It’s still weird and great, just not public and you’re not cool enough to get invited.
Greatest open secret of the last 5 internet years: Real social media happens in private chatrooms and group “texts”. People are tired of posting publicly.
I'm cool enough to be invited or at least grandfathered-in to some of them but it's not the same. You can't just go online and find a different weird community every evening like you used to 15 years ago.
Also, with the tightening of privacy, there's less and less recruitment going on which makes me pessimistic as to the long-term viability of these private groups and forums. They seem to be slowing down with fewer posts every month. Many smaller ones which made the transition from IRC to webforum to some modern software are a pale shade of their former selves even when the Internet around them has been booming.
A core part of the early weird internet was the fact that you could stumble into it entirely accidentally. Private communities can be great, but they're a very different thing.
Greatest open secret of the last 5 internet years: Real social media happens in private chatrooms and group “texts”. People are tired of posting publicly.