The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Off Topic => Topic started by: achab1984 on October 15, 2023, 03:53:49 PM
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Does it seem like the activity on this site has slowed down?
I was looking at some of the very active collectors when I joined. And some have not been on here for years!
Makes me sad to see that!
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A lot of people have moved to social media. Old fashioned forums like this are hard to find now. Also, I know some people from the old days who got out of ponies all together.
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Most of the people I know from way back when aren't here now. Some of them are on Facebook or I see them at ponycon, but most aren't here any more, or aren't active. My memory goes back to 1998, however, which predates the Arena and goes back to the mailing lists. I'm usually surprised when I bump into someone who is still around/has come back who was there back in those days.
I am glad the Arena still exists, though. I don't mind that it has slowed - it feels like a relaxed, community of friends sharing information rather than a hyperactive hive of energy with threads racing past all the time.
I fundamentally hate social media - FB is the only one I use and for ponies, sparingly (and not trades). I like that forums mean actual conversation is still possible...but who knows how long it will last.
I miss all the other forums I used to be involved in, back when forums were the main way of connecting. I guess I'm just getting old ;)
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I guess I never looked at it that way as being a thing of the past. But your right!
I can't get into almost all of those other ones. I do have a facebook account and also an Instagram account.
But I don't do that other stuff like snap chat and whatever out there. I don't how some can do all of them and still live a normal life.
I am also very happy that the ALPArena is still here along with the My Little Pony Trading Post.
I remember how very active it was back when I joined in 2006. And then when there was that wave of male collectors. That sure died out fast it seems! Now it feels like the ponies in the stores are just for little kids again.
There is also a point in life when one has no interest in something anymore, or they just can't afford it anymore.
I have left the site many times for a good lengh of time but just keep coming back! LOL
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I love it here and yes I have social media but I would rather talk ponies here :) unfortunately I can't really participate in swaps a lot anymore because of the postal price hike >:( even cards are expensive to post but love virtual comps like the Christmas Carol comp :) and the threads on the new basic fun ponies /merch are always interesting
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I'm glad the Arena's still around, even if it is a bit quieter these days. I hate how fast-paced social media is - much of it feels like if you're not glued to the site 24/7 and don't reply to stuff the *second* it goes up, you've missed out, and I hate that - forums are soooo much better.
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This is honestly the last forum I'm active on and it's still pretty active compared to another one I was a member of since 2002. It crawled to about 5 posts a year at most in the past decade or two which is sad but I'm glad this one is pretty active still.
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Yeah forums are outdated sadly, but the chill atmosphere gives me nostalgia so I keep returning. (That’s not to say I’m not addicted to IG. :lookround:) My mood for collecting wanes at times, but I always have my eyes peeled for ponies and dolls (with the latter stealing my coins at the moment).
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I am a lurker. Occasionally poster.
I just wish this forum was more updated. Its hard to navigate, not easy to post photos and I always get confused to how to get to the PM's. Maybe a refresh might get more people interested again?
But yea, everyone is on social media. There's nothing like a good forum to slow down and browse through at your own leisure too. I prefer forums over social media.
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PMs are at the top of the page, under "My Messages". :)
I think the images thing is just a difference between social media and um.. non-social media. Traditionally, sites didn't let you upload your own pics like social media sites do. I don't think there's any way to get around that. But there's lots of free image hosting sites out there :)
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i use imgur! sometimes its a little tricky to remember which url works with the forums, but i get it figured out! i like forums better than some of the fast-paced social media sites, since its kinda hard for me to get into my niche there. like instagram, i post some collection updates and custom work but my posts only get like 2 likes maybe. it gets really discouraging.
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i really do not like social media at all.
I think most of the older collectors who have a large collection have packed it up and aren't actively socializing anymore. Imagine the storage locker sales in a few decades!
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i like forums better than some of the fast-paced social media sites, since its kinda hard for me to get into my niche there. like instagram, i post some collection updates and custom work but my posts only get like 2 likes maybe. it gets really discouraging.
I can relate to this. I have Facebook and sometimes I don't get any responses (or a very few) to a post, yet others can say something like "Look at this bug I found outside!" and get a lot of responses.
I'm glad the Arena is still here and active. :) I've met someone here that I consider a friend even though we've never met in person.
I've noticed there are times with less activity than others, but I thought part of it was due to time zone differences.
Ponyfan
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I've been kicking around the forums since Pony Finders in 2003. Most of the good friends I've made in the community in that time have moved on from MLP and sold off their collections, either out of disinterest or life changes. There are quite a few who do still collect that attend pony meets, but social media is where we do the majority of our conversing. Not just about ponies, but about life events too. I honestly prefer the TP and Arena to discuss MLP rather than posting on Facebook, but like I said, most of my peeps aren't really over here anymore.
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i like forums better than some of the fast-paced social media sites, since its kinda hard for me to get into my niche there. like instagram, i post some collection updates and custom work but my posts only get like 2 likes maybe. it gets really discouraging.
I can relate to this. I have Facebook and sometimes I don't get any responses (or a very few) to a post, yet others can say something like "Look at this bug I found outside!" and get a lot of responses.
I'm glad the Arena is still here and active. :) I've met someone here that I consider a friend even though we've never met in person.
I've noticed there are times with less activity than others, but I thought part of it was due to time zone differences.
Ponyfan
very well said, i think "virality" is so strange. someone could try their whole life and not be "viral" but if someone posts a stupid dancing video with like zero effort they get millions. (looking at you, Charli D'Amelio.)
for most everyday people its unattainable, which gets super discouraging to not have people appreciate the things you love. social media is kind of destroying people's perception of the world, only seeing things through a camera lens. even when i post in a server with my friends over discord they dont really pay any mind to new ponies or collection updates and it starts to hurt after a while. really i dont think children should be on social media at all, it can really damage their perception of things like relationships and friendships. everyone should have time off their devices, whether that be drawing or sculpting, taking up hobbies really has helped my mental health, even spending a little time petting my cats helps me feel better when social media gets me down.
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I am glad the Arena is still around. And where else would I get to see new releases, American conventions since I am not on Facebook? I also love ID-ing ponies and see different insights. :) I do think the uploading images should be easier instead of linking.
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I'm old. I prefer the forum type. I'm kind of active on a MLP group on Facebook and I do have an MLPInstagram that I update rarely. I prefer it here. Every other forum I've been a member of has closed down and this is the only one left and I hope it stays. I do miss the faster pace, but at the same time it is a bit of comfort to see familiar usernames posting all the time as well and not see the interesting threads drown in others.
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I love everyone post on this topic! Social media is very stressful at times and also agree should not be on it.
I have seen over and over how it's not good for a young mind. Another reason why our world is becoming what it is also! Its sad! :(
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I have facebook but it's mostly for people I've met irl and still get together to do things with. I also love the funny meme content. But, the rest of social media... its chaos. And sometimes with the trolls, it seems like it's a set up to make people mad and argumentative. No matter how positive the post is, someone has to be angry about it. I understand that's how the public works, but it doesn't seem healthy to make our lives 100% public.
