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TMF Activity Over The Years

tickle_maniac

TMF Expert
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
453
Points
18
I was wondering, how has the TMF activity changed over the years? I've been a member here for more than 10 years but I'm just curious as to what other people think.

Has the number of members just reduced? Or increased? Or has the demographic changed? Are different subforums more active than before or less active? Have newer members skewed more towards some sub forums than others?

Personally, I just feel that TMF used to be a lot more interactive back in the day with stories, discussions, etc. Or maybe I just feel that way because many of the older members don't participate as much anymore.
 
I'm with you on the last paragraph; not only was it more interactive with discussions, stories and, for a little while, TMF Radio, it was a more relaxed and friendlier place. Unfortunately, most if not all of the people who made that way have left. I still check in to browse content, but without going into too much detail I feel the atmosphere has changed - and not for the better.
 
A lot of members I can remember in my early days either left or they lurk now. I also don't think the fourm is as interactive as it use to be. I know a lot of people moved over to FetLife. I feel like a mod could really answer your questions the best.
 
Jeff has always kept his fingers on the activity stats and such, but I can make some general statements from what I know.

A big part of what you see is the evolution of the internet. When we started, boards like this were the dominant way for people to interact and form 'tribes' that shared an interest. At the time is was VERY novel. For the first time people could see that there were others like themselves out there, and they were not alone. This drove interaction strongly. And in it's first decade the TMF saw a very high engagement level across all it's forums, and people were very active in contributing content, forming relationships and so forth.

But things change. Along came FaceBook, and it's shadow Fetlife. Both were honest to gods modern social media platforms that allowed people to interact in different ways, often with much more personal control then the older threaded forums like we did. FB and Fetlife drained off what we called the 'active user group' heavily. People that posted a lot, and engaged a lot on the less fetish parts of the forum. They moved over to the new platforms and activity here dropped.

Deviant Art also rose at this point, and that pulled a measure of artists and writers away who again, liked the controls of 'their own space' and things got a bit more quiet.

Lastly, community participation seems to have a declining curve shape for most people. Stick around long enough and you have seen the same discussions, types of posts and so forth a lot. It's not a big deal and when you may be moved to post back once, when you are on your third or fourth go-round not so much. You get quieter.

Add it all up and the atmosphere of the forum changed. We returned to what we started as, a fetish platform, that mostly services the giant silent majority of users that only have accounts so they can dip in and look at some media for... personal gratification. And things get quiet. If you remember the Tickle Theater, or UK Tickling forums, you can see examples where interaction slowed to a point that things froze like glaciers. We managed to maintain an activity level that is active by the sheer mass of our user base, and being the first in place advantages we accrued.

Lots of the areas here are pretty quiet, and could be folded without much note. But we keep them because they see some use even now, and some folks enjoy them. (Sub areas of the GenDis Forum come to mind)

We actually see more active members online now then ever on average. Most are never going to post, but they are here looking at things and enjoying.

Myriads
 
I love Jeff. There would be a huge void in the tickling community without him. He has graciously donated so much to this fetish and the community. Thank you Jeff for all your hard work.
 
I think it's a lot of things happening at once, and a lot of places are experiencing them as social media expands and takes over.

As Myriads pointed out, there are a lot of other places for people to socialize, and those definitely chip away at us. When the TMF was first founded, there were ZERO social media sites. If you wanted to chat with people at all, not just about your fetish, this was where you might go to do it.

And in addition, there are other places for socializing about your fetish that are more targeted for a specific goal. Like fetlife is much better suited than we are for meeting people in real life, because it was designed with that in mind. We're older and out of date, and don't have the kind of money it would take to improve in that direction. We can barely afford to update at all.

But also, we're a victim of our own success. We once had a huge celebration over the fact that we had 800 members. Now we have that many browsing the forum at any given time. And with more traffic comes more signal noise. It's not just a handful of people who pretty much know each other.

There are people who rarely post, newbies, low-grade trolls, and people with wildly different takes on how our fetish should be interpreted.

The fetish has expanded to cover a lot more ground, and that changes the tone too. When we first started, there was almost no /m content, and now that's become very open and popular. And sex was almost nowhere in the fetish content, and now that too has become very popular.

It's a different time now and we have adapted as best we can, but the unfortunate reality is that in order to really control the tide of change, we'd need money, and we don't have it.

I've often said, and will say again here, that if every person who visits this forum contributed one dollar a month to our patreon, we'd have the most outrageously futuristic and amazing website imaginable. But instead of over a hundred thousand contributors, we have about 40.

So we have to just do the best we can to struggle on.
Jeff
 
I originally joined 2001-2002 and like some of the posts here, there has been change. Over the years I have encountered not so friendly video producers, as Jeff put it, "low grade trolls", members who feel their opinion is the only correct one and cliques that caused me to leave for a while. On the plus side I have interacted with wonderful video producers, made a few friends and have felt the mods here have been nothing short of great when asking them about things going on here. Myriads & Jeff have it right.
 
I think it's a lot of things happening at once, and a lot of places are experiencing them as social media expands and takes over.

As Myriads pointed out, there are a lot of other places for people to socialize, and those definitely chip away at us. When the TMF was first founded, there were ZERO social media sites. If you wanted to chat with people at all, not just about your fetish, this was where you might go to do it.

And in addition, there are other places for socializing about your fetish that are more targeted for a specific goal. Like fetlife is much better suited than we are for meeting people in real life, because it was designed with that in mind. We're older and out of date, and don't have the kind of money it would take to improve in that direction. We can barely afford to update at all.

But also, we're a victim of our own success. We once had a huge celebration over the fact that we had 800 members. Now we have that many browsing the forum at any given time. And with more traffic comes more signal noise. It's not just a handful of people who pretty much know each other.

There are people who rarely post, newbies, low-grade trolls, and people with wildly different takes on how our fetish should be interpreted.

The fetish has expanded to cover a lot more ground, and that changes the tone too. When we first started, there was almost no /m content, and now that's become very open and popular. And sex was almost nowhere in the fetish content, and now that too has become very popular.

It's a different time now and we have adapted as best we can, but the unfortunate reality is that in order to really control the tide of change, we'd need money, and we don't have it.

I've often said, and will say again here, that if every person who visits this forum contributed one dollar a month to our patreon, we'd have the most outrageously futuristic and amazing website imaginable. But instead of over a hundred thousand contributors, we have about 40.

So we have to just do the best we can to struggle on.
Jeff

Fair point. I'm in.
 
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