PhpBB forums are the closest virtual parallel to "third places" (places that are not the home or work/school). I'm on a soccer messageboard, and it's the only

PhpBB forums are the closest virtual parallel to "third places" (places that are not the home or work/school). I'm on a soccer messageboard, and it's the only place on the internet where I recognize handles. Like Cheers, it's a place to chat, where everybody knows your name. You aren't crowded out by a thousand new people joining every day. Social media-centric tech bloggers turned this into a disadvantage ("low growth"), where for actual users, it's a godsend. Brigading and derailaing cthreads, common on Reddit and Twitter, is largely impossible because you have to set up a user account first, and that friction drives away all but the most dedicated trolls. I've had a Reddit account for 10 years and don't know a single person on it. It's no different from Facebook or Twitter, they're all just a amorphous chattering mass.