Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information

When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment.

What follows is a list of forums that range from at least interesting to good. I will attempt to contextualize the ones I know well. This post is by no means supposed to be complete and will be updated whenever I find more good forums.

Audio (Audiophile)

Audiophiles have an oversized presence in the forum game. Part of this has to do with the fact that overpriced gear brings out the worst, best, and most creative in people. It is a fantastic place to start this off. 

• Audio Science Review is notorious and fairly new in the grand scheme of things, a forum that deserves its own post. They pride themselves on doing objective, scientific analysis of speakers, amplifiers and home audio equipment generally. 
• Super Audio Best Friends is another audio forum that apparently has had beef with ASR’s methodology.
• Audiogon is also a well-known, good and reliable audio forum.
• If you want a forum that is just people talking about old speakers specifically, Audiokarma is the destination. Speakers have generally gotten better and more efficient over time, but old speakers have their defenders, and this forum has some fairly interesting and unique information that does not exist elsewhere. It has a sister site called Videokarma that I had no idea existed before writing this blog. 
• For everything involving headphones, Head-fi’s forums are probably the best and the ones I root for the most with audiophile stuff. It’s where I found my favorite closed-back headphones. They have their own convention, Can Jam. I probably respect this forum the most.

Audio (DIY)

Eventually you wanna cross from simply being a guy who has an expensive stereo to someone who starts making audio equipment. Here are some good places to start.

• diyAudio is the destination if you want to make speakers, amplifiers, PAs and more. An incredible resource.
• Speaker building groups like the Midwest audio club are quite good.
• Semi related, but GroupDIY is the best website for building a microphone and related equipment. You can make a total Neumann U 87 clone from info gleaned from that site, and people who have been on their forums have gone on to start their own mic businesses. 

Audio (professional) and musicians

People who own audio gear in a professional context are their own niche. This particularly holds true for musicians.

• Gearspace is one of the oldest communities for audio professionals. It changed from its embarrassing and misogynistic name of GearSlutz following an online petition and a callout from one of the co-founders who built the site. Every audio engineer has used this site.
• The TapeOp board is specifically centered around recording.
• TASCAM forums are for people who use TASCAM devices.
• Lines (aka https://llllllll.co) focuses a lot on synthesizers.
• Mod Wiggler is a great resource for euroracks and other modular synthesizers. Like Gearspace, it also used to have a much more embarrassing name. They were acquired by Synthcube this year.
• Drums forums. For drums.
• Fixing a piano? Piano World Forums.
• Ukulele underground is your one stop forum for Ukuleles.
• PedalPCB is a great resource for guitar pedals, and particularly when it comes to PCB design. Shockingly useful forum. 
• The Telecaster Discussion Page is popular and has a very active DIY subforum
• The Squier-Talk Forum for the fender sub-brand.
• Seven String guitar players specifically have their own forum
• LinuxMusicians is a hyper-specific forum but there’s also a lot of info you won’t find anywhere else on here. 
• Old School DAW is devoted to music creation on older computers. Some very important older musicians were on here. 
• VI-Control is a forum for virtual instruments. 
• If you wanna talk about plug-ins,the KRV Audio forum. 

Music

People who collect old records love posting. Here are some of the most active haunts.

• Steve Hoffman Music Forums is an ancestry unto itself. It spans a bunch of categories like audio, gear and music and thus does not fit into a single category. Great website.
• From a reader, dissensus is full of old drum and bass heads but also has a lot of old Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds posts. 
• Classical music: Talk Classical
• The Mudcat Cafe is a comically simple discussion group for folk music.
• Waxidermy is a forum devoted to vinyl. I like that they have an active politics thread from November 2016 called “LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION ARE YOU GUYS NERVOUS”
• Very Good Plus is worth mentioning although somewhat inactive.
• Acclaimed Music is still going.
• WATMM (We Are The Makers Of Music) is an IDM forum.
• Trance Addict is still going if you are into trance.

