Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
I mean it is the holiday season and a lot of people are busy. Also not sure if only true in my area, but some nasty bugs are going around.
Katia wrote:
I mean it is the holiday season and a lot of people are busy. Also not sure if only true in my area, but some nasty bugs are going around.
I'm really sorry, but people were saying the same thing not even a month ago, but then the reason back then was usually "university stuff". There just haven't been that much activity on RPR as of late, at all. Hell, even when I had a job it didn't stop me from just typing replies on my cellphone while at downtime.
... Which is a shame, because I really wanted to oil my gears for a one-shot or something like that. :^|
Min-ya wrote:
Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
Min-ya, I have noticed the same contraction in visible activity. (Abroad the RP scene as a whole.) Part of it is simply calendrical. Late-year obligations, travel, exams, end-of-quarter work, and family logistics all siphon time and attention. Even committed writers become intermittent. What looks like communal atrophy is often dispersed scarcity.
That said, I also think there is a quieter migration. Not always to a single “better” hub, but into fragmentation. Private Discord servers. Small, invitation-only circles. Group forums nested inside other communities. People are not necessarily writing less. They are writing behind doors that no longer register as “70–80 online” in a public counter.
On RpR specifically, I cannot pretend it has felt broadly hospitable to novella authors. In my experience, it has been conspicuously unfriendly. I have had people bad-mouth my length and my writing in threads labeled “everyone welcome,” which is a contradiction I have little patience for. I have also had three people tell me in DMs that others “feel threatened” and do not appreciate my roleplay, including the seven writers I brought with me. That is not a culture problem I can solve by being nicer, shorter, or quieter. It is a preference problem masquerading as etiquette, and I am done making myself smaller to pacify it.
Setting my anecdote aside, there are structural reasons roleplay has slowed down in many public spaces:
First, the attention economy is more hostile than it used to be. People live inside perpetual notification-storm. Long-form writing requires sustained cognition and voluntary silence. Most platforms now train the opposite reflexes.
Second, commitment has become rarer. The median participant treats writing like an ambient pastime rather than a craft with obligations. That produces predictable attrition. Threads stall. Partners vanish. The cost of investing rises. The incentive to start drops.
Third, social sorting has intensified. Writers are increasingly filtering for hyper-specific niches, tones, and expectations. That is not inherently bad. It is just splintering. Activity does not disappear. It disperses into micro-communities that do not look “busy” from the outside.
Fourth, public spaces accumulate fatigue. When a community normalizes drive-by critique, snide hierarchy, or casual disposability, serious writers sequester themselves. They stop advertising. They stop sampling strangers. They keep their output for environments that reciprocate.
So yes, I think things are quieter. I also think a nontrivial portion of the writing has moved into smaller, curated rooms where the social cost of showing up is lower and the probability of completion is higher.
If your goal is “active and friendly,” I would stop optimizing for the biggest lobby and start optimizing for the best containment. Smaller groups with explicit standards. Clear expectations. Consistent partners. Public counters look impressive. Completion is what matters. Who cares iuf you have 2,000 online, but only 5 are writing. I would rather have 50 people online with 10 writing.
The_Diva wrote:
Min-ya wrote:
Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
Min-ya, I have noticed the same contraction in visible activity. (Abroad the RP scene as a whole.) Part of it is simply calendrical. Late-year obligations, travel, exams, end-of-quarter work, and family logistics all siphon time and attention. Even committed writers become intermittent. What looks like communal atrophy is often dispersed scarcity.
That said, I also think there is a quieter migration. Not always to a single “better” hub, but into fragmentation. Private Discord servers. Small, invitation-only circles. Group forums nested inside other communities. People are not necessarily writing less. They are writing behind doors that no longer register as “70–80 online” in a public counter.
On RpR specifically, I cannot pretend it has felt broadly hospitable to novella authors. In my experience, it has been conspicuously unfriendly. I have had people bad-mouth my length and my writing in threads labeled “everyone welcome,” which is a contradiction I have little patience for. I have also had three people tell me in DMs that others “feel threatened” and do not appreciate my roleplay, including the seven writers I brought with me. That is not a culture problem I can solve by being nicer, shorter, or quieter. It is a preference problem masquerading as etiquette, and I am done making myself smaller to pacify it.
