Lack of conversation?

[Figure]

i kind of find that internet forums work similarly to real life conversations in that well, someone has to post a follow-up reply to a comment made at some point. in real life however, conversation flows more naturally but the principal is essentially the same: someone comes up with something to talk about, people discuss and maybe reply to each other's thoughts if they have anything to add. the big difference is that in internet forums, it's not conversationally awkward to just walk away in the middle of a topic bring brought up because people will add their thoughts when they can and leave when they don't have anything further to contribute.

a secondary point to bring up is that if someone wants to talk to another person about their reply in a specific thread, they can just VM/PM that person for direct conversation. personally speaking, i'd much rather have the engagement in a thread because it's not really harming anyone or getting in the way of anything, but everyone has their own way of socialization.

Personally, I enjoy interacting with people on the forums and on Discord. Sure, sometimes I'll just post-and-go, don't we all? Other times posts I make will be direct responses to things other people have said in the thread. If you really want to get someone's attention and engage with them in a thread, the respond button - as you've clearly noticed - is a great way to go about it too.

I think it's really all just a matter of preference. Forums are never going to be the same again with Discord/Social media around, but I find it's still perfectly possible to have meaningful interaction on the forums themselves too.

To both of these points: First, thank you for taking the time to reply, and second, now that I have had some more time on the forum I have found more threads intended for conversation as opposed to just "opinion" threads as I will call them. There being both types is nice because not everything needs to be a conversation but before I found more threads that were more conversation driven, I thought the whole site was people just posting an opinion and moving on, which I thought was quite boring.

 

[Sydian]

i would say there was more discussion in threads years ago when threads were kind of the only way to communicate. i think it also depends on the topic. like there's only so much you can say about, like. idk. the weather. conveniently there is a thread about weather rn lol. but then other threads that have more interesting topics can leave you to come back for discussion. idk i think it's already been said here but using the discord for chatting seems like the better option here. forums are kind of a dying media platform. showing my age here but this place used to be far more active and engaging years ago than it is now. when you can talk in the discord and get instant responses, it's like. why waste time on a slower moving forum

 

[moon]

I use both Discord and the forums frequently. I think that if one wants conversation, one must create conversation. In any of the platforms~ Ofc if only a few people do it and most don't bother, it's hard to keep anything flowing.

Everybody else has already said it but yeah, forums are a bit like this here. As for Off-Topic in particular? It's always been pretty post-and-go d: other sections are better for convo, historically.