i miss the good ol' days of foruming

[colours]

maybe it's just me. the internet is kinda boring nowadays, what with it being twitter or (insert browsing other social media here) instead of interacting and getting to know people on forums. i've been aware of forums dying as a means of communication for well over a decade now, but man is it noticeable these days.

i'm glad sites like bulba are still around that i can still lurk and talk about pokemon with some of you guys, but there aren't a whole lot of sites around like this. it's a shame. what about you guys? any forums you guys are still on? genuinely want to know.

 

[Okido]

I wasn't really around during the heyday of forums — I was just too young at the time, so I missed the bus ever so slightly. By the time I was old enough to join them it was 2016, so while I enjoyed them for a bit their popularity had already started to decline.

That said, I lurked quite a lot ten years ago and was active on some similar-ish sites (i.e. Scratch and DeviantArt), and I do really miss that sort of sense of togetherness that came with being a user on them back then. Twitter, Reddit, and whatever other forms of social media that have replaced most forums... they just feel so massive and algorithmic and rapid-fire that using them almost feels like shouting into a void at times lol. It's... sad.
I think the key difference is that on forums like this, everyone shares a common interest, and the userbase is usually small enough that everybody knows one another or has at least seen them around. I truly love BMGf because it almost feels like one of the last places where it still feels that way.

There are definitely other forums still in existence, mostly on virtual pet game sites it seems... but honestly there's not that many left to my knowledge. Most of the ones I've joined other than Bulba were either tragically quiet, or just not super fun or welcoming.
PokéCommunity comes to mind as one that I'm on that seems really nice, but I'm just not at all active there unfortunately. And speaking of virtual pet sites, I've also been around on Chicken Smoothie for over a decade and their forums seem to still be going strong as ever.

 

[Vulpix037]

This has been pretty much the only forum I've actively posted on under this name since I first joined. Though it's definitely not as active here as it used to be back in 2017, it's nice to see that there's still some activity here. I'm saying that even though it hasnt even been that long since I came back from a two-year hiatus myself.

Having said that, I'm more active on Twitter than here nowadays, and despite the fact that the Pokémon community there being dubious, to say the least, I've still made a substantial number of friends there over the past couple of years. I don't think the site will last much longer, but that's a completely different kettle of fish.

 

[Greninjaman]

Before I came here, I was a part of another forums. That forum has since been shut down and deleted due to a lack of activity. Like, it was so quiet, it was pretty much a ghost forums. The discord that was attached to the forums was seeing FAR more activity than the actual forums. I will agree that Forums rely on people taking part and posting to survive.

 

[lisianthus]

bulbagarden has been just about the only forum i've ever been active on, and the only online place that i've been consistently active on as well. i don't think i was old enough to join forums before, like if oki wasn't i wouldn't have been either but... bulba has been a very nice place, and i hope forums will eventually come back in style, because it feels like... it feels more comfortable than other social media areas? a bit slower, but it suits me better i think.

 

[Chidamari Sketch]

I briefly left this site for... personal reasons that I won't describe in detail. And frankly, my opinions haven't really shifted since then; I'd say it's more a force of habit and/or a need to feel stimulated that compels me to keep coming back to F&G and other places.

Outside of that, I agree that this site doesn't quite hold the vibes it originally had when I got here. There's obviously no sole reason for such a feeling, so I'll just sum up many factors: simply having seen other frequenters come and go, the shift from vBulletin to xenForo, the atmosphere and zeitgeist of the culture here changing due to the aforementioned people leaving, and other things that just happen by the passage of time. Obviously there's people that saw a much-much older Bulbagarden, but I was there back when we could edit our userpages with our own background images and everything.

The rise of social media is, of course, another big factor; though I can't say that I've ever been fond of the 'streamlined' feel that such places have. I honestly appreciate that people have enough nostalgia for places like Geocities despite their flaws that Neocities is now a thing and people are going back to the fun of making their own website without having to pose as some asinine business site as if everything needs to look like a college portfolio to look 'valid'.

I may have gotten a bit sidetracked but yeah

 

[Insanish Danish]

I've been here for 14 years and I so badly miss my first few years here. It felt so much more alive. Bulbagarden is still doing far better than most forums but it's nothing compared to how it was when I first joined. Social media really killed forums and I hate it.

