Active doll community on other platforms?

I belong to a group in IL ( around 60 ) and our forum used to be very active with people sharing their projects and dolly days and now I go to check daily but it's like a ghost town, Only time it gets active is when a meet up is announced. While I do share photos on FB, Instagram and Flickr if I have a story I share it there as well as here on DOA. But I have never built a following like some as my stories are not like years ago. Now they are that day, not a running story line or such. I get a few comments here, but on the IL forum nothing. Social media could be to blame, people want to see things fast and only need to post a heart. But it also could be as people leave hobby people come in and like many things it changes. We will always have the people who look at these dolls as art and how to express themselves through the dolls but we will have those who love the dolls and think of them as people who are sharing their lives with us in stories. I will keep doing what I do and hope those who do look liked what they saw. But I do it for me, I have made friends in this hobby and I have loved the the dolls I have had and those I still have.

 

Define "community" and "dead"...

I mean, did the large mainstream social platforms kill off a lot of smaller platforms aimed at more nieche topics? Yes. Most certainly.
Has that gone so far now that younger/newer people seem somewhat unable to not find a community that fits their hobbies? Oh, yes, for sure.
Does a lot of people aslo seem unable to create their own new spaces and continuously fail to support those who try? Yes, for some reason.
Does this seem to surprise people? It does seem obvious, but I see qestions like this often enough, so yes.
Some of us did have conversations about this exact topic as far back as when some in our friend groups started to be used by Facebook to market that platform to everyone in their e-mail contacts list without their consent.
Some still joined.
Every new platfrom builds on what has been gathered from the previous ones.
It's a bit too late to cry about it now. I don't believe it's possible to fully reverse that damage. best thing you can do if you fell for it is to stop falling for it and move on. The world has a lot more to offer if you look past the gigants.

And then there is the fact that people have been trained to think in terms of "likes" "followers" and "reposts" instead of in terms of actual interactions with other people, other hobbyists, humans with shared interests. I don't thinks it's possible to be active on platforms built like that without being conditioned at least to some extent.
If you expect a hundred likes in two minutes, you will be dissatisfied with the format of a forum no matter how active it is because it is not optimized for data gathering, but for actual conversations and an exchange of information between people. A forum is not optimized to staisfy search algorithms and data miners and if you use the same mertrics as they do to decide how well something is doing, you are basicly judging the intelligence of a fish by his ability to climb a tree, to borrow a phrase.

We are all responsible for our actions and the consequences there of. Anyone who agrees to the ToS of any site is partly responsible for that sites actions and how it efects the rest of the world. This is not limited to the impact it has on individuals, but extends to lager developements in society and even world politics. If you join, you support it and do have a responsibility to stay up to date. You can't use it and still be sad when it kills something you cared about.
We are all adults here and we are responsible for where we put our votes, our money, our time and our data.

Sorry about the rant, but this topic frustrates me a lot. There is only so many times you can say "I told you so" before it gets old.
How about spending energy building the communities we want going forward instead of whining?

Edit to add: And Yes, I did put down the chrochet project i am currently working on for one of my dolls, to write out a rant as a reply to a whine. So i am not neccesarily any better, just to make that clear. Wich is kind of the point, really. Any action does have consequences. Let's do our best to try to encourage the sort of activity we want in our hobby.

 

I have to agree with @Lillith we fell for the FB especially tricks and hoped we could make it different, but unless we do what works for us then we only have ourselves to blame. I formed groups on Facebook to focus on certain companies. I have one for Dollstown and one for Bishonen House dolls. I belong to one for Irrealdoll and also belong to a mostly Wisconsin member group. If you have a company of BJD you're especially fond of you can look for friends there or join a bjd gr in general. Just make sure they don't allow recasts in group. Also did you make an introduction thread saying where you are, just state or country works. You might find local people to at least talk to and share photos with. You have to find what you want from hobby. You are only alone if you don't reach out.

 

I have to agree. Yes

 

I think it also depends on what you get out of the community. I am a big fan of unboxings and photo staging, I do not care much for the individual story's people create for their dolls outside of maybe their name and their personality.
I like to converse about new releases, different body types, styling techniques, cleaning techniques, and differences between brands. In that sense, I still feel the community is active. It definitely helps that I have an active meetup group around me as well.

 

I think the hobby has become more accessible than ever but perhaps the crowd and the priorities are different. Getting a doll and properly joining the hobby was definitely out of reach for me in the 2000s in many ways, so I just stopped trying, and was flabbergasted by the options and ease of acquiring dolls and related items when getting (back?) into it more recently. To be fair, I wasn't around when things moved to social media and also don't partake in the community on platforms like that so I wouldn't know how active things were or are there. I just guess it's become more aesthetic- and image-based, and many hobbyists don't feel the need to DIY with how accessible and more affordable getting wigs/clothes/eyes/whatever are, or they don't come from a DIY background at all and enjoy bjds in a very different way.

