Forums
When I really started getting in to the world of the roadie, I was on forums a lot. Before that, it was skiing forums. Before that, off-roading forums. It was a way of connecting with others infatuated with whatever fringe activity I was involved in at the time. I learned a lot, and some turned out to be useful. Most wasn't, but that was part of the environment.
I still check in with a couple of them occasionally. One mostly for the classifieds, because the regulars there share my tastes in bikes and good deals frequently pop up. The conversations rarely arouse much interest, centering mostly around which Rolex best matches their Audi or some such nonsense. I rarely jump in.
The other has been withering on the vine for years now, propped up by ads that are sold with the promise of high traffic, which is 90% bots. A few of us are around from the glory days, but now there are too many sub-forums with ancient posts that nobody reads. Even the doping forum, once a bastion of fierce debate is a ghost town. I asked them to consolidate a year or so ago to less than 10 sub-forums, and was ignored. No skin off my back. As long as they get the ad sales from the equally-terminal bike industry, they see no reason to alter course. As a person that is inflexible and resistant to change, I can respect that.
The medium is dying (if not dead). Facebook and other, more effective social media has slowly been strangling them to the point they've become more or less irrelevant. Just like the internet killed off the local BBS, people have moved on to other forms of communication that match their limited attention spans and small phone screens. Nobody wants to type out a well-reasoned statement of their views anymore when a 140 character (or less- average is something like 33 characters) post, including emojis, will do the trick. "TLDR" is usually the response to anything that would require scrolling.
It's a shame, but I can admit I don't have the enthusiasm or time for the forums I once did. Like 80-90% of Bicycling magazine articles, there is a constant cycle of the same questions tumbling around forums over and over again, and after answering them five or six times, you can either stop responding or make snarky "use the search function, idiot" comments. For me, neither one is particularly satisfying.
So, as I post this in an equally-dead format, I am left to wonder if my enthusiasm for the forums or the activity itself is waning. Who knows? Maybe both. I still get on my bike and ride. Sometimes with more vigor than others, but I still make the effort. I just don't read about the activity as much. The magazines sit in piles, unread, until their subscriptions run out. The forums don't get visited as much. The old ways of communicating and learning just have lost their luster for me (and from the looks of it, most other people).
Life moves on, things change, and you either adapt or you get left behind. Judging by racing results the last few years, I have no problem getting dropped. Still, I still try to turn the pedals, because I enjoy the activity. It still centers me like nothing else can, and occasionally I find the spark in my legs. I'm not dead yet.
I wish I could say the same for forums.
I still check in with a couple of them occasionally. One mostly for the classifieds, because the regulars there share my tastes in bikes and good deals frequently pop up. The conversations rarely arouse much interest, centering mostly around which Rolex best matches their Audi or some such nonsense. I rarely jump in.
The other has been withering on the vine for years now, propped up by ads that are sold with the promise of high traffic, which is 90% bots. A few of us are around from the glory days, but now there are too many sub-forums with ancient posts that nobody reads. Even the doping forum, once a bastion of fierce debate is a ghost town. I asked them to consolidate a year or so ago to less than 10 sub-forums, and was ignored. No skin off my back. As long as they get the ad sales from the equally-terminal bike industry, they see no reason to alter course. As a person that is inflexible and resistant to change, I can respect that.
The medium is dying (if not dead). Facebook and other, more effective social media has slowly been strangling them to the point they've become more or less irrelevant. Just like the internet killed off the local BBS, people have moved on to other forms of communication that match their limited attention spans and small phone screens. Nobody wants to type out a well-reasoned statement of their views anymore when a 140 character (or less- average is something like 33 characters) post, including emojis, will do the trick. "TLDR" is usually the response to anything that would require scrolling.
It's a shame, but I can admit I don't have the enthusiasm or time for the forums I once did. Like 80-90% of Bicycling magazine articles, there is a constant cycle of the same questions tumbling around forums over and over again, and after answering them five or six times, you can either stop responding or make snarky "use the search function, idiot" comments. For me, neither one is particularly satisfying.
So, as I post this in an equally-dead format, I am left to wonder if my enthusiasm for the forums or the activity itself is waning. Who knows? Maybe both. I still get on my bike and ride. Sometimes with more vigor than others, but I still make the effort. I just don't read about the activity as much. The magazines sit in piles, unread, until their subscriptions run out. The forums don't get visited as much. The old ways of communicating and learning just have lost their luster for me (and from the looks of it, most other people).
Life moves on, things change, and you either adapt or you get left behind. Judging by racing results the last few years, I have no problem getting dropped. Still, I still try to turn the pedals, because I enjoy the activity. It still centers me like nothing else can, and occasionally I find the spark in my legs. I'm not dead yet.
I wish I could say the same for forums.
Comments
Post a Comment