This place (Lemmy) reminds me a lot of when I used to post on SA back before Reddit was popular. I wouldn’t call it “small” per se, but you actually knew who the moderators were. And since there was no upvote/downvote system, it was a lot more casual and people didn’t feel the need to try to tailor their posts to get upvoted.
Of course, it was also a dumpster fire sometimes too, and just like Reddit, the guy running it was a jerk. But I do miss it sometimes.
I never joined somethingawful but I spent a good chunk of my middleschool and high school years posting on small message boards and some bigger ones. It was always a fun experience and there was a semblance of community. Honestly even reddit in the earlier days had a huge sense of community and in the smaller subreddits you would recognize some names.