 

[colours]

what's even nutty to think about is that as big of a franchise as pokemon is, this is pretty much one of the very few pokemon forums out there aside from... pokecommunity and serebii. we're like, the last "big three" standing, so to speak.

even if you (general 'you') were to expand your scope to say, nintendo forums, there's one or two that i can think of that have anywhere near consistent activity. it's just sad.

i dont mean to sound depressing lol but it's just nuts to think about.

 

[FinnTheCookie]

I was around when forums were kinda bigger, but like others, too young to actually get involved, I've only joined recently, but I already feel happier here than I've ever been on any other social media. I definitely get what you mean when you say the internet feels boring nowadays, it's kinda the whole reason I decided to sign up here, social media is so boring, and I can't keep up with the thousands of changes they make to them every week.

It feels like forums have more humanity, and that everyone here is a real person rather than a mask on social media. I wish I could've been here when things were more lively, but I also like it how it is now, quiet and peaceful in a sense.

 

[stunning_cyan]

I've been here for 14 years and I so badly miss my first few years here. It felt so much more alive. Bulbagarden is still doing far better than most forums but it's nothing compared to how it was when I first joined. Social media really killed forums and I hate it.

I think another reason why forums are dying out is something I noticed as 30-something millennial. Younger people (Gen Z, which, if you haven't noticed, is the majority of internet dwellers now) don't tend to write 'texts', paragraphs and paragraphs like virtually everyone in this thread, including me, did. (To my great pleasure as an old timer) They consider it an attack on their time and an unnecessary test of grammar. They prefer shorter form of communication like TikTok and Twitter or Instagram where it's mostly photos.
There are exceptions to the rule but this was still holds true for the most part, from my experience. I also noticed that Gen Z usually speaks in aphorisms and stolen meme jokes, in other words, after watching a movie/playing a game they will say something like 'I see insert character is drinking their respect women juice' or 'character girl bossing again' or 'character is making me feral' or 'step on me mommy/daddy' (when seeing attractive character). All these jokes have been done to death. And they also aren't informative, they don't reveal or analyze anything about a piece of media, they just rehash all same stuff for attention. But forums thrive on information and analysis. Another thing is that forums thrive on anonymity. But from my experience, Gen Z can't stand NOT knowing the person behind the screen in more personal way, esp. all of their politics and whether they are agree with them, how sympathetic they are as a person and whether they are attractive or 'aesthetic'. They can't appreciate a logical argument on its own. They need to know the 'ad hominem' part or they're scared. You MUST be their potential friend for them to listen to you. Personally, I don't care whether all of the present here are acne covered 300 kg people who never saw the sunlight. Not only it's their lives, not mine and they're free to live it the way they want but if their argument (Pokemon related) makes sense, I upvote. This is not an attack on Gen Z by the way, but a logical observation on how the nature of social media changes.

 

[Rockapheller]

When I was much younger, older than a decade ago, there was only one forums website in Turkish language, and I disliked it a lot due to it being a very toxic place. Then another Pokémon forums website was launched around the time Best Wishes series started airing in Japan. I was hopeful with that one and I spent some good time there. Mostly people were very sharing, open to discussions and we even used to have a Windows Live Messenger group conversation (an equivalent of Discord if you don't know what it is).

I spent really good time there and even became a mod within the first year. But the popularity faded out overtime, didn't meet the expectations. New people stopped coming and old members started to visit less frequently within years. It was really heart breaking for me to see the forums actually dying just like that. People were spending more time on Facebook groups as Facebook became more popular. Twitter was not that popular back then. Eventually the forums stood on its own for about a year with no new messages at all, and then shut down... The owner is now running a YouTube channel and YouTube users are commenting very actively there. But the forum culture was murdered badly.

It was about the time I searched for other Pokémon communities to spend time on, and I started visiting here. I was fluent with Turkish and German back then, but my English was rather weak, so I was not that comfortable here. But as I gained more fluency with English, this place became the one I felt connected to the most. I am also wholesomely happy to be a part of the modding team after all. I am hoping that the same thing would not happen here in the following years, as that would be a very sad experience for me.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Bulbagarden is the only forum that I’ve stayed at for any meaningful amount of time so far. You could call it my home here on the internet, haha. That said, as someone who’s been around long enough to witness the rise of the internet from the beginning (albeit through very young eyes), I can say that it’s definitely changed a lot since those early days, and especially over last decade or so. But at the same time, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed. After all, for all of the shiny, newfangled “Web 2.0” things that form the modern internet, the fundamentals of communicating with people is pretty much exactly the same as it’s always been: send something, someone receives it, they respond back; rinse and repeat. The difference is that it’s become easier and faster to do that, and therefore we’re able to do more of it. But because we’re able to do more of it, this has allowed and encouraged more people than ever to join the internet, especially the communication side of it. And with that, there are those — money-minded types especially — who want a piece of that ever-growing pie. Which comes with its own problems…

