Hello

I enjoy reading this board and Max.

But on both boards, there are few new topics, and it seems even fewer responses to those topics.

Are fewer people interested or are there just fewer people responding.

There used to be a few posters who posed great questions and scenarios that garnered many replies.....but their prose has diminished.

My question is....what is the state of your interest these days.... and what may have happened to change your interest.

Best Regards
Driver

I'm going to be honest: I don't direct a lot of my energy into forums at this point. I've been burned badly twice now by sites that I have no real control over. I spent 8 years building a Facebook account and was locked out and then I spent 8 years building a Twitter account and was suspended for something I didn't even do. That's A LOT of time spent working on building online community that I was just pulled from at the drop of a hat. So, now I'm really not interested in investing my time into anything unless it's totally under my control. For me that's my blog, which I've been maintaining for 8 years now. (Uh oh, it's at the 8 year mark -- I better make backups!). It just feels like a better investment of my time.

As much as I appreciate that this forum is here, the interface is really dated (circa 2000?), and I think that fewer people -- especially younger players -- will be interested in spending time here when they have more modern, dynamic spaces that are more visually appealing and allow for the easier addition of media like photos and video. I mean, I couldn't even get a YouTube video link to work here!

I have tried to start some conversations but find that few if anyone replies. So, I just go back to my blog.

Still, I check in and respond to things that interest me. Or to post something I think is worthwhile, like that there is a new BDSM club in Philadelphia (Events board).

I wish the better folx from Max would come over here, but I know people have sentimental attachment to that site, even if it is glitchy and unmoderated.

I agree with your view and sentiment about how much time you invested in creating an online audience and the time it takes. About coming over here, I personally tried to get people over from Max to this site - especially when Domina.ms was redesigned to LOOK like MF. Few, if any, came over. (Who could be sentimental about Max? I joined in the late '90s at the height of NYC's BDSM scene, dropped out and rejoined a couple of times. But Max, like any site, needs moderators.)

I'd post more topics, and have to a certain extent, but I tend to react now since I'm far less active (and far older LOL!) than I used to be. Some of the current topics seem to resonate with me that come up versus taking some of you "down memory lane" which I could do easily.

Agree it certainly is slow here for the most part. Personally I always check in most days to see if anything interesting has been posted. I find this board a very refreshing, for lack of a better word - sophisticated space. Twitter, Only Fans, Sext Panther, Reddit get most of my online kink time but there is something more familiar, comfortable here. I also find the dialogues here while limited usually very intelligent, thoughtful, and interesting. Definitely can’t say the same for the rest of the internet.

The day of the posting board in general has come and gone it seems but I do hope this one continues for a long time.

It hasn't, though. It's that it just looks different.

This board is just reflective of its time, 20+ years ago. At that time this *was* sophisticated. There weren't yet places like Facebook and Twitter. This was the step up from email lists we had back then. We moved from interacting through email to a website, where we could create user names and passwords! Awesome!

Technology has grown to meet the needs of what people want in their online communities. We get pretty graphics, seamlessly integrated elements, and more ways to customize each user's experience, like profiles, photo and video albums, etc. And now, in the age of the gig economy, which helps people supplement, or (theoretically) gain independence from exploitative labor industries, we have things like OnlyFans and Patreon. A natural evolution, really.

So, while this board can be comforting in its simplicity it is outdated. It's the grandparent of stuff like FetLife, which is essentially the same thing; Fetlife is just wearing a newer outfit. Each forum here is like a group there. Each moderator here is like a moderator there. Each discussion here is like one there, except it only allows the equivalent of "flat mode". You get the picture.

All the structures are the same, it's just the user interface that's different.

I agree with this. I came over from MF and check both sites once a day, or more -- more out of distracted habit than anything else. I do feel sentimental towards Max just because I have been on there since the very beginning and have had some personally important conversations there. Also, when 9/11 happened, there was a subforum and it was a place to go and share. Generational change of the kind you cite, politics, trolling, disrespect towards dommes have hurt it a lot, though.

I do like writing and thinking about DS and the particular dynamics of experiencing that in the pro scene so I would write and comment more. But at the same time, I've been doing this a long time, and not nearly as active these days, and feel that I have hashed out a lot of questions over the years. I'm conscious of just repeating myself.

I get this. But we all have opportunities to create new sentiment. Like this board. Or another place.



That's not generational. There has been disrespect toward women and to each other in general since we evolved to multi-cellular beings that has to in some way compete for survival.

I think that Max has suffered terribly from a lack of moderation. It's why there doesn't seem to be many Dommes who participate there. And without Dommes it's nothing. Self-respecting women don't care to hang around guys who talk about and to women like garbage. I'd literally rather stare at a wall than read some of the trash I have seen posted there.



If you're having conversations with new people then it'll be new to them.

Or maybe you need a new experience to stir up some new feelings and thoughts.

Or maybe you could write articles or a book.

I think that Covid was a pretty serious event whose effect in our life we don't fully understand yet. I think it affected social relations in general, I think it also affected BDSM in a negative way and as a side effect I think at least in the USA the best days are behind. But this is worth of a separate thread.

There are only so many topics and people on both boards tend to people who have been with it for a long time. There are only so many times you can get excited over the same repeated topic.

At least on MF the high traffic threads, when they happen, tend to be about people reacting to a troll.

I stopped posting to the boards when I kept seeing posts and replies that upset me. I would read some discussions and go "wow, they really just don't see us as humans at all." Why would I give my time to a place that makes me feel that way?

I understand that some of these posts/replies are troll posts, but unfortunately some aren't.