Gaia Graveyard - A husk of the old site...

Is Gaia part of the Dead Internet Theory?

Dead Internet Theory?	40.2%	[ 202 ]
It's Possible...	32.2%	[ 162 ]
Tinfoil Hat	27.6%	[ 139 ]
Total Votes:			[ 503 ]

[Raven_Hellwind]

Welcome to Extended Discussion Graveyard

Straight off the bat - it's not just ED!

Having a look through a lot of the forums they are basically dead. Some are only active with a handful of people now and there are MONTHS between meaningful threads on most of the other boards. The few people that remain pop up in multiple threads making it seem like the site is more active than it really is.

This isn't just speculation either. Having a look on archive sites (and being around since the first year) it's strange to see more 'traffic' and snapshots in the last 10 years, with a decline in user and posts. Honestly I think this probably comes from online purchases becoming tightly monitored so the site covers itself with more data now than it did previously.

RP - the main aspect of the site is basically dead. Looking through guilds they are nearly all completely stagnant or have been cycling the same pages for weeks because of infrequent users.

GD is and always has been Chatterbox 2.0 without the BUMPs and heavier Ban Hammers. Not much has changed over there but with the lack of traffic there are certainly 'louder' opinions than diversity now...

Seeing the market/economy balloon into this bloated mess now probably doesnt help either. Surfing would land 1-5 gold while posting would be 15-30 gold. Now I sign in and get trillions? Absolutely ridiculous.

I wonder how much in sitting in the DEAD BANK now...

For those newer than 15 years to the table, the DEAD BANK was a theory we all had way back at the beginning when the marketplace started taking off. Basically, over time accounts get forgotten and purged. In doing this the value of items changed because they get destroyed in these purges (Think Halo and Devil Horns from Year 1 or the Jack Shirt). We proposed the items would be removed pre-purge and filtered back into the market place to artificially boost the economy. Like a Black Market of unregulated items created by the backend. Considering how many items are available now, it wouldnt be hard to think that there is a DEAD BANK available with basically every item that can be put onto the marketplace when there is enough interest in an item to increase the value.

With the cut in active users, I wonder how much is all real or how much has been set up to look like things have changed? It's still a HTML platform with limited support (including resolution ffs) and no imbedded workaround for Flash... which everyone knew was going to be killed off but instead of doing anything about moving to a newer platform we are asked to use 3rd party plugins? All while new items are made basically daily? Not exactly quality form for a site coming up to 20 years old...

ninja

[Flemmes Felares]

The decline is due to the aging user base. Most Gaians these days are well into their 20s and 30s, and have other priorities in life, or have lost interest in Gaia and use other forms of social media. This is compounded by the fact that as the older generation move on, the user base is not being replenished by a newer generation. Kids these days are not exactly into forums that are heavily texted based. Heck, most kids these days hardly bother to read. Video-based social media is the new thing.

[darth acheron]

Oh, look, another gAiA iS dEaD thread. Gaia is working on revitalizing,one example is the new search options in the MP. They are also working on Towns3 which will be 3D. Yes, they have a ways to go, but they are making progress. If you have any ideas to make Gaia better, Ask the Staff is every Tuesday, and is sent out as a Staff notice.

[Raven_Hellwind]

Quote:

darth acheron

To give you a better idea, yesterday had between 0.4 - 0.5% Users online compared to 8 years ago. ZERO POINT FOUR OR FIVE PERCENT.

Saying things like "Well put in an idea" or "Gaia is working on a new..." - those are extremely surface level responses with no substance behind them. How far behind do they need to be for it to be acceptable? What good are new features to a shrinking user base? And honestly, the last 2 Towns failed - From here what are people waiting on? Either a Decentra/Sandbox clone or a Roblox clone? 15 years ago we we waiting on a platform that is now BotW/Genshin Impact. An MMO style open world similar to the fan made Pokemon MMO from around the same time. In 15 years absolutely NOTHING close to those advancements have happened.

To be honest that was a GD response at best and a Chatterbox answer at worst... It's understandable why most of the forums have died if users aren't interested in using each one correctly... neutral

Quote:

Flemmes Felares

I never saw Gaia as a product of it's time until recently. It's probably the most 'out of touch' community regarding newer generations for exactly the reasons you said. But I also don't think it's the platform to change with the times either for reasons above.

When anime, gaming and comics exploded into pop-culture it also created 1000x more "LoL RaNdUm" fan boys/girls that saturated the market with arguably nothing positive coming from it. (Look at what EB Games/Game Stop has become).

[Flemmes Felares]

Raven_Hellwind

I never saw Gaia as a product of it's time until recently. It's probably the most 'out of touch' community regarding newer generations for exactly the reasons you said. But I also don't think it's the platform to change with the times either for reasons above.

When anime, gaming and comics exploded into pop-culture it also created 1000x more "LoL RaNdUm" fan boys/girls that saturated the market with arguably nothing positive coming from it. (Look at what EB Games/Game Stop has become).

Anime, gaming, and comics is more popular now than ever, but the problem is that the platforms which people use to talk about them have changed. People today like to flock to the giants like FB, YT, TikTok, Reddit, etc, because that is where everyone else is at. They offer more features and more ways for people to stay relevant and up-to-date. The times have changed to where there is so much on the internet now that a smaller site like Gaia gets easily buried under the pile, and people would rather flock to the big names than go out of their way for smaller communities because it is just easier to find and use.

