Quote:
Originally Posted by Answer
More like 2010 or so. The reality is that rap forums started out when the internet was in its infancy. In 2000 vbulletin forums were a common way for communities to begin because social media didn’t exist at the time. By the time MySpace and Facebook and a million other phone apps filled that void, forum-style social media are obsolete. In 2000 someone might google “rap” or “how to rap” and inadvertently stumble on one of these forums, but these days they’re more likely to look for a group on fb or reddit or something, so the new people are likely to find different outlets. There’s also more accessibility for REAL battling because there are local leagues all over the world that you can battle in if you’re interested. Learning how to record music is also a lot easier than it used to be. I remember you had to pull apart your computer, change the sound card, learn how to hook up and configure a mixer and microphone and know all the right cords you needed to record. These days you can just plug in a usb and all you need to figure out is the DAW, which are much more user friendly than they used to be.
My other theory is that a lot of grew into this together so we had more of a fighting chance to elevate together while still being competitive. We were all wack when we started out, but none of us were 14 year olds who’ve never discovered Multis going into a forum full of 30 year olds that have been doing this longer than we’ve been alive. Most of the people here are assholes when it comes to voting tbh, they call everything trash and/or played, usually offer very little advice on how to improve, and if you’re a newcomer you’re absolutely going to lose 99% of your battles coming into it and not understand why, and I’m sure that would make most people quit before they get a chance to improve. It’s a completely different environment than the one we grew up in where people were all still kinda green and learning to write and learning from each other. Crews died out, people are tired of voting, etc.
There many factors but that was always going to be the fate of text and rap forums tbh. Keeping these things alive require conscious adaptation to the world as it changes. If amazon stayed a book company for their rest of their existence they would’ve been put out of business years ago, but instead they adapted and changed with the world. There’s not really any change in the way rap forums function in comparison to how they did in 2000 and that’s the real issue.
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Just to clarify a little, because most of what you said was on point.... It started several years before 2000. I mean, Kno from Cunninlynguists, Sankofa, and various other known underground stars now started out as netcees and were doing March Madness and other tournaments with the guys from Sethro’s and a couple other early boards in 1996/97. Sethro’s, Homegrown, and a handful of other sites were huge by ‘98, before RM came around and, at least in a lot of the original heads’ opinions, diluted the hell out of the quality... Then, in 2001 or so, the various other boards that would become mainstays popped up.
But, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of boards were dead by 2010.. A couple boards struggled along, but that was definitely the end of the days when boards were EVERYWHERE.