So, I don't use it unless its for work.
I do love forums though! Moderators are the best and there is nothing nicer that having lunch while reading posts about ponies and other toys.
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I love everyone post on this topic! Social media is very stressful at times and also agree should not be on it.
I have seen over and over how it's not good for a young mind. Another reason why our world is becoming what it is also! Its sad! :(
it really is, especially with the issue of kids not liking toys for a long time. its all based in fast-paced stuff abf i do not understand their heads anymore. i love all my ponies so much, and i have been for years... its really dissapointing what mlp is now based on what it used to be. i hope they at least have a holiday release.
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I think the slower pace works. I do find myself spending more time on the TP but either way when it comes to forums I’m fine with it not being as fast as before. I work a lot and my life is busier than it used to be. I don’t have to feel like I’m missing out on something just because I’m not here all the time. :lol:
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I think another thing is on a forum you have to read. Social media is very visually based with pictures and videos. We post pics here too, but the majority is text. I think younger generations don't want to read or even worse, don't know how to read proper words instead of U R 2 cute. I read an article some time back that people don't worry about spelling because it's always being corrected by our devices, and there will be a generation that can't spell.
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I think another thing is on a forum you have to read. Social media is very visually based with pictures and videos. We post pics here too, but the majority is text. I think younger generations don't want to read or even worse, don't know how to read proper words instead of U R 2 cute. I read an article some time back that people don't worry about spelling because it's always being corrected by our devices, and there will be a generation that can't spell.
I find it very annoying when they can't just spell the whole word out! LOL. They even talk weird also. Stupid. :(
Post Merge: October 20, 2023, 02:05:35 PM
I love everyone post on this topic! Social media is very stressful at times and also agree should not be on it.
I have seen over and over how it's not good for a young mind. Another reason why our world is becoming what it is also! Its sad! :(
it really is, especially with the issue of kids not liking toys for a long time. its all based in fast-paced stuff and i do not understand their heads anymore. i love all my ponies so much, and i have been for years... its really disappointing what mlp is now based on what it used to be. i hope they at least have a holiday release.
It's sad to see kids are not being kids anymore. I think all the new toys are just horrible looking.
Hasbro in my eyes has murdered MLP. I know there are some that do like them though. So, I am not trying to come off mean.
I wish Hasbro would back to the G3 styles, it's the closest to G1's.
I am worried about our furture with this younger society! Yes I know not all of them are bad.
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I guess maybe im stubborn or I dont like social media much. Yeah its a slower pace here but its not bad. I still just love ponies. I guess im not as active as I used to be. I lurk sometimes. Im an old person here too. I dont understand why people cant read anymore that sounds weird. I dont own anything Facebook and I only have a google page. thats about it. Im content with my collection. :lookround:
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I guess maybe im stubborn or I dont like social media much. Yeah its a slower pace here but its not bad. I still just love ponies. I guess im not as active as I used to be. I lurk sometimes. Im an old person here too. I dont understand why people cant read anymore that sounds weird. I dont own anything Facebook and I only have a google page. thats about it. Im content with my collection. :lookround:
Yes, its crazy that people have an attention span of a grain of rice! I also find it stressful at times to keep up with all the posts and comments on those other sites!
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I overheard some coworkers with teenage kids talk a couple of months ago. In Sweden every school provides laptops or tablets now. They rarely have physical books and write by hand. Everything is on the computer. So they have like ten to fifteen tabs open every lesson which they switch between and they write their assignments on the computer as well. When they write a word wrong and the red stripes appear under the word, instead of making it correct, they just include it so the spelling becomes really bad and the teachers wont correct it because it takes time they don't have. I feel like school is going down hill.
Also, social media wants things to go fast. Have you seen kids going through tik tok or instagram? They give a video four seconds before deciding if it's worth watching or not and move onto the next one. My own eyes haven't even started focus on what I'm seeing at that time and if I watch a reel and want to rewatch it, at least the instagram app keeps pushing a bit of the next reel into the one I'm watching to make me switch. It's super annoying.
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i kind of cringe when i hear people say that non-social media type websites are dead. there's a ton of non social media websites out there. idk i think some of the panic around social media is a bit overblown. there were similar panics around books, radio, TV, video games. and a lot boils down to moral panics. i'm waiting to see what the studies are 10 years from now. there's a lot that annoys me but i'm older and easily annoyed. a lot of it just isn't for me. i still see kids playing outside all the time. playing the same way I did over 30 years ago.
if i had kids i do think i would want them to stay off social media though. the privacy aspect of it bothers me. i really hate the data collection that the largest companies do. and as a software developer i hate how there are only a handful of dominant companies who control a lot of the internet.
Social media companies are ad and data platforms. they are not there to make you happy. they will autoplay and push you to keep watching video after video to inflate their watch numbers so they can charge advertisers more and justify their fees. they don't make money off hosting your content, they make money selling your data and selling ads.
i personally hate Facebook. i don't really understand how people do like it. when i did use it and when i followed my friends and people i know IRL it was bad for me. i have a lot of anxiety about friendships and the times when i would call or text one of my friends, get no response and then see them posting away on Facebook was upsetting. or seeing photos of my friends out without me. after i moved to a different city it was even more upsetting to see. also i don't need to be reminded that most of the people i grew up with have horrible politics. i was pretty done with it after the 2012 US presidential race.
i think i'm a bit of an outlier in the way i do use social media because i purposely avoid following people i know IRL. i use it to keep up with stuff i'm interested in. when Twitter was tolerable i used it to follow journalists and extremism researchers because i'm interested in knowing what far right idiots are up to and how people are fighting back. i also used it to keep up with stuff going on in tech, labor movement stuff, etc. I don't go on instagram all that much because it's jarring to see tragic events happening next to a video of someone decorating their house for Christmas. now i use that Bluesky app some and a lot of the same people i followed on Twitter are there now.
i'm glad the Arena is still here. it's not as active as it was in 2010 or so when i first joined, but i like it better than any social media. i do wonder if some of the migration to social media is just a matter of convenience. of not having to remember to check another website. i don't think non-social media websites will die. i think it's more important than ever to keep online spaces that aren't under the control of the big tech. too many good places were bought up and shut down or left to die after they sold out. social media is a tool and shouldn't be the main place for content IMO.
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I've noticed the lack of attention spans re: social media, too. Everything has to be instant! I HATE how some sites (like deviantART journals, don't even get me started on how badly THAT site's been butchered) now have text at the top of posts/articles/etc that give an estimate on how long it'll take you to read it. ?!?!? Who cares??? I see it with "binge watch" culture too - I moderate on a cartoon community (for a long-running series, so lots of episodes) and one of the most commonly asked questions is "How few episodes of the show can I get away with watching?" - SO many people just can't fathom the idea of watching the whole show because they're used to speeding through shows as quickly as possible! It boggles my mind!
