For anime there’s not really activity for episode or Manga chapter discussions, and found that the My Anime List forums ended up filling that void. https://myanimelist.net/forum/

For buildapc checked out pcpartpicker and found they had a forum with people to help and being pcpartpicker the layout of parts is really nice when people suggest them to you https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/forum/27-create-a-part-list-for-me/

For more casual stuff like pics and memes found squabbles has pretty good activity https://squabbles.io/

For NBA stuff found realgm forums with lot more activity for individual team boards https://forums.realgm.com/boards/

For video game deals found this forum https://www.cheapassgamer.com/forum/10-video-game-deals/

It was nice that forums are still alive once I finally tried to seek out communities outside of reddit after all these years

  • deelayman
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    2 years ago

    Slashdot still gets the job done for tech and science news.

    • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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      2 years ago

      Man you wanna talk about a spam issue. Whew. Slash dot is still bad. I went back to trying it a while back and quickly did the whole Homer Simpson back in the bush.

      I still monitor it via rss for the articles. But I stay away from comments. There is nothing to see there.

      • TechyDad@beehaw.org
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        2 years ago

        I read the headlines there daily but steer clear of the comments. A few years ago, Slashdot had a Nazi problem. There were a group of users who would invariably post full on Nazi content no matter the article. It would get down voted eventually, but if you were early and headed into the comments, you were treated to some vile conspiracies about Jews running the world and calls for Jews to be exterminated.

        (Given that I’m Jewish and have been told by such people to my face that “the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job”, it’s distressing when I see posts of this nature.)

        • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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          2 years ago

          Yeah. Would see similar. Full on swastikas in ascii art style stuff. This was within the last couple years, around the time there was another small exodus and I went back to check on slasdot. It was about the time Ruqqus was starting up. Like I said…just homer simpson backed away and moved on and left it to RSS feed links.

          Its a shame what relative anonymity brings out in people on the internet really.

      • GhostMagician@beehaw.orgOP
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        2 years ago

        You weren’t kidding I scrolled down on the comments regarding anxiety screening article and backed away. What is going on with that place. Who exactly is the demographic that uses it to comment.

        • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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          2 years ago

          I have no idea the demo. But I’m pretty sure I’m on a list just by clicking through that place.

  • 🇺🇦 seirim @lemmy.pro
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    2 years ago

    Always been a fan of Hacker News at Y Combinator: https://news.ycombinator.com/

    And we built and maintain a Reddit / Hacker News alternative at Cyber Report focused on cybersecurity: https://cyber.report/

    Edit: in my own personal interest niche category of Archery, and this is interesting: https://www.archerytalk.com/ Archery Talk was always much bigger and popular than the subreddit for archery. I wonder how many niche topics always had a non-reddit, category dominant forum. A lot probably.

  • AndaliteBandit@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I’ve been over at squabbles.io. Its much simpler to use then the fediverse and the community is super tight. The creator is active with taking advise and suggestions. It’s really cool to watch something build from literal nothing. They even have their 3rd party app in beta already. Check it out.

  • Retronautickz@beehaw.org
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    A veteran there, so it’s not much of a replacement for me, but many Redditors seem to have migrated to Tumblr.

    Most of the subreddits I was subscribed to were about Classical music, there’s no much on that topic on the fediverse, but I’ve found a forum and I’m planning on registering on it.

    • Dee@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, I’ve been thinking of moving my blog content to Tumblr. Not sure how much I’ll actually use the platform because I’m not a huge fan of the conversation formatting but it seems like a good option for dumping long(er) form blog writing.

    • GhostMagician@beehaw.orgOP
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      2 years ago

      Checked it out and it sure is. When I start my Fite Emblem play through I’ll know where to go now. It’s been common to say reddit killed message boards, but turns out it was really more an insulated view from redditors who got used to just depending on reddit. And there’s something about forums where even few posts that are old don’t make the place seem as dead, since responding just bumps it back up so the thread just gets reused instead of new thread dependence.

  • StringTheory@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    Spending time on single-topic forums is groovy. Ukulele Underground has a fairly lively forum, I can wallow in all the ukulele minutiae I want to my heart’s content. A lot of the people on UU are far more hardcore than I am, so I keep feeding /c/ukulele on the .ml instance and wait for the more casual ukulele players to arrive… like a hunter laying out bait.