I am a car guy in my 30s, I have been in the scene since the early 2000s and anyone else that was around back then knows what I am talking about with forums. Forums used to be THE place to find everything car related. Whatever car you had, you could find a forum for it with hundreds of active users any time of the day. For sale threads, regional meet ups, anything you wanted was there. It was like an online mecca for whatever car you had. If you had a BMW, there were huge BMW forums with hundreds of posts and discussions happening every day. Fast forward to now, almost all automotive forums are dead, like dead dead. For sale sections dried up, regional sections with the last posts being 6 months old. It’s a ghost town.
So what happened? My guess, is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube divided the community so hard, and gave everyone their “own” little pages, that this is all people do now. I joined a few Facebook groups and found those to be just as dead as the forums. It’s really not the same. We used to be able to post in a regional section and by nightfall have a whole meet arranged with locals from your area. Now, that’s a no go. I miss it, and I would love to know if there is a place everyone is at now, but I am also scared that maybe that era of online car culture is lost forever. r/cars seems to be the only place I can find that has constant activity with other gearheads, but that’s only because it serves as a “hub” for car guys on reddit, which is another “hub”, and all other hubs have been abandoned. I am trying to get involved on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, but it’s not the same, how do you arrange a meet in an Instagram comment section? It’s just not the same.
On an old diecast forum I was on many moons ago (RIP Hobby Talk) it was small but nice. I moved to instagram and reddit once Photobucket decided to kill itself. So many niche forums have been nuked thanks to them.
The forums might not be as dead as they seem. Also try Facebook, lots of stuff there.
Facebook is where the most of the community is, as well as the largest marketplace.
Sucks for me because I got of Facebook a loooooong time ago. Never look back except when it comes time to buy or sell something. I have to use little specific forums or craigslist which is mostly scams and bullshit now.
Facebook and discord servers. I’m on a few Miata servers and they are pretty damned busy
Lot of … un informed people though.
Speaking from my own experience, there are the car specific subreddits already (like r/e46 and r/landcruisers I visit) but if I need something specific I go to a fourm still. On Land Cruisers I go to ih8mud because just about anything you could think of is there.
I miss build threads! Several on the specific site that you were a member of. The thread would get bumped to the top so you didn’t have to search endless content or see a new post from someone in a fb group every time there was an update.
Reddit replaced most forums, to mixed results.
Reddit and IG have turned everyone into goldfish with 3 second memory spans.
Forums had all the stored info you could ever need if you just SEARCHED.
Omg repost just use the search button n00b. That’s the only part I didn’t miss 😂.
That’s on Reddit still, too. Haha
Got me. I was often a visitor to Toyota Nation, but eventually found the one stop shopping at reddit to be easier.
It’s depressing. I moderate a small automotive subreddit(shoutout /r/keitruck) and half of the mod log is just me removing easily searchable questions that have been asked a million times.
Those are some cool little trucks. I want one now!
Having a revolving door of the same, redundant questions is exactly what Reddit wants. It profits by making people see their adds and that can’t happen if you aren’t mindlessly scrolling through the feeds. It needs a constant steam of content to keep people coming back, whereas classic forums often became stagnant over periods of members being inactive. The other issue is that Reddit is somehow even more anonymous than classic forums where core members were more visible and could hold people accountable, for better or worse. Here, it’s hard to pick out familiar user names just due to the sheer wash of random people popping in and out with one-off comments.
Sure, if you mean that you could find the answer scattered in a few comments on pages 4, 20, and 97, of a 200 page conversation.
error: you need to sign in to search error: your account must be more than 3 days old to search error: you must have at least 5 posts to search
I’m exaggerating but holy shit some forums had the worst search functions imaginable
Because those forums are run by “business men” who are interested in making a profit & give no fucks about anything car related.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about social media, but there is also no denying that people NEVER searched on forums. That issue has always been there lol.
loads of forums have been straight up taken down as the owners dont want to fund the site anymore, Evo forums died and it sucks
Reddit has a search function too, but nobody uses it. Like someone else mentioned here, it’s sometimes easier to use Google to search Reddit.
Hard agree on everything being fragmented. Couldn’t imagine owning a brand new sports car platform.
The cool thing about owning a 2018 is the amount of info that WAS posted and remains. I was able to lurk for well over a year on a Mazda forum without ever making a post because all of my questions had already been asked numerous times and sufficiently answered. I only recently posted since… it’s a Mazda3 and there’s only so much you can do, and I’ve now done it.
All to say, people still interested and around. Just a different look to the scene. It’s not specific or exclusive to cars, either.
Interesting. I just got my Supra a few months ago and I think the supramkv forum is pretty decently active. Maybe not busy like VWVortex back in the day but I’ve found lots of knowledge on oils, break-in, track setup and needs, etc
For Porsche at least, you can find some knowledge being dropped by boomers+ on the car forums like Macanforum and 718forum… lots of DIY and specs.
It seems like a big number the car forums have all consolidated around a single platform though. And it’s kind of a usability mess on the home page, I can’t fucking deal with it and they have way way too many subforums which kill discussion and seem like ghost towns.
Carpokes forum is very much alive for 944, in addition to the rennlist
Lack of both interest and attention span of the younger generation.
As a S2000 owner I still use S2KI. It’s not super active with new post but experienced and knowledgeable users are still active and provide fairly quick answers. I’m not too active on other social media however from quick glimpse of Reddit and Instagram the advice is god awful for the more technical vehicle specific stuff.
Retro Rides still lives.
Pistonheads too.
Both UK based.
