A Gamespy network forum for the Lionhead game Black & White (remember that?). It was pre-release, so would have been 2000 onwards I think. I’m still in a Slack chat with #thelads now, have met a few of them irl etc.
Only other major one was a niche World of Warcraft forum for a particular class and speciality.
2004 joined the HotS forum and stayed there until whenever that died, also posted a tiny bit on DiS but not much.
Then there were the wilderness years.
Then I signed up back here in 2017 to try and get in touch with an old friend from my old forum and eventually started posting because it is nice to have internet friends even though it is less nice sometimes how far away everyone is.
A mountain bike one cos I really like mountain biking, but I got bored of the people on that one
Here
There was a Twitter period between the middle one to this one, but I gave that up. Smallish Forums are much better cos you don’t feel like you are shouting into an empty void of nothing
Combination of irl social anxiety, a preference for written communication, and very early home internet access (computer nerd dad). Signed up for my first «music» internet forum when I was about 13, had used random chat rooms up until then. Found some of «my» people, and found it infinitely easier to connect with them due to 1) common interests and 2) everything being in writing. 20 years later and here I am
it was just the done thing when I started internetting if you were really interested in A Thing
I started off doing my internetting on the Muse chatroom, then I think I branched out onto like… lol maybe a Dragonball Z board? and the Muse messageboard.
custom sigs made in Photoshop. wonder if they still exist…
then MTV2 board and Hope of the States board and eventually DiS
good to see that my decision to stop using my old, teenage muse.mu username across the internet to prevent traceability wasn’t totally paranoid then, good lord
joined dis because me and my pals at sixth form were anorak billy no mates who used to spend lunch breaks on the library computers reading music reviews.
probably been on other forums since I was about 13 though. first with video games (battlefield vietnam) and then the libertines and dirty pretty things forums.
I’m not listing forums I joined as a teenager, though I doubt any are online any more. My immaculate posting style didn’t come without a good degree of trial and error.
I’m still doing the forum thing twenty years on because it remains reassuring to see relatable responses to the world. Not really political orientation/musical taste type stuff, but recognition of everyday absurdities. There are things I don’t have much of a vent for in real life, because I know if I point out how bewildering I find something I’ll just get a blank look back.
At this point, I don’t want to share anything personal here, so that’s a big filter on what I post, but it’s good to have somewhere to express bewilderment when I feel it.