Where has everyone gone? (And do I REALLY care?)

[Psalam]

I have been seeing variations of this question, "where is everybody," on threads throughout LoversLab recently. I can understand. There are people who used to weigh in on a regular basis, hell, there are people who used to make threads JUMP, who are seemingly absent. Their presence is missed. Or is it?

 

When I first started "talking" on LL it seemed to me that the moderators were closing a thread a day (or more). There were different reasons, of course. Some were just started, or taken over, by trolls. Most however, were legitimate and often interesting (to me anyway) topics. Those that wound up closed were hijacked (intentionally or otherwise) by someone with an agenda. That person would lead the discussion right up to the edge of the LL rules cliff and then push it off. Sadly, they appeared to drag any number of other people with them.

 

Some of this is seasonal. I've been on LL long enough to know that the standard school year appears to play a role in the quantity of material posted. Whether the person involved is in college, graduate school or teaching, their time is often at a premium during school terms. At least, that's my theory and it seems to fit the facts. So, right now, I would expect that things would be a bit slower. And they are.

 

And that leads to my subtitle: do I REALLY care? I think that I like a good discussion thread as much as anyone. However, in the past few months the moderators appear to have gotten something of a break from my original experience (see above). I think that this is a good thing. I like a good conversation but I can do without flame wars and drama queens. RL throws those people in my face on a regular basis when I can't do a thing about them. I like that my "free" time is not taken up by other people's emotional issues. So, do I REALLY care that some people are gone? No. Do I wish more people would get involved in the threads? Yes. I'd like to invite you to join me in making LL more inviting. A simple thing anyone can do is to respond to the "Say Hi" thread and invite people to join in. At any given time most of the people who are on LL have never posted. Not once. If, like me, you want to see more conversation, then join me in trying to get some of those people onto the Threads.

[steelpanther24]

In addition to what Alkpaz said, there is a lack of "new" games to mod.   As much as we dislike some of the thing Bethseda did, at least it encouraged modding.     At its core, LL is a game mod website.   So with big titles comes big traffic.

[megamantaray]

I'm around, technically came back after deleting my previous account as I divorced myself from gaming(mostly modding and Skyrim) due to anxiety and personal issues, I think there's a lot of people around and they're just kinda centred around mod threads. There's also a lot of different Skyrim/Fallout modding sites now, people will have naturally split up into them, and with many mod authors paywalling on Patreon or doing other things the collective as a whole has thinned out. The forums here are still fairly active though, just not as much as when these games that have mods available came out originally, it's been a while since that and all communities mellow out in time.

All that said though, the majority of people come to LL for the lewdy mods and kinda drift around and leave after a while, same with even the Nexus, it's not exactly mega super duper active in those forums or anything.

[GrimReaper]

I think most people treat LL as they treat nexus: File hoster first, community second. There's been an effort to silence dissenting opinions on some pretty sensitive topics, so there's that as well. There is and was a lot of bad blood, deleting posts and closing threads only makes things go away on the surface but they're still there. So, many people stopped being active here. There's no real reason to hang around here anymore.

 

Well that and forums in general have been dying over the recent years, with discord taking over and such.

[megamantaray]

4 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

I think most people treat LL as they treat nexus: File hoster first, community second. There's been an effort to silence dissenting opinions on some pretty sensitive topics, so there's that as well. There is and was a lot of bad blood, deleting posts and closing threads only makes things go away on the surface but they're still there. So, many people stopped being active here. There's no real reason to hang around here anymore.

 

Well that and forums in general have been dying over the recent years, with discord taking over and such.

The Nexus Forums are dead because they've been around this long and the mods are still power trip cunts.

Didn't know about any bad blood here though, mind you when I left back then I caused a bit of drama myself.

The rise of Discord servers has put a fairly large dent in the online forum board communities, that's a good point.

[KoolHndLuke]

44 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

discord taking over and such.

This I think. I prefer forums myself. LL isn't just the mods, it's the people that make the mods and they seem to be mostly absent anymore with no new games to mod being the likely culprit. As steelpanther24 pointed out, you can say all you want about Beth, but the modding community wouldn't exist as we know it without their buggy titles to fix/sex up. Hopefully Beth releases Starfield with the same modding support and things should start bouncing again around here.

[FauxFurry]

There is also another factor which is overlooked in threads such as this which speculate as to why the traffic decreases at certain times of year: competition from other adult modding sites for LoversLab users' time.

