Do you want DU to grow?

[Celerity]

94. As long as I have been here there have been very few actively posting DU's near my age. Look at the 'what age group

are you on polls' as well. Multiple ones had hundreds of responses, and myself and a random, gardly posting account or two were often the only ones under 25yo (now I am 28) and even up into the 35yo or even 40yo and unders there were usually a small handful at most.

As I have posted often before, I tried for years to get so many I know in my real life social set (a global one, including many Americans) and afe cohort (18 to 34) to join DU, and almost everyone (including many who actually did check it out) told me 'thanks but no thanks'.

Many of them mentioned the far too often seen open hostility by too many here when it came to subjects involving us younger folk (student loan threads were notorious for that).

This is definitely a far older (than the average US age in general) board in terms of it's demographics, and it is ageing, on balance, more each year.

I see few actually new (new as in not alt accounts of already existing DU posters) posters who come in and contribute on a regular basis and who stick around for at least a year and who do not eventually get tossed (directly or otherwise).

I have always been quite good at pattern recognition and other analytical endeavours, and despite not having hard data from the owners if the site, I absolutely do not believe this board has any truly significant level of active participation from the 35yo and under age cohort, and has not for ages (if ever).

All one needs to do to see easily observed manifestations of the above is to look at hhe staggering amount of 50s, 60s, and 70s cultural references that saturate the board on a daily basis. Compare that to a profound lack of younger Millennial and Gen Z cultural idioms (not to mention waves of self-admitted lack of knowledge about our cultural inputs, outputs, and social structures, etc).

I also (to a lesser degree of certainty, but still substantial in my confidence about it) do not see this board as being in much of a state of actual net-on-net growth, in terms of legitimately 'new' posters.

You can see this openly reflected in the amount of posts and replies at present compared to amounts for both from previous times. I often use DU Search and it is amazing how many '300, 400, or more replies' OP threads that were churned out here a decade (and/or longer) ago, compared to DU now.