I am always saying this, phpBB forums and IRC were the peak of the internet - ThreadSky

rincewind.run • 3 days ago

I am always saying this, phpBB forums and IRC were the peak of the internet

Reposted from Josh Watson

Bring back phpbb forums imo

Comments

gledster.bsky.social•3 days ago

Agreed.

I miss phpBB forums.

jon-k.bsky.social•3 days ago

One great part about phpbb is still alive today though: the 8 guys that would never shut the fuck up about how Usenet was sooooooo much better lol

jon-k.bsky.social•3 days ago

Using the word censor moderation tools to fuck with people and create solid community inside jokes on phpbb was a joy I’ve not felt since

jake.sooscreek.productions•3 days ago

RIP the MT art forum

bonestudent.ing•3 days ago

I met my husband on a Star Wars forum.

Also MSN Messenger was top tier instant messaging.

nottooloud.bsky.social•3 days ago

This whole hyperlink thing is never going to catch on.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•3 days ago

I miss message boards. Though they created the alt right, they also created niches of brilliant obsessives who improve our lives. Look at menswear guy.

drmichaelmancini.bsky.social•3 days ago

Usenet. I'll die on this hill

doriantaylor.com•3 days ago

RETVRN

trunksahoy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Man I remember nuking the fuck out of Nazis as a mod on phpBB forums because the community demanded nothing less. Good times. Made wading through goatse worth it.

sirfox.bsky.social•3 days ago

I miss livejournal

ragingspirit.bsky.social•3 days ago

I kinda miss ICQ. It had that magic of "people warning you if they can't respond in the next several seconds" - a truly lost cultural phenomenon.

dane.computer•3 days ago

i need an excuse to have a forum signature

irrased-velation.bsky.social•2 days ago

Met my nesting partner of 13+ years on https://boards.theforce.net when we were 14/15 in 2003.

I miss those days of the internet.

the-ballmer-peak.bsky.social•3 days ago

vBulletin and phpBB were great, IRC was amazing, but can we bring back the dial-up BBS?

kirkmurphy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Boardwatch lives!

bencates.bsky.social•3 days ago

We are still living in the wreckage of the Eternal September.

scabstation5.bsky.social•3 days ago

swirlyball.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think this is one of the reasons why I was fine when this place was only 50,000 users or something and get a little annoyed when people insist a huge user base and an app that does everything is required.

bakerblue.bsky.social•3 days ago

Kind of agree-frankly was just as happy when it was weirder, cattier, and smaller..but scale seems to be the way to monetize-and at some point it seems like someone will want Bluesky to make some.

swirlyball.bsky.social•3 days ago

Maybe but as an xer I've seen many platforms diminish and close or stay around with a tiny user base, I have no problems with moving on if something starts sucking or I don't like it anymore or even if they just randomly decide to shut it down. I do think the AT Protocol does have promise though.

bakerblue.bsky.social•3 days ago

Agree, I’m an X’er as well, and all the different platforms going back to BB’s have been fun, and I’ve moved on when not-but I think this might be one of the last best chances to pull something from the wreckage and make it fly. I’m pretty happy with Bluesky as is-maybe AT is the magic sauce.

jonahtheprophet.bsky.social•3 days ago

I've always been too much of an introvert to fully enjoy IRC's real-time interaction, but phpBB has been the closest the internet ever got to a Greek agora

3fecta.bsky.social•3 days ago

I felt myself losing a bit of the wild west the first time I got a new computer and didn't download mIRC.

ttkciar.bsky.social•3 days ago

"Were"? I still spend more time on IRC and ICB than BlueSky

christosargyrop.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes

treybastian.com•3 days ago

my original UO guild kept active on IRC until we moved to discord in 2015 😂

definitely still miss the original though

nerdonthesurf.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bring back Usenet, Gopher, and anonymous FTP!

bdonnelly.bsky.social•3 days ago

Just when Vanilla forums were going to eclipse phpBB Twitter arrived

planesailinggames.com•3 days ago

I remember a phpBB forum I was on that got deleted by hackers. VBulletin was solid though, and I met great friends on there. Threaded forums are still y hot e best discussion mechanism invented on the internet IMO

mostlybree.kitrocha.com•3 days ago

honestly I think that's why I like discord. since they introduced the forums feature, it's like phpBB and IRC had a baby

nora-hakase.bsky.social•3 days ago

What is this forums feature?

deegc.bsky.social•3 days ago

So peak internet was...when you were a teen. 😁

littlecults4ever.bsky.social•3 days ago

Some of us are still logging into the same IRC channel as 30+ years ago.

