Do you think Reddit has killed traditional forums?

[Bonesnatch]

I remember the days during the 90s and early 2000s when there was a message board dedicated to every subject under the sun. I used to be part of an old truck restoration forum and numerous game specific forums.

With the rise of Reddit, however, it seems like traditional forums like this one have dropped off the planet. This makes me sad because Reddit is all about karma farming, quick quips, dumb memes, and down voting dissenting opinions into oblivion.

I am curious about your thoughts. Do you think Reddit has eaten away at traditional forums? Do you see a resurgence in traditional forums? Why do you prefer to post here instead of the FF subreddit?

 

[Stanley]

I'm not sure how to answer this. But lemme say right off the bat, I always feel that I'm more noticeable, even though not really portrayable, when mingling in forums, compared to Reddit or social media. It's prolly due to me more inclined to write with more content and better articulation. Plus, I prefer the search option, stats and ranking achievements in a forum(if there are any)

 

[Six]

I don't think Reddit by itself has necessarily killed traditional forums. I think social media in general and with how fast paced it is these days kind of took over, but I definitely do think that forums still serve their purpose in no message limit writing about games, art, whatever else. A lot of places like Twitter, and even FB where one will prevent a text wall, and others won't gain as much activity if it's not a short punch line.

I think activity on forums has declined because a lot of people who "grew up" on forums, moved away from them, and then you have the newer generations who grew up with the likes of Twitter, Facebook etc, who might not even know about forums.

I think it's more generation tied than it actually is social media outlets, come to think of it. Like, you'll never see me use the likes of Twitter or Reddit for discussions or "threads", they don't even read like threads to me on those platforms.

 

[Miko]

I think a lot of us who are still foruming are probably people who have grown up using forums to communicate with others - Social media wasn't nearly as fast or efficient at the time when forums were more popular. In a way I suppose forums kind of are it's own social media, just more structured. I don't think Reddit is nearly as personable as forums, and they're more suited for people who want immediate gratification for whatever they're there for content-wise. On Reddit I know there are people behind each username, but only the same way I feel like there are people in cars when I'm driving - I don't know if it's a man, woman, dog, chocobo - who they are, etc. Where at least on forums I can tell a little bit by the signature and/or avatar someone has or the throwback MSN status title they're using at the time.

But, yeah, I like thinking about forums just being slower but more structured conversations with people of common interests. That said, I don't think the younger generations after us have that same relationship with forums and therefore you don't see as many new faces and such. I feel like everything is so easily available for people that kids (like my own) want everything *now*! Forums are probably, I presume, just too slow-paced in the world we are living in today. Even now, our active regulars don't take the time to log in anymore, they'd prefer the instant satisfaction of opening their phone and checking Discord vs logging in & seeing what's new and what's been posted. To their credit - same. If I have to wait in line at the store I'm scrolling to see what weird thing Adam has said or what cat photo the Emperor has posted - It's easy and simplistic and a lot easier to read than the forums on my phone. Again, forums are more structured, Discord (or even Reddit) are more instant, simple, clean, etc.

Also, people are busy. We're all adults now, crap to do, etc. - Not enough time to sit down and dedicate a bunch of time to writing up a long response to things that someone may not even read. So kids aren't the only ones to blame with forums dying per say. I do wonder, if forums happen to survive this long, if we'll see a resurgence once our current average age group begins retiring in the future. More time, more money, who knows.

So yeah, I don't think there's any one thing, it's just... old. Like us.

 

[Dionysos]

Reddit is still a bit of a mysterious space to me. I've seen Reddit threads from time to time, but I don't get a real sense of community or belonging from them. Usernames are all like 'Personontheinternet2000' or 'King_Dudemaestro_The_Third' (made up off the top of my head, my apologies to anyone with those names who might be reading). Essentially it makes everyone look like a bot and not a person. This anonymity is liked by some people, but I don't know. All or most interactions seem to be instant, but then instantly forgotten. But that's the view of an outsider who doesn't really understand Reddit.