 

The number hasn't just increased a bit recently, some of them appeal to certain specific tastes (like The Pretty Kitty Emporium), feature content types which are not very popular here (see Vector Plexus' site), allow types of interactions discouraged on LoversLab (see Kendo2's site) or are outright banned from LoversLab (see the search engine of your choice because I'm not posting any mention of them here).

 

Of course, there is also the draw of lengthy video games with or without much mod support as well. Every hour spent playing something like Indivisible or Atelier Ryza for example is another hour someone isn't on LoversLab.

 

There are only so many hours in a day and so much effort which one can put into interacting with online communities.

[MadMansGun]

i'm still getting PM's at the normal rate, so the "traffic" feels about the same to me.

[FauxFurry]

34 minutes ago, Kendo 2 said:

Too many Leftists on this site for it to be fun to post.

You put it more bluntly than I would have but that is certainly one of the things which could be implied with my previous post.

 

Other sites such as yours or the inverse in the likes of ResetEra/NeoGAF can have less or more restraints concerning forms of politically correct or politically incorrect speech than LoversLab will for better or worse. 

 

LoversLab will get the bulk of the traffic since it gets close to hitting the sweet spot but other sites will still draw away a bit of traffic here and there for that reason.

[BleachedFur]

34 minutes ago, FauxFurry said:

You put it more bluntly than I would have but that is certainly one of the things which could be implied with my previous post.

 

Other sites such as yours or the inverse in the likes of ResetEra/NeoGAF can have less or more restraints concerning forms of politically correct or politically incorrect speech than LoversLab will for better or worse. 

 

LoversLab will get the bulk of the traffic since it gets close to hitting the sweet spot but other sites will still draw away a bit of traffic here and there for that reason.

Also sites that link to loverslab externally. Pirate sites. That kind of thing.

 

I remember you used to not need an account to DL mods here.

[FauxFurry]

2 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

Also sites that link to loverslab externally. Pirate sites. That kind of thing.

 

I remember you used to not need an account to DL mods here.

That is also an unfortunate alternate cause for reduced traffic, even if only ever-so-slight. Mod piracy is going to be a problem for every modding site online or Patreon page alike.

[Kendo 2]

23 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

I remember you used to not need an account to DL mods here.

Removing that requirement would cut down on a lot of the PC/woke bullshit that goes on here.  We don't have it over at NSFWMods.com and I alone get thousands of downloads each month.  DZ, Asenasen and JoshQ pull an equal amount, and with all that traffic we don't have ANY issues.  DZ still gets eyes on his ads and everyone who matters is happy.  But then again we openly discourage the social media aspect of the site.  It could bring in more traffic but at what price?  Leftists fucked up the old EyeCandy forums, Nexus and now they have their heels dug in at LL.  This site is a lost cause, but as long as the staff is happy that's all that matters.

[GrimReaper]

4 hours ago, megamantaray said:

The Nexus Forums are dead because they've been around this long and the mods are still power trip cunts.

Didn't know about any bad blood here though, mind you when I left back then I caused a bit of drama myself.

The rise of Discord servers has put a fairly large dent in the online forum board communities, that's a good point.

Well, you wouldn't know because most of it has been deleted. It's quite the conundrum, it gives rise to paranoia and conspiracy theories when stuff gets deleted out of nowhere but on the other hand people will ask themselves wtf you are talking about because they haven't seen anything whatsoever. On the surface, LL is a very friendly and welcoming site. It's quite convenient either way. Discord is pretty decentralized, everyone can just make their own little private server, however the problem of powertripping and brown-nosing persists, just on a smaller scale.

 

4 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

This I think. I prefer forums myself. LL isn't just the mods, it's the people that make the mods and they seem to be mostly absent anymore with no new games to mod being the likely culprit. As steelpanther24 pointed out, you can say all you want about Beth, but the modding community wouldn't exist as we know it without their buggy titles to fix/sex up. Hopefully Beth releases Starfield with the same modding support and things should start bouncing again around here.

There's plenty to be done for both Skyrim and Fallout 4 but since money has entered the modding scene I guess there's more lucrative stuff to be done nowadays. I'm quite excited to see how the modding scene for TES6 and Starfield will look like if Bethesda continues supporting mods (that isn't certain imo) and how much of a trainwreck the community itself will be. Well, excited may not be the right work but it's like anticipating a crash and you just can't look away, I guess.

 

I also wouldn't consider PC and woke-bullshit leftist but YMMV.

[KoolHndLuke]

Decline is clearly because of too much pc anymore. That and nothing has any shock value anymore. What happened to all the fucking sick/weird mofos that used to post shit here? Like.....I dropkick tree huggers and small children every chance I get and then take their lunch money! 

