Tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017
I am a member of three (admittedly weird) niche communities. These have been orders of magnitude more impactful in my life than Facebook. The friends I met there have become real-life friends. We&#x27;ve flown around the world to visit each other, we&#x27;ve laughed and cried, we send each other quirky gifts, and cheer on each other&#x27;s kids. These are the only close new friends I&#x27;ve made in the last 10 years. Two of those communities are based around subreddits, the other a 90s era web forum.<p>The thing that makes them work where Facebook groups simply don&#x27;t, I think, is pseudonymity. One of those groups has been particularly powerful, and it is a group that inherently involves being mutually vulnerable, so I certainly would never have joined under my real name, and I enjoy being part of the community even though only a handful of people know my IRL identity.<p>Reddit has some big problems, but is the best platform I have found so far for these niche communities. And my experience totally chimes with this article: big social media is as shallow as a puddle. Small niches are where real communities form.