I keep seeing hints of these communities existing, here in hn comments. Every time a thread is about communities that are still good, still human etc someone pops up saying these communities exist, but no-one ever mentions what these communities are.

I mean, I get it: one risks eternal-september-ing them as soon as the hn crowd finds out about them, but sometimes it's really frustrating going down a thread hoping to find better indications for these mythical great communities and always coming back empty-handed.

I'm part of a maker community that I really enjoy being a part of. We don't invite random people, but if someone makes something cool, I'll send them an invitation. I think it's this sort of thing that people are referring to when they talk about these communities.

I think they definitionally have to be smallish groups of people who actually know each other at least a little bit, so you can't just fill in a sign-up form and join one, but you can start your own.

The couple of enthusiast email lists I'm on are still real people, as far as I can tell.

Online the only one I've seen is discord, I don't really like the discord experience though

https://lobste.rs?

I know other communities that I really doubt would appeal to anyone here. However, Lobsters is basically Hacker News, but anti-AI, smaller, and with a (low) barrier to entry.

Two more: https://tildes.net, and https://indieforums.linklists.net/ (a giant list of them).

> someone pops up saying these communities exist,

Maybe send those people a hand-written email ;)

We're all lurking in Cixin's dark forest, watching. The aliens are already here, and they're hungry for more tokens.

Yeah. Because we don't want hacker news assholes to find them and destroy them, the way they've been systematically pillaging the rest of the Internet.

"I saw you posted about a community.."