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Post by chaoman45 on Apr 6, 2022 2:09:56 GMT -6
How many people still use message boards now that we have other social media and improved computing power?
Just logged on for no particular reason for some nostalgia I guess. I really do miss this place and some of the users. As corny as it sounds, I spent a bit of time here in my teens/early 20s and it definitely was part of my life! Now I'm curious to see how many people wander by here and bother to log on and reply.
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Post by masterman on Apr 7, 2022 17:09:25 GMT -6
How many people still use message boards now that we have other social media and improved computing power? Just logged on for no particular reason for some nostalgia I guess. I really do miss this place and some of the users. As corny as it sounds, I spent a bit of time here in my teens/early 20s and it definitely was part of my life! Now I'm curious to see how many people wander by here and bother to log on and reply. I come by every couple of months to see if anyone is doing anything here. I wasn't a huge member but I tried to participate back before all the activity died, also revisiting old forums is fun.
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Post by Cabi.net on Apr 11, 2022 6:45:07 GMT -6
Forums, as a primary communication platform, have almost completely died off. I believe that they had more potential to survive when it was just social media to contend with. Sure, since Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube came on the scene it was far more difficult to be viable. However, I did believe that forums could return due to a sense of nostalgia and because they are a better way to discuss things as a group - not as a speaker and audience. With Discord currently in the mix, I doubt that forums - outside of incrediblely specialist hobbies for a generally older (30+?) audience or a forum that was a pillar of the internet before social media/Discord - will continue to exist as a platform. The issue, which I am echoing the points of others, is that while Discord fulfills a similar discussion form to forums (group discussion over speaker and audience), it does so in a way that makes it impossible to web search and immensely difficult to archive or read at a later point. For example, I can easily look up the thread for Da Goods III. Attempts to do this for Discord would be next to impossible. I love the idea of forums like this where I can just... look at a thread from 2003! These were typed nearly 20 years ago now! And anyone has easy access to this!
These forums were immensely formative for me growing up and mostly for the better. This was the first online community I joined. I gained a bunch of great friends through it. Had a blast managing the Minecraft server. I often think of one of the first nights I had access to broadband AND(!!) a laptop computer. I stayed up until like 2AM talking to SeriousJupiter in the Spam Lounge. In addition to this (and, to an extent, against the nostalgia of forums), it was because of these forums that I joined Twitter. I quickly found most of my current friend group. Lived in Canada for two years with two people from that group, and I would then end up dating a different member of this group. As of October I'm living in Manchester, with them, after dating long distance for almost five years (Covid kinda added two years to that but whatever.) I'm sure it is a shared experience to an extent, but joining these forums was one of the first times I ever fell in with a social group. I'm glad and thankful it was a good one. I still have friends directly from here - myself and Lance were talking just last night and play games regularly enough. In addition, the paths that this forum have led me down have only been good ones, thankfully.
I log-in every few weeks to check up on the place. I also monitor the Discord (Which I set up, directly hurting engagement on the forums, but it was a thing someone asked for I think). I am almost exclusively active on Twitter and shun most other social media, mostly out of disinterest. Not a huge fan of Discord as a discussion platform for reasons mentioned above. I occasionally post on Something Awful, but I would not consider myself a poster there. I use it mostly to keep up with political threads and follow some games. I'm sad that there was never really a forum "generation" beyond my joining. I would have loved to see this place continue as it was before. Maybe it still could! I will always hold out hope beyond hope.
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Post by daveshn on Apr 16, 2022 12:41:44 GMT -6
I jump on from time to time. But, Cabinet's right. Bigger social media sites have gobbled up the roles of smaller forums. I do miss them for fan fics, fan art, and forum games. But, comics, shows, books, and topics in general get more discussion on bigger social media sites.
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Post by chaoman45 on Apr 18, 2022 0:04:17 GMT -6
It IS pretty wild to think this comic (and these forums) are 19 years old. I was mostly curious to see how many people wandered by here and lurked, honestly. There are still times I come here multiple times a week. Other times, I forget about the place for several years. Looks like I'll be stuck with YT and Reddit until the next best thing comes along. Glad to see you benefited from these forums, Cabinet. fwiw, this was the very first forum I ever joined and my post history should reflect the noobishness.
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Post by Cabi.net on Apr 18, 2022 14:41:39 GMT -6
I assume my posts were absolutely horrific when I first joined. I was 15 at the time. Thankfully you were all really nice and welcoming!
I think you touched on a point that's exactly why I miss the miscellanea of forums, Dave. Sure, I can go on Twitter and see what my friends are talking about, but you have to push yourself into it, to an extent. Or, at least, you get served what an algorithm thinks you are interested in (I have gone to great lengths to reduce the amount of "for you" content I consume). Froums like here were great for the amount of stuff people were creating and discussing. I came here to read and talk about a sprite comic I found, and there was a whole community writing fanfiction, drawing art, making their own sprite comics!
I remember reading through old threads from years ago at that time and seeing people drop in and drop out, forum drama, ect. What really got to me was the timeline that was put together. I love that there was effort put in to really make this place stand out amoung other forums.
I'm still embarassed about some posts on here and how I handled myself. Certain things that I am not proud of. But, overall, I am still so, so glad that this place existed and I was able to grow and learn here. Regardless of anything, I am still going to be checking in here as long as it stays up.
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Post by Gooman on Jun 26, 2022 14:09:42 GMT -6
This forum was... I forget if it was the first online community I joined, or if it was the first forum I joined (a long-defunct browser-based MMO called Chosenspace is the thing it's competing with, I didn't join the game's forums until a bit later). So it was a pretty formative time for me, being a precocious and utterly insufferable 12-year-old. Y'all are good eggs for putting up with my bullshit as magnanimously as you did. The over-centralization of info into discords is a shame (the fighting game communities I'm in in particular are incensed about how much info and tech is stuck in character-specific discords rather than being readily available online), but I would also temper that with the fact that most forums I've been on have a trash search function that barely works so I'm used to not being able to find things I'm also unsure the P-X discord had that much of an effect on the forums—maybe I joined it late, but it never even seemed as active as the old IRC used to be. I think the community's activity levels just got hit by entropy, in the end. The capricious whims of fate. also cabi your avi is *adorable*
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Post by Cabi.net on Jun 27, 2022 13:50:04 GMT -6
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