At 13, I joined a Wolfenstein 3d modding forum. 22 years later, my posts are still there - and still searchable.
The discussion I had in Discord 2 years ago?
Not so much.
We chose this. We can choose better.
https://blog.discourse.org/2025/11/the-death-of-community-memory/
someone else ran a forum when the poster was young.
someone else paid for that forum for 20 years
someone else paid to host op’s teen Wolfenstein posts for 20 years
So what’s stopping you from doing the same? It’s not expensive. Is it that discord is free and you don’t actually want to see what stupid shit you wrote about a video game 20 years ago? That seems the most likely explanation. If not, be the change. It’s not hard, it’s not expensive, you literally just need to want to do it and read a tutorial maybe.
As much fun as the “corps run everything” narrative is, that’s only because people keep using their services.
Edit: now I read the blog post rather than the marketing for the blog post, it’s a little worse. This feels very yelling at clouds + nostalgia. Sorry, forum searches often sucked and still do because forums still exist even if the author doesn’t use them. Yes slack is more like normal conversation, no the fact that it’s over the internet rather than in person doesn’t matter. Yes people start talking about document management systems and wikis, yes you have to actually use them. No I don’t like major permanent decisions being made in slack, no I don’t do that – I write them down. This is all very be the change you want to see. People will respond.
Allow me to translate:
So what’s stopping you from doing the same? It’s not expensive. Is it that discord is free and you don’t actually want to see what stupid shit you wrote about a video game 20 years ago? That seems the most likely explanation. If not, be the change. It’s not hard, it’s not expensive, you literally just need to want to do it and read a tutorial maybe.
As much fun as the “corps run everything” narrative is, that’s only because people keep using their services.
Edit: now I read the blog post rather than the marketing for the blog post, it’s a little worse. This feels very yelling at clouds + nostalgia. Sorry, forum searches often sucked and still do because forums still exist even if the author doesn’t use them. Yes slack is more like normal conversation, no the fact that it’s over the internet rather than in person doesn’t matter. Yes people start talking about document management systems and wikis, yes you have to actually use them. No I don’t like major permanent decisions being made in slack, no I don’t do that – I write them down. This is all very be the change you want to see. People will respond.