Moderator Note
Let’s not completely derail this thread, please.
This is a discussion of demographics, so it’s ok to mention that the board skews towards older white males. But let’s not hijack this into racial issues or other issues that will take us away from the overall purpose of this thread.
46 posts were merged into an existing topic: Gender, race, and other issues (split off from Doper Demographics thread)
61, male here. Non-white, if that matters.
Joined when I was 38.
That was half a lifetime ago. I’m 63 now.
I wasn’t unusually young when I joined. I’m not unusually old now.
I knew this place skewed older but didn’t expect that I’d be so far to one end of the spectrum. I’m 37, male, and joined in 2018.
Reminds me of when I attended a gathering of the Oughtred Society (slide rule aficionados) and I was the youngest person there by a couple of decades or so.
47 y.o. white male. I joined when I was 26, when this place was social media. I would love to see updates to the SDMB that might attract younger people, even if it alienates some older folks. Perhaps some younger people put into leadership/admin positions, to help steer the ship toward younger waters. If we don’t evolve, we’ll die. I’d rather see it become less “stuffy” and tradition-focused here if it can help attract a more diverse group of posters and keep us going for another generation or so.
Okay, who claimed to be 80-89 and then switched their vote? Probably one of those smartass kids messing with the poll again.
I can think of 1, possibly 2 80+ posters and one in their twenties. Come on old timer(s), time to vote.
Man, that’s not just going to happen. Not the changes part - I suppose that part is possible. But I’m quite convinced there is literally nothing that’s going to bring in a healthy influx of young people. A couple maybe, but nothing more than a curious trickle at best. As social media goes this is a dinosaur platform and nothing can be done about that.
Even if you do evolve you die 
. I’m okay with that. I’m going to get older and will die sooner than I like as well.
I’m fine with people raging against the dying of the light. But I’m pretty certain that, rage though you might, this place is going to slowly but surely shrivel out of existence
Agreed and I think it’s okay. Nothing lasts forever. This site has lasted a long time.
I also don’t think it’s wrong to keep going and do what we can to keep it alive and appealing.
Just don’t do so with the illusion that it will never end because everything does eventually.
I think the early success of the SDMB was due more to the lack of sites on the internet rather than the quality of the SDMB itself. Without other places to hang out, a wide group of people hung out on the SDMB. But as the internet grew, other places popped up that people enjoyed hanging out at more. If message boards with long-form posts were preferred by internet denizens, then we’d see lots of similar message boards. But instead, we see places where short comments and likes are the norm, like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, etc. Clearly that form of communication is preferred by most people since the bulk of internet sites favor that style. I don’t see how the SDMB as we know it can attract younger people since younger people don’t seem to prefer this kind of site. In fact, I don’t see how it can attract people in general since most people prefer a different communication style. To attract a larger audience, it would likely have to change drastically, and would likely not be the preference of the current population. I suspect the SDMB (and similar message boards) will slowly die away like other internet technologies like gopher, newsgroups, AOL, etc.
Any longshot chance of this place becoming widely relevant was destroyed by ill advised, comically bad management decisions over ten years ago. Ultimately, nothing probably would have worked because, as many have said already, this medium is dying. I am sure we have many years left but we aren’t getting any younger.
Why don’t we have that banner (or subtitle) any more, about fighting ignorance? That is part of what drew me here 10 years ago, and fighting ignorance has got to appeal to the young’uns right?
No. Not in this format. And they certainly don’t want lectures from a bunch of “Boomers”. They can much more easily get their information elsewhere.
Well, there was the popularity of the Cecil books and articles.
Yeah, the old newspaper column in a free weekly brought me here. But weekly newspaper columns, like newspapers generally, are the senescent realm of seniors and near-seniors. They no longer drive much if any traffic.
Except we were told many times over the years that there was absolutely no interest in the books anymore and they had bunches of unsold books that they couldn’t get rid of.
And we know the column wasn’t a draw because they scrapped it, along with the Cecil persona years ago.
I think management gave up on attracting new members many years ago and it’s pointless to try now. Pay to post, allowing racism, allowing misogyny and the overwhelming leftward tilt of the board has slowly but surely cost us many posters. To try to recoup that loss now is just unrealistic. I’m just going to continue to enjoy it while it lasts. I think we’ve got quite a few years left.
I agree with all of this. I was a long time fan of the columns in 2001 when I stumbled onto this place. Very few people who are going to stick around and participate are going to find this place now because there are generally much better resources to get useful information and the format here is relatively antiquated.
We should put together a fund to advertise the Factual Questions forum to university students and researchers.
I’m struggling with how to respond to this suggestion. There is no way that we could be of any real use to university researchers and even if we were, trying to reach out to them through advertising is insanely impractical.
I disagree. In this thread:
A discussion on actual prices around the country ensues. It does not match what I can find (DDG not Google).