One must be careful talking about the “good ol' days.” I'm not talking about making the common mistake of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but forum Rping was just a different game back then. If you had your RP buds on a messenger service, it was likely msn messenger or Skype. There were no servers. Instead we had these clumsy things called group conversations that weren't exactly intuitive. There wasn't much you could do with them in terms of organization. I remember writing collabs over skype, and I'd copy parts of the actual post into a word document among all the random shit posting. Those were good days, but I do not miss the process. 

A lot has changed since then. Phones with internet access have become more accessible, and Discord's focus on servers makes it possible for anyone to create an online hangout. By bonding with your fellow Rpers on a level beyond “that stranger who writes posts,” people become more invested in each other, the group, and the RP as a result. 

Discord presents distractions. I can confirm that I've wasted quite a few hours on pointless discussions that I've forgotten as soon as the new day came. But then you need to ask if it was any different in the days when you'd talk to people one-on-one over Skype. I can't speak for everyone, but I always did a fair bit of shit posting.

I just spent ten or twenty minutes gathering my thoughts on this topic and posting them. Was that time wasted? Should I have put it towards RP instead? Investing more time in IC posts doesn't always insure they will be of outstanding quality. Sometimes you get your best ideas sharing a discussion with others, or just thinking about things a bit.