So, these forums are as dead as I left them 7 years ago

I left Gamespot back in 2013 when they did that major change to the layout and interface (and even complained about it right when they did it here: https://www.gamespot.com/forums/bug-reporting-feedback-1000006/is-there-any-way-for-gamespot-to-bring-the-old-lay-30963424/), as did many other users for the same reason. I figured there'd be no hope for me or many others to return unless they brought back some semblance of the old layout, not to mention unions, so I just left for IGN and other sites and hardly looked back. But coming back all these years later it seems that's still not the case. Hardly anyone responds to any of these threads, many of which on the 1st page haven't received responses in over a month.

I remember when the off-topic board was so much fun, people nearly always responded to your thread in rather short periods of time even if it was a dumb one (and I posted many of those). Now it's just deserted. Oh well.

Yes I’ve been here quite a long time, and some of these forums are nowhere near as populated as they used to be.

You're wrong. They are even more dead than you left them.

aren't forums a dying thing now

Yeah - no surprise. The site was buggy for months after the conversion. They also stripped away tons of features.

Didn't help that the moderation was so severe and they fired/lost all of their talent.

No one wants to be on these forums - we just come here out of habit.

It has been for at least 7 years now.

The only thing I have read about as a potential reason is the rise of social media.

I used to be an OT regular back in 2003-2005. It was a great forum back then. Lots of a great personalities and regulars. The forum now looks like a dead carcass. But you can change it back!

Hard to change the mindset of the users.