In my studies Twitter seems to be about posting superficial nonsense, or in some cases news updates and advertisements. Its really just about spam though.

Salvation still seems to be doing fine (if you can call that community "fine" >_>) but yeah I dunno maybe the days of forums are slipping away into distant memory? Tumblr for example allows you to curate your own space and to some extent act as a moderator of your own experience and interactions with others, so it's got a major advantage over forums... M:EM has loads of followers on Tumblr but not many active people here*. The flip side of that though is that the Tumblr folks aren't really interested as far as I can see in producing stuff in any kind of concrete way and I don't think it would be that practical to organize things with Tumblr so if this really is the end of the age of forums that bodes poorly for sustained mass artistic collaborations I think...

Obviously you could never do the stuff we do here on Twitter.

*though it's worth pointing out that I think F&S is as active as it was right before the collapse and M:EM is WAY more active than it ever was. We're in a major lull right now and still producing ~2-3 stories a week.

I'm a member of a few small forums with a couple dozen active members each. the league of legends forums and the dawngate forums were both relatively active when I posted there. this forum is still extremely active.

Most of the people I meet outside of forums and talk to, even on other areas of the net, say they haven't posted on forums before though.

This forum in particular? At peak we have like 10 to 15 registered users online. That's not that much. But, we also tend to have upwards of 20 or 30 guests at random times as well, outnumbering registered members 4 to 1. Basically, you can't judge NGA based on just active users, as we have like 3 or 4 times the number of lurkers as users.

That being said, AYE, some subforums are dying a little.



For forums in general, I know the LOL and Hearthstone forums are both really active. So are the EGS forums. And I am sure I can find some other ones if I tried. I don't think the medium is dying.

To me forums are of much higher class and standards than the newer social media stuff, that allows you to just jump right in, post crap and leave.

sometimes my friends ask me what my cellphone number is and i say i do not have a phone and in my thoughts i am saying hahaha i am better than you

There's also stuff like GitP and Something Awful, which are still incredibly active.

Twitter is great for staying informed about current events in your fields of choice. There's a lot of chaff, but that's the case with like 95% of social media anywhere. I find it better than Tumblr, simply because there seems to be more "serious" stuff on twitter. Like, I can follow a political journalist and an economist and some authors I like and I get thoughtful content and links to interesting articles and blog posts. (Especially because I'm an expatriate New Zealander living in London, so it's quite good for me to be able to keep up on current developments in politics and whatever.) Whereas Tumblr seems to have a lot more amateurish content, in my experience. (Not that that's bad, and it probably fosters a sense of community better than twitter does, but that's not what I'm looking for really.)

I just use tumblr as an image search engine. It always asks me to join and I just yell at my computer. Then I realize I have to actually click the button to make it go away.

Yeah, I couldn't really figure out Twitter or those...newsgroups? Podcasts!...I'm definitely getting old.

Most people I know don't use forums. I specifically sought out a forum because I thought it was an experience I was lacking. I've enjoyed foruming so far. Some of my friends say they feel jealous that there is a community I am a part of in which I can express creative ideas. Those friends have social media.

I think that's the difference, like Lily pointed out, forums are more personal than the other forms of online social interaction.

forums are also more focused. the YMtC community, for instance, may be pals generally (except Mown) but we came together over a mutual shared interest in fantasy fantasy card design. that gives us a solid foundation to build on, and an inherent open invitation to anyone else who's interested, that more generic social media platforms lack.

wow mean

Anyway, reporting raz for harassment aside.

Are podcasts anything to figure out? They're just audio streams of people talking. Like listening to people talk about things you like?

Facebook allows you to create groups for interest subjects, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who use that feature, although it's not somewhere I would go to discuss my interests.

Where do imageboards fit into these categories? 4chan is incredibly big, and fills many of the same niches.

I don't know, for a while they were always asking me to subscribe, and there was the little window to the left. I guess they're supposed to be like radio shows, but not a radio show?

Mostly I didn't want to try and figure them out because I felt like I'd have to sign up for a service or something and my inbox would be clogged with even more junk.

Many of them have RSS feeds so you can stay updated on when new ones are launched (which is not very scary, I might inform.)
It depends heavily though. Even youtube has channels with people doing podcasts, despite not being a visual medium. Lots of them on iTunes as well.

Yeah podcasts are boring.

The benefit to forums, ime, is that it's just easier to follow a conversation (although some people still quote the whole OP in the second post of the thread to respond with a single sentence) but like tumblr has large and strong television show fan communities, like obnoxiously so, but tumblr is already stronger for visual media.

If nothing else, (hash)tags on twitter, tumblr, etc. already rapidly pull individuals together, much faster than a forum.

Of course, it means I get death threats on tumblr when I critique Constantine.

Ahaha wow I totally forgot about Constantine. I stopped watching after two episodes in a row included Scary Brown Person Magic.

Yeah tumblr is terrible for linear conversations, great for ideas that are way ahead of the rest of culture, terrible for getting those ideas translated into a widespread praxis, great for rapidly spreading ideas, and great for getting death threats when you tag your hate (or, you know, mild critiques of shows or characters that people are irrationally invested in as The Best Thing Ever. Never, ever say anything even remotely negative about Pinkie Pie, people. Just don't do it. It ain't worth it.)

I like it a lot but there's major structural flaws that make sustained discourse impossible. For that, yeah, I don't think you can really do better than forums, and really ideally forums with strong (sane) (discerning) moderation.

Agree with Lily re: podcasts. I feel the same way about Let's Plays and stuff like that too, for the most part. The only things I listen to like that are basically just straight radio shows, with professional radio quality, and most importantly actual editing out of dead air, dead end conversations, and so on

Constantine is the best show about exercists on TV.

lol that is the actual thing i was criticizing when i (and my friends who commented or even just liked my posts) got those 'kill yourself' messages, that and the 'gypsy magic is the darkest magic' line

I actually think the show got better over time, but it's still not great

Ugh, that line. Yes thank you for reminding me vividly of why I stopped watching.