And I agree that people just don't bother to read things properly these days, don't even get me started on THAT. x_x
What concerns me about kids on social media is how much it's been normalized to post all your personal info online. (That was awkwardly worded, sorry. I don't know how to phrase it!) Some of the things I've seen on peoples' blogs, Twitters, etc are just shocking... In my day you were taught to be careful with what you shared online, to think it through before posting personal/identifying info like real name, age, location, photos, etc. These days I see lots of people, especially younger folks, posting all of that and more - some people practically have their entire medical records easily accessible on their "about me" page - now I'll freely admit I'm guarded about my own personal info and don't share things unless I've known the other person for a long time and can trust them - but I really think we need to bring back online safety/privacy!!!
Don't get me wrong, if someone's comfortable sharing some personal info online then that's their business - share as much, or little, as you want to. I'm just saying that I really think everyone, especially kids, need to be reminded to THINK before posting this info where all and sundry can see it. A lot of them just don't seem to realize that if it's public, anyone can see it - I see so many people go "Oh no, some total stranger shared my tweet/reblogged my post/etc that I posted publically, how dare they!" - like, yeah, that's the idea of the "world wide web" ^^; I don't use TikTok personally but I've heard that's really bad for this sort of thing, too. Kids posting videos with their school's name in full view and such. I just think with how widespread the internet is these days, it'd be good to bring back Online Safety lessons etc too.
Beth, I agree that the big draw of social media is everything being in one place. In the age of forums, email groups etc you'd have to find a community specifically for your fandom (etc) but nowadays you can just go on one site and interact with multiple different communities on there. I'm not against that, but I think there's still very much room for forums and other non-social media sites! The rise of sites like Neocities gives me hope that we're starting to fight back against social media taking over the web though :)
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I’m still here! But many folk have come and gone over the years.
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There's a lot to be said about reading and writing and peoples' attention spans and so on, but just focusing on hobby communities- the forum format is what works best! Tumblr and instagram were my main sm sites as a teenager, but neither of them works particularly well for hobby discussions, and tiktok even less so. How can there be any community or discussion if everyone is just... floating around in a random mass of content with no central point or way to ask anything text based? Tumblr is slightly better in this regard (you can be anonymous, post text posts), but still there is no centralized place where you know people with similar interests will see and interact with your posts (I know there are tags, but obviously those never worked very well and there was nothing preventing random other people from jumping in or flooding the tags with whatever else).
I've had some lovely interactions with people on instagram, but it's just so awkward. There is no way to ask a public question to the community, comments under a post are clunky and not great for carrying on a conversation in, and if you make a post it won't get seen unless you have tons of followers. You have to post consistently and post the same type of thing and I don't like feeling like a hobby becomes another to do list item.
If anyone knows of any other sites where I can discuss vintage toy collecting let me know~ reddit doesn't seem like the place, but I keep hearing people talk about facebook groups...
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^ THIS!!! You put it better than I could've. Everything's just shouting into the void now. Even on Reddit which is a little closer to a forum than, say, Tumblr, it's still a mess - people don't bother to read all of the comments, or even ANY of them, so you end up having to put the same comment in multiple replies and it's just a trainwreck.
Forum categories are something I _really_ miss too. When everything's lumped together, a lot of things get drowned out... For example - say you're talking about a TV show community - on a forum you can have separate boards for episode discussion, fanart, etc, but on social media they'd all be in the same place, and the most popular post wins, you know?
(This is a real problem with NSFW content as well, but that's probably wandering a bit off-topic so I'll just leave that there)
Fandom-specific tags help a bit but then that just raises questions of, is it okay to post X/Y/Z in this tag, etc.
You have to post consistently and post the same type of thing and I don't like feeling like a hobby becomes another to do list item.
Yup. Fandom's always had a bit of a "popularity contest" aspect to it, but it's just become worse with social media IMO.
also on social media, there's a lot of... IDK how to put it... Like if you post a lot of Batman stuff then you'll inevitably get someone yelling at you for suddenly doing a 180 and posting about MLP. You know? That definitely happened pre-social media too (people complaining because how dare you like multiple things!! only make content for the thing *I* like! :P) but I've noticed it becoming more prevalent since Tumblr/Twitter/etc. or, maybe it's that people's attitudes about it changed? like, before, the reaction to that would usually be "It's my blog/site/etc, I'll do what I want" but now you see a lot more "o-oh, I'm sorry for having multiple hobbies.."... if that makes sense?
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... if that makes sense?
yes it does, exactly! And then everything is clearly organized and less overwhelming.
I have two instagram accounts, one where I occasionally post stuff about the sports I do, and then I made another one to post about... everything else. So toys, stationery, fantasy books, etc that I don't want to flood my skater friends' feeds with. But it has to be soooo specific! I have some friends who have a seperate insta account for each hobby which sounds exhausting even for a once a month poster like me :yikes:
When tumblr was my main one I posted a huge mix of everything as it was really my BLOG (man I miss those crafty/cutsey lifestyle blogs of the early 2010s), but instagram works different. Sometimes I get the feeling that there are probably a bunch of other people who would like to have convos about obscure toy lines and whatever else but I can't find them because neither of us are taking the best algorithmically favored photos every single day.
I actually completely understand wanting to only see what you searched for, but people have multiple interests and it's not fun to restrict yourself so heavily to one specific niche. I think it also has to do with everyone, not just mini celebrities, having to have their own personal brand? I don't know, social media is weird even though I kind of grew up with it.
There is a Sylvanian families collectors forum which I go on occasionally but there is maybe even less activity there...
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Yeah, personal brand, that's a good way of putting it.
Like... I get having separate spaces for some things. Like if you regularly post about two very different things with not much overlap, or something fairly niche, or if you post enough about something that it really *warrants* a separate space lol. I mean, I've definitely started looking at someone's blog before and ended up thinking "well, I like their content for X, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to pick through the weird Y content too" :silly: It's just the idea that some people seem to have, that you need to be "on brand" 24/7, that bugs me, you know? It just seems exhausting.
I'm on the Sylvanian forum too! :D I don't post on there much though.
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Very interesting topics covered here! I think everyone makes very good points!
I do worry about the advent of social media, but only inasmuch as I worry about the advent of the internet. Like, yes, it's not great that so many young children suddenly have the ability to shout to a million strangers all of their personal information! But I feel like that's something that happened on the internet in general, not necessarily due to Twitter or TikTok. There is a special strain of misinformation that goes around on each different SM platform, but I also feel like that would happen regardless if it was on a forum or SM or AIM.