Gaia is also out-dated for its time, and unfortunately, keeping up with the trends is necessary to stay relevant in today's world where everything is so saturated and fast-paced. People want instant gratification, like videos and instant messaging. Gaia has some of these, but it is no where near feature-rich and robust like the bigger names out there. You have discord (among many) for chat, and you have streaming like YT and Twitch for video games. Gaia does not even come close to delivering any of the things that is needed to remain relevant.

However, that is not to say that niche places like Gaia have no place, but that as each generation flock to certain trends, they are also teaching the next to do the same, and the bigger things get, the more people gravitate towards it. That is just the way nature works. Once a trend becomes big enough, it tends to overshadow the smaller stuff around it.

If you search for "anime forums" or anything like that on google, you are not going to find gaia anywhere on there unless you specifically searched for it.

[Raven_Hellwind]

Flemmes Felares

If you search for "anime forums" or anything like that on google, you are not going to find gaia anywhere on there unless you specifically searched for it.

I was introduced to Gaia through MSN Chatrooms rofl

mIRC and Chatrooms were some of the most fun times on the early web that I had.

I just had a quick look and you are 100% correct. It looks like they havent even set up a good profile page for the search engine... so all other SEO aspects are probably completely trash at this point too.

I just checked out the Merch shop too... a pair of shoes and a hoodie. Both look terrible...

From the ground up it could do with a massive overhaul. I'd love to be a part of it but the gatekeepers never take into consideration what the community has to say...

[Xephyre]

lmao when we were young

[Raven_Hellwind]

Xephyre

lmao when we were young

*Dial-up modem noises intensify*

[Raven_Hellwind]

UPDATE

So its been about a week since I started this and i've notice 2 things:

Firstly, in that time only a dozen people (at most) have people on ED across multiple threads. In some cases, its 2 people having multiple conversations.

Secondly, the amount of active users is capped to make it look like it never drops below a certain range, and the site traffic is generated by bots.
1322 visible, 461 hidden, 1218 guests

Thats as of right now and there are always a massive number of 'guests'. It's a 1:1 ratio of possible legitimate users, and absolute unprovable garbage site traffic.

In those legitimate users its easy to break down the likelihood they are even real users. The backend will have time stamps on all login/log out activity and i'd bet a decent amount of those 'active' users are accounts that were once signed in on old machines with tracking cookies and information saved, that are either still on and not used or old accounts people forgot about.

Between 3K users, is anyone actually going to defend the minimal activity on this site now? Where are they? They sure as hell aren't in ED or GD. Chatterbox has _some_ people in it. And the RP and Art forums never hold many users at all. Games are objectively terrible and so is Towns.

So.... Where is everyone?

ninja

------------------------

Update - 18/07

1774 visible, 594 hidden, 1791 guests - Website traffic: Moderate - Forum traffic: Low. (under 5% activity)

Any time a Mod would like to chime in and be honest would be great...


ninja

[Raven_Hellwind]

1618 visible, 444 hidden, 1607 guests

Today:
ED - Minimal board function.
GD - Slightly more but not by much.
Chatterbox - 20 Pages (more... but using this as a base) with under 5% of the threads in the triple digits or higher while over 90% of the threads under 100 replies. A massive amount of these are burner accounts that have very basic gear and limited profile details. These are part of the VISIBLE accounts... These are burner accounts.

If a majority of the accounts on here are in Chatterbox and constantly spamming and bumping threads with no purpose other than artificially generating internet traffic to the site (handy for things like advertising and pay-per-click marketing...) then what are the real numbers of the active user base. If we were to remove Chatterbox and the artificial noise it generates, what % of the users on here would be legitimate now?

It's pretty obvious now that everything here is artificial. From the Users to the Marketplace, everything has been fabricated over nearly 2 decades to generate the façade that this website has continued (successfully) for as long as it has.

ninja

EDIT

https://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/gaia-community-discussion/ask-the-staff-19-july-2022-closed/t.111714672_121/

Ask the Staff cant even reach 10 pages with (1186 visible, 360 hidden, 939 guests) - Conveniently picking the worst time with the lowest active users online to open a thread regarding feedback...

[Raven_Hellwind]

Currently 1677 users. (849 visible, 266 hidden, 562 guests).

Now that I have shown a large part of this sites activity is 'actively dead' with a constant volume of unaccounted guests and burner accounts I want to dig deeper but i dont know where to go from here...

ninja

[Z33xS1K]

i hate how theres new games like gaia (hobbo lobby, highrise, etc.) but theyre much uglier games

[Raven_Hellwind]

Z33xS1K

i hate how theres new games like gaia (hobbo lobby, highrise, etc.) but theyre much uglier games

This is a big problem too.

Newer sites have come along and done the same thing (some better, some worse) while Gaia just stayed the same...

[Froggy Faery]

Something's definitely got to be done about flash and using 3rd party plugins. That age is long gone neutral

[Kynthis]

As a 30 year old (who was mostly active in the 2005ish time) I came back for nostalgia's sake. When I asked my husband if he had ever heard of Gaia, he said no. And honestly? Drawing new users into this site seems like an insurmountable task - I agree that most people nowadays are looking for video-based social media... or something like Reddit (which I also love).

In general I think Reddit has kind of filled the needs of what Gaia brought to the table for people in our age range.