What Is Going On? Where Is Everybody?

Look, it's been, what, 10-11 years in this incarnation? Message boards have shelf lives. I used to be part of a very active online community in the late 90s and early 2000s, and probably there's still a lot of active boards there, but the ones in our cluster died on the vine as people grew up/spent less time on the internet/found other outlets of interaction.

How many of us who were here 10 years ago are still journalists? Five years ago? Last year? Sometimes people come out of habit, but if you're not vested in the industry, it gets harder and harder to get interested in shop talk -- or even non-shop talk with journos.

And don't forget the Facebook. That happened too.

I come here often but rarely post. Pro wrestling thread, football video game thread, the occasional bout of SHEEP, random shiny things that occasionally grab my interest. I'm not going to get all drama-y and leave, but the board and I are in different places now. It's good. It happens. It always happens.

And it really doesn't rise to the level of navel-gazing. We all have our reasons for leaving or cutting back or going dormant. It's not an indictment of one thing or another. At least not universally.

 

It's getting bad. I think we're in the final days here, which saddens me.

The trolling is one thing. The other is people feeling the need to turn things personal, which I know is the reason why some have left. Over the last couple years people find out who people actually are and as they share things about themselves or things come out, there are some people here who throw that back at them and that's pretty fucked up.

We've lost a lot of good people in the last few/several months. People come, people go... I get that, but we're losing the ones who have been here from Day 1.

That sucks.

 

Then you let that person feed the troll's ego.

Don't let the trolls affect your time on here. Hit the button and move on.

 

I see what has happened with this site.

Instead of the corner bar where you could find different groups of people discussing all kinds of topics, it has turned into a dick-measuring contest between two sides that just can't find the strength to ignore each other (or the common sense to not post MY DICK IS BIGGER THAN YOURS).

That's unfortunate. It has killed a good site.

MODDY. . . go ahead and lock this thread. It has been ruined and shows no sign of getting better.