• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Feels like forums have really been on their way down lately

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
I remember when egm had a forum way back in the day. It was right after final fantasy 7 came out. It was great. It was actually awful but the experience was great.

Anyways, in other news, my dog is eating a bull tail beside me and is super loud about it.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Yeah it's like the oldest crowd is the facebook boomers, then it's probably the message forum millennials. Wonder what happened to the gen x'ers, they pretty much created the internet.
Gen X were always invisible and ignored no matter what they did, especially now they are middle-aged. The most effective invisibility cloak ever made is the "middle age" suit.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
I was an avid lurker on GAF since about 2009 and decided to join recently.

Ignoring the obvious boring console wars there's a caring community which keeps me grounded and informed like no other platform can.

A lot of you have tremendous knowledge & intellectual curiosity and you don't even realise it 😊

GAF is all I need.
Forums and I'll be more specific, GAF was all it took as the final push for me to get off social media. Same bro, this is the only platform other than LinkedIn which I have to use for my job. I hope to see everyone here when we're all over 80. Tell them kids a thing or two.
 

-Minsc-

Member
more about endorphin chasing.

As a 41 year old male, I still deal with chasing "the hit". Part of that has to do with spending so much time online and not building proper IRL relationships. Better now than I was even 5 years ago.
I'm going to be honest with you OP,

I think you're depressed and need to see someone about it

I've noticed your name appear a few times over the last month making new posts, and honestly you're not happy, and looking (admittedly very quickly) through your posting history, I don't think you have posted a single positive thing about....anything

Maybe spend less time on the Internet, and trying a new hobby other than gaming, and like I said, maybe talk to someone about how you're feeling
In my life I find if I'm always finding something about about "it" then it's probably a good time to step back and take a break. One thing the OP (this is something I and everyone else deal with) may be coming to terms with is that we can not go back to the good old days. As we get old the old doesn't stimulate us the way it did when it was new.

------
General thoughts.

Reflecting on when I went on Facebook back in 2007 I can see how it borrowed features which seemed to exist in some form on the internet discussion forum at the time. One feature is the "Shout Box". This is essentially like making a simple post on Facebook. Though, a more accurate comparison to the shout box is probably Twitter.

I believe the modern developed discussion forum software can provide an experience most on big social media don't even know they crave. They stay where they are because they simply don't know where else to go.

Compared to the way forums were twenty years go they have become quite streamlined. GAF (XenForo) works well on both desktop and mobile.

Attracting people to a discussion forum would require a few things.

  1. A person or group to finance and maintain the forum.
  2. A specialized common topic which can be the anchor for the more walled garden format of a forum.
  3. A core group of people to provide content and keep the forum active.
One point I see which may be attractive to people is a forum can easily be free from all the ads you commonly see on Facebook.

An idea I have is to create a forum focused on DIY home renovation and maintenance. The catch is, it will not be open to the internet at large. Instead, the idea would be to attract those locally from with whom it's easier to connect in person.

Would people actually use it? I don't know. The hard part would be taking the years to build a community and not get discouraged.
 

Mossybrew

Member
As a gen-xer I grew up with Forums and have been part of various communities that have come and gone. I still think it's the best form of online discussion. Reddit is ok to browse but too big and impersonal to feel like any kind of "home" - I have a very small legacy presence on Facebook but other than that I don't engage with social media, just does nothing for me.
 
Last edited:

Solarstrike

Member
I agree somewhat. Some idea(s) for what it's worth
  • Contests; art, trivia etc. Members can contribute to the rewards pool
  • Exclusive interviews with developers; environmental artists, audio designers
  • More merch; variety of merch
  • New NeoGAF logo
  • Variety of profile customization(s); gifs, banners
 
Last edited:

Draugoth

Gold Member
Internet Forums will exist as long as Hobbies exist.

Reddit and facebook Groups can be considered hobbist forums.

But places like GAF have the benefit of having actually good moderation, unlike Facebook and Reddit forums/communities which are usually cesspools.

Gen x'er here who worked on the first smartphones. For the past 5 or 6 years I see everyone staring at their phones everywhere I go and I think, what have we done? I was so proud when we started rolling them off the line and I freakin loved working on them. But now, I don't know....

Inventors usually regret inventing down the line

Look at Oppenheimer, or the dude who invented lead pipping back in the Roman Empire
 
Last edited:

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
t's like either I've been growing out of them, or the people using them have never grown up, because it doesn't seem like forums caught on with the younger generations, with most users being millennials
It's not millenials. Millenials are fine with forums. It's Gen Z. And it makes sense as forums don't lend themselves best to a mobile phone. Not to mention shitty ass Tiktok killing attention spans across the board doesn't help much either.

I like forums myself but everything good always comes to an end.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
OP, you not say forums weak.

ukraine-is-a-game-to-you-an-unnamed-character-in-the-show-yells-at-kramer-and-newmann-for-bashing-the-country.jpg
 

Muffdraul

Member
The way people adopted Discord seemed almost inorganic imo. It was pushed everywhere. Someone might've been spending a ton of money to propagate it over the net.
I'll bet you're right because come to think of it 99% of the time I've ever heard of them it was always relatively successful content creators on youtube saying "Join my discord server and sign up on my patreon!"
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
This is the only forum I use any more. It's hard to find good ones that suit my interests. I try electronics forums from time to time but it's hard to stay engaged because any time you talk about something you did that you like there is inevitably some asshole that tells you that the way you did it is wrong and asks why you would have done it that way.

