[Nursie]

Did they describe them as either wholesome or safe?

To me the difference is in the doom-scrolling, the shoving rage-bait in your face and the gaming for addictiveness.

Old-school forums, whether they were wholesome or not, didn't do that stuff. Hell, I used to be on Kuro5hin, which was incredibly toxic, but I have IRL friends from there and it just wasn't the same as doom-scrolling through algorithmically selected influencers while meta/tiktok shoved ads in my face.