Is PLEBA still a thing? I was really active in the U2 fandom when I was in high school (15+ years ago) but I'm afraid to look. It was a lot, to say the least.
*wistful sigh*
PLEBA definitely still exists, but it doesn't seem to get much traffic these days. You can blame social media -- I certainly do, for everything. All us fangirls were securely in containment there, lovingly moderated, and we were allowed to run riot with all our squeeing and lusting and proto-shitposting, without any out-group eyes to judge us or self-righteous puritans to scold us.
I haven't posted on PLEBA in any meaningful way since 2002. I tried to log in just now but I've forgotten my password. Those were good times, especially because I (and, uh, the entire United States of America) was going through some difficulties when I happened to be most intensely involved, and the people I hung out with there were delightful, and motivated me to do a lot of fun creative stuff when I could have instead chosen darkness.
It's strange...I gradually left PLEBA, after a year or so of heavy involvement, while the party there was still in full swing, only because Lord of the Rings came out and I got obsessed with that instead. By contrast, because Tumblr is a multi-fandom platform, I have hung on here for ten years now, long after the party ended, years after this platform’s kaleidoscopic brand of fandom lost its thrilling charm -- fandom, for me, has faded to a sort of fatigued calm after the tumult of the Superwholockian zenith -- just a semi-regular wave to mutuals I shared a ship with long ago, and the occasional fic tossed onto AO3, where I watch my readership dwindle to a fraction of what it once was.
But every once in a while, someone I knew from PLEBA pops up here on Tumblr, and it always warms my heart to remember my golden age of fangirling :)













