LogFAQs > #885125965

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I think the slide started when LUE got locked and 4chan started to rise as an entity, though it took a few years for that to have any real visible impact. The rise of sites like Digg and later Reddit definitely helped, as did the fact that game hints and walkthroughs are almost always better on sites like Youtube or individual game Wikias now (I rarely use FAQs on this site at this point, and haven't for years).

At that point, I was only beginning to post on GameFAQs (an it would have been a few years before starting to post on PotD). But it definitely does seem that around that time smaller forums (I was a member of several) started to dwindle down as more and more people started using Myspace, and inevitably Facebook in the last few years of the decade.

There was still activity, but not nearly as much activity as there was in the early 2000s (Most of which I frequented ezboard and invisionfree as GameFAQs was blocked at school, which was where I spent most of my internet time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But things like Twitter also hurt, because it meant the sort of people who would gravitate to a general social board on any site now had an alternative outlet to go to.

Oh god don't get me started on Twitter. I remember when Twitter first started becoming a "thing" around the 2008 presidential election, that was when I was when I started getting interested in Politics. I swore off TV after CNN did nothing but repeat Tweets for hours a day.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Every website that has ever existed has always benefited from an influx of new blood to refresh the pool (while the older posters would ideally help "socialize" the newer ones into Internet etiquette and make them less assholish), but GameFAQs has been "stagnant" for years now because the incoming new user flood has diminished to a trickle, while the loss rate probably remained constant (or even increased).

I would say this is more or less the same with every site that's not "big". GameFAQs might as well not even have a domain name at this point because we're not going to get many new visitors when there are other sources of discussion and information available.

The loss of uses is definitely a thing, I think it started around 2011. That year had a lot of people on here start to trickle away (this was around the time my second account got banned). I remember returning a year later and the people here were very different.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And it's not even as if this is a GameFAQs-specific thing or a PotD-specific thing. The same sort of social dynamic applies to every website that's ever existed (and even Usenet and BBSes before WEBSITES existed).

Which is a bit sad to be honest. Seeing the internet "die" in favor of social media depressing having been invested into this (in one form or another) for over half of my life.
---

Judge, Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. | http://hwbot.org/user/secretdragoon/
You're a regular Jack Kerouac