What is keeping you on forums in the social media age?

[Jonathan]

This site would be very rich by now if this had been implemented earlier.

Da Luca! Da Luca for everyone!

 

[hodgey]

For me there’s no vanity, or smoke and mirrors. Social media became quite tiresome mentally and I’ve deleted all of it.

I’ve always been a lurker on this forum but I far more enjoy reading about the topics on here than look at over edited photos and propositions of a false reality on Instagram or Facebook.

Everyone on here is real and everyone respects one another, it’s genuinely great. Also we all have a common interest and are choosing the content we want to see. The new algorithms that send you down rabbit holes and shove rubbish down your throat is genuinely fatiguing and I hated it.

Overall, this forum allows people to explore topics, engage and choose what they want to get involved in, which in turn keeps everyone happy (I hope lol).

 

[MattyH]

As others have said I'd be lost without this place. The friends I've made are invaluable and some of the conversations we've had on here are insane.

Where else would I be able to discuss the similarities of a UK theme park's retrack of a coaster to the deadliest terrorist attack ever, learn how many mourners per hour a coffin was getting or if the world would be a safer place if Hitler had won the war?

 

[Tim]

Thought I'd give this thread a bump because of an annoying trend I've seen a lot this year.

I scroll through YouTube a lot, and the amount of Alton Towers related thumbnails that have appeared with claims that are factually not true has increased dramatically.
I suspect its because investments like Alton Manor, Jumanji, and Sub-Terra have been great for Vloggers, but as that content has dried up a lot of them have turned to promoting wild rumours to keep the content going.
What's infuriating is there's nothing to stop people from pumping out content like this.

This is where the forum comes in and why I still find it the best source to stay reliably informed. Anyone can post a wild rumor here, but if it is just made up it'll be quickly called out or ignored. I often refer back to this site while scrolling through YouTube to see if so called "news" is actually trending on here, and if its not it quickly confirms a video as clickbait.

You can't beat a forum like this for genuine good discussion.

 

[Zeock]

Another thing that I would like to add is that, if you want information on a certain subject, the topics on a forum make it much easier to ask and/or find said information compared to elsewhere.

 

[JAperson]

I'd say for me it's more intelligent and lengthy discussions. Sure I often disagree with people on here and people often disagree with me but it isn't usually just insults thrown which tends to be the case in the usually shorter form content of social media. Twitter//x is famous for it's character limit, while other platforms don't have limits. if you write something long nobody will read it. Forums don't have the same disadvantage. Plus there's definitely more a sense of community.

 

[Matt N]

The fact-checking and bias point is a very good one.

Because of the way social media works, you will be directed towards things you want to hear and people who agree with you. That can be great in some circumstances, but when looking for relatively unbiased news and discussion, I’d argue that it can sometimes turn things into a bit of an echo chamber and prevent reliably informed discussion and facts. If social media becomes too much of an echo chamber, then the news and facts will naturally become a bit biased, which can sometimes cloud how factual the debate is.

On a forum, on the other hand, you engage with people with all kinds of different opinions and from all different walks of life. I’d argue that the slightly broader house of opinions and people you encounter on a forum makes the discussion and news reporting more unbiased by encouraging good critical thinking and informed debate. The forum not having that echo chamber-type quality that social media can sometimes have ensures that the discussion remains relatively unbiased, in my view.

 

[Llama]

Another follow-up to that is that there’s no “algorithm” on forums, including this one. Posts show up in the order they were submitted, and I can click the topics that interest me. The admins don’t have any incentive to use an algorithm to show any particular user content that might be “engaging” to them, which more often than not is something that elicits an initial negative reaction rather than something that makes you feel positive or fulfilled.

The echo chamber here is that we all agree on the majesty of Europa Park, but because we all genuinely feel that way, and not because a computer has decided those posts make the most money.