A few years ago I did once contemplate using Reddit to share FFF's magazines and also my Final Fantasy mythology articles. I figured months upon months of hard work should deserve a wider reach every now and then. But then somebody advised me that you need to settle in with Reddit a bit more or they'll bite you. Reply to other threads. Post other things. Which I get, but I can only be in so many places at once. I decided that for now it would be hard to cultivate a presence here, Reddit, and elsewhere. Not without dedicating myself to social media full time. Which I can't and don't want to do. I get scratching a few backs to get our own scratched, but too much scratching and my nails will get ripped off.

I guess people who use Reddit above everything else aren't wanting the aspects of forum culture that Reddit cannot provide, or they don't know about them, having not experienced them themselves. The generation gap would seem to be a contributing factor. The people who still use or remember forums most fondly are generally old enough to have less time to spend on forums than they might like.

Reddit and Twitter, etc, can be time sinks, but they trick people into thinking they are quick and easy things to check. "I'll peek for five minutes", someone says, before encountering an endless stream of content that keeps them trapped for hours. Hours that they are there, and not on forums, unfortunately.

Reddit hasn't killed forums, but part of the audience that has the same interest levels and fandom urges and would usually be on forums (and would be very, VERY welcome here) is now over there, probably not even knowing what they are missing out on.

 

[Frey]

The first time I knew about Reddit was when running into issues at work involving paperwork and trying to find a solution for this on the Internet. As a cashier in a supermarket, working with all kinds of papers is a real challenge for me. Usually, I will find out the solution immediately in the first link after entering the data on Google. If not, then I only see the answer from Reddit. This makes me feel that forum is not just a traditional forum. But more problem has been revealed since then.

A terrifying aspect of Reddit is that "unwholesome pictures" may be shared. This case has once appeared on both Imgur and Twitter. Sometimes you will see quality pictures posted on Reddit by professional accounts, but it turns out they were edited and shared from malicious websites. Unfortunately, that topic is the simplest method to get likes and shares without causing wars on the forum. I think it might even help a conventional platform nearing the end of its life breathe again.

Funny if sharing some unwholesome things may be an excellent way to traditional resurgence forums. For me, this looks like the way that describes the main character in the movie Perfect Blue, a famous woman who wants to be an actress in a dark film more than a singer, even if it will make her lose her morality and then turn to a psycho with a friend of her. It means if something like karma farming, quick quips, and dumb memes… might help make a forum better than only post any wholesome things, then the platform will allow people to talk about them more. Indeed, I remember a thread on Reddit where so many people discuss which characters in a team will be getting make love to each other and how they do that in FF. I slightly feel those people reallly want most of the main characters in FF will be the same as the main in Perfect Blue. And I believe this kind of this post will never stop attracting a lot of guys than any accurate information. So it's good or not? Who knows.

 

[Paddy McGee]

If I have to wait in line at the store I'm scrolling to see what weird thing Adam has said

UM EXCUSE ME?! What comes from my mouth fingers is pure, unadulterated comic genius of such grand proportions that the world simply cannot understand how to handle just how funny my jokes truly are. Wow.

To the point at hand but also to try hit on other aspects outside of "people just moved to social media bc easier":

I feel like the disappearance of Forums has a bit to do with the changes of how people use the internet - namely that we tie our real world lives, goods and services to our online persona.

Most people opt against pseudonyms on Social Media and take ownership of what they say and who they say it with as part of an overall brand they use: people do their shopping through Instagram and they receive their news from Tiktok nowadays. With the advent of using the internet to assist with dating, travel, food delivery and so forth identifying using a pseudonym just doesn't have the same appeal anymore. I'd argue that signing up for a forum, with a pseudonym, is now directly tied with "being a bit creepy on the internet" and "saying things that are morally/politically/culturally against XYZ" for many young people; that's not a look you're going for and you risk being ostracized and seeing real life impact if you do get involved.