Setting my anecdote aside, there are structural reasons roleplay has slowed down in many public spaces:
First, the attention economy is more hostile than it used to be. People live inside perpetual notification-storm. Long-form writing requires sustained cognition and voluntary silence. Most platforms now train the opposite reflexes.
Second, commitment has become rarer. The median participant treats writing like an ambient pastime rather than a craft with obligations. That produces predictable attrition. Threads stall. Partners vanish. The cost of investing rises. The incentive to start drops.
Third, social sorting has intensified. Writers are increasingly filtering for hyper-specific niches, tones, and expectations. That is not inherently bad. It is just splintering. Activity does not disappear. It disperses into micro-communities that do not look “busy” from the outside.
Fourth, public spaces accumulate fatigue. When a community normalizes drive-by critique, snide hierarchy, or casual disposability, serious writers sequester themselves. They stop advertising. They stop sampling strangers. They keep their output for environments that reciprocate.
So yes, I think things are quieter. I also think a nontrivial portion of the writing has moved into smaller, curated rooms where the social cost of showing up is lower and the probability of completion is higher.
If your goal is “active and friendly,” I would stop optimizing for the biggest lobby and start optimizing for the best containment. Smaller groups with explicit standards. Clear expectations. Consistent partners. Public counters look impressive. Completion is what matters. Who cares iuf you have 2,000 online, but only 5 are writing. I would rather have 50 people online with 10 writing.
Personally for what it is worth, I too greatly value Novella writing length so I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in that. But yes, it does feel harder to get people to commit to rps these days as ghosting numbers seem higher then they were even a couple of years ago I feel. However I am still happy with rpr as I have found good friends and good rps on here even if it seems I have to work a little harder.
Katia wrote:
The_Diva wrote:
Min-ya wrote:
Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
Min-ya, I have noticed the same contraction in visible activity. (Abroad the RP scene as a whole.) Part of it is simply calendrical. Late-year obligations, travel, exams, end-of-quarter work, and family logistics all siphon time and attention. Even committed writers become intermittent. What looks like communal atrophy is often dispersed scarcity.
That said, I also think there is a quieter migration. Not always to a single “better” hub, but into fragmentation. Private Discord servers. Small, invitation-only circles. Group forums nested inside other communities. People are not necessarily writing less. They are writing behind doors that no longer register as “70–80 online” in a public counter.
On RpR specifically, I cannot pretend it has felt broadly hospitable to novella authors. In my experience, it has been conspicuously unfriendly. I have had people bad-mouth my length and my writing in threads labeled “everyone welcome,” which is a contradiction I have little patience for. I have also had three people tell me in DMs that others “feel threatened” and do not appreciate my roleplay, including the seven writers I brought with me. That is not a culture problem I can solve by being nicer, shorter, or quieter. It is a preference problem masquerading as etiquette, and I am done making myself smaller to pacify it.
Setting my anecdote aside, there are structural reasons roleplay has slowed down in many public spaces:
First, the attention economy is more hostile than it used to be. People live inside perpetual notification-storm. Long-form writing requires sustained cognition and voluntary silence. Most platforms now train the opposite reflexes.
Second, commitment has become rarer. The median participant treats writing like an ambient pastime rather than a craft with obligations. That produces predictable attrition. Threads stall. Partners vanish. The cost of investing rises. The incentive to start drops.
Third, social sorting has intensified. Writers are increasingly filtering for hyper-specific niches, tones, and expectations. That is not inherently bad. It is just splintering. Activity does not disappear. It disperses into micro-communities that do not look “busy” from the outside.
Fourth, public spaces accumulate fatigue. When a community normalizes drive-by critique, snide hierarchy, or casual disposability, serious writers sequester themselves. They stop advertising. They stop sampling strangers. They keep their output for environments that reciprocate.
So yes, I think things are quieter. I also think a nontrivial portion of the writing has moved into smaller, curated rooms where the social cost of showing up is lower and the probability of completion is higher.
If your goal is “active and friendly,” I would stop optimizing for the biggest lobby and start optimizing for the best containment. Smaller groups with explicit standards. Clear expectations. Consistent partners. Public counters look impressive. Completion is what matters. Who cares iuf you have 2,000 online, but only 5 are writing. I would rather have 50 people online with 10 writing.
