Have we lost our way with forums?

I have found that many forums work more for Google/SEO than focusing on what a community really is.
Many of them see short posts as a bad thing, they want long posts/more content, when in reality not all posts
requires to be a long reply to keep it natural. I guess this happens because there are metrics using post count as forum quality or something..
But forums are more than post count.

Forums are awesome to meet new people and chat about the topics of your interest.
Forums are topic centered, Social Media are people centered. Maybe there is something that can be added into forums
to get the best of both worlds...

I don't think so. I still like forums because I get to know new people there and like to chat with the people like we do in real life. For me the forum is like it used to be 15 years ago. I never focus on creating content on the forums. I write whatever comes into my mind.

I think we now have more forums that there used to be in the past, so if people are stretched out it will surely reduce the activities on them individually.
But even at that I know for sure that forums are still in vogue.

I must confess, forums are not like they used to be. Before we were like a community where we know everybody and it's makes life much easier and we can relate with each other on a deeper level. Now I believe that everything is been rushed with quick replies. A lot of people do not have that patient anymore, it's like they prefer WhatsApp for gist.