General demise of F12; other grappling fourms

[yovan]

Sherdog. Gotta love it.

Just painfully opened a troll thread on why Marcelo has no legit black belts.

About 3-4 years ago this place was a nice, little corner of the interwebz where you could discuss technique, explore other ideas about grappling, etc.

The amazing thing to me is: as grappling is exploding in popularity, less and less people are actually using the forums in a constructive way. It's not just F12... the Underground seems to be suffering from inactivity as well.

Hell, even the old NHB Gear forum was rockin' back in the day.

What happened?

 

[Ton]

I blame MTV.

 

[Balto]

Technology has changed and so have habits.

I mean even the idea of forums is just a replacement for the old newsgroups. I used to look at like rec.martial-arts and stuff before I even did BJJ. But by the time I started BJJ, newsgroups were dead. Things have their time and then technology moves on.

Now it's mostly Facebook with some Twitter and Reddit mixed in. Still the same basic topics though.

 

[RJ Green]

there are still plenty of old farts around. the mods have been pretty lax about the obvious shitposts but look who's talking. a lot of the super-new footsie-type competition stuff seems to have more interest over on reddit, not that dudes aren't interested in here, just that it's not quite the fanboy magnet.

the content a lot of the black belts post is still pretty great even if it's not quite as frequent, and it's cool to see how the competitive guys do as they're promoted. there's still a decent amount of interaction from pros and semi-pros and you've still got a lot of the old guard lurking.

switching to the new board made posting media far easier, although the UI seemed super obnoxious in the beginning. again, look who's talking.

it's also been nice that the dudes posting instructionals have run out of shit to post about. that's not to say there wasn't some gold in there, but the clickbailty 'move of the week' or '6 judo throws every bjj player should know' videos seem to have dried up.

plus we can like posts now. hooray opinions.

 

[Respeezy]

Its pretty dead, sometimes after a huge event there will be literally 0 posts about that event. For some reason i still keep coming back though.

 

[Dogstarman]

I come here still. There are some good posts. Some guys come in and start trolling for the fuck of it. I imagine it's 4chan guys or some other fuckwit group doing it for laughs.

 

[grapplejuice]

Sherdog. Gotta love it.

Just painfully opened a troll thread on why Marcelo has no legit black belts.

About 3-4 years ago this place was a nice, little corner of the interwebz where you could discuss technique, explore other ideas about grappling, etc.

The amazing thing to me is: as grappling is exploding in popularity, less and less people are actually using the forums in a constructive way. It's not just F12... the Underground seems to be suffering from inactivity as well.

Hell, even the old NHB Gear forum was rockin' back in the day.

What happened?

f12 used to be the tits .... I just look around in here and mostly see garbage and people bashing competitive grapplers and other bs. It's a damn shame.

 

[Pixelated Porn]

Sherdog. Gotta love it.

Just painfully opened a troll thread on why Marcelo has no legit black belts.

About 3-4 years ago this place was a nice, little corner of the interwebz where you could discuss technique, explore other ideas about grappling, etc.

The amazing thing to me is: as grappling is exploding in popularity, less and less people are actually using the forums in a constructive way. It's not just F12... the Underground seems to be suffering from inactivity as well.

Hell, even the old NHB Gear forum was rockin' back in the day.

What happened?

there was always trolls here like gsparky and the coleslaw guys and we had baby dela riva
some of the good real posters got banned like Einar and hayliks, and some others

I think the demise of lloyd also contributed to it as well

and fucking reddit bjj having so many people, reddit can suck the balls

 

[Calibur]

I think it's because Jiu Jitsu used to be a niche sport that was small so you had to go to forums to talk about it openly.

Now bjj is pretty we'll known thanks to UFC and there is YouTube and a gajilion subscription sights. So many options for Jiu Jitsu media and interaction and that's outside of the gym.

Plus, Instagram culture makes it where people interact in short bursts. Why explain why you think nogi is better then gi when you can just tap the down vote button and smirk as an opinion you don't like gets taken away without any thought analysis.

This is a sport viable for casuals and casual people need casual media. The people obsessed with grappling will go where the casuals go because the obsessed go everywhere anyway.

Sherdog had its time but I think forums are kind of outdated anyway.

 

[RJ Green]

Sherdog had its time but I think forums are kind of outdated anyway.

we're all outdated man.

 

[fanboysareevil]

I still think forums are a much better format for in-depth, constructive discussion than social media.

That, and not knowing everyone's real name and location unless volunteered is actually a lot of fun sometimes. Can't have a Sitcharoo on FB.

 

[kpoz12]

Chill guys, Kenny Kenmura is still here and loving y'all.

 

[loyalyolayal]

Sherdog.

What happened?

 

[Kirra]

It could be worse. At least F12 isn't as bad as /r/BJJ...

 

[jcandoitbig]

Can't have a Sitcharoo on FB.

he was a true talent

 

[Rico]

he was a true talent

He's here somewhere else... Don't wanna out him, though.

 

[Uchi Mata]

As the sport got more popular, you had more casual people involved, and they jumped on the forums and clogged them up with crap. The forum was better when it was mostly serious grapplers with very few casual guys posting. And the mods do seem to be pretty lax about getting rid of trolls these days, which doesn't help. But there are still gems on here, and overall the crowd is a lot better than /r/bjj which is like 90% white and blue belts.

 

[Ishaq]

The trolling is not so much the problem.

People can overlook that. It's the inactivity? How did we get to such inactivity.

 

[Uchi Mata]

The trolling is not so much the problem.

People can overlook that. It's the inactivity? How did we get to such inactivity.

A lot of these topics are a little played out. You want to talk about gi vs. no-gi again? Or Lloyd Irvin? I think there's still good threads when stuff does happen, e.g. the Olympics, Mundials, ADCC, etc. Hell, the Oly wrestling and Judo threads still get some posts and they ended a while ago.

 

[Ishaq]

A lot of these topics are a little played out. You want to talk about gi vs. no-gi again? Or Lloyd Irvin? I think there's still good threads when stuff does happen, e.g. the Olympics, Mundials, ADCC, etc. Hell, the Oly wrestling and Judo threads still get some posts and they ended a while ago.

I don't know if I agree. The old guys have grown out of it but where's the pipeline of new guys joining f12? When there's alot of active members there's always interesting topics to talk about.