Personally for what it is worth, I too greatly value Novella writing length so I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in that. But yes, it does feel harder to get people to commit to rps these days as ghosting numbers seem higher then they were even a couple of years ago I feel. However I am still happy with rpr as I have found good friends and good rps on here even if it seems I have to work a little harder.
I brought seven people with me. Excluding me, four have reported the same pattern I have. The remaining three are not refusing to join outright, but they are delaying. They are hesitant. They are watching first, because they do not want to walk into a space where passion for writing is treated as a social liability.
To be clear, this is not something I expect any individual to “fix.” It is not a moderation lever. It is not a single bad actor. It is a cultural reflex. The kind that cannot be argued out of existence, only outgrown or outlasted.
But the arithmetic matters. If five people, by my direct knowledge, felt this and experienced it, then I am not describing an isolated discomfort. I am describing a repeatable outcome. And it did not happen in private corners alone. I also received three separate DMs from people outside my group telling me, plainly, that others do not appreciate my length in the Open Bar RP. When that sentiment is circulating at all, it becomes a deterrent. It informs who stays. It informs who never arrives.
You can reasonably infer that this has produced loss. How much is, as always, debatable. But it is not zero.
The_Diva wrote:
Katia wrote:
The_Diva wrote:
Min-ya wrote:
Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
Min-ya, I have noticed the same contraction in visible activity. (Abroad the RP scene as a whole.) Part of it is simply calendrical. Late-year obligations, travel, exams, end-of-quarter work, and family logistics all siphon time and attention. Even committed writers become intermittent. What looks like communal atrophy is often dispersed scarcity.
That said, I also think there is a quieter migration. Not always to a single “better” hub, but into fragmentation. Private Discord servers. Small, invitation-only circles. Group forums nested inside other communities. People are not necessarily writing less. They are writing behind doors that no longer register as “70–80 online” in a public counter.
On RpR specifically, I cannot pretend it has felt broadly hospitable to novella authors. In my experience, it has been conspicuously unfriendly. I have had people bad-mouth my length and my writing in threads labeled “everyone welcome,” which is a contradiction I have little patience for. I have also had three people tell me in DMs that others “feel threatened” and do not appreciate my roleplay, including the seven writers I brought with me. That is not a culture problem I can solve by being nicer, shorter, or quieter. It is a preference problem masquerading as etiquette, and I am done making myself smaller to pacify it.
Setting my anecdote aside, there are structural reasons roleplay has slowed down in many public spaces:
First, the attention economy is more hostile than it used to be. People live inside perpetual notification-storm. Long-form writing requires sustained cognition and voluntary silence. Most platforms now train the opposite reflexes.
Second, commitment has become rarer. The median participant treats writing like an ambient pastime rather than a craft with obligations. That produces predictable attrition. Threads stall. Partners vanish. The cost of investing rises. The incentive to start drops.
Third, social sorting has intensified. Writers are increasingly filtering for hyper-specific niches, tones, and expectations. That is not inherently bad. It is just splintering. Activity does not disappear. It disperses into micro-communities that do not look “busy” from the outside.
Fourth, public spaces accumulate fatigue. When a community normalizes drive-by critique, snide hierarchy, or casual disposability, serious writers sequester themselves. They stop advertising. They stop sampling strangers. They keep their output for environments that reciprocate.
So yes, I think things are quieter. I also think a nontrivial portion of the writing has moved into smaller, curated rooms where the social cost of showing up is lower and the probability of completion is higher.
If your goal is “active and friendly,” I would stop optimizing for the biggest lobby and start optimizing for the best containment. Smaller groups with explicit standards. Clear expectations. Consistent partners. Public counters look impressive. Completion is what matters. Who cares iuf you have 2,000 online, but only 5 are writing. I would rather have 50 people online with 10 writing.
Personally for what it is worth, I too greatly value Novella writing length so I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in that. But yes, it does feel harder to get people to commit to rps these days as ghosting numbers seem higher then they were even a couple of years ago I feel. However I am still happy with rpr as I have found good friends and good rps on here even if it seems I have to work a little harder.
I brought seven people with me. Excluding me, four have reported the same pattern I have. The remaining three are not refusing to join outright, but they are delaying. They are hesitant. They are watching first, because they do not want to walk into a space where passion for writing is treated as a social liability.
To be clear, this is not something I expect any individual to “fix.” It is not a moderation lever. It is not a single bad actor. It is a cultural reflex. The kind that cannot be argued out of existence, only outgrown or outlasted.
