[Serious] Future of the Forums (Discussion)

[Violet]

I died at nasty flirting that you were most certainly a part of at one point but okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Is the forum the same? No. I still think it’s good though. I still enjoy checking in and reading threads and keeping up with people from time to time. The forum isn’t the same, but neither am I.

Ehh, it'll happen: youth'll do that to a person. It certainly did it to me. The total lack of actual sex was driving me mental too. I'm certainly not proud of it: there's plenty to regret about my past actions. Being part of a problem doesn't mean that I couldn't see the problem though.

The 'nasty flirting' really didn't do the forum very well at all. When every thread is heavy with flirting: it's pretty gross from an outside perspective. Engaging in it some myself doesn't mean I approved at all of other persons doing it... but just in the same way that 'the type of posters the site fostered' used to encourage incredibly long-winded debate-style posts in all of its used: so too did the site's change towards a 'social hangout for atheists' change the quality of every post site-wide. They became shorter, more informal, less structured, and more emotional. With the inclusion of A69: certain other elements were attracted to the forum, and this naturally led to people not keeping 'the A:69' stuff in the A:69 forum, because naturally: people don't just stop thinking about a thing just because they've decided to do something else. In this way, communication is malleable by the thoughts people were having prior to having their communications.

That is to say: the environment a person is in changes a person. We might resist our environment for a while when we are alone and aware of our environment, but we are much more capable of 'adaptation' when in a social environment and distracted from it; just as it's no surprise that a statistically significant portion of people who go to prison later go on become 'proper' criminals: it is also no surprise that a statistically significant portion of the population who visit a site where every sixth post is mired in sexual connotation go on to flirt about with the subject as well. That's not to say I'm trying to excuse my behavior (there is no excuse I'm willing to hear of myself, for one... but secondarily I just don't care enough to bother overmuch  ), but to observe why I believe it became such a problem as it did: too many people talking about a thing, caused a slow departure of the people uninterested in the thing, but the rapid (wow it was fast) gain of people who were interested, who then talked about a thing, whic- (and again, the conversion of people who didn't previously do so 'as much' or 'as egregiously' were drawn towards doing so as it became more 'normal' behavior on the site)

I most certainly cannot say how this forum may have changed other than 'clearly low in traffic': as I haven't been here to watch it slowly bleed out. This isn't the first time it had a massive reduction in activity, and all I can call upon to consider why this one might have been the largest and most intense so far is 'how I felt about the forum by the time I left it', and 'what precipitated each of its previous massive reductions in activity'.

What precipitated each of the former reductions in activity was a combination of 'incredibly severe new law/rule changes' to the forum and a massive backlash following it. People do not like change, especially change which necessitates that they engage in new behavior.

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When I first got here I would check in the morning and "new posts" went back to page four. Now I see a dozen and I'm happy.

That's cool. You be happy: it's your forum, fam

But it isn't quite 'mine' anymore, and it hasn't been for a very long time.

My presence presently is therefore pointless (I'm not exactly 'a community member' at this point, and posting at this place is very near to the least valuable possible use of my time (even in entertainment value)), but I figure my opinion on stuff is probably different enough to put it in the heads of 'the people that be' to be worth sharing. It's fairly unlikely that anyone shares my understanding of the matter in exact, but ehh, figured it was interesting.