[PetitPrince]

> the social media of today don't seem all that much different from the internet forums of back in the day

The message boards I participated when I was a young teenager were mostly focused on a specific topic (a specific videogame or series of videogame, or a specific genre), with some off-topics board on the side. They were contained communities; village-like if you will. If you don't like one you could hop on another website that had another set of members, customs, and rules.

(yes, you can sort-of see that small village feel with some Discord group or subreddit; but back then the media were controlled by an admin, not a centralized for-profit group)

Contrast this with today's infinite feed were everyone could potentially reach anyone, all curated by The Algorithm(tm) with a vague notion of "friend" or "subscriber".