This place (Lemmy) reminds me a lot of when I used to post on SA back before Reddit was popular. I wouldn’t call it “small” per se, but you actually knew who the moderators were. And since there was no upvote/downvote system, it was a lot more casual and people didn’t feel the need to try to tailor their posts to get upvoted.
Of course, it was also a dumpster fire sometimes too, and just like Reddit, the guy running it was a jerk. But I do miss it sometimes.
When I first heard about it I was in high school, and even though $10 is nothing for the return in value, I had never paid for anything online at that point and was apprehensive about it.
GameFAQs was my jam. As good as any forum that ever existed. In my limited view, it was the best.