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EmilyFoxSeaton

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This explicitly does not relate to his board. 

Recently, after the election, I left a message board I have frequented for a while.  What it came down to was a realization that they weren't good for me.  I stay talking with them because they are permissive in who they will talk to but the message board is, essentially, for people who don't want to do anything.  Who want to complain about the world but not actually move ahead. A helplessness. Each has a way of thinking that is warped and things I can no longer tolerate.. But I don't want to be a mess anymore.  I don't want to hear their excuses. I don't want to hear their same advices that I can practically telegraph.  I don't say that by way of judgment more like way of explanation.  It is entirely possible I just out grew away from them. I started talking to them in the early 2000s. 

So I started looking around for other message boards and for the most part it seems extremely hard to find message boards or discussions that do not revolve around extremely messed up people.  It is perhaps a function of the internet that most people who are on messages boards might be home from work and could be there to a variety of issues such as mental illness or depression... but even within such boards there are normal topic discussions -- but good luck getting a response.  The vast majority of the activity seems to be in threads that are concerning mental health issues or generally what I like to call... snowflakes... who might get super upset over the slightest thing.  I have registered on a few boards that turned out to have no one in them. 

Here is a question... where do you -- or do you, find normal people to talk to? And when I say normal people I just mean people that will be an improvement to my life and not a hinderance.  People that have good suggestions and are accurate in what they say. People who speak more than two lines in a response. 

Other than here which again, is excluded from this post. 

And if they answer is that I need to get off the internet where do you meet normal people in real life over a certain age. One reason the internet seems to perfect for me is that I just don't have time due to work to meet with people and maintain friendships like I can on the net.
 
I guess it all depends on your interests. I'm a member on fan forums with people who all share a common interest. Some of them can have very...interesting people though. The fandom can be a pretty fickle group of people and I found some boards not to my liking. The people there were just beyond passionate and could not accept anything that diverted from what they considered to be the status quo. But I've met some great people and even got involved with a project lead by fans where I got to do artwork for fan run TCG expansions. It was great until the inevitable fight between friends happened. Thankfully with time that smoothed over and we moved past it, but it did kill our working project together.

I find it's more than finding people to relate to, it's finding people you can talk to about different things that go beyond the boards. We can talk about things that are going on in our lives, not always quite so personal but we can have regular conversations.
 
My experience with message boards (forums) has changed a lot over the years. When I first started using them around 2001, it was a handful of small sci-fi/fantasy and religious forums. This was before Twitter, smartphones, etc. Discussions could be longer and more serious then, or maybe I'm remembering it through the lens of being a teenager. I know I don't tend to frequent forums for interests anymore, and it's been a long time since I made a connection or a friendship on a forum. Years, really.

It does seem to me that forums have become very negative, which is why I visit them less and less. Of course, there are more positive and more engaged discussions, but I feel like things are easily derailed as well and I'm just not interested in reading that at this age when I'm not even part of the joke.

The people I meet now who are friendly, genuine, and kind are all through gaming. A variety of people who all sit down with no expectations. Everyone likes the same thing and can talk about it without struggling to find a conversation point. No one really goes there to date and gender isn't obvious, so there's less need to be suspicious while there are predators on forums.
 
Tealeaf said:
The people I meet now who are friendly, genuine, and kind are all through gaming. A variety of people who all sit down with no expectations. Everyone likes the same thing and can talk about it without struggling to find a conversation point. No one really goes there to date and gender isn't obvious, so there's less need to be suspicious while there are predators on forums.

Unfortunately I am not a gamer so... one thing I did notice as well is that people bring their worries to the message board. And that would be fine if the person took action based on what advice they received but I also notice that it is like spinning wheels.  I also like to spew to people but also... rarely do I get good advice. 

Also I notice that even if you go to a board where you are there for a purpose.. certain people just cannot keep to that. For instance, you are in the section of the board that does not deal with politics and someone has to add something like "after how bad this year was" or "now with Drump in charge..." it is as if they see an opportunity to talk about it but not talk about it.
 
Emily surely that's part of message boards. People talk about what concerns them most. If they talk politics then you move on or elce put up with it. You can only put your message across. How it is received/replied to is partly pot luck depending on who reads it. People generally don't like rules and constraints so if it says no politics you can guarantee you will get politics and if it says you can only talk about the price of chips you'll get some bright spark who thinks otherwise. That's human nature from my experience.

I use message boards off the industry I work in sometimes. You get like minded people on there who are often motivated for business reasons. At least they have usually got something about them, anyway. If you're short on hours because of your work the internet is an excellent place to talk. Off the internet its surely a straight forward case of following your interests and hobbies socially?
 
People aren't just healthy or just in some way crippled. People can be several things out of kind, helpful, good for one, lazy, non-advancing, uncaring and so on. The very, very most are, and it's okay :)
 
I loved forums 10+ years ago, and met a friend I still have (best online friend?) from it. They weren't serious forums at all and just a group of peers migrating to shitpost, really, and those were the most fun.

I took a break for a decade or more simply because they no longer interested me, or I just couldn't find the right one. Until I found one that had my values, didn't take itself too seriously, and most of all, I could have fun, and that was only one I've stuck with.

Other ones are very very very hard to stick with, because I'm not a fanatic about most things (which most forums have a theme); the two or three things I would consider myself a fan big enough for don't HAVE forums (-_-), so I'm casual if I sign up at best.

Worst of all, in current year, I find western values slipping into unfavorable views that have become the majority on 99% of forums, so I tend to get into arguments and then later even banned because I DARE disagree. We're at a point now where even simply disagreeing can lead to a whole forum turning against you, and it's happened more than once literally because I pointed out hypocrisies and the like.


And a forum like this, especially since it's so inactive now, can be a bit tiring most days; but when I go spelunking into older topics (like now), I can find some real discussion to be had, and that makes me like it.
And I do like trying to help/get to know people who might feel similar to how I do/have, which opens somewhere like this as a good place to make friends, or at the very least, have an in-depth discussion on a topic I know pretty well.
 

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