Cameras, Video, Production, Gear

One of my niches is cameras, and so as a result I have spent a lot of time on vintage cameras. I have close to 30 film cameras at this point, and I lay the blame squarely at forums and Goodwill’s auction site. Here are some old forums to enable you.

• For modern cameras the DPreview forum is by far the most active.
• A lot of my knowledge came from obsessing over the MFLenses subreddit. This was particularly popular around when camera sensors got big enough that you could adapt older glass to newer camera bodies. I learned a lot about Soviet era lenses there. 
• This has led to other, niche forums. I spend a lot of time with vintage Minolta cameras, and for that the Dyxum forum is still fairly active. Konica Minolta’s camera department was later bought by Sony in 2006, so it now encompasses discussions of Sony cameras. 
• PentaxUser is also still kicking around, though Pentax as a brand is not what it once was and the forum is less active.
• DVXuser used to be one of the best forums for shooting video, based on the Panasonic AG-DVX100, but if you are old enough to remember that camera you are old now. 
• Photo.net’s forums remain active. 

Adjacent to this and you start getting into video production and editing: 

• Real video editing heads know about the Creative Cow forums. I have spent nights working overtime looking for why something wasn’t rendering correctly. There is a deep treasure trove of info there.
• Blackmagic’s forums are active if you use any of their products.
• Further down the rabbit hole is Videohelp, which is a great resource for a lot of questions about encoding. 
• Even further down that rabbit hole are the Doom9 and the MakeMKV forums, the former being real pervert encoding information, and the latter being useful if you wanna learn how to archive your blu-rays using a jailbroken disc drive called a LibreDrive. 

Home Theater, A/V and Media

Speaking of blu-rays, let’s talk about home theater, A/V and general media.

• The bluray.com forums can get both notoriously anal and unruly while also being an indispensable guide for seeing who is screwing up different video releases. 
• The AVS forums are ancient and remain the best place for people who spend way too much money on surround sound. 
• The forums for the Laserdisc Database are fantastic for anyone attempting to do serious research about releases, and the database/marketplace is fantastic as well. 
• Want an 8mm film forum? Here you go. The 8mm Film Forum.
• The Spaghetti Western Database forum.
• The Original Trilogy forum is nominally a Star Wars forum, but many of the fan projects to restore the original versions of those movies morphed into general restoration of other properties, including 35mm home scans that are open matte. 
• Fan Restore is a different fan restoration forum.
• The Digital Spy Forum is for TV/movies.
• There is a VCR repair forum out there, but I am not going to link to it because the guy who runs it is a vindictive asshole. 
• ANN forums for anime.
• Lost media wiki forums are useful if you try to hunt down lost or forgotten media.

Drugs and Substances

Drugs are great for forums. While I am not making it the explicit policy of Aftermath to do drugs, the forums for drugs are informative or at the very least very funny.  

• Bluelight is the most notorious active drug forum. As with many drug forums, the stated goal is harm reduction.
• I have a special place in my heart for the psychedelic mushroom forum Shroomery. Partly this is because it’s ancient and it still looks like a black light poster, but also because it has a lot of non-drug related mushroom advice on there. If you wanna learn how to cultivate culinary mushrooms it’s a great resource.
• The Poppers Forum exists. While the idea of a poppers forum is conceptually funny, it is actually a complicated topic. Poppers availability, chemistry and legality is a somewhat complex topic. As an aside, I would highly recommend the recently released book Deep Sniff if you are interested in the history of poppers.
• Grass City is the dedicated weed forum. Kinda speaks for itself.
• I remember there used to be a lot of steroid forums. That’s not my scene and not worth linking directly but it is worth mentioning.
• I don’t drink any more but I used to home brew beer, and when I did the Homebrewtalk forum was a destination I spent a lot of time on. Lots of very helpful guides on how to make alcohol. They also send you an email wishing you happy birthday. The Homebrew Forum based out of the UK is also a good resource here.
• Wine Making Talk is an active wine making community. 
• The BeerAdvocate community I spent less time on because BeerAdvocate reviews were some of the worst writing I have ever read. 
• Wine Berserkers is a notorious wine forum. CellarTracker is also well known.
• Home Barista forums are some of the larger coffee forums.
• Teachat used to be the biggest tea forum, but apparently there was a split, so now Tea Forum exists.

