Some of the responses in that thread are hard to read, for some people RE is all they have. All I can say is at the end of the day, no one should be so bad off that a website is their life. I hope they are able to get some help, and while the internet can be a nice retreat, it should never be a replacement for proper human interaction, and compassion, and mental health treatment. I may be getting old and sappy here, but lifes too fucking short and I hope everyone decent finds happiness in their life. I come here and get a cliff notes of RE (and by extension gaf), but that interest is more of the old "High School Reunion" curiosity, I was on gaf from 2001 to 2017 so it was a place I hung out for my 20s and some of my 30s. So I see the aggregate of whats going on, who got fat, who got pregnant, etc etc, and I move on about my week.
Ironically gaf imploding was great because I never went to RE, I poked in here off and on, browsed somethingawful (for its pc stuff, which gaf and RE werent great for, and then of course RE runs off PC era and durante to make metacouncil). But I basically passively consume the net now, I play more games, Ive dropped weight, Ive been teaching myself to code to work on my golden girls survival rpg etc. But for some on there, I feel like RE is their only outlet, and I hope they can find the help they need, because I would not assume that RE is going to stay the same now.