The shift of how content is created on the internet could also be a factor. In the earlier days of the internet you could get by on Youtube with just gameplay and some tips and tricks. The only content made about a game in 2009 could be the ASCII guide someone uploaded to the internet. It's changed now, however: it's all about the brand and personality now; people don't care about what others think of a game, they care about whichever personalities they like think of a game. Why would Paul care that 50 people on the Sonic forum loved Sonic frontiers when Dunkey thought it was dog shit? It kills the desire for conversation, or rather is sates the appetite to hear what other people have to say; the personality has basically said what the fan would have wanted to discuss or the discussion happens as part of how the personality has approached the topic (on their discord or channel comments area) rather than about the topic itself.

Younger people are the lifeblood of Forums like this one; they keep it going because, bluntly, they have the time for it. Partners, careers, children take significant portions of our time - most young people have one of these going on, at most. Along with this, young people generally are still looking for their place of belonging and for many, that leads to the internet. Without this group, and their infinite spare time, the constant communication required to make a Forum seem interactive and "alive" is much more scarce.

There's a significant drop in the stigma tied to having many of the interests that people flock to the internet flock for: games, both tabletop and video, are part of the cultural zeitgeist in a way not thought of before; the biggest movies of each year are based on comic book heroes that are known world wide. Nerd culture, as a niche, has largely fallen by the wayside with younger people. Teenagers tend to make up large populations of the people who partake in these forums; but if they can find acceptance elsewhere, what really brings them here? If you can get followers, as yourself, by talking about games on Twitter why would you want to create another identity to discuss it on a specific forum?

I think about this last point a lot, honestly: part of why I've stayed here as a regular is because I put a bit of "real world" Adam into what I post and how I post it; I connect with people past just discussions and on a more personal level - we all have psuedonyms in the Discord but reference each other, in the majority, by our real names. Life forces us into situations where we create different masks to handle different groups and occasions; I feel like people would opt to have fewer masks whenever they can.

This is just a stream of conscious set of ideas I typed up procrastinating from work.

 

[Raspberry]

i've said this before, that people dont want to be accountable for their opinions anymore. And i'm not talking any political opinion. some people just want to say "I like it. don't make me question my own taste".

Social media has removed the ability to have deep conversations. and if they do have them, they are quickly forgotten.

 

[Shu]

I think like any communication hub, there comes a look and feel and behavior of the application. Take for example persistent chat tools. Not one suited the need for all, so people had multiple chat programs at one point on a computer. AOL instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC, Chat Rooms from various web sites, and more at one point. Now a days, people have that same thing going on via their phone. Facebook Messenger, What's App, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams and etc.. It's just the way people prefer to communicate in general that changes. Now you have face time apps that have taken over, whether quick little video sessions that are captured or complete peer to peer live.

Forums I think will be everlasting to a degree, but lower population due to they usually are centered around niche crowds. The only thing that might take it's place in some ways is discord. Discord integrated voice/chat rooms/threading/private chats and all that into one. I think discord does it well, but honestly I feel it's usually a disorganized brain spew from a lot of people. Forum threading is a lot easier to pop back into since you don't have to search long to find what you are trying to find in general. You also feel like your messages are always relevant without the worry of time. I feel once a reddit thread or discord thread goes stale, that's pretty much it.

Forums I also believe has less anonymity to agree. While you might have more chat time in other community apps, I think forums generally keep known people, even if they don't have anything to say about real life. I think sharing life is brilliant on a forum, but there is no pressure too. Your behavior/emotion generally is spelled out in your writing style. There is less of a need for a quick reaction. Getting to someone's point that was already mentioned, I think forums also give you more depth in conversation. You can edit what you say multiple times, and generally it's not just a splurge of words on paper.

I think that's why Final Fantasy Forums is always a welcoming spot to come back to despite which walk of life you are in. I'm fairly ancient here, but I can tell you, it doesn't take much to get back into a good conversation.

 

[phazmatis]

I think forums became popular because they were the best place to get information, and also were fun social hangouts. Nowadays, Google is so good that you can search for your exact question and get directed to a specific Reddit thread that answers it. And the fun social hangout is Discord now.