Fashion

I personally don’t think you should learn about style from a forum unless you have a hyper specific way you prefer to dress. That said, there’s a lot of useful info on clothing brands online.

• Styleforum is one of the most notorious forums and still extremely active.
• Ask Andy About Clothes 
• Superfuture was really important for techwear back in the day. 
• PurseForum is a very active purse related forum.

Plants and Animals

Farming and gardening is, unsurprisingly, fertile ground for forums.

• AG talk is apparently quite a good agricultural forum and not surprisingly spartan in its layout.
• The Combine Forum is a great resource if you own a combine harvester. I do not, but it makes for a good read even if you don’t own a John Deere 9660 STS.
•  The Lawn Forum is quite good if you are the kind of person who gets obsessed with lawns, although I learned a lot about fescue if you (correctly) believe that lawns with traditional grass are bad for the environment. It’s also where I found out about chelated iron as a non-toxic herbicide.
• I somehow ended up on Beesource, the beekeeping forum a while back while attempting to learn about an antifungal chemical. Seems fun over there! 
• I have heard nothing but good and useful things about  the garden.org forums. 
• Bonsai Nut for trees.
• Guinea Pig forum.
• Backyard Chicken is the forum for home chicken owners.
• Birdsforum is the birding community hub. 
• Pigeon.biz is the internet’s main hub for pigeon information. 
• Parrot forums, for parrot and other bird owners like parakeets, cockatiels and macaws.

Repair Hobbies, Vocational Hobbies, Appliances and Home Goods

Sometimes you gotta fix some stuff. Forums are the perfect structure, because old guys love hanging out in a place and telling you how to fix something.

• Plumbing Forums is a great place to learn about plumbing. 
• Terry Love is another, well-respected plumbing forum.
• John Bridge is the place to go about ceramic tiling.
• Practical Machinist is a great CNC and repair forum. 
• Homemade Tools is the destination for people who like making their tools by hand. Wanna make a gas powered leaf blower from scratch? You will find out how. 
• Appliance Pros for appliance repair. 
• VENDiscuss, for vending machine repair.
• Eng Tips for engineering. 
• BobIsTheOilGuy is where you go if you need to learn about machine oil.
• EEVBlog forum is where you go if you need to talk about test equipment and electronics.
• Sawmill Creek (woodworking).
• Badcaps for electronics repairs.
• ElektroTanya is a great resource for service manuals but is primarily in Hungarian.
• Blue Room is a UK based technical theater forum. 
• Student Doctor Network is the forum for medical students and doctors. 
• The Building Code forum. 
• Mattress Underground is the mattress forum. It’s incredibly useful if you have specific questions about mattresses and bedding. Bedding varies from person to person, so people get very into this topic. I was using it last week to figure out mattress encasements for dustmites.
• After that you have the Automatic Washer forums for dishwashers and washing machines. I have used this to try to reverse engineer which dishwashers and dishwashing products are good. 
• You also have the Vacuumland forums for vacuums. This was handy when I was buying a secondhand SEBO. Old, well-built vacuums can be great if properly maintained, so this is a useful forum to have.
• Kitchen knives have their own active forum.
• And of course who could forget the vintage ceiling fan forum? This is distinct from the Antique Fan Collector Association. 

Gaming

Gaming forums have seen better days, but gaming has always been one of the largest percentages of forum communities. We don’t need to relitigate NeoGAF or ResetERA here. Some of the more interesting forums are the retro ones. 

