So why did the party stop? I think there are a few answers.

* The internet stopped being accessed by desktop

In January 2014, desktop internet use was overtaken by mobile internet use in America. This means screens got smaller, layouts moved primarily from horizontal to vertical, and physical keyboards were largely unavailable.

This means writing a longer post was more difficult. Formatting it to appear nicely with photos in line with the text became more difficult. Reading a post that was text-heavy became more onerous. As people drifted away from their desktop computers, they began to drift away from forums.

*Social media sure is easy

With most popular forms of social media, you're being served interesting things all the time with cross-pollination all in a one-stop dopamine hit. Do you love golf, Audi cars, retro-cafe motorcycles, and sushi? Social media can easily serve that up to you in a seemingly constant stream. With forums, however, you'd probably have to log in and catch up on four or five different places. Granted, that conversation may be deeper and more helpful for technical topics, but most folks aren't trying to read about the best way to do a valve check on a Suzuki GS450 every day when they have a few minutes to burn.

You may be saying, "Hey, it's easier to consume, but it's a pain to create content on Insta or Facebook." I'd agree with you. I'd also argue it's going to be much harder to find great content in the future (if it even exists) because traditional social platforms like Twitter and Facebook are designed to deliver the latest content, not the deepest.

*Photobucket broke the internet one day

The people creating those helpful how-to posts on motorcycle forums needed a place online to host their photos, and many used the popular image-hosting service Photobucket. On June 30, 2017, Photobucket quietly carried out what amounted to be a full-on murder: It elected to disallow embedding of images. To continue uninterrupted service as had previously been provided, Photobucket began charging $399, which was seen by many as tantamount to extortion.

The ramifications were twofold, extending far beyond the motorcycle world. First, many forum articles, tutorials, and knowledge bases were wiped clean of images, rendering many posts either much less useful or not useful at all. Compounding this issue was the fact it affected so many forums which had relied on free user-generated content.

More devastatingly, some users realized rebuilding was futile as they really were not in control of the information produced individually or in aggregate and simply chose to discontinue use of the bulletin board forum instead of starting over from square one. If several different companies can dismantle something you built, well… what’s the point?

The amount of devastation this caused was really hard to assess. I was moderating a motorcycle forum at the time this occurred and could not believe the amount of stuff Photobucket rendered unusable in just one flick of a switch.

*Links rot and people die

This is the ugly obverse side of the coin we just covered. As it turns out, it doesn't feel friendly or inviting to show up to a forum where half the stickies were penned by someone who is deceased and link rot means all the links and images are broken. It feels like walking in on a bulletin board (like a physical corkboard) that has old information and sales ads on it. It's not real helpful, and unless you really suspect something good is on there, you probably won't spend time digging. Fewer people contribute to the forum and the downward spiral continues.

Boring.

Boring.

Geez...

I think RYPN might be around for a while. The format makes it easy to view with a limited number of departments and the most active topics returning to the top as they receive comments. I generally don't visit the larger sites regularly any more, the ones that have dozens of topic categories, some of which haven't received a new post in several years.

The overall hobby participation is influenced by passing years and changing interests. Used to travel to the monthly meetings of four groups on a regular basis, and to the annual meetings of several. Now I view the monthly meetings of only two railroad related groups, just occasionally, and by the internet, and participate in the annual meeting of only one organization, also by the internet.

Watch for the implosion of colleges in the next few years. It's already starting.

Enrollment declines continued to worsen this spring. Total postsecondary enrollment fell to 16.2 million this spring, marking a one-year decline of 4.1 percent or 685,000 students. Enrollment declined this spring at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Following a 3.5 percent drop last spring, postsecondary institutions have lost nearly 1.3 million students since spring 2020.

Undergraduate enrollment accounted for most of the decline, dropping 4.7 percent this spring or over 662,000 students from spring 2021. As a result, the undergraduate student body is now 9.4 percent or nearly 1.4 million students smaller than before the pandemic.

Public institutions suffered the brunt of enrollment declines this spring, losing 604,000 students (-5.0% from a year ago). Community colleges accounted for more than half of these losses this spring (351,000 students) and have lost over 827,000 students since the start of the pandemic.

There were over 462,000 fewer women students (-4.6%) this spring, more than doubling the losses experienced the previous year, resulting in a two-year total decline of 665,000 women enrollments.

A special analysis of the spring freshmen highlights distinctive pandemic-related enrollment trends. Nearly 340,000 students started college for the first time this spring, an increase of 4.2 percent from spring 2021. However, the growth this spring was not enough to return community college freshman enrollment to pre-pandemic levels, with the current freshmen numbers still running 7.9 percent (17,000 students) below spring 2020’s levels.