Something Strange about the Site Statistics · 6:50pm Oct 28th, 2022
Feeling bored and unfocused as I sometimes (often) do, I looked at the site statistics. Stories posted are of course down; anyone writing knows the stats are lower than the were in the glory days. We will never see those days again unless they give Gen 6 to Vivziepop or something (and being the hermit I am) I am not sure I mind.
The strange thing is: new user registrations are way, way up. The site hasn't had this many new users/month since 2013.
Where are all these people? What are they doing? Are they G5 kids whose needs are not being met by the site, who roll their teenage eyes contemptuously at the G4 geezers and bounce? This would imply a shadow-brony; an alternate fandom growing up besides this one. So I looked on the only other fanfic site I go on and there does not seem to be a one of any significance there.
Which is a bit disappointing. I was sort of hoping there would be one; it would be an interesting anthropological case study.
Most likely they're just bots.
Can we interest bots in brony? AI development is proceeding at an alarming pace; past where we can stop it. Better to start trying to get them interested in magical horses so that they include them when they herd us into out stasis pods and plug us into the Matrix.
I will say that bronyfic has proved critical to me in my life. I sometimes worry what I will do if it somehow disappears, or I lose access to it in some other way. Go into the West and diminish, most likely.
The bots don't even seem to be doing anything. Not even upvoting fics. Very strange.
5694992
Right? No one has left any comments offering to enlarge any portion of my anatomy.
They might be 'clicking' on the ads. Sort of a 'dead internet' thing where the bots are selling ads to other bots, for sites that are visited mainly by bots.
Yeah, they figured out how to break through the site's authentication system in 2020 and they've been on the rise ever since. Remember that sidewide warning about phishing from a few months ago? That was because of them.
5694992
Sometimes they spam-post a bunch of blogs promoting whatever it is they're adbotting for, and I've even seen a couple break into the comments sections of the fics at the top of "New" (upon which they're almost immediately downvote-bombed and permabanned).
I've only been on this site for a couple of years now and I've seen an ebb and flow of people leaving and joining over that time period.
I think a major factor of people leaving the site is life gets in the way, bills pile up, folks work at a job they hate just to keep a roof over their head and keep the lights on, and they say "I'll take a break until things get a bit better, then I'l go back to writing", but because they've been thrust into the rat race against their will, they get burned out and no longer have the mental energy to write anything and they just seem to drop off the face of the Earth.
5695002
Boo. That was the most plausible and least fun explanation.
5695012
I tried to quit. Came back the second I got depressed. Pony fic fixed it (eventually). Guess I'm a lifer.
I joined in 2015, which felt late at the time. Now I feel like the old guard.
5695027
Same, dude. I joined like 6 months before you did.
I just saw the show for the first time last year and joined pretty recently because of that. haven't seen any g5 stuff yet. I don't have any stories of my own to post and I'm bad at even leaving comments, but I have been lurking all this time. maybe it's a bunch of lurkers? I know I see a lot of artists these days complain about people just liking their posts and never leaving comments any more. I guess a lot of "kids these days" (me included even though I'm a bit older than that) are bad at that, and maybe that's part of why there's been more users but not more activity. both that and bots seem like an internet-wide problem though so I don't think it can be fixed easily.
5695016
If it's any consolation, I do have a quarter-baked conspiracy theory that the siterunners tolerate the lurking bots because they inflate FiMFiction's ad revenue!
Please don't take this seriously, I am deathly afraid of starting shit.
5695073
It's important to support the site!
5695045
My social anxiety is bad enough that I don't always want to see the comments on my stories.
I just want the fandom to last at least until I am dead. Which old as I am might still be a while. 