• The Shmups forum is actually where a lot of the first RGB mods for CRT TVs emerged. 
• The Arcades-Projects forum is a wildly useful resource and community if you have or want to refurbish an old arcade cabinet. 
• ResetERA is the forum that emerged after the collapse of NeoGAF, and now is where everyone in gaming news lurks.
• Also the Arcade Controls forum.
• The GBATemp forums are where to go if you’re trying to keep up with hacking and Homebrew.
• Bitbuilt is the forum for modding consoles into portable handhelds.
• IGN
• Giant Bomb
• RIIMuk
• GameFAQs is a national treasure and some of the only archives of how to correctly play certain niche games.
• InsertCredit and Select Button are good forums.
• Gamers With Jobs forum
• Vogons 
• The longest running LucasArts forum is MixnMojo, which contains an old archive of the LucasArts forums from back in the day. 
• The Visual Novel Database is one of the most comprehensive resources for visual novels.
• The rpg.net forums are ancient tabletop forums.
• The BoardGameGeek forums are still quite active as well. 

 In addition to general topics there are multiple forums devoted to specific games and subgenres. 

•  Romhacking.net collapsed spectacularly this year under what seemed to be avoidable circumstances. It is not active and much of the active development had moved offsite, but it is worth mentioning in passing.  
• Zeldix, the Zelda hacking forum, is where much of the MSU-1 hacking stuff came out of. 
• SMW Central is the Mario forums. 
• Sonic Research is an active Sonic forum. 
• Retro Gaming Boards is the forum for retro gaming.
• Pinside forums are for pinball machines.
• The Sims modding forum. 
• Civfanatics for anyone who plays Civilization.
• HTLV is the Counter-Strike forum.
• Doomworld is one the DOOM forum and possibly one of my favorites. It is still active and still creating culture.
• The Warthunder forum has become a meme because military documents keep getting leaked there.
• Overtake is the racing sim forum.
• Trainsim is the dedicated forum for train simulators like Open Rails and Microsoft Train Sim.

Technology/Computers/Software

Tech people are unsurprisingly still active on forums. Here are some of the more active ones.

• Ars Technica’s forums. 
• [H]ard [F]orum 
• Bleeping Computer
• Level1Techs forum, also related to the Level1Techs Youtube. 
• Linus Tech Tips forums, also related to the Linus Tech Tips Youtube.
• Serve The Home forums, related to the STH Youtube channel.
• Hack Forums has a long history. 
• DSLReports is the ISP forum.
• Wilders Security Forum is the security forum. 
• Geekhack forums for mechanical keyboards.
• Macrumors is the oldest Mac forum. 
• Tonymacx86 historically was the hackintosh forum but I have not checked since they switched to ARM architecture. I did spend a lot of time there during lockdown because I ran my PC dual boot with Mac as a COVID hobby.
• Spectrum Computing forums are still going and devoted to Sinclair Research computers like the ZX Spectrum. 
• OSdev is specifically the forum for people developing operating systems.
• The forums for whirlpool.net.au are actually not dedicated to the Australian branch of the Whirlpool brand but specifically a great resource for networking and internet access in Australia. 
• XDA is a forum for mobile devices but with a focus on Android devices. A lot of devices are often just rebadged Android tablets so this is an incredibly useful forum. I was on here last week looking up how to sideload something on a Peloton. 

Crafting

Forums are great if you are trying to make some stuff. 

• TheRPF is the best prop/cosplay forum bar none, and potentially one of the most useful forums on this list. 
• Finishing.com has been going for decades, and if you have any question about finishing metal it has probably been asked. The site has roots in the pre Internet era and it’s maintained by one guy from New Jersey.
• The American Association of Woodturners is a great resource if you have a wood lathe or would like to have one. 
• Chemists Corner is for people who formalate makeup and cosmetics. If you want to start making your own shampoo or moisturizer this is a great place to start, along with bulk buying sites like Making Cosmetics.
• The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls if you want to cut vinyl. 
• Wet Canvas is a hub for painting and other visual arts. 

Hyper-Niche Activities (Useful)

Hyper niche forums call for their own category. 