I do remember photostories being a popular thing from deviantArt and Livejournal days and haven't seen many around any more, but might be that the other interests people in the hobby shared were more homogenous than they are now, too. Writing was really popular during the high time of blogging but it's definitely more of a niche thing now. I also think the interest in asian cultures and anime/manga is not as common for collectors any more, especially with more and more western dolls on the market, or people finding out about bjd through a more random pathway when just browsing around.

I've noticed many people returning to the hobby after a long break recently, though. I don't think anything like that truly dies, but rather comes in waves. People are getting more and more dissillusioned with social media as well, and returning to slower communities in many online spaces. However, it must be different for younger peeps who grew up within the big social media and can't find their way to alternative online communities, or don't know how to navigate in them, so there's nobody picking up on how things have been functioning before.

 

This right here is the biggest issue that I see. I'm old, I don't do any of the social media places like FB, IG, Twitter etc because there is almost no conversation between people, just click on the "like" button and be gone. I much prefer forum groups like this one (and others I've been on), as relationships and real friendships can come from them. Most social media sites are just superficial and shallow (IMO) and people leave quickly because they don't actually get what they need.

 

I also miss the times the majority of the community used to create beautiful threads/topics with photos/ stories etc. The races for followers/likes in social media, their unfair illogical algorithms destroyed the users's ability to simply create without looking back at what the others will say and how well the audience will take the new post/photo/creation.

 

I think it is also that people grow up and simply carve their own spaces.
Used to semi regularly organize meets in my area but the big ones are pretty stressful to organize and keep streamlined so I fully admit that these fell on the wayside.

HOWEVER I think there is still a community and we do find each other, but just as regular friendships these need to be nourished.
Interact with your friends posts, interact with their stories, strike up little conversations.
Create the community you want yourself, one step at a time.

Which yes is a PITA but I can say I enjoy the hobby community and friendships just as much as I did thirteen years ago when I started.
Just pick the platform you enjoy the most and find your people.

And for God's sake, ignore like/followers, your mental health will thank you

 

The doll community is alive and well, just spread out with DOA kinda acting as a watering hole for many enthusiasts.
There are very active, vibrant communities on Discord and acquiring a doll is easier than ever.
The community has changed drastically albeit slowly since 2008, when I jumped in.
And everyone has super valid points, so we can all clearly see the changes. The challenge therein becomes adapting to the change and, especially if your a more experienced member, is to provide insight and information.
From fun things like face-ups and stringing, to the critical importance of not buying recasts. We should be beacons on positivity and encouragement.
Hopefully, the dark days of elitism are gone from the doll community and everyone can just appreciate the love and effort folks put into their dolls. (NGL, the elitism is why I took a break and joined a Discord)

Yeah, some things might certainly feel superficial, I think we can all agree that pretty much all doll owners LOVE their dolls.
Cuz if we ain't here for that, then what's the point?

 

I see people active here every day. I don't know just how active it used to be here when the registrations were closed. But, I was in FB bjd communities and many of which were very active at the time I left. Besides that, people were also meeting a lot in person, some only used SM to schedule the meets. So the community was more active outside of the little bit you see online.
The pandemic surely broke up these in-person meets for a while but now every other day I read some message here about collectors returning to the forum or to the hobby after having a long absence.
I guess that the communities have shifted around locations but doll lovers are still loving dolls all over the world.
And so many new doll makers every day, not to mention popular doll conventions, can you really picture their continued success without a strong presence of collectors?

If you are missing some kind of activity where you want to see it, why not try creating some?
Maybe you could encourage others out of the woodwork to participate with you.

 

I don't think it's dead, but it certainly has changed in culture and moved to other spaces. I wasn't around for the DeviantART/tumblr days, but it seems like everyone moved off of there to Facebook/Instagram, and it's since moved again to spaces like Discord.

I find that Instagram is still good for keeping up with the big artists/companies, Facebook is good if you want to cast a wide net if you have a question, but there isn't a strong sense of community on there anymore. Facebook groups feel too big and like shouting into a void, and Instagram you sort of just like a post and keep scrolling without a second thought. If you want consistent activity and discussion, Discord is now the place to be. You can find the big BJD server just by looking up "BJD" in Discoverable Servers; there's other smaller servers but you'll have to ask around - some are location based for local meetups, others are based around certain dolls (I believe there's one for Dollfie Dreams, for example).

I would also highly recommend trying to cultivate your own community and building relationships as I find that friendships are what ground you in a community, not the mutually shared interest as interests will come and go, but friendships last. Doll conventions are also a great way to meet artists and people, as are meetups for more local events.

 

I refuse to let it die!! I don't want to live in a world where my interactions consist of only watching the like counter on my sterile social media profile with no friends in sight. I've mostly quit social media and often cross post my photos here and I hope other owners will start sharing more photos of their precious dolls here as well. I'm trying to ignore the like system and comment more on other people's threads. One comment is worth infinite likes I'm also trying to avoid acquisition syndrome and doing okay!

I'm connecting with a lot fewer people than I was in 2009/2010, but I've made some Top Quality friends who I love to chat with.