There was actual enthusiasm to engage with other people, whether it was to disagree, or to help. That kind of mutual support and mentorship among people who are enthusiastic about building things is missing now. There are, of course, niche communities where you can have deep conversations about some things, but not indie app development - although I've seen a lot of enthusiasm in crypto development specifically.
Now that IRC has mostly gone away, everyone is on Discord. But, I've joined at least 20 servers over the past few years looking for anything that had a reasonable community, and I've found nothing.
Everything I've looked at (Indie Hackers, r/startups, Hustle Army, Solo Entrepreneurs, etc. etc.) is either dead or full of hucksters trying to sell their products to the people in the server/forum/channel.
Does anyone know of any chatroom that isn't terrible? Is it all just crypto now?