Has the TMF slowed down considerably?

[shytickler]

Curious what other members think.
It seems to me that this forum has slowed down considerably in activity and new members.

 

[wolfman40]

The tickling scene has always been a cyclical one.

I equate it to a roundabout (carousel) which was the original concept for Deep Purple.

People get on the roundabout, people get off the roundabout, real life, jobs, mortgages, relationships, having kids, get in the way

 

[tickle_maniac]

The tickling scene has always been a cyclical one.

I equate it to a roundabout (carousel) which was the original concept for Deep Purple.

People get on the roundabout, people get off the roundabout, real life, jobs, mortgages, relationships, having kids, get in the way

What you said, and also that younger people prefer other platform such as reddit, Instagram, etc. Very few younger members sign up on old forums like ours.

 

[milagros317]

Curious what other members think.
It seems to me that this forum has slowed down considerably in activity and new members.

Yes. The total of members and guests on the TMF used to be over one thousand at almost all times and up to two or three thousand at busy times of the day. Now, it is often only about 600 to 800. As I'm typing this, 555.

What you said, and also that younger people prefer other platform such as reddit, Instagram, etc. Very few younger members sign up on old forums like ours.

Yes. My generation found email and websites including forums to be new and exciting.
Anybody under 30 grew up with those as routine, as something used by their boring parents.
I don't have a solution, unfortunately, to getting new young members.

 

[Toesheldback]

I’m on Reddit for normie stuff, but ever now and then pop into the tickling sub to look around. It’s a way different experience, mainly photos and videos with no rhyme or reason; just a dumping ground. Not a lot of conversation.

 

[natscott6282]

define ‘young’ as i am 25 and joined when I think i was 23 but i know theres 18 yr olds on here but most ppl i actually chat to regularly about tickling and ticklishness are on discord
but still the TMF has by far the most ppl on it i have ever seen! tbh i was very relieved when i found it,
still maybe TMF should get a discord server too

 

[TMF Jeff]

We're actually not far below our peak level of activity, especially most recently. Our busiest spikes (aside from weird outliers where some mainstream site mentions us) our peak traffic is typically 300+ members on at once, and we've hit that several times in the last couple of weeks.

The reason we have fewer guests is that I enabled CloudFlare's bot-deflection tools, to make the forum put its attention on live humans where it belongs. 50% of internet traffic is now bots, so I cut our guests in half by doing that.

 

[TMF Jeff]

For context, here's a snapshot of the past seven days of traffic

11.8 million requests for 1.2 million page views
2.4 terabytes of data transferred
630 thousand non-bot visits

 

[milagros317]

The reason we have fewer guests is that I enabled CloudFlare's bot-deflection tools, to make the forum put its attention on live humans where it belongs. 50% of internet traffic is now bots, so I cut our guests in half by doing that.

That is something that I never knew. It explains why, before you did that, there would often be 300 members and 1,000 guests.

 

[TMF Jeff]

Also we've gone noticeably up in the last year, which I assume is because of the upgrade to better software.

 

[U.N.Owen]

I've suspected for a while that it's actually the increase in the site's size that decreased the sense early on (i.e., 20 years ago) that everyone here knew each other.

 

[bobcat1]

I don’t know about slowing down, and the numbers obviously don’t reflect that, but I do have a sense that there is less of certain types of content and that some of the familiar members are gone. The chatroom seems pretty active and I guess the media sections seem to be active but I feel there is less of discussion type posts. I think there are less True Stories but potentially more fiction stories.

 

[inflight82]

I've wondered if growing access to video content made story sections drop off.

 

[natscott6282]

Also we've gone noticeably up in the last year, which I assume is because of the upgrade to better software.

and because I joined

 

[FFT32]

Also we've gone noticeably up in the last year, which I assume is because of the upgrade to better software.

That and maybe (hopefully), tickling is gaining popularity...