MySwan wrote:I agree that AP seems like a site that is just kind of there instead alive. I joined this site probably last year and started playing airsoft last year and I haven't noticed much hostility except for some things I actually overreacted on which was kind of embarassing for who I am but I let it go. I started playing last summer and now I've got my kit and everything almost ready for MSW. Then again I have had help from a friend who has been into airsoft way longer than I have and he has guided and answered my questions a lot. Facebook and Reddit do seem like way better places but as we all know Facebook has taken a recent hostility it seems like to airsoft but that's mainly because of people trying to sell stuff on there plus I like to keep my family and friends who don't know tool about the sport separate but the airsoft community local. Also the whole mag/clips thing is more of a real steel problem rather than airsoft and if you call a magazine a clip or vice versa it just makes you look stupid and is kind of cringy mainly because it resonates with anti-gunner BS.
This foxhound...
Is exactly what Andrew was talking about.
I'm going to be rather long winded in my response, not because I think it's needed, but because this topic touches on something that I am very passionate about, as my teammates will attest to, and that something is community.
(I'm sure they are all "cringy" right now)
I joined AP back in 2005, a buddy of mine took me to my first game, "Another Crack House" (you can still find that game thread here on AP) the player count was somewhere around 50, and that was considered a nice sized game back then. Airsoft was beginning to catch on here in the States, but replicas were still hard to come by, and in order to own a replica you were either paying the exuberant shipping costs form Tokyo or buying some cheap HFC gun from any of handful of paintball places that were selling them. Events back there were once every couple months and AP was already a hot spot for players in the area to come and find out about events, replicas, and anything airsoft related. The player base created by the events made for the same crowd on and off the field. You would shoot at each other on Saturday, and shoot the shit with each other in the forums for the rest of the week. You got to know players on and off the field and because we were all here to play, and we all had to go to the same games weather you liked someone or hated them you were forced to interact with them. Sure we had our problems, our problem kids, our trolls, guys who hated each other for one thing or another, but they didn't have a choice. If the wanted to play they were kind of forced into the community. It was like moving into a new neighborhood. You got to know your neighbors and hoped when new neighbors moved in they weren't total dicks. Shit got big. Were talking 300 players at events big, and that wasn't everyone on AP. Teams had been around for as long as I could remember, but now there were a lot of teams, and team rivalries, Tensions run high and things in the community waver a bit. IN steps Dan (And this may be the one and only time I will refer to Dan as something similar to a hero, in the least hero-esk of ways but...) Dan starts slinging his APE Hate propaganda. And the entire community as a whole turns on him and his merry team of poor misguided fools. I love you Dan, and I remember sitting in Chopsticks bar with you at K-bar's birthday party as you explained your evil plan, and I worried that you were too smart for your own good. But the community had been united behind a common enemy. team rivalries fell by the wayside, as they started working together to crush Dan's PLA Team. And his team was good, they put up one hell of a fight. This went on for quite a while before PLA was reigned back in and their APE hate fell by the way side and the community that had gotten too big to sustain settled in for another few years of Airsoft.
However what happened next wasn't something we could have seen coming nor had any power over. Companies like JG and echo1 became a competitor and leveled the playing field. High end companies had to make sportline versions of their guns to keep up with JG, echo 1 and other such companies. The prices dropped on replicas, as well as a flooding of the market and suddenly airsoft became far more accessible to the public. This sudden intake of players caused a large groowth here on AP, a growth of players that weren't a custom to the AP community and had no way of knowing not to kick the sleeping dog cause she's willing to bite back.
This change in Airsoft does several things:
First, we begin to see players who are aren't as committed to airsoft as the players AP is accustom to having. They come stick around for a year or two and then leave. This means we have a constant revolving door of the same TYPE of new players. A revolving door of the same what gun should I get questions, the same I'm looking for a team thread followed a few months later by the same I'm going to start a new team threads. And because they aren't as invested in the sport they aren't as willing to be a part of the community either, especially a community that has been doing this for a while and has a way of weeding the strong from the... well ... annoying. So the community bites back.
Around this same time Facebook had gotten big and it began to be a hub for the players who were not interested in the AP way of things. So we see players begin to opt away from AP and into Facbook, or readit style boards where they somehow find it much easier and must more impersonal when people say rude stuff about them. Also it's way easier to find stupid people to agree with you when you surround yourself with people who only like what you like.
The second thing that the change in airsoft did was far more insidious and underlying. As the player population increased there was a greater market for fields and locations to play. Unfortunately there are no rules for field owners, they make them up as they go and if you don't like it, then you don't have to play there. So we see fields who host smaller games more often that attract a type of player. And those players continue to play at the same field and there becomes these pockets of players who have heard stories of the big bad AP, or maybe have experienced it themselves but they have no interest in becoming a part of the larger airsoft community, because they have their own little community.
The third thing that happened was the advent of HPA. For years Airsofters and Paintballers have disliked each other. Some paintballers joined airsoft and never looked back, a few guys play both, but even they will tell you how unsafe it is to talk about one with the other. One of the major differences between Airsoft and Paintball is in the attitude of the players. Paintballers are out for blood, where as most airsofters will tell you they don't go for head shots and they honor safety kills, they are out there for fun and not to make someone bleed. I don't know if the creator's of HPA tanks have them all cursed by a witch doctor, or what the deal is, but players who use HPS rigs come at airsoft with a whole different attitude. It's RPS down range, feathering their trigger, making their replicas as quiet as possible to make sure they can't be seen or heard. It's not Airsoft it's speed ball. It's not milsim, it's M4 SAW gunners. So we see SpeedSoft start to pop up, SpeedQB as some people are calling it these days. It's a different breed of airsoft, it's as different as Speedball VS WoodsBall in paintball terms. So you can no longer say "I play airsoft" and assume you are talking about the same sport. You have to specify what kind of airsoft your talking about. And players who play Speedsoft look down on Milsim guys like myself, just like Milsim guys looks down on guys who play SpeedSoft. It's another break in the community. different gun builds, different preferences. It's hard to run a board for airsoft if the two groups that make up airsoft can't get along.
So we end up here a disjointed community, and an airsoft community board who's old members recall the good old days and are too crusty to believe it could ever be that good again. A board who's stigma of being old, evil and outdated, is only true because people aren't trying anymore because they can only see the cracks in the community has and know that there isn't enough glue in the world to fix it.
This community will never be what it once was, because what it was, was made up by who was in it. May of those people have moved on from airsoft, and we cannot get back what once was, but that does not mean we can't try and rebuild into something different.