Why has the quality of threads on this forum declined so much?

At least you still have me. I completely agree with you though. To borrow a term from incels, I mostly see a lot of "Low-IQ posts" on this site nowadays. It makes me sad. And even the good posts are just bumps from years ago. Very few quality original posts are created. People are going to REEEE at this and say stuff like "well if you don't like it, just get off." Idk man, I've kind of become attached to this forum. One mic was kind of annoying btw.

 

yea, I remember him

 

I just joined and the forum seems to be incredibly underwhelming.

 

That's a rarity. Not just for nofap but for the entire world. It's 2020! Bury your expectations and build a concerte tomb over them.

 

I don't know about the off-topic discussion but I see a lot of low quality posts on the self improvement forum. There isn't a whole lot of self improvement going on, just read the counting 3 wins thread for example. Dudes will pat themselves on the back for going for a walk, sleeping in, eating a salad, gaming with a friend, or doing some basic chores. Then you have posts where someone will ramble for 1000 words with no paragraphs about how sleeping 8 hours everynight is important, or a 30 day pushup challenge where you do 10 pushups everyday or some bullshit.

Dudes procrastinate doing actual self improvement like going to the gym properly, picking up interesting hobbies, getting a better job and learning useful skills by doing nofap "self improvement" like sleeping at a normal schedule, meditation, cold showers, basic excercise and making their bed. Its a bit sad to see that rewarded. No one stops and thinks if what they are doing is actually useful.

 

I think the average age of users is getting lower and lower. Which is probably a good thing - in retrospect, I had a problem at 15 or younger, but I didn't yet acknowledge it or try and do anything about it for another 10+ years. I suppose my assumption would be that teenagers aren't so used to internet forums, long form posts and journalling (etc) and are more used to the shorthand communication of things like twitter.

There's still top quality writing on the forums, in my opinion. The journal section has many examples.

 

When these people complain quality is dying...
They mean "conspiracy theory, bulls55t-redpill-bluepill, shiny words, 45 minutes of quality editing going into a single post and response to hoist one's intellectual-wokeness-flag etc. kind of stuff" isn't there in abundance anymore.

If you ask me, it's a good thing, but anyway I am just a simple minded fellow so maybe I do not see the appeal!

 

Ha!
Must admit I thought the quality of the main forums went up once 'Abstinence/Retention' meant all the woo and pseudo-science stuff was all kept in one place

 

You make a great point. I imagine anyone still alive from the Greatest Generation would look at this and go: what the actual fuck has happened to society? The fact that we need these crutches at all to be feeling as though we are good, worthy people is a sign that liberal society has lost something fundamentally valuable along the way. Self-improvement is great but it does not replace being other-oriented, which has been shown in study after study to be necessary for happiness. I say this as an atheist, not trying to promulgate some woo-woo religious look-after-thy-neighbour crap (though these ideas overlap).

People do have to start somewhere though, especially those in their late teens and early 20s. I have certain Aspie tendencies, and without concrete parameters for daily living, I find it hard to convince myself I'm making progress. So in my own personal, handwritten journal, I keep track of water intake, meals, meditation, and exercise. It's the only way I know to make this shit permanent. But I don't do it in public, admittedly.

 

I must be old. I've been here since 2015 And I was trying to kick this for years before that.

 

@AKRO_5891 a little bit of mud slinging from time to time never hurts

 

OneMic here, was lurking after being away for nearly a month and saw I was mentioned. (ill be gone again though )

Wow, man, thanks! I don't know exactly why I was included in this list of yours, but that's quite nice of you to say. I too share the same thoughts for EthanW, Max Fisher, and TheUnfadable. Max, I never saw debate or anything, but I always thought he was just a really chill guy. EthanW and TheUnfadable, even if I may not have agreed with everything they posted (I think especially EthanW comes to mind), they always seemed like they did look into what they were talking about and knew quite a bit on the subject, which you have to respect.

You mentioned 2 out of the 4 reasons I left, though. People I liked seeing posts from (including people whose journals I followed) either going on long hiatuses or just straight up leaving, MoonShot being one example. It made the forum feel more lonely in a way. I also noticed the decline of quality forum posts and found myself rarely replying to anything since they often times were just strange or inane topics.

Meh, can't win 'em all.

 

I'm unsure if I can say for absolutely sure that thread quality has gone down or if its just confirmation bias, but in my experience at least its become extremely hard to find threads in general on NoFap that are actually worth responding to, not just on this forum, with a lot of good ones getting buried under mountains of, well lets face it, complete shit.

Personally, I dont make my own threads anymore unless its something I randomly get the impulse to talk about in off-topic, because it has seemed like the last 4-5 actual NoFap related threads I've started have either gone completely ignored or has been filled with advice that I specifically asked NOT to receive because I've heard it so many times. (I'm not trying to sound like an ass when I say that, I still fuck up like anyone else, but at the same time its annoying to get the same generic advice from people who clearly didn't fully read what I wrote).

I also dont comment that much anymore because it seems like whenever I do, I either get drawn into some sort of stupid argument I'm too much of an idiot to pull myself out of, the thread gets deleted for some reason, or it turns out to be pointless for some other third reason. Just the other day I got insulted by some guy who was clearly hurting, and my temptation to insult back was strong. Instead I tried to help him, and we had a good back and forth. Then the thread was deleted, presumably because of the insult, although I'm not 100% sure on that because he was also saying some messed up shit (which again was clearly because he was hurting), and I never noted down what the guys name was so I cant even continue talking to him to at least reply to the thing I know he commented but didn't get time to reply to. At the minute, I still use the site every day, but thats literally just to comment on one ongoing thread thats not even directly related to the purpose of the site, its about creative writing and I stumbled upon it by accident.

 

Thanks, but I'm not really back since I just came across this thread last night after deciding to lurk that night and really wanted to respond since you're addressing numerous thoughts I've had for a few months now. It had been a while since I've seen a thread like this, a thread that could spark some decent conversation. Or maybe that's just me as AtomicTango kinda makes the point on, who knows. When this thread dies, however, I'll be gone again. Don't plan on making a habit of popping back up all the time either, that would just be stupid.

Still, though, I hope you and the rest of you succeed in your reboots or whatever you're working on!

Not to bring up a bad memory, but I recall that back and forth you (and a few other well-minded people) had with some dude who was convinced you were being "homophobic" and ended up hijacking some poor dude's thread who was actually concerned about HOCD, so yeah, I see what you mean.

Also, didn't know there was a creative writing thread. I do that myself. That's somewhat tempting to join.

 

What I really dont understand about Drab (the guy who was calling us all right wing homophobe conspiracy theorists) is he ISNT a troll, as others rightfully pointed out when I suggested he was. I looked at this post history and he otherwise seemed like a reasonable, fairly genial guy. But when it came to even HINTING at the idea of HOCD, he just had to flip out completely over it and become a different person. He believes PIED is real, believes all the other porn induced/sexual ailments are real, but he wont accept HOCD is also a thing. Why? Well I guess thats a mystery I will never solve.

If you want to check it out heres the link: https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/becoming-the-writer-i-want-to-be.268267/