To demonstrate where I’m getting at with that, I’d like to go back in time a bit. At a place that I won’t name but that I suspect many of you might know what I’m talking about anyway, there was a particularly thriving fanfiction section, one where there was literally at least one new fic a day. Nowadays, that same fanfiction section is practically dead, not in the sense that no one is posting there anymore, but rather that those who are boils down to a small handful of loyal writers, many of whom have been there for decades; new writers are far and few between. A part of me is kind of sad about that, given how it was there that I was introduced to Pokémon fanfiction, which then led me down the rabbit hole of the rest of the fandom, and eventually here to Bulbagarden. So it holds a special place in my history, I think.

That said, there’s another part of me that’s almost happy that there’s not as many people posting there anymore. You see, I said that there was practically one fic coming in every day, but I said nothing about the actual quality of said fics, which was… variable, to put it nicely. For every fic from a reliable stalwart of the fanfiction section, an up-and-coming writer with promise (many of whom would become reliable stalwarts themselves), or a merely decent fic that was at least readable or entertaining in its own way, there were at least four or five very low-quality fics, many of them from young and inexperienced writers (many of whom were also immature ones, in both skill and temperment). Ultimately, there was so much stuff coming in more or less completely unimpeded that the mods were completely swamped with stuff to do of the most unpleasant and stressful sort, to the point where I remember one of them questioning in exasperation whether or not these were the “dark ages” of the forums that they were living through. In retrospect, those probably were the “dark ages” for them, in a rather ironic way for a place so bustling with activity, the lack of which we lament now.

Which leads to me to one of the many reasons why I generally dislike the side of the internet that we call “social media”.

Personally, and to put it bluntly, I have absolutely no desire to participate in social media — and especially the likes of Twitter or Reddit — for stuff like Pokémon, or for anything, really. For many good reasons, but mainly because of one core thing: social media was never designed as a true public square where mature conversations can be had between mature people. On the contrary, social media was designed for the very opposite of that, as it was either designed by people with corporate, capitalistic mentality, or taken over by people with said mentality. Social media, at its absolute core, is about nothing more than generating as many clicks as possible, all in the name of making as much money as possible by selling as many ads and as much user data as possible. If social media doesn’t do that, says the powers that be who run it, then it has no reason to exist. And indeed, it can’t exist, with the literally billions of people using these services and the resources required to maintain all of that while, well, not going bankrupt, and while not appearing worthless to shareholders who believe in more profit, all the time, at any cost above all else. Profit comes at a price, and more often than not, it is those of us at the bottom — that is, the ones who actually make those at the top their profit — who pay that price. A price most people don’t even know that they’re paying, I think… when they’re not turning that price into their prerogative, consciously or otherwise. That price? The current, raging anti-sociality of social media.

How did we get here, to this monstrous Pandora’s Box where arguably least social way of connecting with people has become the way to connect with people in this so-called modern era of ours; this billions-strong behemoth that we now know as “social media”? I believe that the rise in smartphones is a great part of that answer. And also, in turn, the answer to the current decline of forums, and with it the decline of actual conversation between people as opposed the kind of hot takes, knee-jerks, circlejerks, and tribalism that have become nearly emblematic of places like Twitter and Reddit (and arguably popular discourse at large, online or otherwise). No one wants to write an essay on a smartphone, hyperbolically speaking, and apparently, there’s a large contingency of people who don’t want to write an essay at all. And so social media naturally attracts those kind of people, I think, and that, along with the ability to able to talk about anything, at any time, with anyone, rather than just about some specific subject on a specialized forum that you have to sign up for led by — to put it bluntly, and in the eyes of most people, for better or worse — “geeks”, “nerds”, and other “weirdos”, led to an explosion of new users from all walks of life who would’ve otherwise never joined an internet conversation. Or in other words: the cost of entry was lowered, figuratively and psychologically speaking. Say and do whatever you want, says Twitter, so long as it fits in a few hundred characters! Talk about anything and everything, literally thousands of things, says Reddit, all with one login and on one website! And of course, once that admittedly attractive idea became attractive to a large enough amount of people — or rather, the right people in the right places — that idea became dogma. Once the idea of social media became popular in the eyes of pundits, influencers, and celebrities; on your favorite morning news show; amongst your friends and their friends and their families and their friends, there was no stopping it. There never is; people follow and people are expected to follow, least of all when it comes to subjects of the social. So you could say, funny enough, that the entire idea of social media — for all of its proclivity, at its worst, for circlejerking — itself came about as one big circlejerk, as all things that are extraordinarily popular ultimately are when you think about it, aren’t they?

