Facebook/Instagram has really killed forums for the younger generation.
However builds and such don’t document that well on Facebook and either does getting specific advice(LS1tech or other car specific forums)
I would also guess $4 gas had an impact on the car scene.
Maybe that will all change I know a lot of people who are getting back in builds, drag racing, etc.
@cougarspeed is single handedly keeping the builds thread alive 
716 Racing group on facebook is 95% craigslist at this point so maybe its just Buffalo
I have yet to find a SoCal region car/motorcycle forum…
http://www.socalsportbikes.org/forums/
They even have a DVD
However I don’t think that is your scene
yeah I found a few on FB but I mainly meant an all encompassing one like this forum.
but I will check out that socaleuro one
Truth
I went a good year or two with hardly checking in on here…wandered back some and noticed right away this place is dead.
I think its a combination of reasons. Several people I know don’t use this forum because they feel a large number of the users were dicks. I’ll agree with the above about politisuck killing any thread that’s moved there. Actually, the moving of any threads with the auto/off topic and that new auto/off topic section was pretty annoying for me.
The interesting thing about facebook, is I’ve seen that with other forums too. A lot of the snowmobile drag guys never frequent forums anymore…they are all on facebook now. In fact, one of the big 2 stroke turbo guys invented a pressurized air chamber to use in place of the spring in the primary clutch…he isn’t advertising anywhere but on the facebook groups.
I frequent yellowbullet and hardcoresledder way more often than here. Snowest once in a while.
active members are the same as 10 years ago that are older and not contributing as much + not the frequency of meets with recruited more members = gradual decrease of activity? IDK.
I have a garage full of crap I dont want to sell on Craigslist. I could use a SOCAL forum. Wait, am I doing this right? @JayS
my opinion is that forums are still a critical part of any sense of community but that the value has changed and few people are using them properly. Facebook is too… i dont know… fleeting or temporary???.. it’s in between forums and snapchat… you can’t search posts and you can’t keep things topical… it’s always dominated by who ever is the most bored with an iphone in their hand waiting in line somewhere.
with SON we have a better balance because there is such a high level of activity in the groups vs. the forum.
some of this is technical though. with all the spammers and DDOS attacks the forums have to be locked down a bit beyond what is ideal. (manually approving people for example). however, i have to ‘ignore’ maybe 10 fake FB accounts a day that try to join the various groups i over see. anyone whose FB account is less than a month old i decline automatically.
demographics has a large piece of this
we are all older and more mature with new accountability. our wives won’t let us hang out on the computer all day and we’re each better off spending time with family anyways.
for me the forums hold enormous sentimental value and i’d keep paying the hosting until my last dollar was gone but most forums just die. verticalscope has made numerous advances on us over the years but we continue to decline even entertaining it.
i’m not sure that there is a reaosnable way of making things BIG again but i would also bet that you guys would not want 3 times more people on the forums… it makes for more quantity but not more quality…
Priorities have shifted. I’m still relatively new, but I think most of the forum has gone from cashing their paycheck at PepBoys to looking into houses and 401ks.
I remember being 14/15/16 and pretty much just blowing every paycheck at Guitar Center. I haven’t stepped foot in there in years.
Based on last summer people posting on here doesn’t accurately represent people still out there meeting up/cruising/going to the track.
Still have spend money on things you enjoy in life or no point in working.
^True, but it probably isn’t to the same scale as you were when you lived with mom and pop. At least not for me.
Mobile phone is the primary decline of forums most people spend less time in front of computers now and more time in mobile apps. Accessing and using forums are terrible on mobile platforms
dedicated motorsports forums are pretty active . . . . .
this is part of the problem. this forum almost has a bit of a “group” feel with an “in” crowd. if you bring in more people, you will for sure bring more quality because there’s a larger pool of people contributing.
So much truth to this. When you do nothing but work then come home, you don’t have much of a life. Working is not living, you need to get out and enjoy things. I don’t have all the projects going on that I did but I still had to keep one to retain my sanity.
yup. look at yellowbullet. currently has over 2300 active users. sections for everything from racing to cooking, guns and political. every section has plenty of new topics and posts each day.
on a side note, why the fuck are the supporting sponsors/vendors on here up above the regular sections of the forum? every other forum I see puts them down with the classified section.
I’m not sure if I should feel happy or sad that I’m basically the same person I was back when I joined UBRF. perhaps with a little more of everything that I had then.
more events are the key to life for a place like this. IMHO
Might as well change the thread title to “When NySpeed died”… really just don’t care about shit anymore. If I was building a car, I wouldn’t care to post progress pics (same with my house projects which are constantly ongoing). Nobody is posting street racing videos anymore. Very small number of sanctioned racing discussion. I mean, save for a small amount of build threads and a few “which luxury sedan should I buy and sell in 3 months” threads, there isn’t much happening.
There used to be so much smack talk (friendly, but inspiring competition), local racing videos, technical discussion and instruction (stickies in the tech section are from 2007 and older), meetups, etc…
And you don’t even live in the same state :lol:
A lot of the racing stuff still goes on I know a few people stopped posting vids because random people who don’t even own cars worth mentioning would reply with “street racing is dumb” when UBRF/NYSpeed really started from a bunch of people modding cars and racing them.
Maybe its time for the 2015 call out thread.
The STM crew did a lot to keep things moving last year between Emery, Paul, Chris, and David.