I'm not really anywhere online anymore, in a public-facing sort of way. I'm just kind of tired of it. Randomly getting racist drive-bys, constantly getting embroiled in the meta commentary of social media because I have a big mouth[^1], straight up changing my whole persona online because someone IRL has found my account - why put up with this over and over again? Especially when I can just vibe with my group of friends and generally not have to worry about these things? I'm lucky enough to have started a Discourse forum before I dropped out of these more publicly facing social spaces, and it's actually kind of popped off! It's called [Auldnoir](https://discourse.auldnoir.org/)[^2], it's been around since March 3rd, 2024, and at the risk of gettin' real sappy, I adore what I've managed to accomplish with it - make a small, somewhat traditional forum for my friends and I to hang out on, free from the constraints that so often come with micro-blogging. Auldnoir is built off of Discourse, a piece of software with a terrible name but a pretty great feature-set, in my humble opinion. It puts a modern spin on forums that I think makes it easier for most people who aren't old as hell like me to easily acclimate to how forums work. The easiest way to explain this is by looking at how replies work. Every thread on Auldnoir is flat, but that doesn't mean context gets lost. If I reply to someone further up on a page, you can click the arrow to pop up the post I'm replying to. Subsequently, you can see replies to *my* post by clicking the replies button right below it, letting you see how people responded without scrolling all the way down and hoping you catch it on the way. ![[Thoughts on the Discourse Forum Software-20240824161622490.png]] Quoting is an option as well, and can be done by highlighting the post and clicking "Quote" in a second. You can @ people like on any other social media site, leading to notifications more akin to your average social media site. You can post links that generate pretty cards just by pasting them in. And every post is in markdown, so you can add headers and hyperlinks and all that jazz very easily. That's the through-point of using Discourse I think - it kinda just works? I had to do some initial set-up on my server, which I run through Digital Ocean, but the whole thing kind of just runs itself now. Even when I can't get on the site because I'm busy with work or whatever, nothing catastrophic happens. There are even plugins to fill in any gaps that you find to be missing. The best part about Auldnoir - and Discourse, subsequently - is that it has proven to me that there's still a place on the internet for cool little forums. I'm incredibly happy to have built up a community on this site. It doesn't move quickly with thousands of posts every day, but that's by design. We can talk around links - which you know [[Sharing Links is My Love Language|I'm a fan of]] - or specific topics and get interesting perspectives. It's very fun!!! That's what I'm saying. And because I run it, if a rando racist ever shows up, I can hit them with the ban laser in an instant, without worrying about some invisible administrative staff wondering if doing that would take things too far. Because with Discourse I don't have to make a site for everyone - I get to make one for me and the people I care about. So! I'm a pretty big fan of Discourse. There might be some annoying aspects to it on the software side, but the philosophy behind using it is why I plan to stick with it. On that note, if you're reading this, you're probably a friend! So if you want to sign up to [Auldnoir](https://discourse.auldnoir.org/), feel free - and if you do, I hope you enjoy it! [^1]: Acknowledged and my own fault, I know [^2]: A Gravity Rush reference, of course.