Now, perhaps you could say that I’ve sounded rather cynical so far with my appraisal of social media and why it’s become so popular. But social media is an inherently cynical thing, I think, as it currently is. And I also think that it inherently attracts cynical people, if not flat-out toxic or even evil people, not only because of its format but also, again, because of the lowered cost of entry. More people from more places equals more opportunities for mayhem, least of all when they’re able to form tribes and say and do whatever they want in echo chambers with pretty much no meaningful consequence whatsoever, whether that be through moderation or just, you know, the existence of different, valid opinions that are treated by others with respect. And even if there was an incentive for those with power to try and do anything about it — which there isn’t, because money — said people would have to address that problem epidemic to literally millions of people. Again, it’s Pandora’s Box, and I’m not sure that there’s anything that can really be done about it now outside of radical sociocultural change on a sweeping, global scale. Your guess is as good as mine as to the kind of event that would be required to even think about that being possible…

As to how that all relates to my opinions about forums? To put it simply: bigger isn’t better; smaller is better. More intimate groups with actual conversations as opposed to just reactions or circlejerking, more moderation made easier by having less people to deal with, and just a greater sense of community born solely out of love and appreciation for one thing, regardless of our many differences in backgrounds and other interests. Hilariously, I think that this is actually a case where us “geeks”, “nerds” and “weirdos” who prefer forums actually win, haha. Of course, that doesn’t mean that forums aren’t a place where circlejerking, tribalism, and other forms of toxic nonsense can’t rear their ugly heads every so often (or even very often when it comes to certain subjects that I’m sure that many of us here can guess). We’re all still human, after all, for better or worse. But I think that with forums that are truly communities of people rather than just mere gatherings of people, there’s an incentive — and a pure one — for us to do better where we need to while taking advantage of the unique qualities of the forum format that serve as strengths, not weaknesses, even on the modern internet. We’re small, but we’re strong. But everywhere else… Pandora’s Box. Whatever bright spots might shine through that maelstrom of horrors, I myself just don’t have the time, strength, or patience to deal with all of that, and I have no reason to. Forums are my home, I think, and I hope that they’ll always be a place for them on the internet, however small it may be.

 

[Nicolas721]

I also prefer forums to social media, the main reason being the later's immediateness. In social media, lots of interesting topics are covered, but unless you post your opinion on a post less than 3 hours later it will become obsolete and no one will read it. In the forums I can have some time of processing my thoughts and the confidence that even a casual reader could read it, getting likes 1 week after the post is done is not unheard of, and you have easy access to all your opinions. Every year on June I read the posts I did during the last year and having a reaction of "This aged pretty well" feels satisfying.

I think the first step to make forums more active is to try out engaging on different subforums. A month ago I did a thread about the Pokemon Apps assuming almost everyone in the fandom had played at least one, but it went unnoticed, I think that if people who focus more on the anime or the Fun & Games visited the Video games section more often they would have noticed it. Also, I feel Fun & Games itself takes too much of a portion of the "New posts" section, there should be an option to hide those threads.

