Greetings,
Something I've been thinking about off and on over the last few months is just how much has changed with respect to communication on the internet (or communication in general?). Every so often I'll find gems like this forum among the cesspool of politics/memes/porn/narcissism/for-likes content/etc that has seemingly found its way into nearly every other corner of the internet. That's not to say that this place is perfect, but one doesn't need to dig around long in threads to find some truly high-quality conversation about fashion and on plenty of tangential but very interesting topics.
It's plenty obvious to probably anyone posting here that social media decimated the internet forum - everyone moved to centralized platforms that combined ease of access with feature-rich environments that had the added benefit of having all their friends and family in one big ecosystem. It's probably worth factoring in other major events like the iPhone 2 in 2011, the rise of mobile apps and the resulting very low barrier of entry. I suppose I can also assume that many of the folks who used forums heavily in the past are older now and are caught up in everything that goes along with that.
So what's left besides a few older forums like this one that have dropped in activity over the years? I get the impression that there's almost no interest in real conversation anymore, just people looking to push their agendas and/or looking to gain followers/likes/internet points through photos and bite-sized regurgitation of whatever is the flavor of the month. Is there really no interest for something more than that especially with younger folks, I wonder?
I deleted FB in 2012 and never got on board with any of the other big names (Twitter/IG/etc) so it's probable that I'm just disconnected and completely unaware of where the good stuff is today. It's also a possibility that I'm skewed by rose-tinted glasses and that, really, it's always been shit.
I ramble. But I'm interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
Something I've been thinking about off and on over the last few months is just how much has changed with respect to communication on the internet (or communication in general?). Every so often I'll find gems like this forum among the cesspool of politics/memes/porn/narcissism/for-likes content/etc that has seemingly found its way into nearly every other corner of the internet. That's not to say that this place is perfect, but one doesn't need to dig around long in threads to find some truly high-quality conversation about fashion and on plenty of tangential but very interesting topics.
It's plenty obvious to probably anyone posting here that social media decimated the internet forum - everyone moved to centralized platforms that combined ease of access with feature-rich environments that had the added benefit of having all their friends and family in one big ecosystem. It's probably worth factoring in other major events like the iPhone 2 in 2011, the rise of mobile apps and the resulting very low barrier of entry. I suppose I can also assume that many of the folks who used forums heavily in the past are older now and are caught up in everything that goes along with that.
So what's left besides a few older forums like this one that have dropped in activity over the years? I get the impression that there's almost no interest in real conversation anymore, just people looking to push their agendas and/or looking to gain followers/likes/internet points through photos and bite-sized regurgitation of whatever is the flavor of the month. Is there really no interest for something more than that especially with younger folks, I wonder?
I deleted FB in 2012 and never got on board with any of the other big names (Twitter/IG/etc) so it's probable that I'm just disconnected and completely unaware of where the good stuff is today. It's also a possibility that I'm skewed by rose-tinted glasses and that, really, it's always been shit.
I ramble. But I'm interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
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