Gaming forums (and forums in general) are pretty much dead...

On other forums I visit, there's only like 2 or so users who contribute posts. Some of these message boards are used more like news sites or a blog. Yet on busier forums like GameSpot where the activity is dependable enough, you just get arseholes taken the piss whenever you post. Lesser known forums tend to be more relaxed.

Radge pots have certainly ruined the Internet. I remember back in 2003, when you looked at the active users list, there would be dozens of members signed in at once. Man, those were the days. Now you only really get that on YouTube videos.

Personally, I have always preferred forums to Facebook, Twitter and and all of that shite. But if they're truly dead now, I would be as well to just quit posting.

 

Niche specific forums will be around for a while yet. Just a couple months ago I had a question about my acoustic guitar, so signed up for one guitar forum and was pleasantly surprised at how many replies I got. The second thing to keep in mind, forum like DP are actively indexed by search engines. You never know what activity your post may get due to organic traffic.

 

About 2 months ago I registered for a French language site that I heard about. While it only has about 650 members they are almost all active. During the course of a 24 hour period somewhere between 65-80 members will have posted, and about 500-1,000 guests will have lurked.

What makes this site a bit unique is that most (90%) of the forums are locked and invisible to everyone except logged in members. This causes members to open up more, and there is a real family atmosphere there.

 

Are radge pots anything like smudge pots?

 

Ha-ha.

Probably.

 

Yeah i remember those days when forums were popping. Almost all the forums i use now are not as active as they were 5 or so years ago.

It is nice to be a part of a forum that is very active and has a family-like community.

 

I remember those days fondly. I used to love coming to forums and reading and chatting. I was a member of a bigger forum for a long time, but the atmosphere changed and I left. I tried to start my own site but with the pandemic I was the only one coming to it so I let it go.

Chat rooms where cool as well now a days everything is video call this, skype this, etc.... man those were the good old days.

 

Most sites grew due to the pandemic because everyone was at home, and was spending more time online. If you were the only one on your site, it was because it probably sucked.

 

Not all the forums dead now, but I know a couple that were popular a couple of years before but they aren't anymore, like Wickedfire

 

You may be right there. It was just a general webmaster forum was all. Had some plans for it but ahh well that is how it goes I guess.

 

Forum selling and buying pretty much user this days..

 

Something like forums of Entropia Universe are still alive and people are making real money in this game.

 

The reason for this is because more people have given up their online anonymity and free speech for "social" media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. I put quotes around the word social in those "social" media platforms because they are places with dehumanizing censorship including not protecting online anonymity. From what I observed, they are propaganda media platforms to make ultra-wealthy fascists filthily rich via censorship at the expense of independent journalists and human rights activists. Another reason for this is that there are powerful oligarchs threatening independent journalists by forcibly shutting down forum websites. Here are some quotes to support what I am saying:

"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in." - Bill Hicks

"But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it... Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin