So I want to try to address the state of forums like this one in 2014, especially in light of the newer social paradigm which has, in my opinion, laid waste to the older forum world.
It would seem that these old school forums are, for the most part, going the way of the BBS model which preceded them. For good or bad, they are withering away. Their membership is not growing in real numbers, it continually skews older and youth participation is difficult to find. My evidence for this? None, really. I’m just going by anecdotal accounts and my own suspicions that we largely have passed through one era and are in the throes of grappling with another one.
Another concurrent online trend would be toward a diet that’s light on words, period - a marked preference for shorter posts but with greater frequency, with more of an emphasis on images and videos - in some cases said visuals replacing text entirely. But where text exists, brevity is fast becoming the rule. Whereas in places like Ehmac it’s still permissible to post lengthier messages; alas, the viewership for many of these places is either static or actively retreating.
Too, the nature of relating online has changed. Old school forums are like a community of individuals gathering together - if not all in one room, then at least within multiple rooms under a common roof. Whereas with Facebook or Twitter, the difference is an order of magnitude - it’s like being stuffed into a vast, noisy stadium where the audience itself is constantly in flux - hordes of people streaming into the stadium while a roughly equal amount flows out. People make quick stop, then leave, on their way to different destinations within their individual online grazing. The very nature of how one addresses other individuals is fundamentally different; there is no core membership to be a part of, or to interact with. The entity is too amorphous and huge. Any notions of intimate communication are subjected to significant dispersal and dilution.
Yes, the same thing happens in typical forums but it feels more manageable and familiar. The sense of community is stronger - unlike in the social worlds, where there are entire universes competing against one another, each containing their own constellations of smaller social groups. The combinant clamouring for attention - the relentless crush to capture our eyeballs and brains - is exhausting.
I hasten add that while it’s all too easy to romanticize forums, in many ways they resemble dysfunctional families. Too, my definition of “community” within old school forums is admittedly rather loose and does not preclude the reality of brittle cliques, divisive behaviour, chronically abrasive personalities coexisting with more passive lurkers (and all the other personality profiles along the behavioural spectrum). In other words, forums are always going to be messy and problematic entities. I am not convinced that they keenly foment community as much they encourage partisan behaviour and an ancient kind of tribalism. As for the social networking model, I don’t know how to describe the norms there - save to note that the same propensity for rigid tribalism and obtuse behaviour is accommodated - possibly even encouraged, given that there is less “glue” or sense of community. People with little stake in the community can post remarkably ugly stuff then run away, only to pop up later and engage in more childishness or pretend that the transgression never happened at all; it’s not the most elegant of human traits. Yet it happens all the time, everywhere you have an online venue.
Where it concerns discussion on topics of political and social import, forums tend to be places where proponents of any given viewpoint tend to theatrically preach to the converted; relatively little real exchange of viewpoints occur. Mostly it’s turf battles; ego projection and protection; petty (and expedient / entirely temporary) alignments with various parties so as to gang up on some other party. This behaviour tends to be more concentrated in forums because they are smaller entities; we humans like to do things in packs, even if sometimes it’s all a little too Lord Of the Flies for our own good. But in Social? Again, it would seem that the newer model is perhaps even more superficial; since there’s precious little social glue to keep our worst instincts in check, people feel free to act as asocial as they wish. Yes, the irony is rich.
Yet for all that, for all the inherent problems of online life, I suspect there are many of us still relish the more of a long-form discourse and are dismayed to think that just might be going away.
In my own case, though I dallied very briefly with BBS world, I didn’t really get into online life until 2000 or so, when I was 40. Once in, I quickly made up for lost time. Thousands upon thousands of posts, multiple forums at once, hundreds of people flowing into my online world… heady stuff. Lots of friends and connections, a couple of whom I count as good friends in meatspace to this day - that still strikes me as being nothing less than miraculous. Those were, in a sense, the glory years for me; it was a host of new experiences in rapid succession. I was grooving to the gestalt of it, how rich it could feel, how exciting it was to feel myself a part of a greater whole, a community of souls engaged in an historical experiment stemming from the endless march of technology. And man, did I ever participate - always posting content of some sort, always writing, writing, writing. Engaging in fine discussions, taking my own petty potshots at various individuals for perceived slights or just being bored and indulging in stupid stuff for its own sake. In the end, the lesser behaviour was what was starting to wear at me. I felt like I was on well my way to becoming a cliche of myself, a broken record, a knee-jerk reactionary with little that wasn’t predictable to say or do. But still I went on, albeit at a slowed pace. What else what there?
Then the new social model kicked in.
In a brutally short period of time whole galaxies of forums disappeared, having been absorbed into other industry players or having died painful deaths by attrition. In this period of disruption and upheaval, it was like an unexpected explosion in which the hapless remnants - each and every one of us - were flung in every which direction. The cohesion, or illusion of same, was decimated. Even ten years ago, large forums were attracting new blood… yes, there was churn, there always is; but new blood meant that each forum remained like a microcosm of society itself - what it’s comprised of, how it works across generations. That feels like it’s gone now. I’ve spoken to a few individuals from the old days about this - some of us are, in a sense, still in shock. Some of us feel resentful that it had ever happened. Some of us don’t understand why the new paradigm could so powerfully steamroll the older ways. In any case, for whatever reasons, the personal networks we had back then have gone to ruin.
Nowadays I find I avoid the kinds of general interest forums I once loved. And though I’ve tied my hand at Facebook twice and quite it twice I’ve not been back in a couple of years and feel happier for it. If anything, it was even more painfully shallow than my previous online experiences. Perhaps I felt let down because i had expected far too much from it.
What’s left? LinlkedIn, because it’s a business dweeb thing (though I take next to zero pleasure in it) and G+, because it’s image-rich and that’s something I enjoy. My comments there, such as they are, tend to be sparing,even laconic - some short comments or one-liners meant to let people know I’m paying attention - something beyond the paltry +1. As for general interest, old school forums, my presence here was sharply curtailed - a handful of other places I’d keep popping in to post photography and chat with fellow aficionados - but chat extensively as in the old days about politics or the arts? Ixnay.
In a sense, I am largely over what used to drive me. I haven’t tried Twitter; I can’t bring myself to even go there, despite the massive enthusiasm others show for the platform. And then there are the privacy issues with the stuff I already use… Google, like Facebook, wields those mountains of personal data. It’s just a tad disconcerting. It acts like a leash to my more generous urges to share, which might in fact be a good thing, come to think of it.
Has it clicked, how ambivalent I am to the online life? Yep? Good.
Yet I am also certain that this latest turbulence is but a phase of a greater sea change. The net has already gone through several iterations and paradigms. Perhaps there’s yet room for longer expression rather than clever spurts - for comprehensive opinions and dissertations rather than 140 character tweets and hip retro selfies. Indeed, niche interest forums might be holding their own - perhaps that’s the key; general forums may be in trouble but that doesn’t mean the model itself has become obsolete, or merely falling out of favour. I still go, for example, to Urban Toronto’s forums every day, though my participation there has dropped off too… I mostly limit myself to brief exchanges, preferring instead to post photos and document the city as it continues to evolve. Still, it seems that it works because it’s a keenly specialized forum - it’s for urban geeks and those interested in contemporary architecture, thorny development issues, cultural aspects of city life - and the ongoing spectacle that is my city’s mayor. It works because it’s about certain narrowly defined aspects of Toronto life, period. By contrast, I can’t think of any generalized forums doing particularly well.
I don’t know, really. Perhaps rather than reading, people prefer the talking heads model that’s been so popularized by Youtube - watch people vent, express their viewpoint, sell their pitch? That’s possible, too. Maybe we are moving into a post-literary world after all.
This is the most I’ve written in one go in ages. Ten years ago, it was more the norm for me. A thousand words? Sure thing. Two thousand? No problem! And many of the people I engaged with were just as enthusiastic about delving deeply into this or that subject. But again, it wasn’t all wine and roses. It’s always been equal parts noble and ignoble. That’s the nature of the beast we call society.
I don’t wish to suggest that lengthy posts are somehow inherently superior to short ones. Well all know the reverse can be true. I guess I just despair at a world where the dominant exchanges consist of of short posts. The resultant effect feels both fleeting and inconsequential.
In the end, however, I often wonder how ‘social’ the net really is. Do we really have meaningful exchanges in which we learn new stuff, or do we simply tend more to reinforce our own biases and prejudices?