But the arithmetic matters. If five people, by my direct knowledge, felt this and experienced it, then I am not describing an isolated discomfort. I am describing a repeatable outcome. And it did not happen in private corners alone. I also received three separate DMs from people outside my group telling me, plainly, that others do not appreciate my length in the Open Bar RP. When that sentiment is circulating at all, it becomes a deterrent. It informs who stays. It informs who never arrives.
You can reasonably infer that this has produced loss. How much is, as always, debatable. But it is not zero.
Personally I haven't had this problem, but I must just be lucky. Regardless ,I believe you and I am sorry that you and those four others have been having those experiences. Personally I always go looking for partners with writing length in mind and I never join the public rps. I just find myself quickly losing motivation if I try to rp someone who can only give me a paragraph or less. So I always keep that upfront in my rp ads and looks for partners who share such a sentiment when perusing other's ads. Perhaps that is why I haven't had such experiences myself? Who can say?
Katia wrote:
The_Diva wrote:
Katia wrote:
The_Diva wrote:
Min-ya wrote:
Maybe its just me or just this time of year, but I've noticed things seem a bit more quiet and there are not nearly as many people online at a time as before. I know a couple years back I saw consistent 70-80+ online at one time but now it seems to be around 50-60 when I check. Are people migrating and if so, where to? Are there other sites as active and friendly as RPR?
Min-ya, I have noticed the same contraction in visible activity. (Abroad the RP scene as a whole.) Part of it is simply calendrical. Late-year obligations, travel, exams, end-of-quarter work, and family logistics all siphon time and attention. Even committed writers become intermittent. What looks like communal atrophy is often dispersed scarcity.
That said, I also think there is a quieter migration. Not always to a single “better” hub, but into fragmentation. Private Discord servers. Small, invitation-only circles. Group forums nested inside other communities. People are not necessarily writing less. They are writing behind doors that no longer register as “70–80 online” in a public counter.
On RpR specifically, I cannot pretend it has felt broadly hospitable to novella authors. In my experience, it has been conspicuously unfriendly. I have had people bad-mouth my length and my writing in threads labeled “everyone welcome,” which is a contradiction I have little patience for. I have also had three people tell me in DMs that others “feel threatened” and do not appreciate my roleplay, including the seven writers I brought with me. That is not a culture problem I can solve by being nicer, shorter, or quieter. It is a preference problem masquerading as etiquette, and I am done making myself smaller to pacify it.
Setting my anecdote aside, there are structural reasons roleplay has slowed down in many public spaces:
First, the attention economy is more hostile than it used to be. People live inside perpetual notification-storm. Long-form writing requires sustained cognition and voluntary silence. Most platforms now train the opposite reflexes.
Second, commitment has become rarer. The median participant treats writing like an ambient pastime rather than a craft with obligations. That produces predictable attrition. Threads stall. Partners vanish. The cost of investing rises. The incentive to start drops.
Third, social sorting has intensified. Writers are increasingly filtering for hyper-specific niches, tones, and expectations. That is not inherently bad. It is just splintering. Activity does not disappear. It disperses into micro-communities that do not look “busy” from the outside.
Fourth, public spaces accumulate fatigue. When a community normalizes drive-by critique, snide hierarchy, or casual disposability, serious writers sequester themselves. They stop advertising. They stop sampling strangers. They keep their output for environments that reciprocate.
So yes, I think things are quieter. I also think a nontrivial portion of the writing has moved into smaller, curated rooms where the social cost of showing up is lower and the probability of completion is higher.
If your goal is “active and friendly,” I would stop optimizing for the biggest lobby and start optimizing for the best containment. Smaller groups with explicit standards. Clear expectations. Consistent partners. Public counters look impressive. Completion is what matters. Who cares iuf you have 2,000 online, but only 5 are writing. I would rather have 50 people online with 10 writing.
Personally for what it is worth, I too greatly value Novella writing length so I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in that. But yes, it does feel harder to get people to commit to rps these days as ghosting numbers seem higher then they were even a couple of years ago I feel. However I am still happy with rpr as I have found good friends and good rps on here even if it seems I have to work a little harder.
I brought seven people with me. Excluding me, four have reported the same pattern I have. The remaining three are not refusing to join outright, but they are delaying. They are hesitant. They are watching first, because they do not want to walk into a space where passion for writing is treated as a social liability.
