Looking for a great place to party

January 16, 2011 9:10 AM

What are some fun, smallish, friendly online communities that I could join? Details for what I am looking for inside

Back in high school I had a great time on some star wars and lord of the rings communities. In college, I was all about a form for webcomics. I got busy, other users got snarkey, and I decided to sign off.

Now I miss it. Having people to talk to about things I like, current events, getting advice, etc. But it seems like the places I have looked into (and to be honest it has only been a few places) all either have too many members (so it's hard to really meet anyone), too few members (so nobody ever posts), or too unfriendly of members.

So if you know of a friendly, not-too-big-or-too-small community, please let me know.

Some of my interests are: board games, science fiction, video games, psychology, cooking, books, philosophy, the internets, and cats.

posted by rebent to computers & internet (8 answers total)

video games

MeFight Club.
posted by inigo2 at 9:26 AM on January 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

One of my favorite general interest forums is the Straight Dope Message boards -- there are more focused boards like their Questions forum, and then a lot of more general chattiness in other forums. It's a fairly big community, so might be bigger than what you're looking for, but I still feel like I get to 'know' many of the more active posters via their posts, and I get the impression there's a fairly active bit of backchannel chat via PM amongst people who 'know' each other better. That's not really my thing, though, so I couldn't say for sure.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:29 AM on January 16, 2011

I post at ilxor.com - it's a little snarky/jaded at times, and there's a definite in-joke wall to climb, but the standard of discussion is pretty high - the median poster probably has some sort of liberal arts MA - and it's the right size whereby there's always people posting, but a regular poster quickly becomes familiar. There are fairly regular meetups in major cities.

(I'd stay off the I Love Music sub-board unless you own 800+ records - a good half the posters there are music critics of some kind or another and it's hard not to feel out of place there if music's not your whole life. But the 'I Love Everything' board is great).
posted by piato at 9:35 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

You are certainly more than welcome to jump into MetaChat. It was started as a place for MeFites to chatter about stuff that doesn't have to fit posting guidelines. As a result we talk about everything from cooking to current events to what's happening in our lives, good and bad, to books, cool stuff on the internets, and certainly cats.

There are lots of registered accounts but really only a couple hundred pretty active members, many of whom you might recognize from MeFi. It doesn't scroll crazy fast and it's a nice 'small-town' size. Some folks have said it seems 'clubby' at the beginning, and I understand how that might seem because there are folks who have been on there a long time and have built up some shared history. However, the site thrives on new members and really encourages you to just pipe up and post/comment. It takes very little time to feel connected if you participate.

The nice thing about it is that almost anything goes...you can introduce whatever topics you want, comment on whatever you want, self-link, etc.
posted by Miko at 9:42 AM on January 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

I note that philosophy and psychology are significant interests of yours. The crowd over at Less Wrong might be to your liking. It's a blog about becoming rational (in every sense of the word), but there's a really strong community element to it in the sense that most of the insight comes from the comments section.

People at Less Wrong are mostly civil, but be prepared for the odd self-aggrandizing "intellectual". A good place to find your feet is the FAQ, followed by the core "Sequences".
posted by rahulrg at 2:35 AM on January 17, 2011

I am a big fan of HP:MOR, so I bet I will find Less Wrong interesting! Thanks, Rahulrg.

Metafilter is where I love to be. I will def. check out MetaChat.

I .... don't really understand ilxor

The Straight Dope is one of my longest-favorited websites. I will check out the mb there. Thanks!
posted by rebent at 5:22 PM on January 17, 2011

I tried out MeFightClub for the Minecrafting they do, but it was too big!
posted by rebent at 5:23 PM on January 17, 2011

Barbelith is nice, and has a clean interface too. I haven't been there in a while, but it was my hangout before Metafilter.
posted by Xere at 8:16 AM on January 18, 2011