I grew up with phpBB forums. They sucked in many ways, but you could easily find niche communities and be a part of them. I think Twitter is an inadequate repl

I grew up with phpBB forums. They sucked in many ways, but you could easily find niche communities and be a part of them. I think Twitter is an inadequate replacement, because on Twitter you don't just sign up and post a thread for everyone to see. You have to convince people to follow you first. Once you have done that you get exposed to many parts of Twitter beyond just your niche -- politics and memes tend to spread like wildfire. Twitter has other strengths but it's targeted to a wider group of people, not just young men with narrow interests. Reddit is a great place for talking about hobbies, but it is fairly anonymous. Maybe it would be different if you could have animated GIF avatars and massive signatures! I'm mostly a lurker there but I'm sure you can make great friends on Reddit, especially if you reach out. These days a lot of nice communities seem to be forming on Discord, for things related to games, programming and similar nerdy interests. There are more people than ever on the internet, and not everyone hangs out on Twitter. I'm sure you can find your channels if you just look.