The thing I've always liked about forums is they strike the perfect balance between public and private. Yes, everyone can see what you write. But it's not like the forum is directly plugged into a network that can literally reach billions of people, like Instagram or Youtube or Facebook or Tik Tok*.
It was always that feeling of "what happens on the Internet forum
stays on the Internet forum". Which is why you also used to be able to write some pretty wild stuff. It wasn't a huge cultural issue that hurt people, turned them on to insane ideologies, made their internet persona a bigger part of their lives than their real-life one et cetera.
So in short, social media reached it's techological peak around the turn of the millennium. Everything invented since have been downgrades, and directly harmful.
*Not for very much longer though.