Thoughts?
It would seem that these old school forums are, for the most part, going the way of the BBS model which preceded them. For good or bad, they are withering away. Their membership is not growing in real numbers, it continually skews older and youth participation is difficult to find. My evidence for this? None, really. I’m just going by anecdotal accounts and my own suspicions that we largely have passed through one era and are in the throes of grappling with another one.
Another concurrent online trend would be toward a diet that’s light on words, period - a marked preference for shorter posts but with greater frequency, with more of an emphasis on images and videos - in some cases said visuals replacing text entirely. But where text exists, brevity is fast becoming the rule. Whereas in places like Ehmac it’s still permissible to post lengthier messages; alas, the viewership for many of these places is either static or actively retreating.
Too, the nature of relating online has changed. Old school forums are like a community of individuals gathering together - if not all in one room, then at least within multiple rooms under a common roof. Whereas with Facebook or Twitter, the difference is an order of magnitude - it’s like being stuffed into a vast, noisy stadium where the audience itself is constantly in flux - hordes of people streaming into the stadium while a roughly equal amount flows out. People make quick stop, then leave, on their way to different destinations within their individual online grazing. The very nature of how one addresses other individuals is fundamentally different; there is no core membership to be a part of, or to interact with. The entity is too amorphous and huge. Any notions of intimate communication are subjected to significant dispersal and dilution.
Yes, the same thing happens in typical forums but it feels more manageable and familiar. The sense of community is stronger - unlike in the social worlds, where there are entire universes competing against one another, each containing their own constellations of smaller social groups. The combinant clamouring for attention - the relentless crush to capture our eyeballs and brains - is exhausting.
I hasten add that while it’s all too easy to romanticize forums, in many ways they resemble dysfunctional families. Too, my definition of “community” within old school forums is admittedly rather loose and does not preclude the reality of brittle cliques, divisive behaviour, chronically abrasive personalities coexisting with more passive lurkers (and all the other personality profiles along the behavioural spectrum). In other words, forums are always going to be messy and problematic entities. I am not convinced that they keenly foment community as much they encourage partisan behaviour and an ancient kind of tribalism. As for the social networking model, I don’t know how to describe the norms there - save to note that the same propensity for rigid tribalism and obtuse behaviour is accommodated - possibly even encouraged, given that there is less “glue” or sense of community. People with little stake in the community can post remarkably ugly stuff then run away, only to pop up later and engage in more childishness or pretend that the transgression never happened at all; it’s not the most elegant of human traits. Yet it happens all the time, everywhere you have an online venue.
Where it concerns discussion on topics of political and social import, forums tend to be places where proponents of any given viewpoint tend to theatrically preach to the converted; relatively little real exchange of viewpoints occur. Mostly it’s turf battles; ego projection and protection; petty (and expedient / entirely temporary) alignments with various parties so as to gang up on some other party. This behaviour tends to be more concentrated in forums because they are smaller entities; we humans like to do things in packs, even if sometimes it’s all a little too Lord Of the Flies for our own good. But in Social? Again, it would seem that the newer model is perhaps even more superficial; since there’s precious little social glue to keep our worst instincts in check, people feel free to act as asocial as they wish. Yes, the irony is rich.
Yet for all that, for all the inherent problems of online life, I suspect there are many of us still relish the more of a long-form discourse and are dismayed to think that just might be going away.
In my own case, though I dallied very briefly with BBS world, I didn’t really get into online life until 2000 or so, when I was 40. Once in, I quickly made up for lost time. Thousands upon thousands of posts, multiple forums at once, hundreds of people flowing into my online world… heady stuff. Lots of friends and connections, a couple of whom I count as good friends in meatspace to this day - that still strikes me as being nothing less than miraculous. Those were, in a sense, the glory years for me; it was a host of new experiences in rapid succession. I was grooving to the gestalt of it, how rich it could feel, how exciting it was to feel myself a part of a greater whole, a community of souls engaged in an historical experiment stemming from the endless march of technology. And man, did I ever participate - always posting content of some sort, always writing, writing, writing. Engaging in fine discussions, taking my own petty potshots at various individuals for perceived slights or just being bored and indulging in stupid stuff for its own sake. In the end, the lesser behaviour was what was starting to wear at me. I felt like I was on well my way to becoming a cliche of myself, a broken record, a knee-jerk reactionary with little that wasn’t predictable to say or do. But still I went on, albeit at a slowed pace. What else what there?
