I agree.
Facebook I believe is the true culprit in the death of forums.
I used to be heavily active on the fishing and gaming forums years gone by. But started playing paintball a few years after Facebook started and just watched the paintball forums along with all the others just fall flat on their asses in favour of these group chats.
It’s a shame as so much conversation gets lost on groups in a short space of time, where as on here the threads stay active for so much longer
Steve
Facebook groups did serve a purpose alongside forums -
Forum for discussion, then off to the local walkon Facebook to find out who will be around, or to an events facebook to harass the opposition or to plan a faction etc
Things began to fracture when you had a Facebook group for this and for that, breaking up into little communities
When I started paintball I searched the Internet, found some forums and videos etc, but got the first impression that everything was happening in America, Russia and up north
Further searching and also pointers from people at games brought me to the above mentioned forums.
P8ntballer wasn’t really my thing as it seemed to be tournament/speedball dominated but it was paintball so it opened up another community and knowledge
Once I discovered it, scenario was my love so ukscenario was my home forum. The others would be my next stops
PBNation was swamped, mostly by ‘agg’ teenagers so I’d browse it but there was so much noise and little information to find.
I’d pass on the help I was given by others and find brits who had worked their way to pbnation and SpecOps to show them there was a world of paintball here in the UK too.
I claim responsibility for a kid who went on to form his own scenario team - as I found him on SpecOps ...... though it was bit of a tense moment when I wondered what the reaction would be from his mother .....
I pointed him to scenario games and he booked into a game.
(It was the one where you parked up at a farm then rode in the back of a clapped out van down to the site)
On the way back I noticed a little kid with his mother ..... and braved saying “are you x by any chance?” Then made eye contact with his mother trying to work out what her response would be to introducing myself as the man on chatting to a schoolboy on Internet forums!!!!
Firstly I thought his first event was sounding badly - he couldn’t use his co2 and his tippmann 98 wasn’t working on the site air bottle —— and then he said “so this guy gave me his ego for the day”
He was grinning from ear to ear
