i suspect we got online about the same time! for me it was "talkers," but also the occasional MUDs, and the even more bare-bones telnet-based havens, where i met some people who really impacted my life (and some of us even recently reconvened via Slack). (actually i guess technically i started out for a month in AOL chat rooms, but some beautiful soul realized i deserved better and introduced me to my first talker. i canceled AOL (another motivating factor: i didn't know about long distance dialup or AOL's hourly rates, and i borrowed my mother's credit card promising it was just for the free trial-- $800 later, i learned a very serious lesson), got a generic dialup account, and the rest is history.)

the internet saved me... i grew up in rural New Hampshire, and was a total outcast for a variety of reasons, and the internet made me realize the world is much, much bigger than the tiny little bubble that was nearly unbearable. in my darkest nights, it was my havener friends who talked me out of doing something irresponsible. it was my havener friends who saw beauty in me when i only saw ugliness. they literally saved my life more than once.

most of the folks i knew blogged/journaled on their personal sites, which were usually something like geocities or a handful of us would be lucky enough get an account on one of our friends' servers. i didn't think livejournal would be a good fit, and when i heard about it, i ended up joining deadjournal and was there for years. i moved over to LJ after one of my many "fresh starts" (read: the act of running away from a bunch of shit) in life, and i've been here ever since. i worry more than i let on about the fate of LJ... not necessarily the users (but i sure do miss the active communities and lively discussions!) but the company and the servers themselves. everything's just so uncertain right now in the world.

i met my spouse here, and LJ will always have a very very special place in my heart. i hope it never goes anywhere.

in the last year of Jerry's life, he often expressed frustration and disappointment at twitter's one-sided-ness that you also experience. he and i met on twitter, so the site has a special place in my heart in that regard, but i too have found myself frustrated that sometimes it feels like the only replies i get are trolls. but it's my main source of news, which i appreciate a lot, and a fair amount of bay area organizing happened there (i still haven't figured out where phoenix-area organizing happens), but in general, twitter falls flat in a lot of areas. not the least of which being the company's dedication to giving Nazis and other assorted assholes a platform while "coincidentally" banning or suspending activists on the regular. because jerry and i met there, i can still hold out hope for the site to realize its potential, but i'm not sure it'll last long enough for that to happen.

i hope that someday we have more options again. right now it's basically the biggest sites you mentioned: twitter and FB. of course there's other sites, but generally speaking everything ends up crossposted to twitter or FB, and if you want to find people to join your circles, that's where you start. "back in the day," there were literally hundreds of talkers, MUDs, MUSHes, IRC, etc and while it mightve been a little more disjointed and disconnected, it was easier to find kindred spirits and develop communities.