I think they have been stedaily dying since mid 2000 when reddit facebook entered the stage, don’t they? The biggest ones and few niche ones somehow still preserve, but not sure if they are growing. The question is what will happen with the rise of new web (fediverse, web3, etc) - will we see people migrating to them again or not necessarily? I mean fediverse is like forums as well. Plus it offers one account for everything.

well I guess it depends on what you consider to be a forum, like what about stackoverflow for technical questions? I can’t see them ever really dying out, for example I still see people actively use typewriters which are “totally obsolete” in a way so there will probably always be users and use cases

No. We like specialized discussion boards too much and those will always have audience.