From 2016-2018, I was promoting the TDG on a forum called "Writerbeat." We had all sorts of weird cats on this forum, with many writers promoting their work. But there was all sorts of political stripes discussing things of the world. We even had some white supremists!

The moderator was pretty good at disciplining conversations that got out of hand. A few people got kicked out.

If I put an article up on Writerbeat, it would generate a thread of at least 20 comments. Generally, there was a good debate culture with well written rebuttals and refutations. I don't think any minds got changed, but we sure had some interesting discussions.

And I think I made friends with 10-15 people on WB. But I could see signs that WB was going to shut down for lack of revenue.

My WB group gravitated to LinkedIn after WB shut down. We met for a year. It was kind of nice to continue the discussion, without the too-weird-cats.

Then they wanted to go to Discord, and things kind of fell aside (at least for me). But if they showed up in my town, I would drop things to have a visit.

It is possible to build these relationships on the internet. The WB secret was the many comments on fewer articles. After we published an article, we were not allowed another for 72 hours. That kind of forced us into many, many comments. That is how friendships are formed.

I think you are trying to capture the same spirit on Free Factor. But it's easier to write a new article than intelligently comment on another article.

I still treasure my Writerbeat time.