It appears the local Infiniti enthusiasts have only a Facebook presence, of which I do not partake. I have met a couple locals through the multi-regional forum however. This place is far more interesting even with less traffic.
Let's see.... 1) University Ave Friday night car scene is dead. Remember when Firestone/Uni was a thing, and you couldn't go 100 feet without seeing someone hanging out watching cars? I hate to play the "good ol' days" record, but I remember there being more activities and events than I had time to attend. These days, there's like 2 events per year that I care about. The other events that seem to pop up are..... 2) Douche-bro Stance Tard Culture These people just ****ing suck. Their presence ruins car meets. Period. If we could convince these idiots to go back to showing their ass hole on Instagram instead of being insufferable dickheads at car meets, we might be able to salvage the enthusiast scene. Maybe. But I think the reputational damage is pretty much done. The enthusiasts got driven off, and this gutter slime seeped in to fill the void. 3) Facebook happened. I think one of the things that kept things in check was that it took time, effort, and technical skill to setup and maintain a web forum. It kept the number of forums down, and kept the groups coalesced. Now the same platform that dumbed down an entire generation of internet users has also dumbed down the process of setting up a "community." The whole community has now been diluted significantly as any butthurt idiot can go make a new group and suck a couple dozen members out of a larger group any time the larger group becomes even remotely hostile to their ****ty behavior. The other problem with Facebook groups is they are 99% of the time completely disorganized. Discussions are over within an hour usually as things scroll off the page. And the whole conversation gets buried in your over all news feed because Facebook's algorithms are designed to keep dumping crap on you to lower your attention span and keep you scrolling and clicking. In the old days, you made a point to go visit your car forum of choice, and while there, the ONLY thing you had to read or click on was relevant to your car interests. Stuff still scrolled off the main page, but it took days, sometimes weeks for that to happen. And increased activity pushed it to the top. Plus, every forum has a "new posts since last visit" function, so you can go and read what you missed. Your time on a forum is engaged and focused. 4) MNSubaru has been around for a LONG time. Seriously. There are those of us, like myself, that have been here for coming up on 15 years. And alot of what drove the past comraderie and activity of this forum was directly intertwined with the in-person social activity we had at the height of the car scene on University/Firestone nights. It was a huge source of new users, and it was a huge source of discussion topics. Items 1, 2 and 3 above being what they are, is going to kill this place eventually. We don't have regular meets in high-visibility and highly attended weekly meetups where new Subaru owners can drive by a location and see dozens of Subaru enthusiasts hanging out. Instead of roaming town looking for car enthusiasts to talk to, they are on the internet. And since 99% of these morons are on Facebook, that is where they find other enthusiasts. And more than half of those Facebook groups that they find are going to be jilted stance-tard idiots, throwing up fake gang signs, with their cars covered in stupid script font stickers, sticker bombed dashboards, and ill-fitting tires and wheels. And these people are either going to keep looking to find something that fits them on Facebook, or they will give up caring about car enthusiast communities because it appears they are just populated by Instagram-turds showing off their bleached buttholes and "swag." I hate to be a debbie-downer here, but that's the state of the car scene these days. The days of big local weekly meets, high forum turnout and bustling new user membership are pretty much over as far as local car groups are concerned. This place will likely continue on for years with the same core group of us, prattling on about car stuff, and chatting in the Shoutbox. But I don't think you're ever going to see a return to the old days of activity that we once enjoyed. If Facebook got shut down tomorrow, that would probably help considerably. As it would be years before a contender rose to the occasion to fill in that gap. The idiots that couldn't manage or setup a web forum would have to tuck-tail and return to their old forum communities and their egos would get slapped down a notch and things would go back to normal for a while. At least until some social media site popped up and got popular enough for them to migrate again.
Porky's was the death-knell of the local Friday night meetups. Once the city rammed light rail down the throat of University, the writing was on the wall. As soon as Porky's was gone, every car person became persona non grata at any lot along Uni. Places where you previously could sit and hang out with like-minded people and get no hassle from cops unless some knob was doing burnouts in the lot were a thing of the past. Enforcement ramped up steeply, lots were blocked off, and the message was "you're not welcome here." This paired with everything Jason said gets you to where we're at now. The days of impromptu car meets are gone, and people either moved on or adapted. What's left is small groups of friends. The fact that the lacrosse cruise gets as many participants as it does year over year is an outlier in that it's a single car club drawing that many attendees. Most of what you see these days is a mess of different clubs organizing an event to see any meaningful turnout. On top of that, this ****ing state has car season for only half the year. That certainly doesn't help.
I am old! You knowledgeable folks will still be around when I need some advice/sagewisdom pertaining to our new to us STI (when it finally happens) right?!?! Crickets are loud and proud over at MORCMTB forum also. Used to be hopping with dorks like myself talking bout off road pedal bikes...
We can always hope Zuckerberg pi$$es off Jeff Bezos and Bezos buys and dismantles Facebook or the Feds manage to do so for privacy violations, if they can ever get a budget and stay at work for any length of time. I also blame Porn Hub for siphoning off some of the car nerds that will never squeeze a warm boobie.
