How You Feel About Forums

[are]

How has people's experience been posting in this or other forums?
Do you or did you struggle with posting here as a social activity?

Personally, I have the same thoughts about getting it wrong or offending people just less because I analytically know it's more tolerant.
I know I do just fine if i like make a whole persona say on Quora. But I don't know how to be vulnerable and comfortable very well.

 

[Grondhammar]

This is a good question, had to think about it for a little while.

Online, I tend to share much more and feel little or none of the social anxiety that pervades my IRL life. I think at its core this is because of the anonymity of the internet, which enables me to tailor my (online) experience to be supportive and kind.

If a group/site/person online is hurtful, I say to myself, "ok, this is getting awful, block people/delete account". Do an evening or two of self-care. Move on. IRL, it can take days/weeks/years to get out of a hurtful environment or relationship (and sometimes due to golden/emotional handcuffs you never can). So you end up with psychological trauma that you have to work VERY hard to overcome (if it stops) or compensate for (if it doesn't).

Online is so much more manageable.

 

[UFO]

Online is nice. No commitments to friendships, or to any kind of more comprehensive social activity. I mostly prefer to be informative rather than social, so discussion forum format beats chat-systems (like Discord).

I have less fears of being rude, or otherwise improper, or just plain stupid sounding as I have plenty of time to think and refine what I am saying. Just like Grondhammar said, if something goes wrong, I can cut myself, or someone else, off immediately. In real life I might have to keep seeing and working with an another person I have offended (or who has offended me).

Also, in live conversations I mix up words easily, use wrong terms for wrong concepts and so on. This happens if I try to be informative (ie. talk about serious, important and/or technical matters, knowing that accuracy of concepts is important) while small talk does not cause any communication problems (as it does not matter what I say). Tragedy is that informative talk is something I really love, but small talk is something I really hate...

 

[Misery]

Depends on the forums.

I've been doing this for a long time. My first forums were decades ago.

What forums are now is a far cry from what they used to be.

Used to love forums overall. For all sorts of reasons. Now though, this site is the only one left as far as I'm concerned. All the others were eaten by Reddit and social media.

I dont interact online very much anymore. I'm actually most active over on Steam, but even there, you gotta pry me out from whatever rock I'm hiding under before I'll talk.

Whole bloody internet aint what it used to be, bah.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go shake my fist at a cloud or something.