Old Members

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William Suter

Well-known member
I was searching on the internet for Zeiss warranty and it pulled up a PM post from back in 2013. Amazing how many familiar names came up that are no longer members or just don't post here any longer. Some of the older members like me will recognize the names. Wonder where they have all gone?
 
We have a "local" hunting forum here in SC that used to be pretty good 5-6 years ago. Today, it gets hardly any traffic, I'm actually surprised that it's still up and running. I logged in a while back and done some deep diving. Sadly. I lost count at 4-5 "regulars" that are now dead, including a good friend of mine. Cancer, blood clots, heart attack while dragging a deer out the woods, atv accident, man you name it.
 
Some loose interest in the hunt, some the internet. Some hard feelings from disagreements. Some just couldn't behave well and we're shown the shown the door. Who knows.
 
Ackleyman, Rustydust, Tim Neitz (sp), just a few off the top of my head. We use to have some good conversations back then. I remember chatting back and forth for hours with those members.
 
I see that more and more since I became a member here. When I post here now, it's almost out of nostalgia.

A lot of newer online hunters are posting for the highest number of views, likes, and comments. If that's what you're after, there are definitely other platforms that will give you more of that. Most of them weren't even around when this place was at its busiest.

I used to take a lot more pictures during a hunt. In the back of my mind, I was almost building a chronological story as the hunt unfolded, knowing I'd eventually share it. These days, I rarely take pictures except maybe at the very end, and even then I sometimes debate whether to post them at all.

I wish more people still shared content that told those stories—the little details, the setbacks, the things that happened between the trigger pull and the tailgate photo. But the internet has changed. Everything is a scroll on a mobile device now, with people chasing short posts and quick videos that provide a brief hit of stimulation before they're forgotten and replaced by the next one. That's just the direction things have gone, whether it's for better or worse.

 
I spend more time on Accurate Shooter and 24hr Campfire than here these days. Accurate Shooter is a good site but the campfire seems to be where the A-holes of the world gather. You gotta have thick skin there or just don't post anything. Or be prepared to defend yourself. I guess just be careful where you post and what you post. LOL
 
Yes, but those are forum-style bulletin boards with no algorithm driving what you see. The doom-scrolling platforms built around algorithms seem to suck the attention span right out of your head, narrowing your focus into this weird kind of tunnel vision.

Look around in any crowded room and you can see it. People sitting there doom-scrolling with an almost apathetic expression on their faces, completely absorbed in whatever the algorithm has decided to put in front of them.

That's what I like about forums like this. There is no algorithm deciding what you should see. You can scroll up and down, pick the posts that actually interest you, and open them. It's slower and more deliberate.

The downside is that there simply isn't enough new content being posted here anymore to keep someone engaged for hours. But honestly, I think that's part of what I miss about the old internet—the slower pace and the fact that you actually had to choose what you wanted to look at instead of having an algorithm constantly choosing for you.

Before the internet, you had photo books. You took pictures and shared them with family or friends, or maybe left a book sitting on the coffee table for someone to pick up and flip through. When I was a kid, I had a photo book of the things I hunted. I was always excited to get my first of a particular species, and I wanted that book to show the biggest variety possible for my area. It was my little record of what I'd experienced, but the audience was pretty small.

Now, you take a picture and it can travel at light speed, with the potential to be seen by unknownians' — or even people on the other side of the world. The audience went from whoever happened to pick up your photo book to potentially everyone with a phone.

And I think that's where some of the change in how we document things comes from. We're no longer just preserving memories or telling a story to people we know. We're feeding an algorithm and an audience we may have never met.

I don't know what comes next. But considering how far we've gone from a photo book sitting on a coffee table to billions of people carrying an algorithm in their pocket, I'm almost afraid to find out.
 
I always draw a parallel to MySpace. Once Facebook came along with a faster, more sophisticated algorithm, MySpace's numbers started falling off. I'm sure there were countless meetings among their developers trying to figure out what it would take to bring the old members back while also attracting the next generation of internet users.

But sometimes I wonder if that's the problem. You can spend all the time and money in the world trying to recreate what made something successful, but once the way people use the internet changes, you can't necessarily bring the old experience back. The audience has already moved on to the next thing.
 
I've become lazy. I probably haven't posted the last 20 coyotes I've killed, but I still enjoy reading everyone else's stuff.

It's not just this forum that's slowed down, look at Archery Talk. It used to have hundreds of posts a week if not hundreds a day. The largest "local" forum has also slowed down a ton.

A lot of people post on other platforms like FaceBook. MFKs page is so busy I quit posting on it because I got tired of all of the notifications.
 
Infidel 762 said:
I always draw a parallel to MySpace. Once Facebook came along with a faster, more sophisticated algorithm, MySpace's numbers started falling off. I'm sure there were countless meetings among their developers trying to figure out what it would take to bring the old members back while also attracting the next generation of internet users.

