You missed my point, and also reinforced it at the same time.
Yeah, I was starting to run into that, myself. I live on the West Coast, and I don’t use a computer at work, so I don’t get to see new posts until I get home from work, and by that time people in earlier time zones and/or who get to look at the board at work have already pretty much said what I might have said.
Though somebody mentioned something about “more focused boards”—I’ve actually hung around here for almost 15 years, while I’ve never stuck around a “single topic” board for more than a year. The problem I’ve found with, say, a board for fans of a certain band, is that after a year or so, I realize I’ve said about all I have to say on the subject, and the only reason to stick around is to keep answering the same questions that keep being asked by every new person to join the board. The diversity of topics here is what kept me around for so long.
The type of people that spend a large part of time on multiple message boards gossiping about anonymous strangers is special.
I stopped posting (and, for the most part, reading) when most of my friends moved to other social media platforms. For me, the sense of community is gone. I don’t read here often enough to embed myself in whatever community exists here now.
Actually, I didn’t. I thought the point you were trying to make wasn’t constructive and decided to respond to it differently than you would have liked.
I’m another of those conservative posters who finds this board increasingly hostile to anyone not in lock-step with the left-leaning echo chamber.
It’s not just that people might disagree. That’s expected. I posted quite a bit in Great Debates in the first few years (1999-2002 or so). You could actually have a civil debate without being called a hatemonger or racist for having “traditional” conservative views.
And to take it a step further, it’s the smugness of the left-thought that of course the liberal position is right and compassionate and enlightened, while those bad old conservatives are just knuckle-dragging neanderthals. When for every 100 posters, 97 agree with you, it’s easy to be smug and pile on. I have better things to do with my time than deal with being one of the 3. God bless the few remaining conservatives on this board who carry the flag, so to speak, for intellectual conservative debate.
Sam Stone doesn’t know me from Adam, but he’s one of the posters I enjoy hearing from the most. Too many like him have bailed on this place over the years. That is much to the detriment of this board.
If all left-leaning/Democrat/progressive/liberal (take your pick of what applies) were as intellectually honest as Spice Weasel, this place would be so so much better. Moreso than most I’ve noticed (and granted, I’m not paying all that close attention), SW seems not only able, but willing and eager to meet folks halfway and understand opposing viewpoints without automatically going straight to the personal invective. I really enjoy reading her posts.
As a case in point…go read the thread in elections along the lines of “Are GOP positions actually popular?”.
If I had a dollar for every time words like racists, sexists, xenophobic, stupid, evil, bigoted, and a handful of other unpleasant labels in just that 80 ish posts thread…I could go get some decent blow and a budget hooker.
Yeah, that’s an honest and in good faith debate right there…:rolleyes:
PS. Sam Stone is one of the best damn posters we’ve ever had.
Hello again, my friends. I’ve been here a long time. Even way back then, there was a liberal tilt to the board. Then, as now, some posters bemoaned the fact. Some conservatives simply went away. Other stayed to grouse about the left. That seems to still be happening.
What has changed? The rest of the internet world has changed a lot, in the last few years. There are a lot more places to have an online conversation now. There’s a multitude of games to play, from Bird Crush and Angry Candy, through the combat fps fantasies and world-building games, on up to the tough ones that actually require thinking. There has been a big growth of conservative-friendly blogs, message boards, and outright nests of Russian bots poisoning the wells.
I just quit, cold-turkey, a years-long addiction to Township a few days ago. Township is a highly addictive farming/manufacturing/town-building/boat-racing game. Your life, my friend, is your own, and you can choose how you spend it. I strongly advise against spending your life playing Township.
The SDMB has a wide variety of forum sections. You can choose the ones you like, and you can ignore the ones where you aren’t comfortable. I stopped looking at the Pit a long time ago. Sometimes I wonder what happens if you get lambasted in the Pit, but never go there to see it.
When I visit the SDMB, I go to the General Questions first, then IMHO and MPSIMS if I have time.
When I find a thread that’s interesting, but is already out to 4 or 5 pages, I figure one or two posters have already said what I was going to say.
Another “old timer” here. For me, I not only post less often, but also lurk less often even though I have more time to do so.
I used to spend a lot of time in Cafe Society. I loved the discussion that occurred after the weekly airing of television shows I watched. Each episode was dissected in detail and plot developments speculated upon endlessly. The epitome of this was “Lost”, but it also occurred with many, many other shows.
I miss those days.
With streaming services releasing an entire season at once, this level of discussion is not really possible with the long list of shows I like that get released this way. If a thread even exists, I avoid it because of the absence of an episode by episode sequential discussion.
And the number of threads about network television shows is woefully small. Perhaps because network viewership is down? Or perhaps because the shows themselves are not very compelling. Or just because some shows are getting old? For example, “The Amazing Race” used to have multi-page threads on each episode. Now days there is barely a post or two in the season-long thread. “The Good Place” is a notable exception to this lack of discussion.
Another outlier is HBO. “Game of Thrones” weekly episodes generate robust threads. And “Westworld” too.
Cafe Society is mostly music and movies these days. That’s OK, but it’s not enough to draw me in regularly.
I think maybe the amount of screen time we spend on our mobile devices instead of our computer might be affected the activity on the SDMB. Have mobile apps like Reddit and Quora sucked the Dopers away from the Board?
For me, politics invading EVERY fucking thread is largely responsible for the drop in my posting rate here because I’m sick of (half)wits who think political hit-and-run one liners somehow help a thread*. Also, the Pit has turned to shit since it’s now “All Trump, All The Time”.
Poster 1: I really thought that this week’s episode of such-and-such was clever
Poster 2: Unlike donny thump who’s not clever becuze he’s dum as rocks! Har har!
Some issues…
Number one, most formerly (and reasonable) conservative posters have become more moderate, if not liberal (perhaps it’s just the Overton window as applied to the Dope, if you wish). Many have indeed stopped posting in political threads altogether. Any conservatives which still participate almost invariably now represent the extreme right/Trumpian viewpoints (if not engaging in outright trollery), and a large amount of discussion is now spent trying to refute their empty, fallacious, and repetitive views (where they never change their positions on anything despite endless cites to the contrary).
I’d thus say that the patterns that you may note from liberals are in said environment inevitably going to look more extreme and lockstep by comparison, just given the opposition.
In any event I have grown tired of said little song and dance and generally quickly scan such threads for any substantive information or news.