Exactly this. I’ve been running forums since I was a teen in the mid-00s and I’ve still got one. It’s much smaller than it used to be, but some of us have known each other for twenty years. It’s harder to find us, but occasionally someone still wanders in.

I grew up on a farm and it’s amazing that I always knew we were poor, but we always had our basic needs met. It probably contribited to me having an easy on-ramp to socialism once I moved to a city and saw the horrors of real poverty.

Relevant to the topic, we had a combine and I got to operate it to help my dad with harvesting. Crazy, very cool vehicle. It was always like magic to me.

I had a youtube channel for a few years in the early 2010s and had the same experience. I got extremely uncomfortable once people started giving me free game keys and started requesting ad reads. I ghosted my channel and eventually deleted it, but now I wish I had made a final video or something talking about the experience and why I didn’t want to participate anymore.