 

[colours]

i just want to say that your post was well worth the read @InfiniteBakuphoon and very well-written.

not to show my age, but i come from an era of the internet where there was practically a small forum everywhere you go, because making free forums was fairly easy and straightforward and every single one of the friends i knew had forums of their own. we wanted to be The Next Big Thing, so to speak. if bulbagarden can be as big as it was, why can't we? it's interesting thinking about it; what with those very same people linking their forums in their signature in other places in the hopes of getting some eyes and people signing up. those were rather simple days, but in the pursuit of growth and expansion, we were blind to what we already had.

to further illustrate, i was once part of another pokemon forum called ever grande city forums. it was small and rather home-y, and it was a thing for a couple years iirc, but i think during our pursuit of always wanting to grow, it didn't occur to us at the time to appreciate what we already had. it was already a home-y sort of site that didn't have the population of places like serebii or bulbagarden, but it didn't need to. this is what i miss about smaller forums this day and age - it's the community that comes with them and it's easier to get to know and converse with people - that i think gets lost in much bigger sites. you become just another face in bigger sites and it may be rather intimidating at first to participate.

to clarify, i of course appreciate the state of bulbagarden even now. we're definitely not where we used to be, but that can be said for a lot of places. i can't help but feel a small part of me that wants to relive the days where posts were super frequent because a lot of activity is a good thing! it's nice to visit a place that's very much bursting with life and conversation. simultaneously, it's much easier to keep track of interactions here and maybe it isn't necessary to have crazy amounts of frequent posting.

 

[Aulos]

I understand. I began joining forums 20 years ago when my parents finally allowed me to at age 14. In the mid-2000s I joined forums where I resonated and I had lots of people I talked to. It was important for me because IRL I was facing drama with lots of friends turning on me, and it was also a place for me to be myself... For better or for worse back then, me still being a teenager. Lol.

But it was neat back when forums were so active. I remember there was a forum I was a member of that was very active despite being smaller, it was a lot of fun and I remember making 1000 posts in a day. xD Now I'd be lucky to get 1000 posts in a decade on a forum.

I will stick with forums until the very end. Things like Discord don't work out for me. The constantly shifting topics and everything give me social anxiety.

 

[Volphied]

Soo... this is how the folks on Usenet must have felt when everybody young started abandoning that place for vBulletin forums.

I think another reason why forums are dying out is something I noticed as 30-something millennial. Younger people (Gen Z, which, if you haven't noticed, is the majority of internet dwellers now) don't tend to write 'texts', paragraphs and paragraphs like virtually everyone in this thread, including me, did. (To my great pleasure as an old timer) They consider it an attack on their time and an unnecessary test of grammar. They prefer shorter form of communication like TikTok and Twitter or Instagram where it's mostly photos.There are exceptions to the rule but this was still holds true for the most part, from my experience. I also noticed that Gen Z usually speaks in aphorisms and stolen meme jokes, in other words, after watching a movie/playing a game they will say something like 'I see insert character is drinking their respect women juice' or 'character girl bossing again' or 'character is making me feral' or 'step on me mommy/daddy' (when seeing attractive character). All these jokes have been done to death.

In the preface to the 1780 book A General Dictionary of the English Language, Thomas Sheridan wrote: "The total neglect of this art [speaking] has been productive of the worst consequences ... in the conduct of all affairs ecclesiastical and civil, in church, in parliament, courts of justice ... the wretched state of elocution is apparent to persons of any discernment and taste … if something is not done to stop this growing evil … English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases."

And they also aren't informative, they don't reveal or analyze anything about a piece of media, they just rehash all same stuff for attention. But forums thrive on information and analysis. Another thing is that forums thrive on anonymity. But from my experience, Gen Z can't stand NOT knowing the person behind the screen in more personal way, esp. all of their politics and whether they are agree with them, how sympathetic they are as a person and whether they are attractive or 'aesthetic'. They can't appreciate a logical argument on its own. They need to know the 'ad hominem' part or they're scared. You MUST be their potential friend for them to listen to you. Personally, I don't care whether all of the present here are acne covered 300 kg people who never saw the sunlight. Not only it's their lives, not mine and they're free to live it the way they want but if their argument (Pokemon related) makes sense, I upvote.

The Mothers' Journal and Family Visitant in wrote in 1853: "See the simpering little beau of ten gallanting home the little coquette of eight, each so full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self, as to have but little to spare for any one else ... and confess that the sight is both ridiculous and distressing... the sweet simplicity and artlessness of childhood, which renders a true child so interesting, are gone (like the bloom of the peach rudely nipped off) never to return."

This is not an attack on Gen Z by the way, but a logical observation on how the nature of social media changes.

Attack or not, it still feels very mean-spirited and I audibly cringe whenever someone claims to be making "logical observations". Personally, I do miss when this forum was more active, and I definitely prefer forums over Discord and such. But on the other hand, I don't blame Gen Z for forums dying out. The blame lands squarely on Millennials and Gen X.

