What happened???

[wminish]

I have found the decline of forums very sad to be honest as other forms of social media require extensive by-in and I've never seen community form quite as close knit as in forums. Discord chat rooms require intensive amount of time to stay in the know and don't properly catalogue information/conversation. I largely suspect the move from forums to Discords is more about low maintenance, high engagement, and high monetization rather than any actual benefit to the end user.

Well said. In terms of discord, the time required to stay in the know has always been what has prevented me really getting into it. I thought that maybe I was just missing something that was obvious to people who were more familiar with that platform.