Mental health was not the primary purpose, but I think the organization of online communities probably benefited a lot of people with niche interests or identit

Mental health was not the primary purpose, but I think the organization of online communities probably benefited a lot of people with niche interests or identities and introduced them to lifelong friends. Some of my IRL friends are people from the LiveJournal days. Unfortunately, this has gotten more difficult as social interaction on the internet consolidates into either major social media sites or private Discord servers. If the community for something is on Twitter, everyone is thrown together into the same unmoderated space when they would really be served better by niches that can be moderated to exclude people who get unhinged about disagreements, and allow people to opt in and out of different types of content (i.e. the people who want to see deep dive lore analysis may not be interested in adult-oriented fanart and vice versa.) Discord servers can work for this, but unlike forum history, they're not Googleable and you might not even know a specific Discord exists.