Why are online motorcycle forums drying up and dying?

If you're over age 30 and didn't come to motorcycling late in life, you probably remember at least one of those motorcycle forums, even if you didn't belong to one. In the heyday of the internet forum, you could reliably punch almost any make or model of motorcycle into a search bar (AltaVista, anyone?) and someone, somewhere, had started a forum for it. And now, in 2022, that same forum is likely a wasteland. Why is that?

What's a motorcycle forum?

For those who didn't live this little bit of history, forums were sort of a crude version of social media. I used quite a few, moderated another, and still log on to a couple today — but things have changed.

Through about 2010 or so, using a motorcycle-specific forum went like this: You'd join, introduce yourself, often in a "New Members" area, and you were off to the races, asking questions, sharing advice and opinions and talking about the forum's subject matter. Some forums were about a specific model, like 600rr.net. Others focused on a brand, like Triumphrat.net. Some, like bayarearidersforum.com (affectionately known as BARF) were regional, and some of those transcended their local beginnings and had people posting from around the world.

In most cases, it was likely to be a community of warm and welcoming people who had gathered. There were as many people asking questions as giving answers and it was awesome. Trolls were few, moderation by volunteers was adequate, and most people genuinely wanted to help. Often, you could find deep and detailed writeups and how-tos from people creating genuinely wonderful user-generated content because A) they really loved posting helpful stuff and B) it was before most people were aware that all commercial enterprises on the internet are using you and your content for their own profit.

Since there was a specific forum for just about every popular model of motorcycle, if you were doing a job at home for the first time, instead of reading a generic article about how to do the work you could read a description from another person who did the job on the exact same bike. And if you got stuck, you could get online and ask for help. It was great.

So why did the party stop? I think there are a few answers.

The internet stopped being accessed by desktop

In January 2014, desktop internet use was overtaken by mobile internet use in America. This means screens got smaller, layouts moved primarily from horizontal to vertical, and physical keyboards were largely unavailable.

This means writing a longer post was more difficult. Formatting it to appear nicely with photos in line with the text became more difficult. Reading a post that was text-heavy became more onerous. As people drifted away from their desktop computers, they began to drift away from forums.

Social media sure is easy

With most popular forms of social media, you're being served interesting things all the time with cross-pollination all in a one-stop dopamine hit. Do you love golf, Audi cars, retro-cafe motorcycles, and sushi? Social media can easily serve that up to you in a seemingly constant stream. With forums, however, you'd probably have to log in and catch up on four or five different places. Granted, that conversation may be deeper and more helpful for technical topics, but most folks aren't trying to read about the best way to do a valve check on a Suzuki GS450 every day when they have a few minutes to burn.

You may be saying, "Hey, it's easier to consume, but it's a pain to create content on Insta or Facebook." I'd agree with you. I'd also argue it's going to be much harder to find great content in the future (if it even exists) because traditional social platforms like Twitter and Facebook are designed to deliver the latest content, not the deepest.

Photobucket broke the internet one day

The people creating those helpful how-to posts on motorcycle forums needed a place online to host their photos, and many used the popular image-hosting service Photobucket. On June 30, 2017, Photobucket quietly carried out what amounted to be a full-on murder: It elected to disallow embedding of images. To continue uninterrupted service as had previously been provided, Photobucket began charging $399, which was seen by many as tantamount to extortion.

The ramifications were twofold, extending far beyond the motorcycle world. First, many forum articles, tutorials, and knowledge bases were wiped clean of images, rendering many posts either much less useful or not useful at all. Compounding this issue was the fact it affected so many forums which had relied on free user-generated content.

More devastatingly, some users realized rebuilding was futile as they really were not in control of the information produced individually or in aggregate and simply chose to discontinue use of the bulletin board forum instead of starting over from square one. If several different companies can dismantle something you built, well… what’s the point?

The amount of devastation this caused was really hard to assess. I was moderating a motorcycle forum at the time this occurred and could not believe the amount of stuff Photobucket rendered unusable in just one flick of a switch.

Links rot and people die

This is the ugly obverse side of the coin we just covered. As it turns out, it doesn't feel friendly or inviting to show up to a forum where half the stickies were penned by someone who is deceased and link rot means all the links and images are broken. It feels like walking in on a bulletin board (like a physical corkboard) that has old information and sales ads on it. It's not real helpful, and unless you really suspect something good is on there, you probably won't spend time digging. Fewer people contribute to the forum and the downward spiral continues.

Conclusion: As in "the end"

The death of the motorcycle forum is probably like the death of the printed motorcycle magazine. It was mourned by some, but hasn't been replaced because a replacement isn't something most people are asking for. Most people I know seem perfectly happy to get motorcycle memes from Instagram and used bikes from Facebook Marketplace, so perhaps our current social scenario is the most evolved version of how bike chatter and kibitzing with others should take place.

The forum, which was somewhat asynchronous and perhaps more demanding of users' time, whether giving or receiving information, has been supplanted by a much faster mode of communication. Some quality of the exchange probably suffers, but the volume has probably increased by more than the quality of post content has slipped.

Perhaps where we are is exactly where we are supposed to be.