Also, a lot of old forums were re-created a Facebook Groups (which are very similar to forums actually). The only bad thing is they're full of boomers and their political opinions they just can't keep to themselves. Sigh.

 

[Daenoxiis]

Kind of. If we're going by trending standards, Reddit did to forums what Facebook did to social media platforms and what massive corporations do to smaller local businesses to put it to analogies.

 

[Jdeadevil]

This topic is something so familiar to me that I had to check if I'm the one who made it. Here's an example that sums up what other people have said about having more of an identity on an Internet forum; I met one of my best friends on this forum who I'm still in contact with today. I also met my current girlfriend on another forum which has since gone offline. In contrast, 99% of the people I've tried to befriend on Reddit have ghosted me, life either got in the way or they just couldn't be bothered.

That said, even though I'm very nostalgic about Internet forums for the same reasons as Bonesnatch, I don't have the best memories of using them, I was bullied and trolled a lot by various communities back in the day and that's not to claim victimhood, I was a proper little shit back when I used to surf Internet forums on the daily. The reason forums are so bittersweet for me is that I wish I was a little older and wiser by the time I got to the stage where I was curious enough to use them as much as I did back then.

In-fact, that username over there to the left? That's something I made up when I was thirteen before signing up to a forum for Game Genie and could barely type a coherent sentence. I don't have the best mental health today, but I would never go back to that time period.

Edit: Just looking at my profile and seeing people messaging me from 11 years ago is like a time-capsule, and it makes me uncomfortable.

 

[Shadowrazor97]

That, as well as other bigger social media sites too from discord,twitter,tumblr (well tumblr itself is dead like deviantart these days) and forums are basically novelties and antiques of the past sadly.

I rather forums than places like reddit anyday.

 

[Mercurial]

I think there are just a lot of factors generally - most of which have already been mentioned - influencing the decline of traditional forums; I don't think Reddit is an overly big contributor to this, however. When it comes to Reddit specifically, I think it just does a good job adapting that instantaneous feedback into one platform - but, it's also a $10+ billion company.

I think the main contributor to the forum decline is actually this:​

I remember the days during the 90s and early 2000s when there was a message board dedicated to every subject under the sun. I used to be part of an old truck restoration forum and numerous game specific forums.​

When it comes to Final Fantasy Forums, I think the scope of the subject is too narrow to compete with the new generation of media platforms, which isn't actually the fault of the forum whatsoever - it's simply a cumulation of the new media platforms and evolution of the gaming industry.

When this forum was at its peak, it was probably one of the leading Final Fantasy forums available - but in my opinion, the media hierarchy also looked very different. The biggest platforms were message boards that incorporated every subject into one area (IGN, Gamespot etc) but there was plenty of space for independent, subject specific forums like Final Fantasy Forums, KHInsider etc. The likes of Youtube were still very popular but I think they co-existed parallel to message boards rather than directly competed. Today, there are so many different forms of media platforms, everything is pretty much competing in one space - independent forums, giant media forums, Youtube, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok... just to name the popular platforms. On top of that, you're also competing in media specific areas: livestreams, podcasts, written media, longer videos (Youtube), shorts (TikTok) etc. A prime example of how difficult to compete would be E3 - it used to one of, if not the biggest, gaming showcase in the world which got completely swallowed by the rise of streaming.