 

But, seriously.....I never understood what's so fucking great about social media like Fbook and twit. What's the point of saying shit just to be saying shit? I can understand just bsing for awhile. But like ALL the fucking time? Come on! I think we need to reserve parts of the internet for people that actually have something interesting to say about life or whatever instead of updating peeps on their status every few minutes. If you are interested in that kind of shit, then you clearly are easily entertained.

[Mr. Otaku]

I post sometimes in topics i'm interested in or if i wanna respond to a specific post for some reason. I tend not to make things too serious, as in, not getting too heated with anyone. Often in the middle of writing a post i stop and decide to erase it and either just lurk or get out of there because of not wanting to get in the middle of things or thinking the post wouldn't be necessary.
 

Sometimes i notice that i'm being a bit of a douchebag so i tend to stop myself from going too far into it. Once in a while i say a bunch of harsh stuff about people with certain opinions/thoughts/beliefs, sometimes it's warranted, sometimes it's just me being a douche. So i at least try to blend in a bit of my shitty humor to round off the edge lol.

 

Overall:

 

 

 

 

[KoolHndLuke]

^^^Robert Downey jr is one very interesting mofo. A terrific actor who's personal life has been such a fucking roller coaster of shit through the years. He's one guy I'm glad I didn't hear about committing suicide or overdosing cause that would be a goddamn shame. I don't think I've disliked a single role he has played.

[Alter Native]

Skyrim and Fallout are both pretty old. It's normal for people to leave communties for whatever reason. In a healthy community those get replaced with new people, but since both games are fairly old and no new game is on the horizon less people enter the communtiy and thus it's shrinking. 

 

[Psalam]

1 hour ago, Mr.Otaku said:

I post sometimes in topics i'm interested in or if i wanna respond to a specific post for some reason. I tend not to make things too serious, as in, not getting too heated with anyone. Often in the middle of writing a post i stop and decide to erase it and either just lurk or get out of there because of not wanting to get in the middle of things or thinking the post wouldn't be necessary.
 

Sometimes i notice that i'm being a bit of a douchebag so i tend to stop myself from going too far into it. Once in a while i say a bunch of harsh stuff about people with certain opinions/thoughts/beliefs, sometimes it's warranted, sometimes it's just me being a douche. So i at least try to blend in a bit of my shitty humor to round off the edge lol.

 

Overall:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

I truly value this. I would hate to have to tell you the number of iterations I went through to just start this thread and make the first post. "Peace be the journey."

[megamantaray]

5 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

 

But, seriously.....I never understood what's so fucking great about social media like Fbook and twit. What's the point of saying shit just to be saying shit? I can understand just bsing for awhile. But like ALL the fucking time? Come on! I think we need to reserve parts of the internet for people that actually have something interesting to say about life or whatever instead of updating peeps on their status every few minutes. If you are interested in that kind of shit, then you clearly are easily entertained.

 

Okay what?

Social Media is a place you can be social(using media), that's all it's for

>Make friends

>Keep up with friends

>Chit-chat and share memes

>Talk to people from overseas

>Join communities of like-minded individuals

>Update each other on your day as it goes along or things happen(from events to emergencies)

>Play games with each other, and set events up

>Have small debates, run polls for small communities

>Advertise stuff like a youtube channel, your art or hang out talking to the community you might've built

 

It's basically an open forum like this website but you only see what you want which for most people is just their friends updates, people who go to facebook for their news have issues

You can say pretty wise things on twitter if you want, or Facebook, not everyone's a flat-earther antivax boomer soccer-mom but I'm hardly pretentious enough to think that all people do is take pictures of their food

Most people use it like it should be used, to share memes and fuck around talking to each other without extra apps installed(lol Facebook), the reason for that is likely how draconian Twitter is about "wrong-think" but that's why you have chat clients like Discord dedicated to just messaging

 

Easy reach of other people and constant contact is what social media sites are for

There are places reserved for people who have "interesting things to say about life" it's called r/iamverysmart

Dunno if that comes off as hostile and I don't know how old you are but please step down from that horse you're gonna hurt yourself

Maybe this is why people are leaving

[Mr. Otaku]

39 minutes ago, megamantaray said:

Okay what?...

Social media at it's core is digital public space. Like people conglomerating, only digitally instead of in person. Information that you wouldn't otherwise find through traditional/dedicated websites you will find in social media. It gives a much rawer perspective and insight into people's thoughts and says, hell digital space tops in person physical space because a lot of the things we say online we wouldn't feel comfortable talking about in real life. Especially people who don't do well in groups bigger than 2 people or even one person in general. Lots of couples met online, professionals finding and meeting other professionals across the world, businesses growing because of online support and social media expansions and just friends coming together or making newer friends in general. Often in real life you're surrounded by incompatible or shitty people, social media can help you find the people that would give you good company. Forums too are a form of social media.

