Natural Freedom

I tend to agree with GB here on this :
and I wonder how valuable it is to people nowadays...
maybe many view it without logging in, new users registrations have dropped of a cliff over recent years.

Lots of bots and spam applications, hardly any new users. (if you are a real user, please put something in your application to let us know)

Then we have the responses to this thread, or lack of.

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Then there is the thought that have mainstream in some ways caught up nowadays, as seems various terms that were almost banned or burn at the stake if you mentioned them are almost accepted as part of life now, not that people are coming up with solutions like we were.

Many thoughts

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.

That's what I started out doing. It took a couple of years before I had the guts to try registering with my main email address and finally get approved, and by then I'd seen enough newbies embarrassing themselves that I wanted to get to grips with the material before asking a dumb question. Maybe 12 years of reading is enough to finally start posting...

Things always go in cycles. The oldest record store in my country shut down like the year before vinyl blew up in popularity again. They said they were still just barely able to operate but there obviously wasn't a future in physical media based on what we knew back then. I think forums will return to popularity

Reddit is the site that probably killed a lot of individual forums. And now they're well on the way to killing themselves. Their "red pill" community is seriously misguided, but when the subreddit is inevitably banned, at least some of its 3.5 million members might want to hear the word of the guy who invented red pill, and get straitened out.

Discord is another option. If every forum member gets sent an invite to a server, we can stay connected and bide our time until the world is ready again

Regardless, I'm gonna start posting all my dumb questions here now and see if it will drive others to participate. I wouldn't mind the option of buying a "Gold Membership" to this site and get a cool banner or my name in different colour. That's also gonna make me want "to get my money's worth" and post more

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Instead of screaming at the clouds when it starts raining, try opening your umbrella

Do you have a deadline for when this forum may shut off? Just so we can organise and archive posts and move people to a new place if need be?

it would be a shame to lose so much valuable information. It is right, text forums have declined a lot. Reddit and other platforms casued a decline in them. It's a real shame as Reddit doesn't foster communtiies to get to know each other as its all subreddits and upvoting new threads, so old threads never get back up or 'bumped'. Discord is terrible for in depth conversation as its chat based and hard to search through. And is never indexed on web search engines as its all chat rooms. So much hidden info behind Discords. And again Instagram, Facebook groups, Tiktok are not greaat for in depth conversation threads back and fourth and being able to segregate threads by different topics and searching.

I have browsed this forum for many years without logging in. I wonder what the monthly traffic is?

Are they any other forums similar to this?

do you see the issue..

you are not alone
It has past and seems to be safe for another year. it is archived, for those that want to venture to the web archive

i agree... however if people do not show its valuable and use it and continue to contribute, how does anyone know?
which is also ironic together with too much attention may not be a good thing, given all those similar places that were driven off the net not so long ago.. a tricky balance.

There are a number of people who view this without logging in, there have been since its inception.. we have no clue who they are..
agree with this and Kiwis comments also about the same..
Its been a topic of discussion recently... how these new things ended up less useful than the old ones.

discord is awful imho and has been since the start.. so many forums moved to it and i'm not sure they've realised its horrible for long form discussions or saving info or searching for things..
its main benefit over irc was the always on bit and not needing to be connected.. yet it brought so many downsides that wiped that out imho.. imho, IRC is still better... for that

imho, none of the current options are good for long form discussions from a number of users.
its a trend imho, a sign of the times.

now, taking a long term approach i am sure things will swing the other way in time, its just how long.
Not sure

there are other forums on similar topics, a search will unearth them... there are also archives of old ones that are not more than a search away.. and from a search the other day it seems some have popped back up that vanished for a while.

for kiwis, i dont remember ripping into newbies... i remember a few established users who asked for it, then thanked us later... glad you both decided to hit that post button..

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.

This is going to be large platform to jump.

As you said elsewhere, content is dropping in everything. Almost nothing has any physical (or even non physical) resemblance of richness. I don't know how we can not discuss this.

The other day I had three new thread ideas. All relevant and none related to the several threads I already started.

The planet has gone nuts.

I know it's meant to. I just didn't think it could be to this extent.

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Sparkling All Over

It's pretty wild that new posts get tens of thousands of views.
I'm with you. I don't get how you'd have a forum on there. A discord server is just one long random conversation going back years and years. It's fine for having a channel of communication between people, if the alternative is losing touch forever. But I'd rather use ICQ – if only for that "uh oh" If I understand the history correct, some of the fine people on this forum migrated from something called "the Pirate ship" because these teachings weren't welcome there. I think we should make an effort to keep this forum blooming Yeah, I wish I actually had embarrassed myself back then. It is a good motivator. I was weary of the general forum trope of asking questions that have been answered a million times already. (But mainly I was shy) Thank you for replying and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. The first year or so of visiting this forum, I had a theory that you and The Kidd!! were secretly the same person because you said the exact same thing only differently. But that didn't hold up to scrutiny, since you weren't trying to sell anything.

Anyway, I will strive to keep posting

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Instead of screaming at the clouds when it starts raining, try opening your umbrella

Some of the view counts are crazy at the moment.. we have had an influx of AI bots scraping it seems, they've added to the traffic way more than the search engine bots.
imho, the main benefit of the forum format is that if it has been asked before, or a very close variant then the users can add a link in the post to the relevant material, as is seen in many posts here.
Which saves the writer from re-answering it all over, you can go off and read and then come back and continue.

It can be quite a web of links to travel if you find a sub subject that interests you.

the search function on the forum is most useful and a tip is '+' means the word has to be in the answer.
you can also switch result between posts or topics which can make it more readable imho
You brought up some memories of that happening and us both being asked.

It was quite uncanny given our very different locations, circumstances and lives, imho, that showed to the commonalities going on.

I have posted an article I feel may help shed light on my comment on how to approach the party event for you kiwis and amr might find interesting: https://www.naturalfreedom.info/viewtop ... 482#p50482

The reason I answered not sure to other forums like this is the mix of information, inner work / inner game, together with the societal influences and social dynamics parts.

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.