It's probably the unpopular opinion of the day, but I don't think the 'instant gratification' culture is particularly new to the younger generations, I think it's just become a culture that is more prevalent. As someone who is 31, I grew up whilst a lot of the 'huge' platforms were in their infancy, but people of my generation still wanted that gratification - people wanted to be in 'top friends' on MySpace, wanted 'like for like' on Facebook photos, wanted people to 'like and subscribe' to their Youtube channels... this was going on 15 years ago. This hasn't changed in 2024, it's just more culturally engrained and a lot of the younger generations were born into the social media world after it had become huge; they've not known any different. If technology had evolved quicker, we would have been having this same conversation ten years earlier. Any of the older members of this forum that were around at its peak probably spent as much time traversing this forum as children today spend on TikTok and such like. The only real difference is that modern mobile phones and tablets make media accessible from virtually anywhere, rather than having to be fixed on a PC / laptop with an internet connection. I think the need for information 'instantaneously' has remained the same as a decade ago as well, but again, technology has evolved to allow it to happen. These days you don't need E3 to share your major releases, it can be done on 'Direct' streams that are organised periodically, several times a year - you don't need massive press releases into mainstream games media for screenshots, cancellations, delays etc - it can be done on Twitter in seconds. There hasn't been any real generational change to wanting this information, a lot of us just didn't 'grow up' in an era where it was possible.

Gaming generally has also evolved massively - from what I can remember 15 years ago, gaming 'seasons' weren't a thing. MMORPGs would be developed into expansion packs and had their own communities and the popular online games (COD, FIFA etc) would be released annually as new games that you either did or didn't like. These days, the longevity of online games is huge - Fortnite is what, seven years old now? Warzone, four? They may have seen a lot of progression in that time, but the core mechanics are still very much the same and I would wager the original core fanbase are largely, still playing or dipping in and out at minimum. These games are now probably the face of gaming.

On the other hand, I think it's much harder for single player AAA games to maintain spotlight - as soon as a developer releases what is considered an outstanding game, another developer will come out three months later and do the same thing... and so on and so forth. It's great for the gaming community, but not so great for independent forums like this. The consequence of this is that we're seeing games on par with film budgets and expectations, but it's also increasing development length. Take Naughty Dog as an example, three mainline Crash Bandicoot games in three years during the original Playstation era, three Jak games in three years in the Playstation 2 era, three Uncharted games in four years in the Playstation 3 era... two Last of Us games in seven years thereafter. Square follow a similar trend: Final Fantasy I to X-2 (11 titles in approximately 15 years). Seven years between Final Fantasy XIII and XV, seven years between Final Fantasy XV and XVI. It's very difficult to maintain activity on a subject-specific forum when it's nearly a decade between mainline releases.​

 

[Extreme Warhawk]

I think so and its a shame

 

[Lord Kaos]

It's possible it might've killed some specialist gaming websites like this one, that were just too niche to survive. Plenty more are out there, thriving; following the Reddit moderator tantrums, lots of people went back to the official forums for their games.

FFF was made for a desire to talk about largely single player games that were cultural phenomenons at the time. SE used to slam them out like clockwork and they'd end up as a big part of your life at a bargain price. The problem is, XII was out when this forum became popular. It didn't even release that well. Since then, we've gotten 6 big titles in 17 years and they weren't anywhere near as impactful, culturally.

13 was lackluster and didn't make many new fans. Then the series went multi-player with FF14 , and... wow.
I'll just say it: 14's release was one of the worst I'd ever seen for an MMO, and resembled a gamecube-tier MMO tech demo.They had to outright redo everything involved with it, and this came at about about the time Wikis became available for even the most niche indie games.
Since they've gone on to recover and make it a commercial success, the company packed its own forums with a ton of features and integration with the game. It's now the designated hub for everything. FFF can't compete with them now.

Even then, look at XV, and XVI. They're single player. Rumor, guides, discussion and support fueled online gaming communities for the previous 20 years, but who needs those conversations now? The games are all solved by Wiki communities within a week and any discussion around them does so in the face of fact.
Most of the use of communications in gaming communities today are for multiplayer experiences. By the time those were out, XIV had cemented the users' habits for years.

So, unfortunately, FFF was doomed to drop off.

There's countless other forums out there still thriving if you can overcome terrible search engines; speedrunning, tech support, coding, PC building, vintage car repair, you name it. Those will always be viable and a cesspit like Reddit will never kill them because they stifle even the most factual discussions by assigning words and meaning to your 'tone' that lead to 15 page lectures and a permaban from their community.