 

Edit: Just to be clear, just like physical space, digital space can be harmful as well. So being careful is always a given.

 

The only reason social medias are shit right now is because the companies that own them are not fully obligated to uphold free speech, so they can arbitrarily put the goal post wherever they want and shift them at a moment's notice to suit their agendas because "private company". None of this would be an issue if public law had proper effect on digital spaces but that's a whole another can of worms.

[Reginald_001]

Social media only stops working when people are being a-social. It's very simple, When people are social, social media can really add to your life. I know several handicapped people that have far richer lives because of facebook, twitter, etc.. they meet and socialize with people far more than they did when they were isolated at home before that. Social Media has revolutionized life for many people that aren't fortunate enough to live 'normal' lives.

 

When you start taking it all way too seriously, is when you need to back down. Because of my mod releases, I've had some trolls follow me around, trying to make my life miserable but they all left eventually. Nothing here 'to get me' with anyway, I just ignore the drama wherever I can. And I'm so brutally honest about myself that nothing that anyone can say to me, I haven't told myself already. No one is as hard to me as I am to myself.

 

So it comes back to the simple fact that social media (any kind) works well when people are being social. It's not called a-social media for a reason.

 

Social Media isn't called political media, so it's not for political discussions. Social Media isn't called 'let's piss people off' media, or 'drama-queen media'.. There are specific platforms for such discussions (also part of a larger platform that we could call 'social media' but that's a whole different semantic discussion). The point is that social media often 'goes wrong' when people start using it as platform for stuff that it wasn't designed for. You know them.. the friend that goes on political rallies on their facebook, the social justice warrior that invades a gaming platform to talk about equality, then starts screaming bloody murder when it is pointed out that THAT is not the place for such discussion.

 

My advice? Let the haters leave and the modders and gamers stay. Don't mourn their loss, they came here with the wrong agenda to begin with.

[Mr. Otaku]

1 hour ago, Alkpaz said:

That alone should scare you. Imagine if government had control of what you shared? Finger guns would not only be a felony, but a ton of other things like "okay" symbols. Yeah, nope. I rather have a choice in which platform I use and if I don't like it, I can move along. FB is only popular because most people use it, just like Myspace previously, and Hi5 before, or name any old Geocities page even before Hi5/Myspace and other similar things. Google, back then, was great because if had a good search algorithm (better than using Metacrawler, Yahoo, Excite, etc) but it seems to be falling behind lately and Duckduckgo seems to do a better job. Nothing stays popular forever, unless it is the only thing available.

And that's exactly the point. Letting any entity control extensively is a pathway to centralisation, censorship and oppression. If you wanna see what's potentially waiting for all of us, look at china. CCP owns everything, what you post, what you like, what you don't. And depending on that the CCP will decide if you're a "good citizen" or not, your social credit score will determine if you can't make purchases at all. Paypal is already denying transactions to people on the "wrong" side of the politics, social media companies denying voices to those that speak the things they deem heretical and the looming threat of the government joining forces with these to establish an iron curtain is always there.

 

Alternatives will always climb up when an established system becomes corrupt, but that only happens when it isn't too late. Freedom takes a bit of blood every now and then cause if something can climb up to dismantle a preexisting system, it can also become exactly what it dismantled over time. It's a cycle.

[Guest]

I love LL. This is the best forum I ever been member regardless of some unpleasant experiences with some people here. I joined LL not primarily because of mods, but to make friends. Unfortunately not all people are friendly are willing to make friendships, which is OK in the light of knowing we are all different. I almost left Ll few times but thanks to some REAL LL friends and good people, I stayed. Reading your posts @Psalam, I learned you are very intelligent, friendly and helpful person. Too bad not all people are like you and some others. Therefore, there were many reasons why some people left LL.  I also have my disappointments in certain things on LL, but it's it not the reason why would I stop being member. As long people here keep the rules 2, 8 and 9; "Live and let live" I would be a member of this forum even if there will be no single mod for any game.  

[KoolHndLuke]

4 hours ago, megamantaray said:

Maybe this is why people are leaving

 I've shared mods and helped people fix their games more times than I can count. What the fuck have you done here?

[worik]

19 hours ago, Psalam said:

So, right now, I would expect that things would be a bit slower. And they are.

I must confess I didn't even notice. Most probably because of my own crazy RL for the past months