For anime there’s not really activity for episode or Manga chapter discussions, and found that the My Anime List forums ended up filling that void. https://myanimelist.net/forum/
For buildapc checked out pcpartpicker and found they had a forum with people to help and being pcpartpicker the layout of parts is really nice when people suggest them to you https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/forum/27-create-a-part-list-for-me/
For more casual stuff like pics and memes found squabbles has pretty good activity https://squabbles.io/
For NBA stuff found realgm forums with lot more activity for individual team boards https://forums.realgm.com/boards/
For video game deals found this forum https://www.cheapassgamer.com/forum/10-video-game-deals/
It was nice that forums are still alive once I finally tried to seek out communities outside of reddit after all these years
I read the headlines there daily but steer clear of the comments. A few years ago, Slashdot had a Nazi problem. There were a group of users who would invariably post full on Nazi content no matter the article. It would get down voted eventually, but if you were early and headed into the comments, you were treated to some vile conspiracies about Jews running the world and calls for Jews to be exterminated.
(Given that I’m Jewish and have been told by such people to my face that “the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job”, it’s distressing when I see posts of this nature.)