Not to single you out, but people keep replying ONLY in regard to TFW, and I'm not just talking about here, but places like 4chan as well. That place is a ghost-town filled with shills and trolls now. It's eerie. I don't know. Maybe it's just coincidence that the only two forums I go on {mostly} both had separate mass-exoduses around the same time. Still, I've never felt this squeezed before. I've been through the times when the TF fandom has been between movies. Haven't there been 4 of them now? {I don't know. I don't watch them.} I've grown empathy and understanding for people who say "[X] was my life! and now it's been taken away from me / ruined!"
That's what makes me wonder why I should spend time here: it feels like this place has become and anti-fan site sometimes. I come here to talk TFs with fellow fans, not to have the figures and lines I like called shit 1000 different ways and told I'm a moron idiot for liking them. Ah the factions. If you like 3p *and* HasTak then you go into Toy Discussion to read how your 3p stuff is all cheap knock-off crap and you go into the 3p forums to read how your HasTak stuff is steaming garbage made for babies. Double the fun! News threads are the worst. Especially Hasbro reveals - those become absolutely unreadable almost immediately. There's a guy in the Hasbro CW Devastator news thread with 53 posts in that one thread, every one of them a variation of "this is shit" in lousy punctuation and grammar. The thread is full of 3p master-race types who only came in to call it garbage made for blind morons. Over in 3p threads we sometimes have someone poke their head in to post something about the figure being crap. Then a few of the 3p fans in the thread get furious and ask why someone would come into the thread just to crap on something like that... Fair objection. Unless you go into the objector's post history to see them going into HasTak threads just to call it crap. If you point out the hypocrisy, they object that "yeah but that HAZBLOW figure *is* shit". They can't see that if you create and foster a nasty culture of uncivil and hyperbolic negativism then that culture is inevitably going to turn on what they love too. I say this so much I feel like a broken record.
It's not at all a coincidence, population trends don't just apply to one board/community you know, it applies to them all at once. TFW being, by far, the biggest Transformers community that I'm aware of is as good of a place as any, if not the best to use as an predictor for what's going to happen at others places. Like looking at water levels in a region, if the biggest body of water starts going down, you can bet rest will as well to varying degrees. So of course we can reply with only TFW because the rest of the communities will reflect it as well. And when is 4chan not filled with trolls and inhumans? It's what 4chan is. Price hikes probably aren't helping matters much in some cases. Also, the vast majority of us G1 fans are now pushing 35-40+ and yes, probably are starting to fall off much more, so it is possible that between movies the drop off might even become worse as more of us move on from collecting.. Its bound to happen eventually I suppose. It will be interesting to see what happens to the franchise as a whole when the whole of the G1 fan base either moves on or dies.
Yeah, this. Every movie brings in a few really obnoxious people who are irritating to read, and not all of them leave by the Bluray release. I've got friends who have lost most of their interest in Transformers because fans have sucked the fun out of the hobby for them. Even the other collectible fanbases know how bad ours is, because it's become infamous.
Although my join date says 2007, I was here during the Car Robots/RID days and I remember how everything was much more chilled back then and the core members and staff seemed friendlier. Gotten older since then and thus my patience and tolerance for the increasingly snarky and rude members (not everyone here is like that) of this board has made it so I just don't generally spend much time here anymore. I'm in my mid thirties now and I just don't feel the need to be arguing with a complete stranger over the color of a toy robot's eyes or whether or not an alien robot would have facial hair. Couple that with a growing disinterest of the Transformers brand itself and I just can't be bothered with TFW much anymore.
Ah yeah this too, I remember when I wanted a toy from say, TF cybertron, I could find it no problem in a store. Wing Saber I did have to try a few stores first, but regardless the toys could be found. Movie toys are easy to find, but anything that comes out with it, super hard to find. I mean Alts were hard to find, but not like it was for say, classics or generations. I feel like half the toys really don't actually get releases or because of the growing popularity of the fandom, people scalp way more. Toy hunting was funner. You could usually find what you were looking for. TF collecting isn't really that appealing anymore. The rise in prices don't help either. I think you could get those little tin car robot/rid toys at Kaybee for like $2. Remember those days?
Seems the new thing to rage about "is it Masterpiece or is it Classics?" or "official vs. 3P". One guy even went into a 3P thread for an MP-style figure and kept haranguing about how it wasn't a true Masterpiece and demanded that the mods change the title of the thread to delete any mention of it being a Masterpiece (because fans might get confused between official MP figures and this unofficial figure) despite multiple folks and a mod telling him (respectfully) that there was no harm in the title. Some people can't take a hint, I guess.
Personally, I blame this whole outrage culture large parts of the internet appears to have been swept up by. A few years back most people just ignored the things that didn't appeal to them, and if they decided to talk about it they did so in a civil manner. Nowadays it seems as if people have to be deeply offended by anything that doesn't appeal entirely to them, and they must simply let the internet know how offended they are by making repetitive posts filled with as much vitriolic hyperbole as possible, regardless of how trivial the topic may be in the whole grand scheme of things. I've vacated a lot of boards myself because of this. I've never had issues with people having differing opinions from myself when it comes to these things, but lately a lot of places have just become incredibly hostile to someone who just casually want to chat about silly hobbies. That's why I've moved most of my nerd-chatter to Twitter and, increasingly, Tumblr. Sure, both have their limitations, but they give me the option to pick and choose whose posts show up on my feed and I can actively decide to interact with people I know will be able to maintain a civil conversation.