I do hate some of the SM trends (like when pranking became so popular due to social media stars doing it, eugh!) but I do think it's also probably just reflective of human nature. We have better methods of communication now, so it stands to reason that social memes and behaviors will be passed around more rapidly now, for better or worse. I do think it's also nice that so many 'atypical' kids can find each other now; it used to be you might be the only kid like you in your school, and the bullying could be crippling. Now, even with the dangers of SM, you can find other kids like yourself on the internet, and know you're not alone. That's pretty awesome, even with all of SMs other flaws and dangers.
Personally, I really love forums! I'm glad the MLPArena is still here, and I wish there were more forums hanging on in general! But one thing that does get me down is sort of the speed of communication here, and the relative ease of being notified. I can wait days for a reply to a thread, and sometimes by then I've forgotten what the topic was we were discussing! I tend to have posting bursts where I'll post every day for a week, and then go back into a sort of dormant read-only mode. I'm still here, I'm just not really joining in, even if mentally I think 'ooh, good point there'! (But I know I vastly prefer it to Discord's '500 messages over 20 minutes' format, where missing a day of nonstop reading means you've fallen behind forever!!)
The other downside is, if I'm commenting to someone on IG or Tumblr, I'll get a little pop-up the instant they reply on my phone! I might not check the MLPArena at the exact moment someone replies, and so I might not see a reply for days - or even a week, if I go dormant again. That's a bit of a downer! And then you feel like a heel bumping an ancient topic just to be like, 'Yeah I think Pinkie Pie is overrated too!' XD
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Oh wow! It's nice to come back to this thread to see how active it is! This makes me very happy to read what all of you have to say!
I totally can see how the internet can be good and also be bad! It's a wonderful tool for sure though.
I hope this site NEVER leaves <3
Post Merge: October 28, 2023, 08:41:46 PM
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I love the art! <3
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Carrehz, Beth, I think it interesting you think social media makes everything more centralised because for me it's the absolute opposite. My brain can't really cope with logistics and I have trouble finding things in general, but these days everyone is on about fifteen social media sites and fan groups are split across all these different platforms, rather than just one forum dedicated to that fandom which is easy to find and doesn't require multiple methods of access/multiple logins/etc etc/. Keeping up with all of those is basically impossible for me. I only use facebook at arm's length and not much else. Tumblr, but literally only for translations and stuff, never anything at all personal. It's just too much. Having to keep up with so many platforms also affects attention span. People hopping from one to the next posting one gif or one like...it's just...not really a fandom anymore, but rather a popularity contest. It's about likes and what's popular and all that jazz - and most popular posts get pushed to the top - rather than just having a conversation generally without worrying about that.
I also think online friending has made it harder for some people to judge trust. As we're most of us older folk here the generation who grew up with the internet evolving rather than already being there and at top speed, we are probably (or should be!) more cautious about sharing data online. But now it's like everyone is sharing everything and the people they meet online are immediately their best friends. I've met amazing people online, but still while being pretty careful. It worries me how many young people especially are targeted by predators because they think people can be trusted more than they actually can online.
Regarding whether forums are still going strong/non social media fan spaces are still vibrant - they mostly aren't. Most all of the forums I've been a member of since I came online (we're talking more than 20 years) are dead. This and the TP are the only exceptions, honestly. Livejournal is no longer a place anyone should access, as it's been taken over by bots. Someone already mentioned DA.
As soon as TL;DR became a thing, communication became 100% more difficult for me as well. As you guys know, I'm not especially concise *lol*. And that's even after I rewrite my posts multiple times to try and be more coherent. In the past it mattered a lot less because people had time (and manners) to read each other's posts and then reply to them coherently as a matter of course.
And then there's language. Ableist slurs are really common on social media. They're just used as normal words and people don't do anything about them. No online mod bot includes them as slurs or hate speech because they're not about race or sexuality. Most human mods also don't care because disability discrimination isn't a thing, right? It means being in that space feels manifestly unsafe, and most people really don't care about that. Even if you raise it, mostly people ignore it or treat it like it's banter or not worth considering. At worst you make yourself a target and then have to deal with the fallout.
Social media basically makes me feel more invisible and less empowered than forums did :/.
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I’m one of those who disappeared! Real life happened and MLP was not the first thing on my mind. Still isn’t, even though I would never part with my collection! Most of it is stored in boxes, but I always do a seasonal display.
It should be nice to be on here more often again, see some familiar faces.
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For me, having to upload photos to a host to post here has been a bit of a barrier to interaction tbh. I’ve gotten spoiled by other platforms for that.
Also, that G5 just isn’t doing much, there’s not a whole lot I have to talk about anymore since G4 is out. Also, I just feel like there isn’t as much hype for certain things anymore. Like, in the past, not just on this forum. I feel like events and new items used to get much more discussion for longer. I feel like I’ve got accustomed, and probably others as well to a stream of new things and it’s affected attention span and excitement level longevity.
It also seems like people are more apt to buy sell trade on other platforms lately. I’ve been rebuilding my collection the majority of the past year and only a few of the items was I able to aquire from forum members selling or responding to my wtb’s.
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Flitter that's a great point! I know that's kind of a big hurdle, especially if you're more of a casual user - and with the death of Photobucket, it's like, where do I easily upload photos? Is Imgur still a thing? Probably! But I don't know how to use it! XD I usually 'cheat' and upload all my photos on Tumblr, but since I'm posting there... I usually don't remember to crosspost. :blush:
I know it's only semi-related, but I saw an interesting tumblr post that said that image hosting is part of what makes starting up any kind of new blogging/social media platform really expensive and difficult, compared to the old-school forum days. It costs a lot of money to have your own server or to pay someone else to host it, so there's far fewer sites getting started in someone's garage, for example. So it sucks not being able to easily upload photos, but it is nice that the Arena is (hopefully) cheaper to run without it!
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The Arena has a photo tutorial :)
https://mlparena.com/index.php?topic=403706.0
I use Imgur with no issues. You just have to be sure not to post publicly unless you want comments from the community.
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Taffeta - meant to reply to this earlier, sorry...
I'm not sure I explained myself properly earlier, it's difficult to figure out how to word it. When I said "centralized" I meant... I think the appeal a lot of people have in using social media for fandom stuff is that you can post about anything with just one account. So like if you're on Reddit, you can post on (for example) a toy-collecting community, then a cartoon subreddit, then a joke sub, and you don't need to swap to a different forum or change accounts or anything, it's all in one place. I can understand the appeal there! I know I find myself not really wanting to make a new account on anything these days if I can avoid it - just something else to keep track of, you know? (admittedly in part cause you have to worry about whether or not some random site'll get hacked/datamined/etc... the net feels so much less safe these days! but that's veering onto another topic LOL)
So I can see it from that angle. And in one way it is nice to just be able to nip onto one subreddit and say (for example) "Wow this ep was really good" or "Cool fanart" without having to sign up specifically just to say that, when you might not really want to post on the community past that one comment. IDK if that makes sense, that was poorly worded, sorry. Not sure how to clearly phrase it.
