I think that this is actually a great thread with potential discussion that could get the user base to help grow Bluelight. With that being said
@acklac7 and others cut it out with the memes please. Can we actually talk about this? It is an issue that staff discusses but I would love to talk to members about how they can help out.
Short answer: Yes, in 10 year Bluelight will be here.
More in depth, but also to the point, answer: Without a concerted effort to make people aware of the forum and site... Membership will decline and we will be smaller.
That being said, there are things every member can do. Provided, they don't troll or exhibit seriously weird ideas right off the bat... You all know who you are. Put your best foot forward, yeah? One thing that I have seen drive the site traffic for short periods of time is linking from other parts of the internet to specific threads on Bluelight. For example, the Reddit knowledge surrounding drug use and harm reduction is usually not so great. If I see a post on Reddit (or any other social platform) where Bluelighters have answered it better, I'll link over the thread. In high traffic posts, this causes spikes in traffic from Reddit to Bluelight. For every 100 clicks, and this is not hard data but my estimate, we gain some lurkers and one or two members. How long those members stick around, I don't know. Linking back to BL, his is called "backlinking". I believe is one of the best things we can do to circumvent not showing up on Google in the top results. If we make people aware that our users are experienced, knowledgeable, and can be trusted that's awesome. If I can I will also suggest one of the socials because that is often why people stick around. Right? We aren't here to always talk about how to clean meth or shoot hexen into our eyeballs. We stick around because this a cool community of like minded people.
All of that being said,
you can't spam the shit out of anywhere. My connection with Bluelight is known to some Reddit admin and mods. If you're over on any social media platform and someone wants to know about drugs. Give them the
forums link and recommend a few forums that might be helpful for them.
This makes you less anonymous, but that's why I like Reddit. However, as I have grown more comfortable in my role and being able to own my past, present, and self I have recommended the site to people without associating my account name. It's enough to just say "I'm a member and I think that
this might be really interesting and helpful. Check out Other Drugs and then go over to the Psychedelic Drug Discussion's Social thread. You can ask questions and get to know the users. My favorite forum is Drug Culture (I know it's probably The Lounge but I can dream)."
Is that something that any of you members or mods bouncing into this thread would feel comfortable doing? What are your thoughts on all of what I've written?
Edit: Glad to see
@Tronica in DC! We've talked about backlinking. It really can't be done by one person. It needs to look like a community of people that care reaching out to the less informed parts of the web.