To be clear, this is not something I expect any individual to “fix.” It is not a moderation lever. It is not a single bad actor. It is a cultural reflex. The kind that cannot be argued out of existence, only outgrown or outlasted.
But the arithmetic matters. If five people, by my direct knowledge, felt this and experienced it, then I am not describing an isolated discomfort. I am describing a repeatable outcome. And it did not happen in private corners alone. I also received three separate DMs from people outside my group telling me, plainly, that others do not appreciate my length in the Open Bar RP. When that sentiment is circulating at all, it becomes a deterrent. It informs who stays. It informs who never arrives.
You can reasonably infer that this has produced loss. How much is, as always, debatable. But it is not zero.
Personally I haven't had this problem, but I must just be lucky. Regardless ,I believe you and I am sorry that you and those four others have been having those experiences. Personally I always go looking for partners with writing length in mind and I never join the public rps. I just find myself quickly losing motivation if I try to rp someone who can only give me a paragraph or less. So I always keep that upfront in my rp ads and looks for partners who share such a sentiment when perusing other's ads. Perhaps that is why I haven't had such experiences myself? Who can say?
Nah. I aim for literate+. They run when I send a post or my sheet.
You're not wrong, my activity feed occasionally experiences an activity drop. For my case though it's mostly simply they didn't get online or only used DM, - but I've seen one who, after I applied for their rp, had a lot of discussion and roleplayed with them for three posts, they vaporized. I dunno if this ever happened on someone else, but while this probably shouldn't count as a valid case, what I can infer is that some people are losing interest.
I will say that, after being on the site for a few years I've certainly learned the do's and dont's and the quiet expectations of the space. I think that is an interesting and valuable thing to consider, that people coming from elsewhere might be intimidated, shocked, or confused about how things work here, even if it feels very natural to us who've been here for a long time and maybe even have not been anywhere else at all.
I hadn't really considered that people are hiding in groups, but it makes sense. A lot of people seem to do discord RPs nowadays, which doesn't fit my play style as discord can't take my post length lol. But it does seem like more and more new players are preferring the quick short replies, which, yeah, I just can't get into. I love cozying up and reading a post I have to scroll down to finish reading, with atmosphere, emotions, inner thoughts etc all there on the page. Love it.
But, to not divert from the topic too much; I have noticed people in the forums talking about other sites and having similar thoughts as me, so I was just curious if there was an up and coming/growing site, platform, app etc for roleplayers that people are getting interested in. I'm not looking to leave RPR, but when a pond runs out of fish you try elsewhere for a bit before coming back, you know? I'm not looking to leave, just dip my toes in a different pool and see if anything comes around.
I hadn't really considered that people are hiding in groups, but it makes sense. A lot of people seem to do discord RPs nowadays, which doesn't fit my play style as discord can't take my post length lol. But it does seem like more and more new players are preferring the quick short replies, which, yeah, I just can't get into. I love cozying up and reading a post I have to scroll down to finish reading, with atmosphere, emotions, inner thoughts etc all there on the page. Love it.
But, to not divert from the topic too much; I have noticed people in the forums talking about other sites and having similar thoughts as me, so I was just curious if there was an up and coming/growing site, platform, app etc for roleplayers that people are getting interested in. I'm not looking to leave RPR, but when a pond runs out of fish you try elsewhere for a bit before coming back, you know? I'm not looking to leave, just dip my toes in a different pool and see if anything comes around.
Min-ya wrote:
I will say that, after being on the site for a few years I've certainly learned the do's and dont's and the quiet expectations of the space. I think that is an interesting and valuable thing to consider, that people coming from elsewhere might be intimidated, shocked, or confused about how things work here, even if it feels very natural to us who've been here for a long time and maybe even have not been anywhere else at all.
I hadn't really considered that people are hiding in groups, but it makes sense. A lot of people seem to do discord RPs nowadays, which doesn't fit my play style as discord can't take my post length lol. But it does seem like more and more new players are preferring the quick short replies, which, yeah, I just can't get into. I love cozying up and reading a post I have to scroll down to finish reading, with atmosphere, emotions, inner thoughts etc all there on the page. Love it.