There are plenty of valid reasons to be outraged over. Racism, discrimination, social injustice, crimes against humanity. But toys? C'mon now.
Most hobbies have a lifecycle for people... And people move on from hobby1 to hobby2... So there is alway turnover. The movies are a special catalyst that sparks rushes of new people into a hobby. The lifeblood of any community is the influx of new blood that will replace those that fade away. In the era of wikis, youtube reviews, facebook, etc the discussion community is no longer the 'goto place' for people looking for quick answers. That undermines one of the huge "recruiting" hooks discussion forums where people came in for something short... But get hooked. Now they can find their answer or media easier from a google search than from engaging with a community. When i signed up here, i was amazed at the daily post count still raging here... So many communities had already suffered huge set backs. My main constraint here is the new posts page only showing 10 threads at a time...plus this site still hanging onto vbulletin. The movies were a double blessing as they got in young people... People thatnwill likely boomerang and come back to the hobby at some point... Just like those of us who are in the hobby right now because of our memories from the mid eighties. But you have to survive the lull inbetween
People don't pause as they write a post to think "I'm saying this to fellow fans who like this figure/show/whatever, so I should phrase my post similar to how I'd talk these folks in person". Instead, as some have explained to me, it's "I'm gonna say whatever I want how I want cuz f*** them". They'll play it as "I just tell it like it is, honest opinion, I don't censor myself, etc", but those last 2 words sum up the problem: "Fellow fans? F*** them." "You like what I don't? F*** you." "You don't like what I like? F*** you."
I can't blame people for abandoning ship, lately especially I've noticed so much more negativity it makes me wonder why I bother using the site for anything other than news. Some people's unnecessarily strong opinions on fucking toys and attitudes in general create a really shitty atmosphere.
I never venture outside of GD, Toyark, Video Games/Tech, and non-TF Movies/TV and I'm happy. The rest is horrible uncharted waters to which I never want to wade into again.
You lost me at shills. :V I've been on 4chan since 2007, and I can tell you that yes, people are changing but it's probably because: 1) Most of 4chan users are 18 and up, and 2)/v/ is usually kids from the 80's and early 90's and they're busy with their jobs, and maybe even their kids as they're not NEETs. 4chan as well isnt the big "internet boogieman" like it was back in 2007, but now if you say "yeah I go on 4chan" nobody's gonna question it, as everybody knows or goes on 4chan. On TFW, people have moved on. This place was my first 'transformers related' account for discussions made and tbh, the place is getting as toxic as ever. I go on tumblr and while you can have a decent discussion there as well, 80% of the people there who start shit you wanna spray with a garden hose because you can't believe they're that stupid/toxic. The only thing really keeping me attached to Transformers right now is really just MTMTE/IDW. The new show, I just couldn't dig into and enjoy like Prime as there's no interesting lore. My toy purcases have slowed down too due to horrible distribution here, and how horrible the new toys look like. :I
Kinda agree. The live action movies brought in boatloads of money/popularity to HasTak and the TF brand, along with new generations of fans and bringing back jaded old G1 fans who had previously lost their passion for the franchise after G1/Beast Wars/etc. (I can count myself as one of these formerly lost souls but the first Bay movie and the toys reeled me back in). The brand will always need new blood to replace the old, or else it'll stagnate and die. Admittedly, I do feel that a good number of these new folks will be your "fair weather fans" who just show up when the movies roll around and then move on to other things when the movie and its merch have run their course. Separating the chaff, so to speak, you hope to get the diehards who stick around and have something constructive/positive to contribute rather than more negativity. I freely admit to dishing up some snarkiness myself since one can only take so much passive aggressive BS without being affected by it but it's something I'm aware of and try to catch myself from doing. Some days are better than others.
Yeah... Who's got the Grumpy Cat sig that says "I'm 30 different screen names, ask me about Hasbro"? Need to post that here. More and more it's becoming about what *you* want to talk about, so there's less need for a giant pool of rather specific topics that may or may not interest you. Here it's basically all Transformers all the time (and even then mostly just G1 and whatever's current), while in other social media sites you can share a dumb pic of your dog, post your latest theory of whatever show, get on a soapbox of some political issue, share a doodle, all kinds of personal nonsense. It's more like real life talking, not nerdy convention talking.
Everything falls apart eventually. I think many people are sick of Forums because of issues with fellow posters. Another reason is there is not a lot of news in the TF line right now. After toyfair everything got really slow in news and it's been boring since. I don't care for how the other TF forums are set up, and both Tumblr and Twitter are manifested with the SJW.
I pretty much avoid TF General Discussion/Movies and Rumors/Toy Discussion like the plague (I got no beef with them 3rd party/Generations/Classics TFs, although they look awesome) and TF Fanfiction/Funnies (I love Happy Hour and Bad Comedy). Only places I stick to are GD, Movies and Television, Fanart and Video Games and Technology. Pretty much this on all counts. (then again, I was never a fan of/interested in the last 3 movies after '07. I do like Animated and Prime though) And them "f--k your opinion" posts from other posters (new or old)... yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
agreed the negativity has gotten or getting to a lot of people there was a lot bashing on tfp threads last year causing people to leave, seldom visit, or just not participate (it was like a war zone the last couple of years) movie's over there is a lot of rehashing of the same or similar subjects others have mentioned the lack of activity in general, tfw2005 has been loosing people in spurts
