You're probably anticipating what my angle is immediately after reading this headline. It's going to be a hateful, insensitive article targeting these people and those people. Let's get straight into it.
Or... I don't know. Maybe this subject is too difficult for some.
I'm going to assume without preaching at you that you are decided to put an effort into using forums. Whether or not we think it would be a better use of our free time on the Internet than something like social media or an always-on chat app isn't something I'm going to go into. It doesn't matter if that's the case or not. We miss forums. We want to try forums. How do we build this behavior?
It's interesting that we're using language like "put an effort into" and "building this behavior." That is because reading forums is not as convenient as some of the mainstream, modern ways of using the Internet. And even if you're okay with putting in the work today, another thing you have to swallow is the glacial pacing that forums sometimes move at. So whether or not you become a forum user comes down to, "Do you return to the forum at any interval." There is a lot of room for that interval to vary. You can check boards everyday or you can check them one Sunday per month.
In this post we're going to assemble a list of forums to read. Each is going to fill a different niche, and we're going to subscribe to all of them like old men and women reading the newspaper.