But, to not divert from the topic too much; I have noticed people in the forums talking about other sites and having similar thoughts as me, so I was just curious if there was an up and coming/growing site, platform, app etc for roleplayers that people are getting interested in. I'm not looking to leave RPR, but when a pond runs out of fish you try elsewhere for a bit before coming back, you know? I'm not looking to leave, just dip my toes in a different pool and see if anything comes around.
I hadn't really considered that people are hiding in groups, but it makes sense. A lot of people seem to do discord RPs nowadays, which doesn't fit my play style as discord can't take my post length lol. But it does seem like more and more new players are preferring the quick short replies, which, yeah, I just can't get into. I love cozying up and reading a post I have to scroll down to finish reading, with atmosphere, emotions, inner thoughts etc all there on the page. Love it.
But, to not divert from the topic too much; I have noticed people in the forums talking about other sites and having similar thoughts as me, so I was just curious if there was an up and coming/growing site, platform, app etc for roleplayers that people are getting interested in. I'm not looking to leave RPR, but when a pond runs out of fish you try elsewhere for a bit before coming back, you know? I'm not looking to leave, just dip my toes in a different pool and see if anything comes around.
I agree with your read on it. A space accrues an unspoken systems over time. The veteran population internalizes it. New arrivals do not. What feels “normal” to long-tenured users can feel like a locked door to someone coming from a different ecosystem. Even when nobody is being overtly unkind, the ambient rules still exist. People still bounce off them.
On the “hiding in groups” point, I think you have put your finger on the most consequential shift. Public lobbies used to be where you met writers. Now, for many people, the public lobby is only a storefront. The actual writing is happening behind closed curtains.
Discord is part of that story, but Discord is also not the perpetual growth engine it used to be for roleplay. I have been on Discord since 2015. In that time, I have watched the density of genuinely alive servers diminish. There are still many servers, but “many” is not the same as “thriving.” The churn is high. The half-life is short. The number of spaces that sustain long-form writing, stable staffing, and consistent partner follow-through has contracted.
From the SEO side, I see something similar at a broader altitude. Keyword traffic for roleplay, as a whole, is down, with two obvious exceptions. People looking to roleplay with AI. People looking for erotic roleplay. That skew has downstream effects. It distorts discovery. It changes what platforms get built and promoted. It also explains why, if you search for roleplay apps on a phone, you will mostly get AI. That is not an accident. That is demand shaping supply.
I also want to underline something you already implied. This is not a culture unique to RpR. It is a straightforward premise.
The more advanced the craft, the smaller the pool.
The more stringent the expectations, the narrower the compatible population.
That was always true. What has changed is that a growing portion of the hobby no longer treats roleplay as collaboration. It treats it as competition. It becomes performative. It becomes status. It becomes fragile ego-management. In that climate, length stops being a neutral preference and becomes a perceived threat. Not because long posts are objectively superior, but because they can be interpreted as an implicit comparison. People react defensively. They disengage preemptively. They rationalize it as “fit,” while behaving as if it were combat.
There are other structural pressures that compound the slowdown.
Attention has been atomized. People are habituated to micro-rewards and constant interruption. Long-form writing requires sustained concentration and voluntary silence. That is rarer now.
Reading, specifically, has become rare. I am not guessing. I run my sheet off-site on a website. I can see the behavior under the hood. The current rate of players who invest more than two minutes in lore or sheets is 0.387%. That number is not a feeling. It is instrumentation.
And if anyone assumes that is just “bad luck” or a niche audience, the comparative benchmarks do not support that. According to Google’s benchmarking, my site sits in the top 10% across categories for this space, and top 3% for time on site and pages per visit. In other words, even when you are empirically outperforming the norm, the norm is still startlingly low. The median visitor does not read. The median visitor samples and leaves.
Add to that the general erosion of follow-through. People start more threads than they finish. Life gets harder. Bandwidth shrinks. The incentive structure rewards novelty over completion. The social penalty for vanishing is minimal. The result is predictable.
So I understand the instinct to “dip your toes” elsewhere. Not as betrayal, but as basic ecology. When the pond thins, you test another inlet.
The hard truth is that there may not be a single up-and-coming platform that solves this at scale, because the limiting factor is not the UI. It is the population’s appetite for reading, reciprocity, and sustained collaboration. The winning move, in practice, has become curation. Fewer partners. Higher compatibility. Clearer expectations. More completion. Public spaces are still useful for introductions. The actual longevity tends to be forged in smaller rooms where craft is treated as joint construction, not a referendum on someone’s worth.