(I'm using Reddit as an example because it's really the only one I've got any sort of experience with, but it applies to other sites too. and I use Reddit basically like I do here, really only use it for one sub, so I doubt mine is the "average experience" :P)
But on the other hand, that also means there's little-to-no sense of _community_, you know? again, I moderate for a cartoon subreddit, we have a couple of regulars. But easily 95% of our traffic/posts/etc come from random drive-by posters who'll never post again. (and that's being generous when I say the regulars make up the remaining 5%!)
Whereas on here, I don't necessarily know everyone, but I recognize most people's avatars, at least. I'll see something and think "Oh man, so-and-so is gonna LOVE this" or whatever. I don't get that on Reddit. (or well, I get it for like, 2 people tops) I know that if I post something, most people are only going to skim it, if that. We're going to have duplicate posts because no one's really paying attention to see if it's been posted before.
I guess how I'd really put it is that everything is simultaneously centralized and split across multiple places? Tags and subreddits and such are meant to make things "easier" to find but honestly a lot of the time it does feel harder than ever to find things.
You mentioned LiveJournal - I wish Dreamwidth was more popular. :( That's a great substitute for LJ but I don't know how much traction it's really gotten.
Also agree w/ you totally on the TL;DR thing!! I use Twitter literally once in a blue moon (I made it to buy something and then kept it because it turned out to be useful for keeping up with anime, then theatre, news) and I have NO idea how people can stand it! I always end up retyping my tweets like 300 times to get them under the character limit and even make a tiny bit of sense. Annoying if you're trying to explain something.
to be fair I think one problem is people using these sites for things they weren't necessarily intended for? I mean I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Twitter started off intended for just quick microblogs rather than lengthy indepth posts. Tumblr wasn't intended to be a fanfic site. Stuff like that. Which probably doesn't help?And to be fair that's always been a thing, people have always tried to put things where they don't necessarily belong :silly: like Quizilla was a quiz site but everyone kept putting their fanfics on there. although on the other hand, the owners of that site responded by expanding the site to include fanfics and added more options to support authors and etc etc, whereas modern social media sites don't really seem to do that when people start using them for something they weren't necessarily intended for... so maybe not a good example... hm...
But yeah uhhh definitely people just don't bother to read things on social media. You get misunderstandings on forums, obviously, and god knows it varies depending on how good the community is to begin with (don't even get me started on some of the ding-dongs I've wound up rubbing elbows with over the years :drunk:) but my point is, on a forum I'm more likely to be like "Okay I think you misunderstood what I said" or "No that's my bad, I didn't word it right". On social media I see sooooo many posts + have experienced this too, where it's obvious they just. Didn't actually read what they were replying to. Like again going back to Reddit, a while ago I posted a pic + context in the comments? And all but maybe... 1 or 2 of the comments just totally missed the point because they hadn't bothered to read the comments first to see if there was context for it. And I see that sort of thing happening ALL THE TIME now, and god help you if whatever point you're trying to make is longer than one or two sentences x)
actually if I can just get on a soapbox about that one for a minute longer, I strongly believe the move towards TL;DR is a problem in general!! I think there is a place for TL;DR in some contexts. Or just in general keeping things short and sweet. Like.. hmm... what to compare it to... *think* I guess... like, a YouTube comment section isn't necessarily the place to put your 3000-word write-up on a theatre show you've just seen. But there's definitely a place for those posts and I'd love to see them! But almost no one seems to write lengthy/indepth posts any more! There are exceptions, obviously, but overall I see a lot more people just condensing their love for things down to the shortest posts possible. Instead of detailed theatre reports (not reviews, I mean fans gushing about shows) you just get vague "Oh that blooper today was so funny". Instead of lengthy essays about someone's anime OTP you just get a gifset and maybe one of those Powerpoint Presentation posts (do people still do those?). I can't remember the last time I saw a con report. Etc etc. And I really notice it with characters/stories and artwork too. Back in the deviantART days you'd see pics with long descriptions talking all about the artistic process, the backstory for the pic, etc etc and now you're lucky if the pic even has a caption, because "oh no one cares anyway/they'll just delete my comments/TL;DR". It's harder to really get an idea for character personalities/stories/etc cause not as many people write detailed profiles any more. (to be fair there is also the fact that such things take Time and most of us character creators are lazy and/or lacking in time :P but you get what I mean!! it's less that people aren't doing that sort of thing and more that few people seem to want to do it)
I guess my point is that there's nothing wrong with... NOT rambling, haha. God knows I ramble too much. It just feels like the internet nowadays essentially encourages people to talk less? Which is sort of paradoxical.
Also everything's a damn video these days. :U Even when it really doesn't need to be. The amount of times I've gone looking for a doll review, or blind box codes, or what-have-you, and had to sit through a 10 minute video....!!!
Snapdragon - I saw that post too!! I've definitely noticed an uptick in people not understanding how to post images unless there's an easy upload button to do the work for 'em. Photobucket was such a huge loss :( Everything that happened with Flickr was a big blow too.
I wonder... is there something that'd let the Arena hook up to the Imgur? So you could upload images to Imgur without having to actually go onto the site itself, after you'd set it all up I mean? Didn't we used to have something like that for Photobucket, or am I getting mixed up?
(either that or would it be possible to add a link to the image-posting tutorial on the Post Comment page itself? I think a lot of people forget about the tutorials board.)
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Flitter that's a great point! I know that's kind of a big hurdle, especially if you're more of a casual user - and with the death of Photobucket, it's like, where do I easily upload photos? Is Imgur still a thing? Probably! But I don't know how to use it! XD I usually 'cheat' and upload all my photos on Tumblr, but since I'm posting there... I usually don't remember to crosspost. :blush:
I know it's only semi-related, but I saw an interesting tumblr post that said that image hosting is part of what makes starting up any kind of new blogging/social media platform really expensive and difficult, compared to the old-school forum days. It costs a lot of money to have your own server or to pay someone else to host it, so there's far fewer sites getting started in someone's garage, for example. So it sucks not being able to easily upload photos, but it is nice that the Arena is (hopefully) cheaper to run without it!
yeah photo hosting is very expensive these days. even trying to have a site load quickly with images the site owner/designer adds using a service is really expensive. i looked into that for my pony site. i'm talking like $100/month on a fairly small site that will never make money.
allowing anyone to upload images is probably going to be cost prohibitive unless you have access to a lot of capital. but then that means you need to make money to satisfy those investors. and you need to charge for your services and on an on.
also, if you're just allowing anyone to upload images someone needs to moderate the content. the moderators here do a great job and i think that's one of the reasons I stay here. I can't tell you how many times i've clicked on a trending topic on Twitter only to see porn. i'm not a prude but if i click on a seemingly un porn related topic I don't want to see porn.
