IRC is still good! Libera (née freenode) is alive and kicking and has sane people on it. It is worth just.. having an idle in a bunch of channels and checking t

IRC is still good! Libera (née freenode) is alive and kicking and has sane people on it. It is worth just.. having an idle in a bunch of channels and checking them out. We're also pretty lucky to have the fediverse now, which the 90s lacked. Think of it as WordPress ping backs which iirc started in the 00s. As for other stuff, remember to use indie search engines. I forget the names now but some are hobbyist creations with a niche angle - perhaps some other commenter can help. Older communities are great too, like sdf.org Mostly though this feels a bit like it might not be entirely about the internet: I'm wondering, how many of the kinds of places you're missing had friends on them that you lost touch with? Personally I've only crossed the streams between (say) IRC and IRL a handful of times and would lose touch with people I care about a lot if IRC went away. One of those crossings did result in me being best man at an IRCer's wedding many years later. So maybe it'd be worth you trying to hunt out old communities you've been part of too, and bridging the gap to IRL friendships. That's the real antidote to platform addiction, imo.