When I'm on here it legitimately feels like 80% of the people I'm talking to are low IQ schizos or bots, with a minority of semi articulate but malevolent retards who get a dopamine kick out of mocking any genuine passion or interest in videogames or their stories. It just feels so inorganic and dead, like online communities have been gutted and filled with jaded blase people and numbskulls, and in their place are artificially promoted influencers with botted views and likes no different to mainstream television.
15 years ago, online forums pulsed with life. You had discussions about videogames that went incredibly in depth, leading to famous effort posts like the BioWare forum user who used his xenobiology knowledge to calculate the pheromones present in Quarrian sweat and what Tali would smell like naked, or the infamous chad who came up with the Squall is Dead theory. There was so much passion and joy for everything videogames, from the game mechanics to the lore to the story, and people would talk about them for days, but in that cultures place now is just sort of stupidity and apathy. I go on Vidya forums and they're filled with cynicism for videogames themselves. Barely anyone cares to discuss lore beyond a paragraph, barely anyone is interested in unique mechanics, it's just FOMO, hollow marketing, porn and cynicism.