I read an interesting point which I hadn't realized before. Discussions on current social media are always current, not long term. You open the app or website to see what's going on now. When you comment, it's soon lost to history, buried by newer stuff. If you happen on a post more than a day or two old, it doesn't make sense to comment as it's already passed and nobody will read your reply. You're not building anything of long term value. It was not like this in forums that predated social media. You could reply to a years old thread, and it would be bumped to the head of the queue. I suppose both the form of social media with its feeds and the algorithms designed to hook you and make you come for more are to blame.
How could we make kbin or fediverse in general more purposeful long term and less for instant gratification? Going back to old forum form is probably not the answer, but maybe something between feeds and forums or even something entirely new? With fediverse we have the opportunity to build something better and more useful than what we have now, as we are not bound by the economic imperative to make the users hooked.
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I did grow up with forums. They key though is that communities are much weaker today despite many still having threaded conversations. Back then you'd get to know people because there were few enough people to know. Today when you have a subreddit with millions of users it doesn't matter that there's threads or not because due to sheer volume it's all ephemeral.
Again, tell me you've never been on a large forum without telling me.