The I Feel Down Topic.

[QTXAdsy]

Right, this is going to sound either petty or moan worthy but I couldn't seem to find a place to write this down as I'm not sad per say but rather just utterly fed up.

What's making me feel this way? Honestly, just the coaster community as a whole either on here and elsewhere online is making me want to crash out as they are either moaning about how parks in this country are run or brag about their adventures overseas for vlogs from TPWW and others is just rubbing me up the wrong way making me despise them as I'll never get to experience all those great and so called magical places that I'll never experience that joy giving my current situation. Either I'm getting old or really my patience is running out fully of dealing with people and I will say the thought of leaving the community just to make my own opinion on how I'd feel if these places are as good or bad as they say they are but alas you'd be brave to say something different and or a nuance viewpoint which I feel I have but that sort of thing is never valued IMO.

However I won't leave as I'm already too deep in with the crowd to leave and I'm very lonely as a crave someone to meet up IRL just to chat about this hobby more than just online but there is nothing here unless I'm lucky by chance. All in all, I swear people are becoming more opinionated, too difficult high standards and just unlikable in this hobby that makes me wonder what really is the point?

Yeah, guess I just hate people yet crave someone just to sit down with and talk to in a calm and rational way which sadly I'm certain isn't going to happen soon.

 

[Craig]

So I don’t really want to turn this into a full on discussion in this topic, but a bit of my own opinion on this…

The enthusiast community has always been a critical bunch, but recently it’s clear the industry in the UK has been struggling for quite a while now. With ever cheaper flights and more importantly the tools to be able to access information on how to achieve trips abroad, more and more people are being exposed to how parks in other countries operate. That only increases the criticism that parks in the UK receive, and has only served to increase people’s strength of opinions over time too. It’s not something that can really be avoided, and often comes from a place of exasperation from seeing the success of parks elsewhere, and the lack of actual innovation going on in the UK these days. Let’s be brutal too, the average age of forum users is skewing a fair bit older these days too!

I do have to push back on you referring to vloggers “bragging” though - it’s a popular medium that unlike forums is perhaps skewing a little younger in terms of target market for you. Before Youtube, you had forums like this one, Coasterforce or TPR where people would post extensive trip reports complete with photos. Even before that you had magazines like First Drop or RCCGB’s Airtime Newsletter. A lot of vloggers are full time, ran as a business and so serve a market. If that market didn’t exist, they wouldn’t publish the content they do.

I’ve been extremely lucky in my time as an enthusiast to visit some amazing places, but there’s still a huge chunk of parks that I’ve never managed to get to. That said, I still always enjoy reading about them, or watching a video from people who have been lucky enough to visit - I’ve never particularly seen it as bragging. To me personally, it’s a great source of information and it’s nice to see what other people are up to. This sort of content has always existed, be that in print, pictures or in the videos as they do now. It’s the same sort of stuff it’s always been - it’s just the medium has changed. Thinking of it as someone bragging is instantly going bring a negative view of it before you’ve even hit that play button. It’s an informative source - just as the many websites that published extensive reviews of parks back in the day were.