• For extremely powerful flashlights you gotta go with Budgetlightforum. 
• Alternatively, the Candlepower forum. 
• The World Literature Forum 
• For amateur astronomy and astrophotography, Cloudynights is your forum.
• There are tons of niche cycling forums, but London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed forum aka LFGSS is a tolerable one. 
• Related to that is Weight Weenies, the forum for ultra light cycling.
• Word reference forums.
• The forums for Backpackinglight are great when it comes to the ultralight camping niche…
• … as is trek-lite if you are attempting to dive into MYOG (make your own gear). 
• Origami forum
• eGulletForums was the big cooking and food forum. The site has seen better days but is a huge repository of information about food. Anthony Bourdain was an active poster there.
• Zoo Chat, the forum about zoos and conservation.
• Fishing.com for fishing. Or also in-depthoutdoors.
• Wanna get into making maps? Cartographer’s Guild. 
• Fragrance nerds love the fragrantica board.
• Designaddict is a furniture forum, specifically European design stuff.
• Badger and Blade is a great resource for shaving, particularly if you’re trying to find the good razors or shaving cream.
• For BBQ there’s the Smoking Meat forum and the BBQ Brethren forum. There’s also forums devoted to specific brands like the Pit Boss forum and TVWBB (The Virtual Webber Bulletin Board).
• Stopmotionanimation.com went offline September 28th 2024 as I was writing this piece and people are currently archiving it.
• For survival stuff: Bushcraft USA and Bushcraft UK. Bushcraft OZ shut down in 2023 and its archives are here. I have read some drama about Bushcraft USA trademarking the term “Bushcraft” but am otherwise not up to date on it.
• Model Train Forum.
• For RC cars, RC Tech is the forum for racers specifically.
• Tamiya Club is the RC car forum specifically for the Tamiya brand. 
• RC Crawler is specifically for 4WD RC Cars. 
• Ip Camera Talk is one of the more popular forums for both home security cameras and setting up an NVR, although I have read at least one competing subreddit that hates them. It can get reactionary, which is unsurprising, but I think it is very funny that they have an almost 800 page thread that is still going on from January 2020 called “Pandemic threat? Anyone else concerned?” 
• If you are into pens then the Fountain Pen Network is the best English language one. While I won’t dig too deep into non-English forums, PenBBS is the Chinese language one.

Hyper-Niche Obsessions (Questionable)

Not all forums are in the service of something useful, so here are the ones that are at best neutral.

• MyFico is the forum for credit. There’s an entire subforum on there of people who post about credit cards and all of them have which credit cards they have in their forum sig.
• FlyerTalk  forums are for gaming flights and frequent flier programs. It can be fairly useful if you are trying to get a cheap flight and they have deals alerts, but my understanding is that frequent flier deals just aren’t what they used to be.
• If you are into Chicago-based cuisine, LTH is the primary forum about food in Chicago.
• ABC Homeopathy is the forum for homeopathy, which is quack stuff but it can be fun people-watching.
• T Shirt Slayer is specifically about metal T-shirts, although it appears to be only intermittently active.
• Two Plus Two is the poker forum.
• Builder Society is a digital marketing forum. BlackHatWorld is the forum for SEO, marketing, spamdexing and botnetting, often to an unscrupulous degree. I would not go there but it’s worth mentioning.
• Of the vaping forums, Vaping Underground is the biggest one. Planet of the Vapes is the UK one.
• The best destination for getting out of a parking ticket in the UK was PePiPoo, but has since been taken down (archive here). The site apparently got reformed here as FTLA (Free Ticket Legal Advice).
• Above the Law for lawyers and Top Law Schools is for law students to post deranged stuff. 
• Paranormalis is the paranormal and time traveler forum. 

