feedback on their comment, I tend to not read it. facebook had been doing this (mod your own group/shadowcensoring) since year dot.

which might or might not work. or not. or might. or not. thing is, twitter has 500 mill odd users and is established, so they can afford to lose 10% of their users with a bad idea and stay intact (read profitable - advertising companies will still pay twitter for the database of info they collect from users). other 10,000 userbase forums, might try to "copy" the big ones, and lose 1/3 of their users. and a 10,000 userbase forum won't be able to weather that as well as a 500mil userbase