What community message boards and forums did you frequent?

[Squall]

Oh man, I used to be on a lot of forums in the 2000s, mostly gaming-related ones.  It's probably easiest to write this out as a timeline:

2001: The very first forum I remember joining was a forum for the Dreamcast game Jet Set Radio (originally released as Jet Grind Radio in America) in the summer of 2001.  I didn't post there much, but during my phase when I was super obsessed with that game, I visited that forum and the site with which it was connected all the time.

2002: I joined GameFAQs at some point in 2002 or perhaps 2003.  I later created a new account in 2005.  I haven't posted there in a long time, although I still browse the forums occasionally. 

I also joined the RPGamer forums in 2002.  I mostly lurked, but posted there occasionally and also hung out in the IRC channel in the early/mid-2000s.  I'm still upset that the forums were suddenly shut down and deleted a few years ago. :-(

2003:  I joined a small gaming forum that I won't name here.  It has remained online and slightly active to this day, with a close-knit group of core users keeping it alive over the years.  I've posted there regularly since I joined.  I'm not sure how much longer it'll last, but I intend to keep visiting it and posting until the creator/owner decides to shut it down.

2004-2006:  The peak of my forum usage and perhaps the peak of Internet forums in general.  It seemed like everyone I knew online had their own forum in this era.  I was in high school then and had lots of free time and few responsibilities, so I spent a ridiculous amount of time on them.  Some I created accounts on and posted on semi-regularly; others I simply browsed and lurked on.  These included the Dream Views forum (a forum dedicated to lucid dreaming, something I'm interested in but have never been able to do consistently), Final Fantasy: Worlds Apart (a forum dedicated to the Final Fantasy games, of course), and Green Day Community.  There were a few forum-based RPGs and strategy games that I played for a year or two in this time frame as well.  Oh, and I played Urban Dead pretty consistently from 2005 through about 2008 or so and joined a few forums devoted to it in 2005 and 2006.

Also, two of my high school friends created short-lived forums during these years, and I joined both of them.  One was just a forum for general chatting about music, video games, etc. The other was a horror roleplaying forum where I RPed as a werewolf for a while.  Good times!

Whoa, funny that this thread came back up, because I recently went looking for remnants of some of the old forums I was a part of that me and some pals set up back in the day for discussing creative projects, organizing game nights, and generally just being middle to high school weirdos. Sadly I don't know if the good ol' Internet Archive preserved anything that was hosted on Invisionfree or not (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) but I didn't have any luck finding any remnants of it. Oh well.

Yeah, that's a shame. :-( A lot of forums were only partially archived by the Internet Archive at best, and many were skipped over or couldn't be saved properly. Anyway, just reading "InvisionFree" takes me back, haha. I remember joining a few boards hosted on it back in the day!

[xero333]

I can't really remember if there were any forums I frequented years ago, but I do use a few now. Namely, something awful forums, melonland, neogaf for gaming stuff.

[Nikodile]

I remember 2 forums I used to frequent 20ish years ago. One was AnimeForums.net or anime-forums.com (A4) forgot which one - it was as you'd expect, just a bunch of people talking about anime. Another one I frequented was a WB Kids/4Kids forum that I would RP One Piece, it was an interesting time trying to one up someone in a 1v1 fight thread as a kid who did not like to lose

[glitchlynx]

I used to use the 39 clues message board a lot. (the 39 clues were a series of books for kids, centered around a family with a long, secret history. Lots of secret codes, secret societies, treasure hunts, that sort of thing.) There was a pretty long delay every time you posted something, as moderators were checking everything to keep it kid friendly. I remember it being pretty active though, and there was a lot of stuff there completely unrelated to the 39 clues books - lots of original fiction, role play, inside jokes that I can't remember... It's all gone now. I just checked and there's no longer even a 39 clues website, there's just a page on the scholastic website with links to buy the books. There used to not only be a 39 clues website all on it's own, with a forum, games, and content, but as scholastic tried to create more series like the 39 clues those books got their own websites and forums as well... which I used despite not even reading those books.

At one point someone made a 39 clues message board wiki, which had a chat box feature. A handful of people from the message board used that to be able to communicate in real time, rather than waiting for moderators to approve everything. That little chat box was where I found my first internet friends... I hope those people are doing well now.