a lot of those sites came about during that weird era in the late 2000s early 2010s where people were building web apps with free services and worrying about how to monetize later. then they got bought up, shut down, or are kind of just zombie shells or their former selves like Photobucket and Flickr. Websites cost money to maintain and pay employees. and a lot of services sites use to run that were dirt cheap back then are expensive now. the industry is full of greedy people who just start websites and apps with the explicit purpose of cashing out ASAP and not really caring what happens next. they just build clout in the industry and more to their next grift. this is my rant as someone who fell for that tech utopia dream in this same era i'm talking about and is now jaded and sad. it's always been kind of a con I just fell for it. tech is a mess and it's not going to get better. especially now that AI is the new hype bubble. i feel like forums like this are little oasis in the internet desert. even google stinks now :huh:
i think this article sums up the state of the internet platforms well. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
and yeah that whole "pivot to video" thing Facebook started back in the day is one of the reasons why everything is a video. people are just feeding the content monster. also it was a scam, facebook lied about their view numbers and a lot of companies went under because of it. but so many people who work in the industry really think that no one will read and people just want to watch videos. i've had so many arguments trying to explain that people will scroll and read if your content is good. if they're not scrolling then maybe your content is just uninteresting and you need to do better!
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Hosting cost is all about bandwidth really, but it's also about people's attention spans, and accessibility.
I remember someone posting here years ago about white Tootsie and calling her UK tootsie (which she isn't, of course). And when I pointed out that was wrong, they said it was too hard to find info like that. So I put white tootsie into google and it came up on the wiki right at the top, saying she was European but not UK. Writing two words into Google is now an intense investigation requiring deep level brain power. (It's things like that which make me think about taking down my website (lol). I definitely don't pay 100$/month on bandwidth/hosting, I couldn't afford that. But I do have to pay to keep it up.)
@Carrehz, I know what you mean. I hate reddit, but at the same time I do sometimes use it for certain things. But it's obvious there that mostly any kind of actual conversation is shot down by people's awareness of up and down arrows. They are definitely used to intimidate popular opinions.
I'm going to be old and cranky for a moment, but back in the day I was on a Bleach (anime/manga) forum, and back then complex and detailed discussions about character and plot, plus RPG and other stuff were the norm. People who just posted three words or 'lol' were considered to be spamming and would be brought to heel over it. Doubleposting was also NOT A THING. We did have a reputation system, but people who abused it got hammered.
Another site which I know that's relatively new has a forum, but people post on it like it's social media. One post just saying LOL or an emoji or gif is common, as is posting 3 things in succession. It's also common for a group to gang up on one person in a much more hostile way (mostly for nothing things). People looking for trouble and trying to make trouble, rather than having actual discussions about things.
The impact on social media on forums.
Back to Bleach, and critical thinking, but when the manga finished, most of the fans I knew left the fan community. The final arc of the manga rewrote a lot of continuity, retconned stuff and mangled the timeline, as well as having huge plot gaps. People really disliked it. It didn't get an anime adaptation for years.
...Now it has one and people are raving about it because of the quality of the animation and the 'big fight scenes'. Most of those people haven't noticed that the continuity is screwed up and the plot doesn't make sense.
It's not that it's not ok to like something for different reasons, but it's just interesting how fans back then felt betrayed by Bleach's ending, because they were invested in plot and character. But now people are welcoming the new adaptation because they are invested in pretty animation and violent confrontations.
Continuing on that line, I remember one community where people were struggling to write fanfiction, though they wanted to. And they would write AU fiction not because they were inspired by a crossover or another setting but because they 'didn't know how to write x character in character' and so it was easy to not bother trying.
Of course this is not all people, but it is a growing percentage.
Something else I've noticed just from an anime community perspective. So many posts from people who need other people to validate their decision making. Not just "recommend me an anime, I like this kind of stuff" but more disturbing things like, "I've watched the first 10 eps of x show, should I continue?" "Should I watch x or y?" "Should I watch x anime again?" Like the internet suddenly became their mother or their evil overlord and they can't make decisions without ten other people confirming it for them.
On TL;DR - it's such a negative thing to have to apologise/undermine a detailed and thought out opinion because the person on the other end of the conversation can't read more than five words together without needing an emoji break.
There you go. My old cranky rant for the day. :)
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you can definitely host a personal site very cheaply if not for free. i was more thinking of a site that gets a lot of traffic and/or is trying to attract a lot of users for image hosting. larger sites that serve people all over the world will usually want to have content hosted in multiple servers so the content downloads from a server close to you instead of one on the other side of the world. it's fractions of a second but on sites that download a lot of images, videos and scripts the saved time adds up.
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I use template websites that are free (Wix/Weebly), and I can post a lot of images without an issue.
Back to the original post by achab1984:
Does it seem like the activity on this site has slowed down?
I was looking at some of the very active collectors when I joined. And some have not been on here for years!
I agree with some of the folks replying here--it's hard to maintain activity on *any* website, much less forums like this one, for longer than a few weeks, let alone years at a time.
There is a high cost for maintaining servers, which host all the data from posts in threads like these, the images that are uploaded/linked, and even just making sure the buttons/links/general interface even works.
I'm honestly grateful the MLP Arena still stands after 20 years. It's a safe haven for collectors/customizers of ponies of all gens/ages.
It's also hard to be social online, as in truly sociable. I think that's what Taffeta and Carrehz were getting at. "Social media," starting with MySpace and Facebook, *was* literally a popularity contest for college aged Internet users. Message boards and forums were where people actually built community, and the few that still exist need to be funded and treasured.
It's hard work to maintain a place like this, to communicate well, to have your intentions clear and kindness being the norm rather than the exception among users/mods/admin.
I'm grateful for making so many pony friends here over the years. I honestly hope the Arena sticks around. <3
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ChocolateStarfire - Yep, that's exactly what I meant ^^ Social media just feels like a sitewide fight to get noticed to me.
I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.
I can't tell you how many times i've clicked on a trending topic on Twitter only to see porn. i'm not a prude but if i click on a seemingly un porn related topic I don't want to see porn.
Ooooh, right??? >_< For some reason one theatre Twitter I follow attracts a *lot* of pornbots in the comments, no idea why, but it definitely makes me think twice about looking at the comments on there! x)
Taffeta - Aw, I like your site. I feel you on hosting costs though >_<
The upvote/downvote system is horrible IMO. I've seen so many good/valid opinions get downvoted into oblivion because they weren't popular. A while ago on here we had the "Unpopular Pony Opinions" thread, right? We didn't all agree with each other and IIRC we did get some "Aw no, how could you not like that!"-type comments (fair enough, that's part of the fun of unpopular opinion threads XP) but also intelligent/thoughtful discussion, right? Try having one of those on Reddit... you say something like "Well, I don't like [popular character/ship/episode/etc], but to each their own" and *bam* everyone jumps on the bandwagon and starts downvoting.
