Silence prevails?

[lasirice]

So with an average of 75 lurkers per day, most of them after the downloads that may be only here, whyfor is the forum silent of activity? Did everyone disappear?  Forget their login info? (I know I did.) Misplace their passion for insim because Josie, Maria, Jenna and Squinge don't flirt every 15 seconds anymore?  Really curious on where everyone has gone.

[Jenna]

Pretty much everyone has moved on, although I do have a lot of the old regulars on Facebook. The Sims 4 never really caught on here, and content creation for TS2 and TS3 is pretty limited these days. Most of our visitors are just here to snatch and grab. Or berate me via PM about the registration questions.

[lasirice]

A Google search would make reading rainbow obvious.

[Jenna]

Could've been worse; I could've gone with the Baby Shark song.

[lasirice]

Baby shark is no real issue. Now if you had done Circular Appendages of the Mass Transit Vehicle Constantly Spin Spin Spin, I'd have refused to sign back up.

[cactus]

Greetings.

I recently tried TS4 and instantly hated it. And after that I bought TS3 and I'm enjoying it. Though it doesn't feel fun as much as TS2 was.

Thanks to my master's thesis, I made a return to sims world (I'm studying gender & sexuality in gaming) for information gathering and nostalgia hit me hard... I really miss the old colorful days of TS2, when the forums were hard to keep track of with so much activity and building connections with so many people all around the world. But times change, people age, we all die eventually... I know that some creators passed away, some "friends" had gone through so many bitter life events and many simmers from the past aged and caught in real life drama, work, kids, school etc... It is hard to keep interest in gaming at some point when you face so many punches in your face while trying to survive IRL, and it is even harder to keep relatively older audience of a game which is relatively outdated... From my personal experience, I can confidently say that majority of TS2 audience is going through late 20's-early 30's period of their lives currently and noone can deny that those decades of a human life can be the hardest. Like, you're passing from young adult to a fully grown adult, you're settling somehow, trying to stabilize your finances, your family, your career and many more. The sims can be the ultimate escapism but you mostly won't have the time, even if you get some, you won't spare them on forums like the old days...

It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth too. Like Yakov (beosboxboy) used to joke about it, maybe I'm an over-sentimental a*hole and it is my ultimate curse on this planet. After so many years, I find myself replying to this thread with so many conflicted emotions and such. I hope I summerized the situation more or less correctly though. Salute to all my fellow past-simmers.