[Gravity Wins]

I'm 33, and while not exactly young, I'm clearly on the younger end of the spectrum when it comes to this forum. So if I can put on the hat of "young person" for the purposes of this discussion, I'll put it bluntly: forums are dead.

Prior to social media, forums were an integral part of the internet. I'm just old enough to remember that age. I used to be a daily user on a MuchMusic Forum where in-depth discussions of all genres of music were had. The average age there must have been around 20. I learned more around punk, metal, alternative, and indie, from that forum, than anywhere else.

Where is it now? Who knows. Some tech dev probably noticed a while back that it was costing too much to run and deleted it. When facebook went mainstream, between about 2006-2010, the decline of forums began. Most forums are now long gone and those that remain are collecting cobwebs.

Ironically, facebook groups (which largely replaced forums for the younger gen) are no longer considered cool and are rapidly aging as well. Now, most young people find communities in places like discord chats, subreddits, or other places that I'm probably too old to know about.

The desire to connect and build communities is still there. And honestly, with so many people tired of social media, if forums really modernized they could possibly make a comeback. But it's not going to happen with confusing photo posting tools and "Smilies" that haven't changed since 1996.

And so the decline of communities like skyscraper page will likely continue.