The Decline of Lucid Dreaming Forums

Forums:

• LD4all
• Dreamviews

They were just so much more active ten years ago, and likely more actively the further in the years prior too.

Now it feels like there is more activity on Reddit^[1] r/luciddreaming, and Discord groups (I'm in one big lucid dreaming one, and then one that is the official LD4all one).

Why do I feel like forums are better than Discord groups?

• Discord is designed for ephemeral discussions, not gradual accumulation of knowledge.
  • Then again, maybe a long forum thread is just like a Discord conversation
  • But, a Discord group seems like so much more fragile of a place to keep these knowedge and discussions. Something about a website feels more sturdy and like it will last for more of time. You can archive a website (e.g. via Wayback machine) but more easily than a Discord group.
• Forums are more accessible/public, allowing for better knowledge-sharing over time. Discord groups are closer to a "walled garden"
  • Walled garden is a concept that I learned about when I was first learning about the Digital Garden concept. It's a term I think strongly tied to the indie web movement. A "walled garden" is a website or social media that is "typically owned by a for-profit corporation that stakes some claim to content contributed to it and restricts access in some way (has walls)."^[2]
  • The walls of Discord would be that you need an account to access the content, and the content is not searchable from a search engine.
  • The "walled garden" also lends to another sense of fragility like I mentioned in the previous point. Discord being a for-profit company could decide to delete the group or something. Then again, a forum could also just as well be shut down or wiped clean (though, goes back to my ease-of-archive point about a website versus chat).

I'm not against there being Discord/similar chat groups for lucid dreaming communities! I do think that the chat format has its benefits and can also lead to sense of community. I spent time in the LD4all IRC group (basically an archaic form of a discord group) when I getting into the hobby.

I'm more just sad that the forums have had lower activity than in the past. Some of the content I see on the Discords really seems like they could/should be forum posts. It makes me wonder why those people don't just post them on the forum. Maybe because they think they won't get engagement, since the forums are quite inactive. It's a negative feedback loop.

Maybe they'll spring back up. I can do my part by being active on them, responding to posts that trickle in, and maybe making my own posts too. Recently I saw that LD4all was doing a new Lucidity Challenge, which generally causes a spur of activity. Maybe that could help to get the engine going.

There is also some solace in the rich history of these forums. There is so much past content to browse. And, despite my points here, I'm also grateful that there is any activity at all in the LDing community, even if it's in the more ephemeral form of chat groups, and there are surely interesting discussions going on in the chats that I could probably endlessly surf as well^[3].