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  <p>I have my own website, so naturally I've seen videos preaching the benefits and trying to convince others to make their own. The main point they cite is that it's more personal than a social media site and it helps the internet stay grass-roots as more and more of the internet is taken up by corporations for e-commerce and data scraping. <i>Make a personal website. It's sooo cool. You're helping the internet.</i></p>
  <p>The problem with websites like mine, and <a href="https://acsq.me" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ángel's</a>, and anyone else without a comments section is that it's a one-way discourse. Sure, you can suggest that people email you, but there's no history of the interaction online, and nobody else benefits from the discourse &lpar;assuming the person even emailed you in the first place, which is highly unlikely&rpar;. Forums are the answer.</p>
  <p>I'm from the era of modern Reddit, so I won't pretend to know what it was like back in the "good ol' days", but I've read plenty of discussions and videos on the subject of "early" message boards. Today, Reddit is the answer to the above problem. Well... sort of.</p>
  <p>Reddit is going through some changes. Not many of them good. They've become large and therefore are doing things that large companies eventually do: monetize and restrict.</p>
  <p>I've been off of Reddit for a couple years. My account is now locked, and the Reddit staff does not care enough to fix it, so I just browse without an account. There tends to be a decent amount of quick info from real humans &lpar;something you can't take for granted in this era of the internet&rpar;. Unfortunately, while I was browsing today, this message popped up.</p>
  <figure>
    <img src="/static/media/reddit-lock.png" alt="Reddit warning message stating that users must log in to view the full comments section." width="1194" height="702" />
    <figcaption>Reddit being modern.</figcaption>
  </figure>
  <p>Luckily, it's just a scare tactic for the time being. Clicking the "X" closes the prompt without furthur issues, but I'm sure that won't be the case for long. This is the norm now. There were plenty of reasons to stay off of Reddit for a long time, but this is definitely the nail in the coffin for a casual browser. Gone the way of paywalled content. So be it.</p>
  <p>If you want to keep the old internet alive, go find an oldschool forum that's still hanging on and make an account. Get to know the community. There's so much more specialized knowlegde out there and archived content with much more useful information. Car help? There's probably a forum dedicated to you make with people who have experience with your exact model. Old computer hardware? There's people that'll crawl out of the woodwork to help newbies make use of old tech.</p>
  <p>Stay off of Reddit. Don't feel the need to make your own website. Help keep old-school forums alive.</p>
  <p><b>Created:</b> {{ .Date }}</p>
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