Is Social Media changing enthusiasts?

[Sandman]

I don't mean social as in meet-ups etc, more the whole cult of personality behind vlogging & vloggers. Personally I'm not interested in watching a video of a person pointing a camera at themselves for the majority of a video and telling me what ride they've just done and how it was, and if it was on 2 trains or not. If others enjoy that, that's cool.

I'm all for using social media to push the meet up side of things though. From my experience, it's the best way to really enjoy and embrace this kind of hobby.

 

[Ben]

The funny thing is - we were basically doing vlogs before they were a thing. We always had meet up videos, we had the documentaries - we were doing them once but never actually kept up with them and evolved them.

I do want to be clear though - I’m not saying we should be doing vlogs, and they they’re magically the answer. I tried it and Jesus it’s hard and sooo not for me, so I get the effort it is. What we need is to find what it IS that CF offers that’s different - for me it was always quality content, fun community.

This is verging off from the topic a bit now but it doesn’t help our POVs are stagnant - whereas we used to have the best quality and widest range for a channel that doesn’t have a fat man yelling over every video, we’ve really lost that in the last few years and for whatever reason, Jerry hasn’t re-shot updated POVs or kept up to date with what’s opened around the World, or allowed anyone else to step in and assist.

If we still had that content, we wouldn’t need to think about vlogs cause we’d have the better content.

Scott and the PBE team are doing a fantastic job with their channel at the moment and (sorry Scott this is going to sound shady but I don’t mean to!) - it’s embarrassing that a channel like that is outperforming us. And they don’t do anything revolutionary! Just, simple yet solid stuff.

 

[MouseAT]

The funny thing is - we were basically doing vlogs before they were a thing. We always had meet up videos, we had the documentaries - we were doing them once but never actually kept up with them and evolved them.

Yeah, the loss of the regular videos is definitely a big deal. I remember when I first came on board in around 2007, I already had a pretty good feel for who was who on CF, and for the general atmosphere in the CF community, despite having never met anyone from the site in person. CF always felt that it had a stronger sense of community than most other forums I've been a part of. I think that was primarily down to the fact that people met up and became real world friends, as opposed to just online acquaintances, but the videos helped capture that and bring some of that enthusiasm to those of us who had never been to a CF event.

You're right in that CF doesn't really have a "face" behind it, and that's definitely something which has made us fall behind now that vlogs have become such a thing.

Sort of in defense mode (to an extent, more explanation really), but I think it's because there's always been a fairly dispersed group of people behind CF, rather than one person, or a small handful of people, and that group are spread out all over the place. When forums dominated, that was excellent since we were covering everything, but in the age of the Vlog, it becomes an issue. Maybe for a CF Live you can put something together - a video of people enjoying a park, interspersed with ride footage doesn't necessarily need a face behind it - but what happens if you establish a "face" and the face of the brand can't make a particular trip?

If you look at the CF Facebook page "we" are covering parks all over the world, but, in reality, that's one or two people from the team at a park. You'll have noticed that "we" are often somehow at parks at opposite sides of the planet on the same day. That's great for a huge variety of coverage, but it doesn't allow for a CF face behind it. We're not all at the same place at the same time.

I don't know what the answer to that is. Do we find a CF "face" and then limit our content based on which parks that face can visit? I don't think that's an answer since it restricts the content in terms of the parks covered.

If CF wants to go that route, maybe the solution is to have multiple faces to the site, rather than just a single person.

What if CF's social media presence wasn't (just) the anonymous "CoasterForce", but was a bunch of obvious individuals, all delivering their own content from time to time? Instead of just CoasterForce, what we started having a variety of content, featuring "Jerry from CoasterForce", "Lofty from CoasterForce" or "Jordan from CoasterForce"*, each with their own personality or unique spin on things? Perhaps have a little CF logo or watermark on each of the videos so that they have a consistent branding, and perhaps have each person end with a little 30 second segment which goes something like "Hi, I'm _____ from CoasterForce, if you liked this content go to [link] and check out other stuff from me and the rest of the CoasterForce media team". If it's possible to do some crossover videos at some of the Lives or events to help capture a stronger sense of community, even better.

* - I'm not implying that specific people should be doing this video work, or trying to volunteer anyone here - just using names of a few, well known CFers as examples of the sort of arrangement that we could potentially have if people are interested in trying to pull it off.

 

[JJLehto]

I think social media in general has been, on aggregate, not a good thing for us. It does change human behavior and in ways I think are often for the worse. Of which I am not trying to claim holier than thou, it has absolutely gotten a hold of me and I have tried to really scale back my usage of it because I didn't like what I noticed in my behavior on it, and what being on social media can do to my mood.
So I can agree with the OP.

I say on aggregate because it does of course have upsides, for example I have I have seen 8 people now like a coaster page, through me and I did nothing at all. They see me comment, check the video and see thats cool, then follow the page and yeah they're GP/casual but maybe they learn some stuff, follow some coaster news, think to go to a local park.
But probably not, they just clicked the like once and will never see the page again most likely lol
I cant say Ive been an enthusiast long enough to say Ive seen a change, since I started in 2012 I dont know how things used to be, but yeah social media changes us. It encourages "look at me!" clickbait/going for the click, speed over substance, constant comparison. So I can see how all that could've have changed how enthusiasts behave. Really all social media does is allow the urges/excesses we have to be expressed, when normally we'd keep some lid on it. I mean I keep and share coaster counts, rankings, am about to post pics of a trip on FB. Why? Why cant I just be happy with my memories and good times? I guess because I have the ability to indulge.

 

[GeodieCoasterFan]

Social media is just awful for society as others have said and imply it just magnifies some of the worst characteristics and leads to behaviours we wouldn't undertake in normal life

but I do have to say I really love a good list video on youtube ( saying that there are some awful ones, especially the ones with the smarmy kids)