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Kitzyma
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Likes it here |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 215
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For those who don't know, i.e. almost everyone, I'm a bit bipolar. For almost a year I had the longest and lowest 'down' that I've ever experienced. Hence, no posts from me in all that time. As some will have guessed, just a couple of weeks ago I bounced back to a high, and recently I've been making more than my fair share of posts.
My introduction to this site was about 3 years ago, when I arrived as an author, and my initial forays in the forum were mostly related to story feedback. That, I like to think, was only partly due to my self-absorption as an author. Mostly, as a newbie, I felt rather overwhelmed by the huge numbers of posts in the previous 10-12 years and felt a little intimidated by what seemed at the time to be a lot of posters with a shared history on the forum.
Sometimes it was difficult to determine the significance of a post, though it seemed clear to those who, unlike me, knew the background of poster. What might seem to me to be a rather over-the-top reaction or an ascerbic retort was clearly deemed completely understandable by those who 'knew' the poster and could interpret the post in the context of the poster's personality and life experiences.
A couple days ago, prompted by the 'A time for reaffirmation' thread, and my brain in its current overdrive mode, I began to take dips into the vast ocean of previous posts. My initial idea was to go right back to the beginning, around 15 years ago, but trying to do that was totally overwhelming.
So instead (and I hope this doesn't sound too creepy!) I tried an alternative method of picking one or two contributors from the past and picking out semi-random threads from their posting histories. I also picked a couple of my favourite authors (e.g. Grasshopper) and looked at some of the threads they'd contributed to.
These are some thoughts derived from those exploratory paddles in the ocean of posts. I don't pretend to have any answers. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I don't even have the right questions. In any case, my personal views would be too much influenced by the fact that I'm very atypical in so many ways. e.g. I don't like physical closeness, and my aversion to being touched is such that I almost never visit a barber, instead preferring to do my own hair (badly!). Also, one reason I write stories is because it is an attempt to understand what romantic love is and why people seem to think it's so desirable. So I wouldn't expect my opinions to be in any way representative of the general population.
The forum was obviously much busier in the past and many of the early regulars have gone. I wonder if that is just because people move on in real life and nowadays are not replaced by new people, who instead use the modern 'social media' instead of web forums. Have other potential newbies felt the same degree of trepidation I felt when coming to such a long-established forum with so many posts over the past 15 years or so?
I doubt that many new people would do as I've been doing, a semi-random dipping into old posts, but if they did, maybe they would be as saddened as I was to find bad-tempered argumentative threads that seem to have no logical basis or depend on trivial usages of certain words. Having grown up with parents who were always arguing and sometimes physically fighting, I now shun situations with strong antagonisms and any hint of violence. Yes, I know I'm a timid wimp, but if I'd first come across the forum when such bad-tempered posts were being made, then I would probably have quickly scurried away.
There there used to be gay teens on the forum but now there are few (if any). Has life become so much easier for gay teens that it was 10 years ago so they don't need the support of a forum? Or has new social media etc provided them with alternatives? Or has all the media report of 'online grooming' made modern teens too scared of forums? Is there some clue in what appears to be Grasshoppers last post to the forum in Dec 2009?
Finally, I wonder if 10-15 years ago, the perception of the site to newcomers and to those who saw it mentioned elsewhere, was that it was a place with a forum (where teens could feel safe) that site also had stories. Is the perception now that it is a site for stories that also has a forum for chatting? Is it only a tiny proportion of visitors who look at the forum compared with the number who just read stories? Does the success of the larger Story Shelf bring new people to look at the forum or does it distract people away from the forum?
As I said, just some thoughts and observations from a relative newbie who happens to be a bit of a timid soul.
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Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: Kitzyma on Sun, 19 July 2015 23:51 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: timmy on Mon, 20 July 2015 10:20 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: larkin on Mon, 20 July 2015 14:40 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: Kitzyma on Tue, 21 July 2015 09:09 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: larkin on Tue, 21 July 2015 09:42 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: Kitzyma on Tue, 21 July 2015 10:49 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: timmy on Tue, 21 July 2015 12:39 |
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Re: Some observations on the forum, past & present
By: ChrisR on Tue, 21 July 2015 19:29 |
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