What happened to everybody?

LED Flashlights – General Info
21

I honestly don’t see much difference here in general. I also don’t exactly see a bad thing… yes its slow herd right now. But heaven forbid this place ever grows and becomes a conglomerated mess like some other “luckier” forums. (Looking at you bladeforums.com, a place I remember as comparatively small and friendly 20 ish years ago, that has been too damn big for the last decade. Or EDCForums that got big, stuck up and killed itself, twice, before finally disappearing. )

And the software change made a great improvement as far as I’m concerned. It was a buggy mess befire, that made me avoid this place. I was so happy that day I forced myself to try coming to read something and found a Functional forum that I could read! Yes it can be harder to see the older threads now, but if you really want them, they’re searchable.

I’ve stopped in here at BLF off and on for years… always has been a small slow forum. I avoided it for that reason for years, it was too hard to ever get any information when no one was here.

I like the small easy community now. I mean, even when it was too slow here in the past, I hated trying to go to CPF for the last 2 decades because its always been big, fast, and stuck up.

Maybe its a little smaller and slower here now even compared to a 10 year average low, but people’s interests and time available drift around.

Something to consider, is as people age, time for hobbies or even just genwral interests changes. Younger folks get families and lose time, change priorities, etc. Middle aged becomes older, and time slows, more time for such things, but more time can mean more for interest they couldn’t do before, and they drift away. Finances change in spades, and really dictates what interests we can continue.

It’ll come back up at some point.

As to me, I find it hard to be on any talking site anymore. 15 to 20 years ago I was on 10 to 15 forums at a time, for several interests.

I still have the interests, just no time and energy to give a damn to talk about them. I’ve only been on about 3 sites for 6 or 7 years now, but even for those, and life in general, I’m burnt out on trying to interact with Anyone much. Especially with the huge impersonal disconnect called the internet.

I could talk for hours about lights with you folks if I could do it over coffee, or a beer, in person. I type half of a lot of replies here, then delete them… It just never matters enough for me to care to participate much. too much energy and effort in it right now.

important to you in life 5 years ago, today, and 5 years from now can be exactly the same, or it can be worlds apart.

On the other hand, and I hate to admit this, it may never come back to its previous peak. I see a general downward spiral to internet forums as a whole… They’re all dieing with the invention of the evil of Facebook and "groups " there.

And stupid redit too.(and I disagree with an above statement about the light group at redit being friendlier than here, and this being the more geeky place… both are pretty dang geeky lol. But its quite the opposite in my experience. Redit is something I’ve avoided as much as possible, no matter the group or interest, it looks like a mess, and friendly never comes to mind. I’ve never even tried signing up or joining in there. )

But Fast easy access to a bunch of sub groups of one place, in one “app” for all your interests is easier for most people than going to different dedicated sites for differing things, and its killing a lot of forums.

Heck, I’ve even been told that redit is outdated and past its prime, that its going away…

Then again it all survives in some way, if we wait. The next best communication medium will pop up, and I’m sure folks will be gung ho and starting fast big flashlight “groups” on it as well. I started on “news groups” on usenet, something no one remembers now.

4 Thanks
22

You got me to sign back in at Bladeforums, I joined them in 2003.

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23

I just mentioned a bunch of stuff about this very topic a while ago, forgot the context, though.

One of the points I made was that Back Then people were into “rolling their own”. Drop-ins reigned supreme, like The Mighty Dinosaur. You pick your host, the pill, the reflector, the driver, the emitter, then you went all gangstah on it to make it your own. Eg, a '502 with a hot WW XP-G and 2-mode 2.1A driver. You wrapped the pill in Al foil or Cu tape for better heat transfer. You chemically dedomed it for more throw. Etc. And you felt a sense of accomplishment.

Today, everyone just buys 'em premade, demanding that the mfrs pretty much make 'em to order. No buck/boost driver, then no sale. No latest version of the UI Of The Day, then no sale. No flash-pads, then no sale. No sub-lumen low-low, then no sale. Etc. Everything’s custom, nothing interchangeable. Modding is dead except maybe for screwing with the emitter.

Gearbest is gone. Fasttech is gone. Banggood? They still around? Never was into Kai or Ali except for the odd purchase, and can’t even remember when the last was. Never got screwed by FT. GB was lousy then great for a year or so then dropped off a cliff before fizzling out. Not many places to get parts anymore, and really miss FT.

So it’s all like going from the days of being a gearhead and modding your ride, to just buying the latest “sports car” off the lot.

I can’t speak for others, but I was never into group-buys because I didn’t want to have to pay to be a beta tester.

