New here? Tell us the corner of the internet you came from and what you are hoping to find here

[NightOwl]

A welcome thread for everyone arriving. The internet has fractured into a thousand corners, the big platforms, the niche communities, the dying forums, the group chats, so tell us where you have been spending your online time lately and what specifically made you come looking for somewhere like this, an old fashioned forum in a feed shaped world

The interesting thing about new arrivals to forums in this era is that most are refugees of something, a community that shut down, a platform that got worse, a feed that stopped feeling like people and started feeling like a slot machine, and the thing you are running FROM often says as much as the thing you are hoping to find

For the regulars this is a chance to make newcomers feel at home and point them somewhere good, and for the new folks it is a low stakes first post, no expertise required, just where you came from and what you are after, because everyone here was new once and most of us remember how quiet that first post felt

So introduce yourself with those two things, your recent corner of the internet and what you are hoping for here, and veterans, share yours too and welcome someone properly, because a forum lives or dies on whether the first post gets a warm reply or vanishes into silence

[Sequence87]

Coming from the big feeds and honestly running from them, they stopped feeling like people and started feeling like a slot machine, hoping to find actual conversations here that go deeper than a hot take and a pile on

[Sentinel96]

The slot machine description is why half of us are here, the feeds optimised for reaction and lost the plot of actual human exchange, welcome, this place is slower and better for it

[Caitlin86]

Old forum I loved for a decade finally shut down and I have been adrift since, hoping to find that same feeling of a small place where you recognise the regulars, refugee of a dead community and looking for a new home

[Vulture50]

Forum refugees are the backbone of every good board now, welcome in, the recognising the regulars feeling takes a few weeks but it comes, stick around and you will know everyone soon enough

[RayOfLight32]

Been lurking in various niche communities and never posting anywhere, decided it was time to actually join something and contribute rather than just consume, hoping to find a place worth delurking for

[Leo]

Delurking is the hardest first step and you just took it, welcome, the fact that you want to contribute rather than consume means you already belong here more than you think

[MurkyVoyager]

Came from a big chat platform where everything scrolls away in an hour, hoping to find somewhere that things actually stay, where a thread can live for weeks instead of vanishing into the scroll, permanence is the appeal

[QuantumLeap]

Permanence is exactly what forums do that feeds cannot, threads here are still going months later, your words do not evaporate, that alone is why some of us never left the format, welcome to the slow web