On the other hand, you know that millennials are finally getting old when they start to complain about young people acting like brats with ADHD.

Anyhow, we should keep in mind that the Internet was ruined back in 1993 when Eternal September began, and never ended.

 

[Shadow of Umbreon]

How is this a Millennial problem, or Gen X problem, or an any generation problem? I've seen people of all ages complain about this, it depends on how you use the internet rather than just demographics. The major platforms themselves are set up the way they are for maximum exposure of ads and timesinking, not for encouraging people to interact in any meaningful way.

It's nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation about anything on Twitter because it has to be broken up into 20 posts due to artificial limits, TikTok is a lost cause with how the algorithm works there and how terrible the search function is (not to mention the amount of ad hominem as was mentioned), LiveJournal is functionally gone, Dreamwidth is hardly active, etc. Long-form discussion hubs are limited to traditional forums, Tumblr (particularly in the fandom sense), sometimes Reddit (quality can vary dramatically though), and private Discord servers with manageable numbers of members. Even most search engines prioritize the 800-lb gorilla sites of the internet rather than personal sites that may be more relevant to the search terms.

Basically much of the internet - even major longtime news sites, which now adopt clickbait strategies in their videos - is now rapid-fire feeding of Content Nuggets that get you to scroll to the next thing immediately so you keep rolling the dice until you accidentally click on an ad or otherwise directly generate revenue.

This isn't "herpderp me old, young people evil, the Greeks/Romans/Victorians complained too, old man yells at cloud", it's that the internet itself has morphed around being advertiser-friendly rather than human-friendly. Same as how sites will censor common profanity/"potty words" to be more attractive to advertisers, but will look the other way when it comes to hate speech and threats because they can still make money from the lowest-common-denominator engagement that it attracts. It reduces communication to people screeching fallacies at each other ("ur mad so u wrong", "you didn't get enough Internet Stranger Upvote Points so my argument wins", [insert forced, unfunny, beaten-to-death meme followed by 50 emojis here], etc) and people who want to have in-depth discussions can rarely find anything of interest there.

Sure, stupid people have always existed and new users who don't read the rules have always existed, but it's only over the last decade or so that the internet has become so bite-sized, hyper-centralized, and utterly plastered with intrusive marketing to the point that it's a chore to socialize or find meaningful community that is 1. active, and 2. not full of unmoderated hordes of people like that. This isn't unique to any one age group, there's a whole genre of "Why isn't the internet fun anymore?"/"Where have all the forums and personal websites gone?" thinkpieces and they all come to similar conclusions about how corporatized it is now.

 

[Norzan]

Stuff like social media and Discord have pretty much made forums kind of pointless to a lot of people because why join a forum about a specific piece of media when you can just join something that gives access to many different pieces of media. With Discord and Twitter you don't have to manage multiple accounts because one account is all you need.

But even with that convenience, i'll never use Twitter. I'm sure there's some pockets of it where actual meaningful discussion is being held, but all Twitter does is give voice to people to complain about shit that hardly anyone cares.

I do miss some of the forums i used to frequent back in my early adult years like one for a MMO i used to play religiously in the early 2010s.

 

[colours]

idk about anyone else but i've never joined any sort of a twitter discussion. nuanced and mature discussion is kinda lost on twitter whereas i can have that sort of conversation (for the most part) on forums and i think that's why i just. don't care to participate much in the social media sphere of things. i have a twitter so i can see what my friends are up to and commission artists and look at funny memes and that's about it.

 

[Volphied]

Stuff like social media and Discord have pretty much made forums kind of pointless to a lot of people because why join a forum about a specific piece of media when you can just join something that gives access to many different pieces of media. With Discord and Twitter you don't have to manage multiple accounts because one account is all you need.

Frankly, there is one thing where Discord is a clear downgrade. Video game guides. In the past, when I found myself stuck in a particular game, I went on the internet and searched Forums and Wiki's for answers on how to progress. But nowadays, now that everyone has seemingly moved on to discord, it's becoming harder for me to find guides and walkthroughs. Discord is immensely bad when I have to use it to search for guides. Hell, you could say it's actively hostile to people who ask "noob" questions that were asked "a million times before". But it's not like I have a choice, now that even game Wikis are slowing down and becoming increasingly outdated and incomplete.