My favorite old social media experiences include old pre-Digg-downfall reddit, and the youtube comments on certain very small gaming channels.

I’ve had some good recent experience with Tumblr, but some bad too. Not sure what to make of that place yet - for me, I think it requires careful curation to make sure it stays constructive and not just rage-making. But like, there is cool art, and photographs, and lots of cool marine biology content.

My actual top spot goes to archiveofourown.org, however. It’s not the type of site you meant, probably, but damn if I haven’t gotten a lot out of its massive library of free, ad-free, entirely volunteer made, supremely well organized (its tag system puts libraries’ to shame) fanfiction. It blows every other internet community site I’ve participated in out of the water when it comes to creativity and user-generated content.

I also have a soft spot for Drawception, which somehow still exists despite all the odds. People play a telephone game with drawings and prompts. It’s great for a laugh or three, and for art practice, though games take days to complete now there are fewer users and apparently the site owner is AWAL. It may be on its way out. But I hope not.