Seeking Seclusion, Embracing Decline: A Qualitative Enquiry Into the Long-Term Development of a Private Online Community

Abstract

This article analyzes the development of a message board–based online community between 2002 and 2016. It examines a private online community that actively secluded itself from online publics and has welcomed no new members in over a decade. Drawing on online participant observation, offline fieldwork, online and offline interviews, as well as archival research of 12 years of online interaction, the article provides an in-depth qualitative account of the “aging” of an online community that focuses on its internal dynamics and member narratives. A portrait of a community that survived years of apparent “decline,” it enquires into the durability of online socialities and cultures. Specifically, the article identifies three interlinked factors that shaped the long-term development of the community: (1) structural and cultural continuities, actively achieved through user and administrator efforts, established the online community as a coherent and recognizable social aggregation that persists over time; (2) forum members do not uniformly perceive decreasing levels of community interaction as negative but reframe it as an expression of in-group familiarity and side-effect of a consolidation process; and (3) interweaving of online and offline interaction is a primary source of familiarity among members and factor benefiting community longevity. As study of a message board tracing back to 2002, the article examines a remnant of an earlier online culture and speaks to increasing scholarly interests in online pasts. As a study of a closed forum, the article further contributes to an emerging body of research on private and secretive modes of online interaction.