[krish]

My early internet experiences are almost intrinsically intertwined with the TamaTalk forums. As an elementary schooler, I didn't have very many friends interested in Tamagotchis, so the idea that there was a space for just Tamagotchi fans to congregate was so magical and special to me. I also used to frequent various Neopets forums including TDNForums as well as the forums actually on the Neopets site itself 

[Seraphim]

My early internet experiences are almost intrinsically intertwined with the TamaTalk forums. As an elementary schooler, I didn't have very many friends interested in Tamagotchis, so the idea that there was a space for just Tamagotchi fans to congregate was so magical and special to me.

Oh my gosh! I used to frequent Tama-zone all the time! I miss it dearly, it was instrumental in helping me understand how each version worked. I remember posting to my log twice a week for months! You are exactly right in mentioning how magical those places were.

[PurpleHello98]

My favourite forum back in the day was the Scratch forum! I used to be obsessed with the Scratch programming site (it's actually where I came up with my on-line alias!) and so I loved frequenting the forums---I remember fondly the running joke about evil kumquats eating your siggy. :) I checked up recently, and was somewhat surprised, though happily, to find that it still exists! Although I don't imagine that it's active now like it used to be---it seems to be hidden away and not on the main site.

[zeroten]

On Livejournal, I hung out on ohnotheydidn't soooo much

I was also on a forum called Laundromatic that was kind of like.... what poshmark would be if it were a forum. It also had the usual boards with lots of girls who shared so much useful life advice

[Capybara]

The first forum I used was a Neopets forum when I was... literally 11 years old. Not the smartest idea. My most formative forum experiences after that, I don't want to name... They were basically "friend group" forums that would've been private Discord servers today. I wish they were, because I used them as a personal sounding board/diary and so much shit that shouldn't be said out loud from 16+ years ago is still there in public

Besides that, I was on Pokemon forums a lot in the late 2000s. Bulbagarden and Pokecommunity were better experiences for me than Serebii, whatever golden days that had were over by the time I joined... I still popped on Bulbagarden sometimes even when I lost interest in Pokemon, just because it was still active. I was also on a MLP forum from 2011-2012, but I left because being on there was a huge stressor in my life.

[kingdomcome]

I don't use any other forums aside from melonland, but I do frequent jul & lesbiaboard every now and then. I'd like to find more forums as friendly as melonland! I didn't grow up on forums, because I only used the internet to play online games lol. Which, in retrospect, was a very good thing.

As others have mentioned, I also use the fediverse, but I don't think that'd count as a "community message board." Would it? 

[grubbyfox]

oh my goodness, I dont actually remember half the names of the forums I used to hang on!

There was one forum I was a part of for all my teen years. I feel weird saying the name cause it wasn't so big, it was kinda private in a way (weird thing to calls an online forum but you know.)

I found it while looking for some anime pics for a roleplay or something. It wasn't even an anime forum?? I guess I just rabbitholed. There must have been at least a few 100 users there at it's peak. Then at every server-change/name-change, people dropped off, etc. At the end we were only maybe 10 users or so there. But we had been there so many years, it was like, we cant just leave now. Then the forum went down eventually and a few of us kept in contact through like LJ, insta etc.

There was also a Silent Hill forum I used to post on, but I was always a bit too scared to post because a lot of people there were so incredible toxic and mean for no reason. Just itching to fight everyone, all the time. But I used to read theories and such there.

I also hung out on a ton of EZboards. There was the Kiara's Sahifa (lion king related one), and one uhm called something like Kovu's corner? I dont remember, but something similar, haha. I hung out on a few of the Furry ones, but wasn't too active there. I was mainly there for looking art art, roleplaying, and just talking to people about movies/animations.

I remember a few LOTR related EZboards too. I specifically remember spending a new years eve on a Billy Boyd-related EZboards.

Man, imagine we had forums dedicated to like, ONE whole actor back then... crazy, lol. And they were always active too!

I think I hung out in some Hannibal-EZboards too? (Before the series, I mean the movies haha). And one dedicated to Ralph Fiennes, lmao XD

Ohhh and yeah I was also on a few proboards-forums as well! Mainly I remember one for Midsomer Murders, and there may have been a few others too, I think one was just strictly for roleplaying/fanfic/original stories? Like, just a random forum for people who liked writing stories.