Other 

• You have to mention Something Awful because while it does have some genuinely vile parts, it’s apparently gotten much better since LowTax died and also because big portions of it have useful niche info.
• Niche off boards on 4chan would occasionally have good stuff, but that’s harder to recommend with a straight face on account of it being a cesspool but also just difficult to sift through and anonymous, which runs counter to the idea of most forums as a resource. Moreover it has always just given me a headache to look at it even on a good day.
• BoingBoing’s forums are worth mentioning. 

Sex Stuff

I’m not going to link to porn forums because that’s really just kinda tacky, but there are some sex-adjacent forums that are interesting unto themselves.

• The largest porn forum is adultdvdtalk (NSFW, obviously), primarily when it comes to commercial pornography.
• I have been informed by a person who makes technologically advanced buttplugs that there is a forum for people that sync their toys to porn. I will direct you to the post about it for attribution instead of linking directly.
• There is an entire forum dedicated exclusively to porn modding in video games called Lovers Lab. 

Exercise/Training/Competitive Sports Forums

People who train their bodies or in a competitive sport love posting on forums. Here are some of the most notorious. 

• Bodybuilding.com was so gargantuan it barely needs mentioning. But as of writing this, I have learned that the forums have now officially shut down as of last month. I will never forget its members disputing how many days are in a week is the stuff of legends. The reformed forum is apparently newmisc.com.
• Let’s Run is the main running forum, and I have heard it’s both incredibly useful and can also be deeply toxic at times, which is not unusual for a forum. 
• Billiards forum is where you go for billiards.
• GolfWRX and The Hackers Forum are golf forums.
• BowlingChat.net is a bowling forum.

Sports Forums

I am going to be honest, sports generally are a weak point for me. My understanding is that this is one subject where a lot of stuff has moved to other platforms like Discord. That said, I did reach out to the folks at Defector. Dan McQuade mentioned the Sports Argument Stadium at Something Awful, and Luis credited the college football boards on IGN as an inspiration. Another suggestion from Dan McQuade:  "Oh people loved the Eagles message board. Like on the official site. Great community developed there. Not kidding. smart and informed.”

Gun, Weapon and Military Forums

I have found a shocking amount of practical information from gun and military forums despite not wanting to own a gun or to deal with a huge portion of gun owners.

• I have stumbled into useful information about military clothing on the AR15 forum. I do not endorse it because it’s obviously a reactionary site, but gun forum stuff is shockingly useful if you wanna learn how to refinish something. I have also stumbled across it when looking up deadstock Patagonia military surplus jackets.
• Blade Forums are apparently the big non-culinary knife forums. Similarly, I have ended up there despite not owning a switchblade or gravity knife.
• Secret Projects forum are the aviation forums specifically devoted to lost or unbuilt military projects. 
• The Great War Forum is the forum about WW1.

Car and Vehicle Forums

I don’t own a car or even want one, but I would be remiss if I did not mention some car-adjacent forums. A lot of them have sadly gone under, but the ones that remain and are active are unsurprisingly very niche.

• VW Vortex is a fairly active Volkswagen forum. 
• The Final Gear forums are the big Top Gear related forums.
• The DIY Electric Car forum is self explanatory and actually about that. Of the car forums it is probably the one that’s the most impressive and fun to lurk in.
• SportTrac.org is a forum for the Ford Sport Trac, which is for a kinda bad car that has not been made in 12 years. It is still fairly active.
• Leasehackr is specifically about automotive leases. 
• Ih8mud is the best resource for Toyota Landcruisers.
• If you own a Sprinter van, you gotta go to Sprinter Source. 
• If you wanna post about the Kawasaki KLR650, do I have a forum for you. 
• The AARoads forum is the forum for roads including such topics as “ Highways You Have Clinched.”
• The Bimmerpost forums are specifically centered around BMWs.
• Rennlist is the forum for Porches.

Those are just some of the more interesting forums I could find that are still active. I don’t assume that all of them will live to even the end of the year, but I think it is worth remembering that culture is still being generated in independent places that aren’t closed gardens owned by tech companies. It’s important that we cultivate these wells of knowledge, lest we lose them forever, in favor of spaces far outside of our control.