Then the new social model kicked in.
In a brutally short period of time whole galaxies of forums disappeared, having been absorbed into other industry players or having died painful deaths by attrition. In this period of disruption and upheaval, it was like an unexpected explosion in which the hapless remnants - each and every one of us - were flung in every which direction. The cohesion, or illusion of same, was decimated. Even ten years ago, large forums were attracting new blood… yes, there was churn, there always is; but new blood meant that each forum remained like a microcosm of society itself - what it’s comprised of, how it works across generations. That feels like it’s gone now. I’ve spoken to a few individuals from the old days about this - some of us are, in a sense, still in shock. Some of us feel resentful that it had ever happened. Some of us don’t understand why the new paradigm could so powerfully steamroll the older ways. In any case, for whatever reasons, the personal networks we had back then have gone to ruin.
Nowadays I find I avoid the kinds of general interest forums I once loved. And though I’ve tied my hand at Facebook twice and quite it twice I’ve not been back in a couple of years and feel happier for it. If anything, it was even more painfully shallow than my previous online experiences. Perhaps I felt let down because i had expected far too much from it.
What’s left? LinlkedIn, because it’s a business dweeb thing (though I take next to zero pleasure in it) and G+, because it’s image-rich and that’s something I enjoy. My comments there, such as they are, tend to be sparing,even laconic - some short comments or one-liners meant to let people know I’m paying attention - something beyond the paltry +1. As for general interest, old school forums, my presence here was sharply curtailed - a handful of other places I’d keep popping in to post photography and chat with fellow aficionados - but chat extensively as in the old days about politics or the arts? Ixnay.
In a sense, I am largely over what used to drive me. I haven’t tried Twitter; I can’t bring myself to even go there, despite the massive enthusiasm others show for the platform. And then there are the privacy issues with the stuff I already use… Google, like Facebook, wields those mountains of personal data. It’s just a tad disconcerting. It acts like a leash to my more generous urges to share, which might in fact be a good thing, come to think of it.
Has it clicked, how ambivalent I am to the online life? Yep? Good.
Yet I am also certain that this latest turbulence is but a phase of a greater sea change. The net has already gone through several iterations and paradigms. Perhaps there’s yet room for longer expression rather than clever spurts - for comprehensive opinions and dissertations rather than 140 character tweets and hip retro selfies. Indeed, niche interest forums might be holding their own - perhaps that’s the key; general forums may be in trouble but that doesn’t mean the model itself has become obsolete, or merely falling out of favour. I still go, for example, to Urban Toronto’s forums every day, though my participation there has dropped off too… I mostly limit myself to brief exchanges, preferring instead to post photos and document the city as it continues to evolve. Still, it seems that it works because it’s a keenly specialized forum - it’s for urban geeks and those interested in contemporary architecture, thorny development issues, cultural aspects of city life - and the ongoing spectacle that is my city’s mayor. It works because it’s about certain narrowly defined aspects of Toronto life, period. By contrast, I can’t think of any generalized forums doing particularly well.
I don’t know, really. Perhaps rather than reading, people prefer the talking heads model that’s been so popularized by Youtube - watch people vent, express their viewpoint, sell their pitch? That’s possible, too. Maybe we are moving into a post-literary world after all.
This is the most I’ve written in one go in ages. Ten years ago, it was more the norm for me. A thousand words? Sure thing. Two thousand? No problem! And many of the people I engaged with were just as enthusiastic about delving deeply into this or that subject. But again, it wasn’t all wine and roses. It’s always been equal parts noble and ignoble. That’s the nature of the beast we call society.
I don’t wish to suggest that lengthy posts are somehow inherently superior to short ones. Well all know the reverse can be true. I guess I just despair at a world where the dominant exchanges consist of of short posts. The resultant effect feels both fleeting and inconsequential.
In the end, however, I often wonder how ‘social’ the net really is. Do we really have meaningful exchanges in which we learn new stuff, or do we simply tend more to reinforce our own biases and prejudices?
Thoughts?
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