(Upvoting has its downsides, too. For example, I've seen it several times where someone's posted something incorrect and they've been upvoted to the top - then someone else will come in with the *actual* answer, but no one'll see it cause their post either doesn't get as many upvotes, or it gets downvoted! :/ Drives me crazy since I can't stand misinformation - not saying that people that do this are intentionally misleading people, 9/10 it's obviously an honest mistake, but it makes it so much harder to get the correct story out there! >_<)
re: thoughtful posting vs spam, I'm a bit more lax on that, it depends on the context. I don't mind short posts or just "LOL that was so funny!" as long as it's not *all* someone ever posts. One thing that does drive me nuts though is when people post threads that are just like "Discuss this thing". (unless it's an episode discussion thread, or similar... I'm talking casual threads created by users, not "official" discussion threads, if that makes sense) Like "Who's your favourite character?" and then the OP doesn't answer their own question, that sort of thing. like... gosh if you don't have anything to contribute yourself, then why start the convo?! XD I was on a forum once that specifically discouraged that sort of thing though, so that's where I picked that up from.
Double-posting drives me nuts, too.
And OMG YES the decision making thing!!! It's not just anime communities, I see that all the time with cartoons too, it's amazing. SO many people wandering into the subreddit going "Should I watch this show?" - as if we're going to say no?! :P Then you get the odd one that's like "Well, I started watching it and I'm at season 4, but I don't really like it, should I keep watching?" - I can sort of understand posts like this if they've only seen a couple of eps of season 1, since some shows do pick up significantly after the initial shaky start, but if you're that far into the show and you're still not clicking with it... why ask others if you should keep going?! @_@
Also no one searches to see if their questions have already been answered any more... or even just gives the first page of posts a cursory glance to make sure no one else has posted the same thing that day... okay to be fair, a lot of sites these days have crappy search functions, but still...! I really miss the days of "Use the search function to make sure you're not making a duplicate thread" being a common courtesy if not an outright rule.
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Ah yeah, the duplicate post thing is a regular issue on our local area facebook group, when the same thing gets posted multiple times and everyone gets outraged about it multiple times....(heh).
Glad it's not just me wondering about how people make life decisions now, if they have to ask what they should be watching. Problem of influencers = people stop thinking for themselves. Again, not all people, but there's definitely a genre of people who like to have their decisions made for them by literally any random person they've never met before.
Another weird one is "hate-watching." People literally watching season after season of something just so they can post hateful or mocking comments about it. There was one like this on the anime reddit recently. She'd watched every episode, read every manga and novel, even jumped on me for not knowing when the last dvd release had been, yet she describes it as her most hated series ever. And tells everyone every time it's mentions. Follows anyone who comments on it positively so she can rant about it. And the reason she hates it is something in the novels that never got put into the anime...but she likes to rant about it without spoiler tags to try and dissuade people from watching it/shame them for liking the anime...
After a few rounds of being followed by her I told her if she carried on I'd report her for stalking and harassment. She's not spoken to me since. Hopefully she blocked me.
Actually, there's another thing from that forum I mentioned. People blocking people they have never interacted with. I understand blocking someone you've clashed with, or if they post upsetting content, but this was literally someone blocking someone else because they chose to play the game differently or liked a different character...
Eh.
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not really social media related but speaking on the not searching for already answered questions. it makes my head want to explode when someone i message with asks for information that i sent them previously. just scroll up in the message thread! it's not hard. but no you're going to inconvenience me and ask me to look up something you already have right there! i was raised not to bother people to the point where i won't ask for help until i've exhausted all other options. sometimes to the point where it's a problem. and these people are just asking questions again and again. i've actually had it happen where the answer was visible on my screen and they asked again!! if i can see the answer you can too.
@Taffeta, yeah the whole hate watching thing is annoying. I feel like on the internet there's an incentive for people to have an opinion on everything. and i think people also just like to hate on stuff too. like they can't say "no it didn't look appealing so i didn't watch" they have to rip it to shreds. the whole this thing sucks definitively because i don't like it mentality annoys me. i guess there is always that too cool for the popular thing mentality in people. but now instead of it being people you know IRL it's random people you'll never meet spoiling stuff. it's ok to just like or not like something. don't ruin it for everyone else. also maybe if they're still watching they actually like it.
i don't really go on any other forums these days. i was never really into fandom communities all that much. outside of ponies and web development my other main interest now days is learning about why people get into conspiracies and extremist movements. thankfully that interest doesn't overlap with ponies :) i don't go anywhere near the internet stuff where they hang out. i just follow and read stuff from people who do that kind of research. i don't go on Twitter much either these days.
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Going back to the TL;DR thing for a sec.. I just wanted to say that I do think there's a place for TL;DRs. Yesterday I was reading something that was a very long, winding, extremely technical explanation... it would've definitely benefited from a TL;DR in layman's terms. Though I guess that's less a "too long didn't read" and more a "I read it, but it was a bit too technical an explanation for the average user", but still... I think a short and to-the-point explanation *as well as the longer explanation* is good for situations like that. Or if it's the sort of thing where you need to go "Okay first up, TL;DR everything is fine, nothing was lost, don't panic. Anyway here's what happened". I think it's a good idea in general, in the right place/context, it just gets overused WAY too much these days.
I don't understand hatewatching either. I see a lot of posts like "Oh, the show sucks, but I like [my AU/redesigned/might-as-well-be-original-characters versions of] the characters" too and it just baffles me... People seem to put a lot of energy and effort into watching things they claim to hate. I don't get it! I'm not going to tell someone what to watch/what not to watch, I just don't understand the logic there. Ditto people who spend significant amounts of their time ranting and hateposting about something. There's nothing wrong with not liking something and there's nothing really wrong with ranting about it IN your own space (posting a rant in your own blog about how much you hate something - ok, posting to a community for the thing about how terrible and awful it is - pls stop), it's when people do nothing BUT whinge and moan about something they claim to hate that confuses me. If it makes you happy then go for it, I guess, but I just couldn't spend that amount of time and energy getting all het up over something I hated... I'd rather spend that time talking about something nice.
(I guess that sounds a bit hypocritical since I'm having a good moan about it here :P Well less moaning and more just being puzzled over it, but... ah well ^^;)
Beth - I'm exactly the same about asking for things. I always try and have a good search for the answer before resorting to asking others. I don't expect everyone else to be as neurotic about it as I am! :P But it does annoy me when you can tell they just didn't bother to look for the answer. It just makes me feel like "why should I put the effort in to answer if you didn't bother to put in 0.2 seconds of effort and see that it's already been answered two posts down?", you know?
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I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.
Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.
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The Imgur community is pretty strong. They're very sarcastic though :lol:
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I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.
Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.
OMG, I had a computer that crashed and died years ago, and I remember being SO SAD because I had saved a billion gifs for all of my ~hilarious and witty~ reblogs, and I was so sad I'd have to track them down again! :lmao: And I never did! But man, that takes me back! I miss all of the goofy gif shenanigans on there!
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I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.
Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.