Stanceworks has a very active Discord.
gr86.org is pretty active
Even this subreddit seems slower ever since that whole protest thing
And for good reason. I now only ever end up on reddit in-browser after coming here for something specific and staying for a little while. It’s nowhere near as convenient as it used to be to just kill 10 minutes while waiting for your morning coffee or whatever else
Yep. Lots of users used Reddit primarily to burn a bit of time during their downtime on their phones, and the official app is extremely unpleasant to use, so it’s no wonder activity decreased.
Another problem IMO that I’ve seen over years is the way that this sub is moderated in combination with it becoming popular from the general userbase of Reddit overall. Due to the inbuilt nature of how Reddit’s algorithms function, it really incentives godawful behaviours and the people who notice and hate that disengage, so over time the user base will skew more and more towards those who are not self aware about it, creating this feedback loop where even more moderate people become adverse because “insanity” increasingly becomes the norm.
The moderators are also extremely hardass when it comes to “be civil”, yet I barely, if ever, see them ever do anything to improve the “culture” of the sub. They don’t remove replies that are effectively off-topic and only serve to circlejerk misery. They don’t remove comments that are soapboxing in a way that can’t facilitate discussion. They never remove clearly bad-faith arguments border-lining on trolling, or passive-aggressive argumentative and combative posts, but if those posts bother someone enough for them to take a shot back in a more explicit manner, they’re hit with “be civil” and the original bad-faith comment starting shit to begin with stays up. It’s even worse when the bad-faith comment is some typical Redditor take so it gets upvotes since it follows the circlejerk, so then of course people who disagree and see it get fed up and just leave. I barely see any familiar names nowadays that used to be prominent, and the ones I do recognize are clearly becoming more and more agitated by the general culture here.
Some examples of what I’m talking about from the recent years:
- Review videos of the Type R: Top comments are all complaining about ADM instead of talking about the car itself. This is effectively off-topic - if you want to talk about ADM create your own thread to talk about it
- Matt Pharah review of the Supra calling it “affordable”: People projecting their financial insecurity and whining about the title of the video instead of talking about the car
- Any EV video: People insisting that EVs are shit because it doesn’t work for their personal life where they don’t have a EVSE and roadtrip their car around the world every month
Mix all that in with the sentiment that more than ever the average Redditor seems to be broke, unsuccessful, yet extremely vitriolic and assertive while morally grandstanding, it’s no wonder many people have noped the fuck out leaving the place more barren.
While I appreciate the criticism, and it’s not wrong, I want to remind you that:
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We’re really damned if we do and damned if we don’t. You think we should fact check people? Everyone absolutely hates that if their thing ever gets removed for being not factual. Remove comments complaining about prices? We remove the more egregious off topic stuff (you don’t see how much of course) but see above, we start removing more and we’re power hungry instead of absent.
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Reddit ruined access to a whole slew of tools that could help, but also they made a lot of regulars and mods check the fuck out. Nobody really gives a shit anymore. Oh and that absolutely includes fact checking.
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Remove enough shit and you don’t push the culture into a better direction, you just get a dead subreddit. It’s easy to see various other subs with this problem.
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Any EV video: People insisting that EVs are shit because it doesn’t work for their personal life where they don’t have a EVSE and roadtrip their car around the world every month
The circle jerk topics have been out of control the last couple weeks. The “EV bad” or “SUVs kill people” threads feel like blatant rage bait at this point. It feels like way too much of the sub lately is devoted to just hating certain vehicles.
I think it’s totally fair for people to vent their frustration at the cost of cars and especially enthusiast cars skyrocketing in the last 3 years or so.
Lots of car people are rich and totally out of touch. That guy you’re responding to is a classic example.
People leave communities because of assholes like them. I just block 'em so I don’t have to see their trash opinions.
They don’t remove replies that are effectively off-topic and only serve to circlejerk misery.
Literally any thread about the Kia Stinger (ree dealerships) or Nissan, with the added touch of classism for the latter.
Yeah I’ve noticed this too. I’m browse here more than any other sub and there are days when nothing gets posted.
What’s a shame is that for all its troubles this sub is better for discussion than a lot of the more specific car subs, which all eventually just devolve into pictures of ppls rides.
Photos taken at a 45 degree angle with a shitphone from 2011
i basically only use reddit on desktop any more because they made the mobile experience so goddamn shitty, and i’ll be damned if i pay out the nose to fund reddit’s stupid ass API choices
Theres ways to get mobile apps working. I personally am still using boost, but Sync is another popular choice that still works. You just have to patch the app to use your own accounts api credentials.
I think they changed who can post here during the protest thing? At least back then only a select few “elites” could create new threads. Might be still a thing and hence this is so dead.
Definitely not, you can post a thread.
Oh man. I do miss the forum community. It was friendly and helpful. Specifically likeminded. It crumbled apart as soon as Facebook started pushing Groups. But it’s nowhere the same. A shame actually, but I’m no longer active on forums as well anymore.
Man, I was on a Mazdaspeed forum focusing on the speed 3 and speed 6… those guys were knowledgeable but they were not friendly. They were misogynistic, racist and assholes. But I stuck around because the knowledge base was huge
“Friendly” might be an overstatement 😂
Yeah my dad and I used to frequent a fishing forum for coastal fishing, as we didn’t live on the coast but would make a trip once or twice a year so we wanted to keep up with what was hot and just tips and stuff.
There was so much good stuff on there, but there was always underlying factions with a lot of the big posters and gatekeeping/bickering. Fortunately having nowhere else to go kind of kept everyone together. As soon as Groups came around a bunch of the main posters took their little factions to Facebook and the forum basically died instantly.
That’s not been my experience. benzworld.org has hundreds of thousands of members and even my little W124 corner is reasonably active and full of DIYers.