something like a forum from 2010
fb is too non-anonymous
Normal people don’t comment on online messageboards. The fact that someone comments online by definition means they’re not normal.
There are active forums that still exist. The ones I use are centered around my hobbies.
In 2010, I don’t think that the typical person used Web forums.
My guess is that if you want a slice of the general population, your best bet are going to be new, large social media websites, because, well, that’s where a lot of the population is, so to a certain degree it’s going to be representative. I just don’t think that a typical web forum in 2010 was representative.
So if what you want is “Facebook as it is in 2025, but without exposing as much identity information”, you’re probably looking at the major social media websites.
If you want something like a 2010 Web forum, well, a lot of those probably still exist. I don’t think that there are “general conversation” things, but lots of special interest stuff. I don’t think I was still using Slashdot much in 2010, but it’s still around, for example. You want that, you probably want to start with an interest and then go hunting.
At least for me, the Reddit-style model (a single software package that handled a “collection” of not-directly-related forums) pretty much was a better replacement for individual forums. There were too many forum software packages that all had some limited subset of features and a limited population. You had to juggle accounts on a ton of different sites.
Yeah we have that over at
Oops. All extremists now.
The internet pretty much pushes people far left or right these days.
