I had a similar experience with a previous forum I was on. Although I definitely joined it largely because of videogames, since that was a different era, where things like official promotional art from games wasn't as easily accessible and taken for granted as it is today.
But like you, perhaps a bigger takeaway was all the things surrounding the games we interacted over, as I've made some lifelong friends from there whom I still interact with to this day.
And the way I express myself online is dramatically different now, almost entierly due to my time there, and to some extent here as well.
I learned from some easily avoidable mistakes that still pop into my head to this day when I begin typing up something opinionated or factual.
And some of these things have translated into useful tools to have offline as well.
Since forums are not really popular these days compared to social media, I think a lot of people are going to miss out on some of the good things that makes forum discourse unique.
