Modern online communities can be either one of these five cultures and it sucks:
1. Big-Tech walled gardens for "normies" where algorithms and bots influence how everyone is supposed to think
2. Neocon, Q-tard, and MAGA-tard echo chambers that are most likely just honeypots for tech-illiterate boomers and use APIs from Big-Tech, despite allegedly being meant to break free from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, and Google
3. Tech-bro lolbert echo-chambers where people talk about how Web 3, blockchain, and <insert integrated cryptocurrency that probably isn't private here> is going to save the world for real this time
4. Extreme far-left, anti-capitalist SJW communities that consider words like "crazy", "lame", and "dumb" as "ableist slurs", and end up cancelling each other.
5. Anime avatar shitposters who post anime lewds, wojaks, and variants of copypastas from /pol/
If you don't feel like you belong in any of these cultures then there isn't a place on the Internet for you, I guess.
b e a r d
@xianc78 #5 is unequivocally the best option out of all these. i stand by my anime avatar shitposter brethren.
the true way to go though is knowing that you won't get absolutely everything you want from just one place. nobody really had that way of thinking until the massive social media conglomerates came around. i've got newgrounds, fedi, gaming/game dev forums, and discord all for different purposes. just like hanging out with a different group of friends, or your family instead of your friends, you'll act differently and talk about different things and there are certain social rules to follow. all that jazz.
@beardalaxy I agree that #5 is the best, but there are a few drawbacks I can think of:
* They are still echo-chambers, but for hobbies/ideologies/lifestyles that are considered niche, which isn't a bad thing, but if you disagree with them, even on one thing, you may be labeled as a "normie" and be told that you belong on Reddit/Facebook/Twitter.
* Despite our presence on here, these places *MIGHT* not be the best places to build a brand (e.g. indie games, webcomics, etc) unless those brands in question cater to that type of culture (i.e loli/hentai games). I think it's generally fine to be on here, but you need to be careful. Don't sign up on some instance or host your code on some repository with the word "cum" or anything like that in the name because some people will take that as an excuse to cancel you.
* These types of places attract three-letter agencies. Once these people get involved, expect fedposts and CP spam everywhere (we are nowhere near that level yet, but there are signs of it growing everyday).