And yeah, I think BLF took a big hit with the new sw. Lots of relearning the basics. Lost a lot of threads/reminders. Lose momentum, and things stall. Fact of life. Eg, if you were following the “My Favorite 18650” thread and someone posts in it today, you would’ve gotten an email reminder if you were still on the old sw, but not on the new sw. So that thread could be “resurrected” and you’d never know it unless you checked the main site and saw something in “newest posts”. So that hurts numbers. You’d have to remember all your old threads that you followed, hunted them down, then go individually and change the “watch” option.

Most of the active threads I’m in now (and that have some consistent traffic) aren’t even flashlight related. “What are you XXXing today?” What am you snacking on, what knife are you EDCing, what movie/teevee did you watch last, what’s the weather like where you are, do you have/use/want a bidet, what brand peanut-butter do you like best, do you have an innie or an outie, etc.

A thread like “What’s a good 4-bay charger?” might get a handful of replies, but then fizzles out pretty quickly. Ask about chemical vs heat dedoming vs slicing, and how long might that thread go on? How many people are still interested in that kind of thing?

And frankly, a lot of the old-timers just upped and died. Yet others touched grass or something and got other hobbies.

I miss the old days. But, life goes on. Maybe drop-ins might have a resurgence. Who knows. But will a bespoke C8 or S2+ or '502 get even a fraction of the attention that The New Shiny gets? Doubt it. And that’s kinda sad.

3 Thanks
24

You got me to try and sign in at CPF, to see if I’d still show as banned, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered with a password reset.

I got banned for asking why that big Ultrafire thrower, I forget the name, was comparable to the Thrunite Catapult. Apparently I was spamming the forum with cheap Chinese rubbish. The Ultrafire still works fine, the Catapult not so much.

BLF is better, there’s a knife thread, a watch thread, a music thread, a tv and film thread, and plenty of other things. I don’t get much involved with all the tech stuff.

I liked EDCForums, but only when John was running it, it dissolved into a mess when he got ill and handed it over. Well, some time after that anyways.

1 Thank
25

Forums evolve, some members move between forums based on their buying preferences.

Different forums serve different buyer niches:

Reddit: The Recommend me a Light Forum. Members like Hank Lights, McBob Zebralights, Skilhunt, Armytek. The Classifieds are extremely active, with a lot of Hanklights changing hands.

BLF: This forum has a strong modding culture. There is also a very strong Anduril decelopment team presence. Lumintop, Wurkkos and Sofirn started building lights with members input. This produces a lot of lights with Anduril. Now the next trends are towards lights with USB-C charging, and Efficient drivers. Classifieds seem to have low readership and slow turn over.

CPF: Populated by a few Old Timers that like Surefire, Zebralight, Malkoff, HDS, McGizmo. Very active classified sales especially Surefire. High dollar lights sell quickly here.

Facebook: This is the Fancy Metals, Fancy Machinework, Price is no Objection Forum. Populated by people in a position to direct thousands of dollars into Jewelry lights such as Hanko, Okluma, Laulima.

Youtube: The primary focus of social media marketing, dominated by reviews from influencers with high numbers of followers.

Amazon: Home of the Fake Five Star Review… Vendors game the Verified Buyer system by giving refunds in exchange for positive reviews. The beauty of Amazon is the easy returns, that creates an opportunity for consumers to buy and try.

6 Thanks
26

That’s good news! Where can I get a BLF A6 driver?

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27

I asked google for you and she said you should roll your own :slight_smile:
link

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Yea, that was a joke of sorts. I was implying that the BLF A6 driver exists about as much as this strong modding culture you refer to.

But to solve the classic dilemma of “where can I get a BLF A6 driver?” fortunately there are better options in DEL’s drivers (from 2017) on Osh Park, and also the TA series drivers (from 2016) which were undoubtedly drawn by Lexel, so don’t expect updates. Del’s drivers don’t have an OTC cap but if you need that you could easily air wire it.

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29

OMG, I loved this function, some interesting topic pops, if you dont have time to check it immediately you can just subscribe to it and get notified via email every time when there’s something new. Its lika a reminder that you wanted to read that. I used that a lot. Never lost a thread like that, now I just leav the thread open in a tab, If I accidentally closed the tab it’s gone “forever”, dont even bother hunting it in the history.

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You can set the “tracking” thingy to whatever (“tracking”, “watching”, whatever’s the topmost one). It’ll send notifications to your email account, but only if that’s set.

The problem was that if you had 50 threads to follow before, when switched to the new sw, you’re back at 0, and would have to hunt down all 50, or as many as you’d remember, and either reply to something in that thread or set the thingy above.

Kinda like losing all your bookmarks if you change browsers, if there’s no mechanism to save them from the old browser and stick 'em into the new one.

1 Thank