I was in a lot of manga/seiyuu/Japanese stuff LJ groups back when. I have no idea if there still exist spaces for that stuff, probably there is a reddit if I go looking but this was much less toxic and much more friendly.
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yeah niche forums really need to make a comeback. i guess setting up a facebook group is easier and more cost effective though. but facebook :(
i miss the days when the internet was filled with hobby sites. i miss the hobbyist feel of the earlier internet.
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I despise the lack of accountability now. My scammer list is pointless. I spent YEARS working on it, only to have Ebay change its settings for "privacy". Now you can't obtain the same quality of data.
Also there's nothing stopping the scammers from just making a new account on whatever platform. And I have had mistaken identity before, which was very hurtful to the innocent person! Who knew SunnIEDaxe2777 at FreeEmail DOT com wasn't the same as SunnieDaxe 27? (*names were made up)
I miss the sense of comraderie and community but mostly I miss the sense of accountability and transparency.
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I miss the sense of comraderie and community but mostly I miss the sense of accountability and transparency.
This is the main reason I no longer sell on ebay. I still have stuff. Doubles. Things I need to get rid of. But I just don't want to deal with the hassle (and the fees for private sellers, the people who originally made Ebay a thing when it first took off.) How to repay your original customer base :/
I don't like how easily a lie can just go viral or spread without anyone bothering to check the facts. People need to question more. It's not even an age related thing. It's just a lack of reading thing, and a lack of thinking thing that somehow proliferates online. People rework things to fit into how they want to see it. I am not even just talking about big world issues - though it happens there too - but it spreads to stupid little things like the plots of films, novels, or what happened in a football (soccer) game.
I don't really understand but apparently everything these days is someone else's fault.
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I know this has turned into a discussion about social media, but it still seemed like an appropriate place to pop my head up after years of absence. Sorry if I’m intruding, I’m not sure anyone would remember me…
I’ve definitely noticed forums in general fading as people shift more focus to instant gratification social media. It’s just so hard to have any kind of cohesion there. I miss having drawn out and more insightful conversations about ponies!
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I know this has turned into a discussion about social media, but it still seemed like an appropriate place to pop my head up after years of absence. Sorry if I’m intruding, I’m not sure anyone would remember me…
I’ve definitely noticed forums in general fading as people shift more focus to instant gratification social media. It’s just so hard to have any kind of cohesion there. I miss having drawn out and more insightful conversations about ponies!
Welcome back! :hug: :happy:
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People rework things to fit into how they want to see it. I am not even just talking about big world issues - though it happens there too - but it spreads to stupid little things like the plots of films, novels, or what happened in a football (soccer) game.
I don't really understand but apparently everything these days is someone else's fault.
I'm afraid it's symptomatic of a deepening problem that's affecting our society. It's called things like 'reframing' (in psychotherapy) 'spin' (in media) or post-truth. Anything open to access on the internet is not worth looking at anymore IMO or is actively misleading. I like books and asking people I know about stuff. Luckily I can make my own fun. But I'm off-topic. I agree that because we are a small, well moderated and responisble forum makes this place a gem. At it's best, it allows us a magic door back into the world of My Little Pony kept alive through collecting, customs and activities like drawing. I've already said how much I appreciate it here but it's worth saying again!
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I know this has turned into a discussion about social media, but it still seemed like an appropriate place to pop my head up after years of absence. Sorry if I’m intruding, I’m not sure anyone would remember me…
I’ve definitely noticed forums in general fading as people shift more focus to instant gratification social media. It’s just so hard to have any kind of cohesion there. I miss having drawn out and more insightful conversations about ponies!
Welcome back! :frolic:
lovesbabysquirmy, that sounds totally miserable, and I don't blame you for being frustrated. Bouncing off of what Beth3346 said too, I feel like it's fighting a losing battle to try and keep scammers out of the Facebook groups. I mean, the obvious ones tend to get caught, but I know of at least one "popular" name who's a mod for multiple groups, allegedly holding people accountable for not scamming, who was very nearly kicked out of the pony community for scamming years ago.
At that point it feels like ... there must be so many more who skate by because they're only scamming amounts less than $50, or they're just too "popular" to be held accountable until they hit grand larceny levels. It's reminding me of the Unicornucopia fiasco (super-popular so she was able to rip off more people without backlash because people were afraid to go against the 'big name member'), but it's even worse because it's easy to change names or just make a new account on Facebook and rejoin the pony groups. And if the pony groups are modded by scammers anyway, we've got the foxes watching the henhouse!
It makes me glad that Paypal has such a long claim window now, because man, it feels so dangerous to be buying and selling ponies on Facebook! :faint:
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I still have stuff. Doubles. Things I need to get rid of. But I just don't want to deal with the hassle
Same here!
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I still have stuff. Doubles. Things I need to get rid of. But I just don't want to deal with the hassle
Same here!
yup. me too
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It's sad that so many of us feel like that. But even though the sale market was so much riskier back in the late 90s/early 2000s, it also felt safer because we could monitor scammers.
That said, I saw a few big names go up in flames because the people who they scammed were not believed and they had too much status.
I don't post at the TP anymore because of an incident like that, with a couple of well known people, one of whom was scamming and threatening people into keeping quiet and the other who was just operating a behind the scenes smear campaign. Thankfully both are gone now, but it wasn't unknown to have big name collectors behaving like the rules didn't apply to them and site moderators taking their side in scam complaints instead of listening to the people they were victimising.
But overall I feel like as a community we did better at policing things when there was some control over policing our trading areas. Now it's just too vast and people don't care.
If I could drive, I'd have taken everything I have spare to a Ponycon, or even a carboot sale by now and got rid of it. But I can't, so that's not an option.
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Yeah I have made slow progress with listing some items on the local sales marketplace. Glad it can go to people who appreciate it, but I am surprised at the lack of collectors in my area compared to what it used to be!
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I was never very active posting on the forum, but always enjoyed reading many posts. Due to changes in life I got sight tracked from MLP and the forum years ago, even sold most of my G2 and G3 collection, but I absolutely love seeing "old" members still being active here when I log in. It brings back happy memories as this feels like such a safe and loving place.
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I'm still here and have been in the pony community since early '97. I sometimes think about the people I knew back then and wonder if they are still around in the pony community. I probably have had times where I didn't sign in for years and I don't usually post much. I just tend to read more than I post. I had mostly quit collecting ponies, but I love collecting the Basic Fun ponies. I love this forum and would be sad if it ever became completely inactive. I'm really glad to see there are still people posting here, though I agree it's not as active as it once was.
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Hi all! I'm a bit late to 'the party', sorry. But I wanted to let you all know I love the Arena. I'm sad to see so many moved their sales to somewhere else (facebook, eBay, Etsy etc) where we could make a nice safe buy-and-sell area over here. Arena members are so much more relaxed and trustworthy. Why not boost the arena by selling through here?
(if the posting pictures is an issue I would gladly help, it is sooooo easy if you know what to do).