I was also on the official Sims forums as well, back before Sims 4 was the main contender.

There was another one, I dont remember where it was hosted, it could have been during EZboards lasts breaths, there was a huge forum for roleplaying only. I think I only posted there a few times because it was super overwhelming, but it was like, ALL about roleplaying original stories or something.

Oh and I almost forgot, there were the Buffy the vampire slayer/Angel forums as well. I thiiiink I was on a Buffy one that may have been hosted on EZboard? Or it was invisionboard? God I want to cry with nostalgia. I wasn't too into Buffy tho, I was mainly there to roleplay/read.

Now that I think about it, whoa....I was on a lot of forums. How things have changed! I wish I could remember all the URLS and have a snoop on waybackmachine, but I've noticed forums seem to be hard to find on the WBM, or rather, most pages wont load and all that.  ;__;

[Paprika]

Used to hang a lot on VideoGames forums during 2000-2010, a little bit on comic-books forums and from 2018 to 2021 on a doll forum but I didn't liked them a lot. After I gave up on video games I stopped going to that forum, the comic-book forums were nice for a bit but I've seen too much nerds fighting each other for stupid reasons (who cares about DareDevil's horns position like a hill to die on ????) and the Doll Forum faded a lot after the tone of the topics shifted into a ranged battle between the forum owner followed by a handful of users against a lot of the users. I remember being targeted for a stupid reason and it derailed. After that I was adamant on not going on forums anymore but this one I like it a lot. Good vibe, cool people. I hope it will stay like this

 

[foxmosis]

The first forum I used was a Neopets forum when I was... literally 11 years old. Not the smartest idea. My most formative forum experiences after that, I don't want to name... They were basically "friend group" forums that would've been private Discord servers today. I wish they were, because I used them as a personal sounding board/diary and so much shit that shouldn't be said out loud from 16+ years ago is still there in public

Neopets was the first forum I ever saw!!  I was like 7 though so I wasn't old enough to use them nor old enough to lie about my age and think I could get away with it.  I always wanted to post there though.  My one friend actually did post there and that's how he met his now-fiancé and he moved to Australia (for context we're american) to be with her and I think that's pretty cool!  My friends and I also had a forum like you were talking about, I didn't get there until a little bit later when I was like 19, so it's a little cringe for me to look back at as well but at worst it's mostly just piss and vinegar.  For the most part reading old threads there gets a laugh out of me.  We eventually migrated to Discord/Facebook Chat so we could all stay in touch.  I'm sure we'd still occasionally post on the forum for kicks and grins but the original host got bought out and aggressively changed the layout of the website which no one was a fan of.  I go there occasionally though to make sure the Discord link is working for any former member that strolls on by. 

Between that and Neopets though I posted on a scattering of forums but mostly on a site called Supercheats.  A video game website where I made a lot of friends and probably made a bunch of embarrassing posts.  It's still a time I look back on very fondly though.  Maybe that's because I haven't gone digging too hard for my old posts though! When that site's moderation got a bit too, well it was teenagers so I'm sure you could imagine, a lot of my friends made their own forum which is the forum I was talking about previously!  I love forums so much, I've thought about making an album that's basically just a love letter to them.

[neoratz]

I used to be obsessed with the Scratch programming site (it's actually where I came up with my on-line alias!) and so I loved frequenting the forums---I remember fondly the running joke about evil kumquats eating your siggy. :)

hahaha i was obsessed with scratch too but i found forums boring so i never visited, i am so glad you mentioned this because i looked it up and the wiki page for it is so funny. i think i may have missed out on a lot of scratch in-jokes cuz i kept to like, sonic fan circles and stuff, the biggest one i remember is kaj and that time the staff made a kaj april fools account. i think it's so awesome when staff plays into community jokes/rumors like that

[SilentHope33]

I used to be obsessed with the site sprites-inc when I was a teen through my 20's but the site has been inactive, since the early 2010's. So now I'd say this website has been my new obsession, mostly cause of how nice people are here. I did make an account on an anime forum, but that forum is as inactive as sprites-inc as of late so...