Elon's catastrophic handling of the website formerly known as Twitter has helped, if only because a lot of the people who formerly used the website for networking now have personalized Substack publications. To be honest, though, I doubt that we'll ever see the forum and personal website revive to more than a fraction of their former status. A lot of young people on the Internet today don't remember a time before the big algorithms, and they'll probably just go to successor websites should the established names fumble the bag (e.g. people going to Bluesky/Threads after Elon's takeover of Twitter). The forum will have a niche place on the Internet for a while to come — we're posting on one right now, after all — but the Web 2.0 gigamachine isn't going back in the box.