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What are the best non-cancer obscure online communities like this (preferable not alt right

Do you mean in general? They do seem to be hard to find. Even ignoring the 'obscure' part, good communities tend to be those that focus on making it the best place for the existing users, rather than trying to be a catch-all. [spoiler]ironically, those that try to appease all end up appeasing none (it fit's like a glove, most users get's a bit of what they want, but almost no-one gets more than a little bit of what they want; and there will always be some onto whome the glove won't even try to fit), which makes it a catch-22.[/spolier] The effect of this is that most people who happen upon it won't stay, as it's probably quite not what they want. In some smaller communities (many, in my experience), reaching out to find new members from other places, as well as 'advertising' other communities, is frowned upon, so they tend to remain in their isolation, with only rare instances where a member of two such communities carefully gets each to know about the other, or a member of one community knows a specific person who would be a good fit for the community, and, with similar carefulness, gets him to know about the community. In communities where the members have social difficulties, the latter approach is stunted to near zero, leaving the former 'careful mutual advertising' as the main source of knowledge of the involved communities. The aforementioned pessimism aside, what makes a good, non-cancer, obscure, internet community? Some ideas: Having a small population, so that people can better get to know each other, but large enough that there's a good amount of daily activity (don't want users to get bored, et c.). Lainchan seems to do this well. Having some thematic focus, so that there's always at least something to do / talk about. Lainchan has a slight cyberpunk theme, with other themes either as subthemes (DIY, Informatics, Psychology, Art, 'counter culture' (I hate that term), et c.) or derived from what the users also like. Having a carefully selected set of rules which refelcts the local customs, and changes through time as the community comes to learn what sorts of activity is productive, which would be used mainly to self-moderate, but, only occasionally, when someone is being subtley pernicious, moderators could exercise their moderation power with some reasonable defense of their moderation action, even if not the true reason, the true reason that that behaviour was pernicious would come to be known. Does lain have any other ideas?

>>6383 This is definitely all true (and I must say, very thorough, good job lain) but I am still looking for specific communities here. Is lain aware of any?

I think it's primarily about given incentives. If you come to a platform to make money you will behave better per default than if you visit some gaming forum to soykafpost for entertainment. It's been a while but i remember the RTM sites as having a much better community quality than official gaming forums throughout the board. Some forums also have a reputation system that doesn't allow to spam upvotes infinitely like it became popular recently which makes people consider whom they give credit to. Comes also with inner circles for those who manage to gain high enough reputation. This seems to facilitate enough quality control by itself. You don't need to police anything when the community self-polices trying to get into the secret club with the good stuff.

There's this thread if you haven't seen it: https://www.lainchan.org/r/res/6299.html. For more Lain culture, there's arisuchan. You might look into text boards and, of course, old forums that are still hanging on. Pick an interest, and you can probably find a forum, and the post quality and level of friendliness seem to be generally better than they are on image boards. I've personally enjoyed one dedicated to lucid dreaming and one dedicated to werewolf enthusiasts. I'm kind of wondering the same thing, though. I thought I had found a community that would last me for life with this site, but I've been growing more dissatisfied with it and with image boards in general. I'm hoping for the next innovation in less popular social media formats. Maybe I should start playing MMOs or MOOs or something. The addition of virtual geography and space seems exciting.