@Hyperhidrosis This was something the very first anons learned when the Eternal September happened in 1992: you either do some gatekeeping, or intruders will come in and shit up your garden.

That brought about the era of internet forums when the www became popular enough. There were indeed many forums for all kinds of topics, and they almost always had an off-topic section. Don't get me wrong: admins could easily be arbitrary, and not all forum communities were good. But it didn't matter, because there were just so many. Banned in one niche thing forum? Jump into this other forum about the very same niche thing. For a while most of the Internet was small interconnected archipelagos of forums.

Then corporates came in, and sucked all potential userbase into large socials. Youngsters don't know any better, oldsters just went there because it was cooler. Forums gradually lost critical mass and went away.