>>10919 >>10918 >How did they survive? I guess familiarity factors into it. Think about textboards. In the West, textboards were like a niche within a niche. Like a decade or two ago, imageboards (thinking of 4chan) were a niche or an uncommon Internet activity. Textboards are still a niche. The ones I can think of and became somewhat familiar with = not really the type of culture I want to be a part of. Namely, idiotic deletionism (of the posts or the entire website) and "random shitposts". There's generals in imageboards. Besides the programming general which I think exists in textboards, I wonder if textboards have generals on various things. Or, and I guess I'm continuing this ramble, no general is needed due to such low activity, so you just have topical threads. So I guess my point is that textboards were like always dead, but definitely/seemingly more now than decade(s) ago. I think the same can be said about phpBB-like forums. So, relatively speaking: . Textboards = very small community decade(s) ago = even smaller now . Imageboards = small community decades ago = still a small or medium-size community now (so possibly grown in popularity to medium-sized) . Non-anonymous/phpBBish forums = large community decades ago = medium-size community now, I think . Social media = small community decades ago = completely dominates and is a large community now
However, I think many normies are on social media. And if you want to be around the nerdy type Internet user whom you may have talked to in 2009 in some phpBB forums you can go to some imageboard or just said type of forums right now. 4chan definitely gained more normies as it rose in popularity. IRC also factors in to all of this.
