The era of niche subreddits is over these days. Reddit started ignoring subscriptions and just pooling all posts together and suggesting things the algorithm thinks you are interested in regardless of subscriptions.

Old.reddit.com is the only way to get something useful, "new" reddit is slow, ad riddled and full of irrelevant and unwanted noise.

Discoverability of new subs used to be a bit of an issue, but people do cross-post.

I think it goes further than that. Since IPO a huge number of subreddits have been shut down and the disappearance of many moderators. I don't have any way of proving what happened, but it seems awfully coincidental and the result of some private policy change. Reddit has a huge thumb on the scale on their own platform and it is not healthy.

Many moderators left/were removed and subreddits closed as a protest for the lockdown of the API

The SA forums are still there, happily chugging along. It's been my main hangout for 20 years.

You might want to clarify what you mean by "SA" lol

I think it's pretty clear from the conversation context?

I didn’t participate in its heydays but made an account during covid era and it has disappointed me greatly.

Let’s say that if you wish BlueSky were a forum, it’s the place for you. All I found were a bunch of americans that were simultaneously playing edgy, touchy and uncurious with anything in their cultural blindspot. Dreadful stuff. But the shadow of its greatness was palpable and made me nostalgic for something I didn’t experience.

yeah it's nothing like it used to be. back in the old days it was like the wild west. nothing was off the table unless it was illegal or grossly against the forum rules. now it's just a forum version of reddit or bluesky like you said

It has definitely grown up with its users, yes. Most of us are in our 30s-50s now, lol.

SomethingAwful was an important prominent internet culture anchor for a long time, enforcing good moderation and content standards. I checked out of there the day Lowtax died and never looked back. Prophetic truth in the tagline "The internet makes you stupid."