there's a lot of things said in this thread that I completely agree on, I don't mind that forums aren't as busy as they used to be, it's almost like a nice break from the constant pinging and notifications of social media and discord. I think the difference between old web and new/current web is definitely the pace; everyone is posting, liking, and forgetting within the span of days, even with popular trends. You see such things in fashion also, which I watched a video detailing the difference in quality of clothing, and fast fashion as a whole, and why clothes don't seem as well made as they used to be
there's also been various web revival movements over the few years, trying to create a smaller and simpler spaces on the web far away from the fast pace and toxic community bases of social media. unfortunately I notice a lot of these projects slow down, burn out, and unfortunately end for the same reason overpopulated discord servers become areas to avoid, the best way to form a community is to keep the size small, not in a gatekeeping kind of way, but like what BurningBlaze said; small cliques form, conversations can get easily drowned out w/ so many ppl talking, but on the other hand, keeping a community too small can also lead to an echo chamber, like what Tomi said
I think forums are almost a good balance in a way, we all have our parts of the forum we obviously frequent, but we also are all willing to talk w/ each other in threads and be civil towards each other
unfortunately though I agree that blogs and forums aren't going to be as popular anymore, tumblr being one of the last "mainstream" websites to allow customization shows that. You have other sites like spacehey and such that allow customization but you don't meet many ppl who use sites like spacehey, dreamwidth, owler, etc. but I've been seeing this for years, I'm going to date myself here revealing my age, but when I was in highschool abt 10 yrs ago there were ppl trying to make smaller moderated twitter-like sites like quitter, freezepeach, and shitposter club, or apps like peach, turtleseed that allowed statues and profiles... but they never caught on, ppl all flooded the sites, got "canon URLS" (usernames of games, stages, characters), shitposted the website to crashing their servers, and then left when it wasn't shiny and new anymore bcuz a community was never properly built... I don't know where I'm going with all of this but for the last 8-10 yrs it's been difficult to really find a site to keep myself on and willingly use on a daily basis, I have bluesky and cohost but it's a miracle if I posted on them at least once a month, and even here I try to post at least once a week but I'm also willing to put my personal life first now and not my online life, I enjoy talking to the ppl in my computer but I also don't feel "forced to" like how demanding social media felt back in the day and even now, it's almost like you have to live on the website if you rly want to get smth out of it
I'm not sure where else to go with my tangent, but having a personal website if anything is my "main thing" online now, I update it whenever I want, decorate it however I want, and talk abt coding and other ppl's website layouts w/ them and that's plenty for me
there's also no pressure when it comes to a website on how it looks for functions, or even what's on it, I know so many ppl who have their website as just some marquee text saying "I LIKE SONIC" and it's great, it's a small community I can build at my own pace, or not have at all! there's no need for me to talk to ppl on my site page if I don't want to