百度贴吧 (Baidu Tieba), launched 2003, was Chinese internet's biggest topical forum platform — every interest got its own
吧 (lit. 'bar', a transliteration of English 'bar' / abbreviation of
论坛). Members of one are
吧友. Tieba peaked in the 2010s before users migrated to Weibo, Douban, Bilibili and Xiaohongshu, but the term still surfaces wherever forum culture survives.