Reddit killed car forum threads. Instagram killed car forum pic threads. FB killed car forum classifieds. For the time being, Google searching forum archives for DIY threads is about the only practical utility for car forums. Along with chat (although Snapchat is more convenient). With the exception of this cesspool and the classifieds on lotustalk, norotors, nasioc, 6speedonline, etc... I personally findfind forums are redundant with newer, more streamlined media platforms. That said, the lulz and the dickpics keep me coming back here.
i'm on a pretty good FB group called "Subaru Legacy&Outback Owners Club Discussion". as people say, it's hard to keep up with discussions unless you just stay on the page...
I'm with you all. let's keep coming here for some great entertainment (like the recent "taint" thread) and for helpful advice. I have learned a ton about my car and basic car stuffs from y'all and I'll be here for awhile! Unrelated, but is there any chance of finding a new "Porkys"? There has to be some privately owned restaurant that wants to gain some steady friday night customers by embracing the car folks. Who on here knows someone in the restaurant biz? I'll start poking around my outside of Facebook and forums friend group and see what I can come up with. Let's make this happen people!!
This is pretty spot on... but I hate those channels as well, personally. I come here for the buttfuxin', and go to lotustalk to look at things I'm not ready to buy with this weather and 6speedonline to pipe dream.
Not likely with the current law enforcement attitude towards car enthusiasts, die to the aforementioned douchebags that tend to permeate any meet these days. The attention-seeking types tend to ruin it. Look at what happened with weekly Sonic meets a few years back, it got too big so too many stupid people showed up and caused trouble. While Sonic may have appreciated the business, the Bloomington PD got sick of it, so the organizers were asked to kindly **** off if they couldn't control the attendance. You'd have to find a location that is less central to the cities, which these days means you cut half the potential attendance - if it's on the north side, people from the south side won't bother showing up. Then you'd probably have to not only find a business that wants a big gaggle in their parking lot who may not all want to spend money, but get local PD on board to not immediately disperse everyone. That brings up another point regarding meeting at a restaurant, so many people the days are cheapasses who don't want to spend a dime, but they're more than happy to take up a parking space that an actual customer could have used. Businesses tend not to appreciate that. Getting a meet to work would pretty much make spending money mandatory, and that turns off another portion of potential attendance. All told, it looks pretty bleak.
^all that said, we have this exact same conversation every winter. Attendance at meets dies off because it's ****ing cold and we're all getting older and don't really want to be out in it anymore like we used to be. So we decide to hold our meets at restaurants, nobody wants to show. Can't say I blame them, either. Not only is it cold, but depending on where you go, parking is a total bitch and a half too. I'm sure once it's warmer this place will pick up again, as far as attendance at meets and hanging out goes. I'm not sure about bringing in new members, I feel like we just discussed this a couple of months ago and SURPRISE whoever came up with whatever idea they had at the time didn't follow through on it. Another mns tradition. The reason we have stellar attendance at things like LAX is because @tangledupinblu and others on here, promote the **** out of it. Through word of mouth, Facebook, here, etc. And they've been doing it since it started. And that, right there, is the root of the problem and has always been the root of it: everyone has great ideas. But once it becomes "work" people lose interest in seeing it succeed. And now with Facebook, it's easier to just post there instead. It's work to continue to maintain a presence on a forum, as well. Look back on the history of this place, and you will see that I'm not wrong.
Yea, the traffic is moving away from forums. I've found a huge amount of information on Facebook, but there's a lot more BS to wade through to find it. I've joined a couple groups for the Lexus V8 that I'm putting in my 4Runner, and there are definitely some deeply knowledgeable people that watch them. I've learned more in a few days on Facebook than weeks of forum searching. It really did seem like the car culture changed considerably when they drove the enthusiasts off Uni. IIRC Porky's relocated to the suburbs, and still hosts gatherings, but it's nothing like what it was right there in town.
It is sad that the traffics have faded out. Not the numbskulls, but the actual members that contributed. I remember the first year of the cruise. It was a great turnout and there were soooo many regulars. Felt a bit like family(and still does, only smaller). Either way, was just observing the lack of postings and convos. I’ve enjoyed being here for the good, the bad, and the fugly. #Chirpchirp?
Yep. Many hours of my life I will never get back. Only Stephen King book I have ever read, and it will be my last. Plus it was a bitch to carry around.
if you feel like trying again, Revival was the best of his latest books since Duma. His kid writes well too.
I still enjoy MNSubaru and read through whatever looks interesting multiple times a week. It’s a great forum and a great community!
This conversation and others I've had over the last month or so have basically reaffirmed what I have believed about FB since they became a publicly traded company: it's really not needed in my life. Like, at all. So I woke up this morning, looked at my accounts, and decided to... Just stop going to FB. I manage my monthly meet here, I only once ever posted it on fb, and I talk to most of you bozos in the thunderdome every day. Turns out, that's exactly the level of interaction I personally need. Hopefully I don't end up back. It happens and I hate it. As far as promoting content here to try and sway some of our lost users back, I can help out wherever I can.... but I think this group is what we've got. It's not going to get any bigger or smaller really, and there will always be the weekly/monthly hangouts to catch up. As I get older, I'm appreciating the small groups of friends thing more and more. The trolls, however, can go to fb and stay there.
I hate FB. I used to be on there way too much and enjoyed trolling people on those stupid car groups (mnsubiez, awd army, Late model mayhem etc) but it really isn't even fun anymore and a few of my catfishing accounts have already been banned from all of them. I just turned off notifications for FB on my phone and now I maybe go on there like once per month to look at the dogs from my parent's rescue.