But sometimes I wonder if that's the problem. You can spend all the time and money in the world trying to recreate what made something successful, but once the way people use the internet changes, you can't necessarily bring the old experience back. The audience has already moved on to the next thing.
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Dude, I loved MySpace. MySpace was the best hook up site ever. Hell, it was better than Tender.
 
Yes, but MySpace was really the catalyst for something bigger. It gave people the ability to build a profile and project an image of themselves online. You could suddenly network with people from other states or even other countries. Before that, there were chat rooms, but you couldn't really click on someone's profile and get a sense of who they were. You couldn't scroll through their photos, see where they'd been, what they were doing, or pick up on patterns in their interests and moods over time.

Forums like this offered a little of that, but the focus was still on the content rather than the person. You got to know people through the threads they started and the opinions they shared, not through a carefully curated personal profile.

A lot of that history has been lost, too. Go back through old forum posts and you'll find countless broken image links. So much of the content was hosted on third-party sites like Photobucket. When they decided to start charging for what had once been a free service, years of photos effectively disappeared overnight. Entire hunting reports, build threads, trip journals, and stories were stripped of their images. Photobucket probably got what it deserved in the end, but it also marked the beginning of the end of that era of internet photo hosting.

In a way, MySpace, forums, Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok are all part of the same progression. Each step moved us a little further from simply sharing experiences with a small group of people and a little closer to broadcasting ourselves to the world. The technology changed, but the desire remained the same: to tell our stories and be seen by others. The difference is that today the story often takes a back seat to the algorithm. The platform decides what gets seen, what gets buried, and what keeps people scrolling.
 
This is a picture from my last post. If you had shown this to me as a kid and said, "This is how you'll be hunting coyotes decades from now," I would have assumed we were hunting with laser guns in some Star Wars future.

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Back then, trying to explain thermal optics, ballistic calculators, recording hunts from a scope, and posting online would have been about as impossible as trying to explain the internet to an ant.

Yet here we are. What once looked like science fiction is now just another night in the field.
 
PhotoBucket... Man you are talking about some old school stuff now.

I remember a few years ago I dug up my old MySpace and was actually able to log onto it. I spent about ten minutes looking through the old pictures and stuff and haven't been back.

Next you are going to start talking about the dial up sound that AOL made whenever it connected.... "You've got mail".
 
personally I enjoy this site and have joined campfire but, I never use it and don't really care anything about it. I don't use FB hardly at all except Marketplace and frankly I hate the idiots on FB and what seems to be a regression in general attitude and "mutual respect" for others. So many people act like they were born and raised in a cave... don't know what mutual respect for another is, I hate being in irritable atmosphere, won't do it. Back in the day we didn't look each other in the face and talk like this, the fight would be on and an a_ _ whooping coming. People get on a keyboard and actually grow a set, as long as they're not looking at you.
anyway as I said, I enjoy being here and some times I'm gone for awhile, but hey, IF there is not that one on one personal relationship, actually knowing someone and hunting with them, ...just ain't the same. computers can be neat BUT they can't replace personal relationships or substitute one
 
For me, PM is it. No farcebook, instascam or any other sites. I'm not an old tymer, but I joined because I was a lurker for years. I was searching for info and PM kept popping up, so I finally joined and glad I did.
The wealth of info a person can glean off this site is invaluable.
If there are "fights" every now and again, so what. What family doesn't bicker over every little trivial thing? If your feelers get hurt, grow a set of balls and move on to the next topic/discussion. Most of what is argued about isn't personal anyway.
Just my two cents, but I love this site and the acquaintances I've made.
 
Sprinkman said:
For me, PM is it. No farcebook, instascam or any other sites. I'm not an old tymer, but I joined because I was a lurker for years. I was searching for info and PM kept popping up, so I finally joined and glad I did.
The wealth of info a person can glean off this site is invaluable.
If there are "fights" every now and again, so what. What family doesn't bicker over every little trivial thing? If your feelers get hurt, grow a set of balls and move on to the next topic/discussion. Most of what is argued about isn't personal anyway.
Just my two cents, but I love this site and the acquaintances I've made.
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I couldn’t agree more, Sprinkman. I’m not on any of that stuff either. I’ve been a member here for quite a long time, but admittedly have taken some pretty long breaks in my earlier years as a member. I generally just ignore the drama, but on occasion have tried to steer some threads in the right direction. Occasionally though I lost my patience and just told it like it is and moved on.

By an overwhelming margin I feel like PM has a great group of like minded members. There’s a wealth of knowledge here. I think we have all witnessed the progression of a few inexperienced members that asked questions and actually listened. I love hearing about the successes of everyone on here as well as offering some insight or encouragement when things go awry.

In a nutshell, I’m proud to be part of PM, and I hope it stays around for a long time!
 
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