>>227102 (OP)
I feel that way sometimes. There are places on the webring that have regular events where you can feel like there's a community, but everywhere else is incentive-driven. Xitter was always bad, and the term "anon" there has been perverted to mean an account without a face, rather than without a name. Worse still, money incentives continue to creep into it, and its dynamics lend themselves to a refined version of forum culture where high follower, non-gimmick accounts are respected and low follower accounts are given the cold shoulder. This isn't to mention the rampant grifting and cults of personality or the classic issue of reputation. You can't rexeet something funny or gross or absurd on your main account. That's what alt-accounts are for. You can't say something serious on your gross or absurd account for the same reason.
The same is true for Discord, especially if it isn't among friends. Discords for e-celebs are cults of personality with their designated e-celeb as God and the moderators his angels. It doesn't matter if the e-celeb is a game reviewer or a VTuber, it's all the same. Cultures form there that aren't reflected in the e-celeb's work. Then there are places like Substack, which is a weak continuation of the blogosphere, again with a price incentive, and it's now trying to become like all of the other apps but "high brow" as they gravitate toward the perfect ideal of a social media app that the Chinese developed.
Even the most popular "altchan" is linked to these things. The Sharty is infested with xitterfags looking for content and has opened its own forum and blog sites away from the imageboard. On the flip side, the webring and 8kun are as dead as door nails. They just don't have the same population they used to, and those who remain are becoming increasingly demoralized in what may be a war of attrition with normalfag social media. 4um is filled with shitskins and ESLs and other bad actors who have ruined, rather than advanced, the cultures of the boards they've hijacked. "Oldfag" imageboards have the inverse problem. They don't want to move on from or advance the imageboard culture they grew up with.
It could be that this is what would always happen. Leading figures appear in all communities in all forms, and people gravitate toward them because, even if they are only a spectacle, they have charisma, and people want to be around like minded others. Imageboards fought this by hating namefags, but now there is no significant kind of social media to do the same. One online as much as the average imageboard user would have to be truly antisocial, either due to chronological or psychological reasons, to remain on imageboards. The internet has become the real world. Billionaires and nations fight for and buy social media. People tie fiscal assets to its workings in cryptocurrency. Yet the opposite isn't true. The real world has not become the internet. Many trends have found their way into the real world, but the average person doesn't browse Reddit seriously or use Discord or know what Substack is. He doesn't post on imageboards. He uses Xitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for minor moments in his daily life. He might follow a few accounts for a laugh or the news. He doesn't care about the money attached to it. Yet the people who are online want his eyes so they can receive money. He's a customer.
Maybe we've reached the true opposite of normalfags. Maybe how combative imageboards are now wasn't always serious. Maybe those like us have been trained to remain on them by taking it seriously. It could be that what I've typed in this post is reflective of the same issue. When was the last time you saw anyone on an imageboard disparage another for leaving a comment on a YouTube video? No one anywhere cares.
I don't know the solution to this issue. I have heard the proposal of (pay)walled gardens where users can talk to like people within a bubble of their own, but that doesn't seem satisfactory. I don't want to be a part of a scene or a fandom or some group for intellectual discourse. I want to have fun talking to anyone at any time without knowing his face online, but I may have missed out on even that. The opening up of the internet may have been its death kneel, or maybe it was 8chan dying, or maybe it was the webring being killed in its cradle. For now, buy a burner if you want to give any social media that requires a phone number a chance. Unless you're a 2FAfag, it doesn't matter if it's a flip phone. You could get a virtual phone number too. Get tech literate and remove yourself as far as you can from the frontends of non-imageboard social media platforms, like Revanced or its forks for YouTube. A script to let you switch between libre and normal platforms for reading and writing, respectively, shouldn't be too hard. You want to connect with people on imageboards? Make posts and threads and attend events.