World Wide Web (www) exploded around 1993. It was a time when the Internet was not so popular and everyone transacted offline, may it be forums or communities.

From offline study classes to meetings arranged specially for finding life partners, this was when the major sources of information were Newspapers, Radio, and Television Sets. Still TV sets were not that common and Radio was the buzz of the time.

We used to see everyone worldwide taking his or her morning breakfast with a newspaper in hand, similar to what we do with our smartphones. That was the time when we used to say to focus on your meal first to our friends while they used to ignore us with their newspaper and comics reading habits. 

Those were the nerds of our time!

Having said that internet started expanding and more and more people started exploring online or virtual life.

Some websites were customized to the pixels and had a persona of their own. This was the time when people were literally creating their psedu profiles and interacting with each other and also trying to solve world problems by creating online forums.

Several online communities allowed users to discuss a particular topic or a wide variety of topics. 

There were no filters or firewalls
People having access to the internet were able to connect with other people around the world, and this was just because there were no firewalls or filters that could limit users to their geography, and this was the intent of the internet in the first place.

To connect people around the world.

The Changing Scenario
As the internet expanded so did several internet companies. Some of the big companies were Yahoo, Bing, Google, Amazon, etc. 

Out of these, Google stood out and has now become one of the biggest brands among internet companies. Google also started AI-generated search results and I believe it seems like a competition to ChatGPT.

ChatGPT changed how people used to do things and solve problems. I won't divulge what benefits ChatGPT can give to writers, students, coders, and in other fields, but several people around the world have already started using ChatGPT for their day-to-day work.

Google with the help of Bard and now Gemini has also played a part in real-time AI usage, especially in the search results.

Initially, the bread and butter of bloggers and other internet users, search engines have now started kind of plagiarizing the content of these bloggers and article writers. Initially, Google started this with temperature, time zones, and simple online tools, and now every single thing that we can think about is available on the first page of Google.

I am specifically pointing out Google because it is one of the biggest and most of the shareholders of all the search engines, but this is true for every search engine as they have planned to move in the same direction.

Social Media Networks are no different
These days even Social Networks have stopped being fair and open to their users. I can understand that stopping spam and bots is important but algorithms should not filter people according to their geographical locations.

Facebook and LinkedIn both have this habit of filtering users as per their geographical locations, because of this it usually becomes difficult to connect with people around the world, and these days there aren't many social networks that can create enough competition.

Rise of Online Forums
In the past, forums were simple text-based social networking platforms that were used to connect people around the world as per their common interests.

Having said that these days there are very less forums available online and some of the biggest remain; Reddit, Black Hat World, etc.

Online Forums seem to be of more importance as the day passes by because now most of the things online are AI-generated, because of which human interaction and networking have become a more special occurrence.

Forums allow people of similar interests to connect and this allows space for collaboration and support, which are diminishing these days online.

Although forums are the first to get the attention of scammers, if these are properly moderated, forums become one of the best places to talk to each other and form communities that can discuss together to solve common issues around the world.

Forums are natural

The reason to quote this particular thing is because forums are one of the most natural things that can happen to anyone online.

Although people hide their identity on online forums, they also help and provide their support with 100% of their ability because it gives a sense of belonging in the community and also because it makes us feel more powerful.

We feel the power to say what we want and help whomever we want to. This also allows people to showcase their thoughts as they don't have a fear of being judged. 

Conclusion
I believe that Forums will again become the connecting grounds for people soon as people want to be part of more human things and less machine-generated content.

Although AI-generated content is going to rule the world, but online forums will be one of the best places to interact and solve bigger problems that even machines cannot solve.