I think we're seeing the effect of a generation of writers growing up, becoming adults, having additional responsibilities and being forced to survive before being able to relax and enjoy a hobby. Younger generations are writing less and less, they're letting AI write for them, think for them and be the creative outlet for them.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
Edit: Oop this reply was to The_Diva, I had posted it before seeing Sanne's answer.
I hear you, but there can also be other reasons for migration. There are things people might be unhappy with RPR about, that cause them to move elsewhere where they feel more at home. Which is totally fine of course! But I'm curious. I am very sure there are sites and places that are a lot worse than RPR in every sense of the word (I say that as someone who loves this site lol so I'm biased) but there might also be places that have unique features, events, or people that RPR do not. Like I said, I'm not looking to move places, and I don't think there is "a golden site" to solve all RP problems and become the beacon of all literate RP. That is why I want to check out the options and see what little golden nuggets I can find in different places. Not all gold nuggets are in the same place.
So if anyone comes across this and has tips, maybe someone who is actually currently dual-wielding RPR and other sites, I would love a tip so I can check it out for myself
I hear you, but there can also be other reasons for migration. There are things people might be unhappy with RPR about, that cause them to move elsewhere where they feel more at home. Which is totally fine of course! But I'm curious. I am very sure there are sites and places that are a lot worse than RPR in every sense of the word (I say that as someone who loves this site lol so I'm biased) but there might also be places that have unique features, events, or people that RPR do not. Like I said, I'm not looking to move places, and I don't think there is "a golden site" to solve all RP problems and become the beacon of all literate RP. That is why I want to check out the options and see what little golden nuggets I can find in different places. Not all gold nuggets are in the same place.
So if anyone comes across this and has tips, maybe someone who is actually currently dual-wielding RPR and other sites, I would love a tip so I can check it out for myself
Sanne wrote:
I think we're seeing the effect of a generation of writers growing up, becoming adults, having additional responsibilities and being forced to survive before being able to relax and enjoy a hobby. Younger generations are writing less and less, they're letting AI write for them, think for them and be the creative outlet for them.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
Yeah its rough out there, I get it. I've been a lot more exhausted in general from life so I get that people are going through that, but honestly all the crap IRL just makes me need RP even more since its something positive and nice. I hope more people who are struggling can find the time and ability to come back to it if they want to, it is terrible to have to give up things that bring you joy when things are difficult.
Sanne's Insights
Sanne wrote:
I think we're seeing the effect of a generation of writers growing up, becoming adults, having additional responsibilities and being forced to survive before being able to relax and enjoy a hobby. Younger generations are writing less and less, they're letting AI write for them, think for them and be the creative outlet for them.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
The current political climate has also created a genuine crisis where things like being online to RP is a luxury they can't afford to spend time or energy on anymore. I know of several people who have almost completely stopped RPing because they're too exhausted from having to navigate the dumpster fires of not being allowed to exist to even be able to escape in a fantasy world and write.
All this leads to reduced activity basically everywhere in creative spaces. People who are still active and seeking to engage in roleplay are not finding the same amount of interested parties as before and then want to look elsewhere (which is fine!) but it's a pretty universal thing happening everywhere at this point.
It's hard to invest in long-term stories and dedicate a significant amount of time to a hobby when you don't have the resources to anymore. It's easy to talk to an AI who's always there whenever you want it to be cause AI has no real life schedule to work around.
You hit the nail on the head with this Sanne! I have sadly seen AI 'take over' some roleplays to the detriment of all. For my part I have been scarce for a year and a half, and am trying to get back into writing RP again. But a lot of it is a seasonal ebb and flow, and it isn't the same for everyone.
The mention of 'migration' is interesting as I am on a few different RP sites, and a few have shut down this year (Black Dahlia and Creative Freedom I know ended, along with quotv and a few others). I think when people are engaged in RP and their co-writers leave for whatever reason, that is disheartening as well.
I get the whole RL poltiical stress, and life changes and what not. It takes a toll. It's still nice to stick my head in the sand and write stories with my head being one of my characters. Escapism? Sure. But I keep an eye on reality always.
I prefer to not use AI to write for me
My days I have time are Mondays and Wednesdays...
My days I have time are Mondays and Wednesdays...
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