Interesting peripheral websites (besides personal)?

[hellodreamymiku]

I've been thinking about quitting social media completely and only making a presence in the peripheral web but I just can't seem to find any websites that are not personal web revival websites to hangout in. I don't know if anybody else has experienced this but I really couldn't find anything besides personal websites. The personal websites are suuuuper cool don't get me wrong but I still can't actively talk to people on those websites or do anything besides leave a comment and check out the work the person displays on their site. The only forum I really go to is melon and that is because I believe that the "deeper" the web goes, the more I keep finding people who are conspiracy theorists (or any other reason that they are creepy) last time I checked gaia online, the forum was a person trying to recruit for their you know what . The community here is wholesome and diverse, I really like the climate here. But I also want to set sail to other websites and I don't really know where to go since search engines are not likely to help me find that :(

So, where do you go for fun on the internet? What websites can you recommend? How do you surf the internet? I would love to learn about your internet surfing habits and check out some fun sites. I'm really bored of social media but I don't know how to break the cycle. Any forums with a wholesome atmosphere such as this would be great, I would love to meet new friends.

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[Memory]

I completely relate and would love to also visit other cool hangout spots! Unfortunately, this means I haven't found any myself :D So I can't really help there... The only other forum I use is on a site called "Dappervolk" which is more of a pet site/dress up site with a forum attached rather than solely existing as a forum, but the culture there is really wholesome and welcoming like this forum too! Albeit in a different genre...

If I may suggest creating your own space though? The "oldweb" community at large could use some more spaces to engage and discuss! If you felt comfortable enough to, I think that'd be an awesome place to start! It's something I've been thinking a lot about recently too 

And also, as previously suggested, a lot of users within this space enjoy penpalling! Whether through email or snail mail. That could be a lot of fun too! (And this reminds me to reply to my pen pals!)

[hellodreamymiku]

might be worth a shot?

a lot of users within this space enjoy penpalling!

Penpalling?? That used to be my favorite hobby before sending an actual letter through snail mail became very expensive I would love to penpal through email though, but how do I find people willing to penpal here? Is there post made about this already or should I make one?

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[Capybara]

This is something I've been wondering about too! Social media is barely "social" but a lot of the private circles/Discord servers/etc. were things I stumbled into by accident or had to be invited to. But the issue is before social media existed, I had plenty to do online, but now there's not much else besides social media... There's not nearly as many active forums for any little thing, so many end up dying after a short time. Even the forums I did use to frequent as a teenager like Pokemon fansites moved to more active Discord servers and have a completely different culture now.

I have a Dreamwidth account I've debated on dusting off, but finding what communities or journals are active is hard to figure out too. Some personal websites have links to their own servers and IRC channels, I've considered downloading IRC just to check them out.

[virtue]

Ahhhh how long I have been waiting for an excuse to shill the absolute BEST SEARCH ENGINE EVER! There is a search engine called Marginalia Seach that describes itself as such:

This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.

Basically, its hardwired to help you find exactly what you're looking for! The websites on the margin; the marginalia. I can spend hours just searching on marginalia and searching through the variety of wild random websites I find! There are also a variety of extremely helpful tools, like specifying to only search for html1 2 & 3 websites, searching by website generator (like wordpress), or even searching by the year the website was published! (Fair warning, I have one time found a website with pornographic content, but that was only once and its especially easy to do since I think they are intentionally removed from the dataset, but please be careful!)