"I made a controller for garden irrigation out of a raspberry pi, a couple of arduinos, and some sensors. It works well."

Response: "Ugh, your first problem is that you used a raspberry pi instead of [obscure device] and there's no way your idea will work. Why would you think a stupid idea like that would ever work?"

MF'er, I just told you that it works. I don't need your approval.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
"I made a controller for garden irrigation out of a raspberry pi, a couple of arduinos, and some sensors. It works well."

Response: "Ugh, your first problem is that you used a raspberry pi instead of [obscure device] and there's no way your idea will work. Why would you think a stupid idea like that would ever work?"

MF'er, I just told you that it works. I don't need your approval.
Why didn't you just use an ESP32??? WOW! Look at this guy, wasting a Raspberry Pi on such a trivial project!

:messenger_smiling_with_eyes:
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Why didn't you just use an ESP32??? WOW! Look at this guy, wasting a Raspberry Pi on such a trivial project!

:messenger_smiling_with_eyes:
Yes! That's the guy! Or when I mention my Plex server runs on an older Dell Optiplex and Windows 10 I get "Ugh, Windows? Really? That's your first mistake. Why would you choose Windows when FreeBSD...."

Or I created a web service prototype for this thing in C# and inevitably "Ugh, why did you do it that way? If you would have used python then it would have been so much easier with this new library that only 3 people know about" when it's their library and it hasn't seen a commit on GitHub in 6 months.
 
Last edited:

-Minsc-

Member
The way people adopted Discord seemed almost inorganic imo. It was pushed everywhere. Someone might've been spending a ton of money to propagate it over the net.
I don't know when I first heard about Discord but when I tried the program it seemed to work well. What I found odd was the "spoopy whoopy" presentation of things from behind the scenes. When ever they gave updates on new features of the program they spoke in this weird childish language. Now that it's mainstream that aspect seems to be gone.

If I were going to use a chat program today it probably would be Discord. This is mainly because it's what I know. Honestly, I'd rather use a program that's nice and clean, works well, distanced from "gamerness" and is not bloated trying to sell me things. The big thing I noticed on my rare occasions using Discord lately is it's trying to o sell me stuff in its ecosystem.
 

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Reddit and then Discord basically killed forum communities. :/
That said, GAF is still a pretty great place to be if you're interested in discussing and getting the latest gaming news.
 
I prefer the pace (and in most instances, quality) of conversation here. Everything else you mentioned as supplanting forums are a cacophony of noise. No individual is connecting with another in a way that’s meaningful IMO when things zoom past in an explosion of emoji’s and GIFs. I’ll be here until the end and be thankful that I found a place that felt like home on the internet for the better part of 15 years :)
 

NecrosaroIII

Ultimate DQ Fan
They have been. Everything is either Facebook / Instagram groups / Twitter, or Discord these days.. A shame. I have been on forums since like 1999. They've been a huge part of my intellectual development. But to be honest, the experience has gone down greatly in the last decade or so. GAFs still around, but it was sort of fun in the days when you could go on say Enix of America's website and talk with Dragon Warrior fans all the time.
 

Toons

Member
Im certainly a rare breed then being a 20 something using gaf. But its fun sometimes so ill stick around as long as I can
 
Last edited:

TwiztidElf

Member
It's the moral superiors shutting down legitimate conversation and original, unique perspectives that's killing forums.
Once you take a beating from the mob, it's like what's the point? Folks just disconnect.
 
Last edited:

Kabelly

Gold Member
i like reddit for just mindless scrolling but i despide the way conversations are displayed. so confusing. forums are just better for the fact quotes are highlighted and you can understand context a bit better. plus simple chronological order has always been the best.
 

Droxcy

Member
I miss the days of forum signatures. There was some really positive communities built completely around making those for other members. I'm sure a ton of millenials taught themselves Photoshop through things like that - I know I certainly did.

The whole reason I started doing Graphic Design in 2002. Fast forward to the late 2000s & 2010s, I was a part of some of the biggest design forums and met some pretty awesome people from it. I definitely miss those times when they felt more community/team based. Crazy how you don't feel like it's really all that special in the moment, then now current day the medium is even bigger than before and double the people doing it. Forums have been on their way out but I wish they'd make a resurgence in the art scene to combat AI posts all over social & interact with actual humans and not mindless bots.
 
I mean, BBSes, IRC, Discord, Slack all had/have their values but they are alm aimed at a certain group and not something you can ”read”. They are forms of chat that don’t really lend themselves to taking part in several discussions at once with a wider group of people.

Thinking of it, I wonder if people partske in any discussions at all other than liking clips in their selected platform.

Twitch (or similar) chats are another interesting sign. People sit at home, visit the isolated islands that the “communities” of their favorite “creators” are, and spam stuff in channels that move to fast for reading - sometimes paying money to get highlighted or read aloud in their hunt to feel seen. And when the creator talk and do stuff they feel something similar to having a …friend?
 
Last edited:

Soodanim

Member
Reddit and then Discord basically killed forum communities. :/
That said, GAF is still a pretty great place to be if you're interested in discussing and getting the latest gaming news.
Given what's happened to Reddit's user base over the last 5 years, I'm glad they're there instead of on forums. If you have a member list full of those lunatics, you end up with... well... something else.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Another one bites the dust...


3gOevaf.jpg
 
Top Bottom