Other places to chat

[heroshark]

I usually write my questions on the back of toilet doors with my number. I usually get a better answer than I do on this forum. 

 

[Lozart]

It's a circlejerk of the most dull people out there.

yeah, but r/airsoftcirclejerk is quite amusing (and occasionally absolutely hilarious).

As with all social media it's about curating your own experience. I often see people complaining that their TikTok fyp is just full of porn. Mine isn't because that's not what I use the platform for. Find the content you DO want, interact with it and the various algorithms with usually (not always, granted) steer you where you want to go.

 

[Cannonfodder]

Find the content you DO want, interact with it and the various algorithms with usually (not always, granted) steer you where you want to go.

I heard somewhere (I think it was on a podcast so take it with a pinch of salt) that social media algorithms deliberately only give you content it thinks you want about 30% of the time. This is because if it only gave you content you're interested in most people would get bored quicker, whereas drip feeding relevant content causes a little buzz and dopamine hit when something relevant or interesting pops up. This causes users to mindlessly doomscroll for longer

 

[Tommikka]

@ruskitsellerhit the nail right on the head about the supposed death of forums ….. often cited that social media trumps forums, in the ignorance of what social media is and how long it has been around. 
 

Social media is suggested as beginning in the late 90s and taking off in the 2000s, but was preceded by 70s chat groups & bulletin boards

A forum is a place for discussion, and internet forum software provides hosts with the ability to structure them 

They have evolved over time with numerous features beyond their origins, but remain as structured places

Social media such as Reddit may be just a bulletin board system of today, Facebook is the current flavour of systems such as MySpace, these go in waves based on the population of those environments as a generation moves on and doesn’t want their day to day social media to be fully connected to their great aunt

As these forms of social media lack a clear structure there sometimes becomes a misconception that the past is the past and has gone away, until a reminder of your night of debauchery a decade ago flags up in ‘memories’, which you can choose not to reshare - or even worse your friend shares their ‘memories’ involving you - it’s fine for a chat over old times, less so when you are now management and it flashes over your profile 

Forums do die, but they are the place that keeps getting visited, and I do like it when someone comes up on a forum to tell the community that forums are dead so come over to my new forum 

 

[Lozart]

 whereas drip feeding relevant content 

..and that's the trick. Curating enough content you DO like so that the other stuff is relevant not just utter rubbish.

 

[AK47frizzle]

Man, I still regularly visit the forums after all these years. Started off on it, went off for a while, and now still coming back. The quality and pace of discussions here is still much higher than the skibidi-rizz-adhd-gooner-mogging talk everywhere else.

Discord is a decent place to chat about airsoft too but you have to be more selective and in the know-how on where to go because, being the real-time chat service it is, there are quite the few special folk of all sorts that don't think before they speak.

 

[Lyndication]

Some Discords and WhatsApps I've peeked in feel like back in middle school, when boys tried to outdo each other on slur count per sentence for brownie points. Absolute lack of patter. 

Plus just not actually having any knowledge to share. 

 

[Galvatron]

Some Discords and WhatsApps I've peeked in feel like back in middle school, when boys tried to outdo each other on slur count per sentence for brownie points. Absolute lack of patter. 

Some WhatsApp chats were insufferable. It wasn't just the slurs, it's the memes lampooning those with disabilities and other shock jock behaviour. I didn't ask for that shit on my phone. I have a dark, childish and often distasteful sense of humour but there's a time and place.

The worst is where you find 100+ unread messages and you'd be lucky to find 5% of them to actually discuss airsoft. I do appreciate that some chats have somewhat strict rules to keep the discussion to sales and tech/equipment advice only and use the dedicated chat if they want to dick about.

 

[rj1986]

I sometimes use whatsapp - the groups im in tend to be more product/brand specific so its a bit less chit-chatty, but not super strict.

I rarely use discord as i feel like an old man with all the kids using brain-rot lingo.

I use reddit but avoid airsoft stuff there as the mods are power-hungry and often wrong. I also had an argument with a couple of people on there about TM AK NGRS mag compatibility (to stop OP spending about £200 on incorrect mags). They didn't listen to me saying it, didn't listen to the TM website/retailer website saying they're not compatible. OP did listen to me when i showed a video of it not working, and some people said i was still wrong because their Specna AK could do it.

 

[Mtemprell]

Some WhatsApp chats were insufferable. It wasn't just the slurs, it's the memes lampooning those with disabilities and other shock jock behaviour. I didn't ask for that shit on my phone. I have a dark, childish and often distasteful sense of humour but there's a time and place.

The worst is where you find 100+ unread messages and you'd be lucky to find 5% of them to actually discuss airsoft. I do appreciate that some chats have somewhat strict rules to keep the discussion to sales and tech/equipment advice only and use the dedicated chat if they want to dick about.

I can agree here with WhatsApp groups. I've been in a few for the car hobby side of things, and some of the chats are just nonsense, can finish work and got 200+ unread messages about nothing to do with the group subject. Added in when people feel the need to send voice notes in the chat. 

 

[ruskitseller]

Reading all this stuff about whatsapp/discord makes me feel quite nauseous and even more glad this forum exists. ?

 

[Lyndication]

I will admit I have sat in the corner throwing peanuts when the TAD WhatsApp Sales chat kicks off. They're very easy to get riled up in there.