Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care about is the answers provided for free by their users. I could easily return to 90's era usenet, it wasn't as convenient but it worked. What I couldn't deal with is a lack of a platform where people ask technical questions & get answers, I remember being on dial-up and reading paper manuals that were out-of-date/incomplete. But SO isn't irreplaceable, and I am oftentimes frustrated with finding questions closed for incorrect reasons, normally my answer is buried 2 links deep in SO because my DDG search (and Google too) takes me to an improperly closed question where the 'previously addressed' question is adjacent to my query.
StackOverflow does not provide an irreplaceable service; like github they do some nice things but there isn't any reason they must be the dominant platform. And the real value is in the answers, which SO gets for free.