whereisgraeme.bsky.social•2 days ago

I was recently also saying this. Something died when forums and social became walled gardens

maxdubler.com•2 days ago

Forums were useful because they did not try to serve everyone. The scale was small enough that actual humans could know the community well enough to moderate and kick people out for being assholes.

dmswojcicki.bsky.social•3 days ago

Old enough to respond: Usenet.

aih.bsky.social•3 days ago

the great thing about Usenet's one problem is that it's easily fixable, it just requires a willingness to do it: depeer sites that let shit through, and depeer sites that don't depeer sites that let shit through

iananan.uk•3 days ago

Discord truly is just the worst parts of both of these with none of the benefits, and yet.

jsharkey67.bsky.social•3 days ago

I have gone on vacation with friends I met on a webcomic forum, had them at my kids' weddings, and so on. The closest I have come to that in the last decade+ have been a couple excellent Discord channels.

chrisd238.bsky.social•3 days ago

The decline started when google removed the tag that restricted searches to forums

editer.bsky.social•3 days ago

(Would Sonic's Dick Be Blue or Tan Like His Tummy Is) Viewing Discussion Page 307 of 1,108. "Fuck You Reagan actually cared about America--"

editer.bsky.social•3 days ago

From bransonbranson from back when the old site was still waxing

danielzklein.bsky.social•3 days ago

*quavering old man voice* the first time I went on IRC, php hadn't been created yet. We had perfectly good forums even back then, and we called them usenet! You would wear a lemon on your belt, as it was the fashion at the time...

ewiley.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bring back netsplits and :tenbux:

melarune.bsky.social•3 days ago

I wish I'd appreciated them more at the time tbh. Something of value was definitely lost with the advent of social media as we know it

mccheapo.bsky.social•3 days ago

I have a tab open on a phpBB site right now!

#tech #OldTech

s3rp86.bsky.social•3 days ago

Ah IRC when 14 year old me and my friends would randomly get insulted by drive-by Americans in our gaming clan channel because we had no idea LDS = Mormons when we chose the name for the clan.

s-quadr.at•3 days ago

phpBB forums were really just a pale reflection of the glory that was Usenet.

yoyoyoyo.bsky.social•3 days ago

I was a minor at the time. I learned webdev before all my peers due to the kindness and criticism of people on those forums.

rincewind.run•3 days ago

I do appreciate the fact that most of the webcomic artists I read from that era are posting on here now

fortunasaga.com•3 days ago

Niche webcomic PHP forums were the internet version of a perfect bottle of fine wine.

appalachianbravura.bsky.social•3 days ago

I maintain that Google killing off Google Reader was the biggest mistake in the development of the internet

rincewind.run•3 days ago

aside from a small handful of folks, my oldest friends are people I met on or through a webcomic forum (Megatokyo)

one of them (@jake.sooscreek.productions) is the reason I have a bluesky account

itsdoug.ca•3 days ago

The MT forum was the most inscrutable site to try and read as an outsider

dzeeszed.bsky.social•3 days ago

Oh, you have a question about the comic? Try asking in our IRC channel, #moomoomoo

lyndztanica.bsky.social•3 days ago

you should have seen us that summer we all got bored and started roleplaying

rincewind.run•3 days ago

the thing about the MT forum is that about 90% of it was “comic? what comic?” so people who wandered in after reading the comic were often very confused

itsdoug.ca•3 days ago

That tracks, I don’t think I ever discussed a Brian Michael Bendis comic book on the Bendis Boards

gunks.bsky.social•3 days ago

I do hope that Jake doesn't have copies of those IRC logs anywhere though...

itspenguin.ca•3 days ago

I haven’t thought about MT in over a decade! I used to read it every day

theemeraldwizard.bsky.social•2 days ago

From webcomics to podcasts, there is so much stuff that I am/was into that nobody I know in meatspace or elsewhere online had heard of that comes up all over the place on Bluesky. Megatokyo, Rusty Quill podcasts, Due South, etc.

xehtfodrol.bsky.social•3 days ago

I love the Discord servers I'm in, but you just can't stumble into a new community with them, like you did with forums or IRC, you have to know you're going there before you get there!

trashmale.bsky.social•3 days ago

Reddit ate the general forums and Tumblr (post porn ban).

Discord did the same with most of the remaining niche forums.

It overlaps with Reddit but also eats some of the user base when the old users feud with admins.

The content on default subs, including comments, is widely fueled by bots

theloaraxe.bsky.social•3 days ago

Spinning up vBulletin at the nursing home in 2062 to bring the spark back into my residents' eyes.

aih.bsky.social•3 days ago

ultimatebb or gtfo

who needs php and mysql when you've got CGI scripts writing to a flat file

ytregaws.bsky.social•3 days ago

FidoNet LIVES!

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