(EDIT: I found something!) Is there anywhere I can read really old Dragon Ball threads?

[Hellspawn28]

Just think all those people who were already teens or adults in the 80's or 90's when Dragonball was airing to be old enough to talk about it online or travel to Japan...these people are like 50 years old now. Goddamn, it makes you wonder if any of them are watching Super.

It's times like this it's easy to forget Dragonball is over 30 years old. All the people who were already 10 when it first came out in 1986 are now 45+ years old.

That's what I'm wondering. They were apparently hardcore enough to put up with the barely functioning internet of that time period just to find other fans who they could go to a whole heap of trouble to swap tapes with. Surely they haven't just forgotten.

Even before the Internet exist. you had people at fan clubs would meet up and talk about these stuff. Not to mention, collector shops would have RAW tapes of anime, tokusatsu and other foreign media. People had ways to find out about these shows and movies while they where going on in Japan. People like August Ragone, Fred Patten, Stuart Galbraith, Jerry Beck, Toren Smith and many others are some of the first generation of anime fans in the since the 70's.

[VegettoEX]

My on-going experience working theory is: a constant influx of younger people is draining and incredibly difficult to put up with for a prolonged period of time. Also, ya' know, we all gots other stuff going on in life to deal with.

Wouldn't be surprised if my generation of fans drove away the existing first-gen of website owners. We were absolutely insufferable. I wouldn't have put up with myself, nevermind all the others I was surrounded by. This cycle just keeps repeating itself over and over, with fewer of the old guard actually sticking it out each time through.

Sure, you can be a fan of something, and always keep that with you, but how many of them are going to want to stay in whatever "position of fandom authority" they may or may not have carved out for themselves? Everyone's gotta burn out at some point. Can't keep dealing with a stagnant base of consistently-16-year-old visitors/readers/members for the rest of your life, right?

ITT: Mike publicly questions his life choices, asks for past forgiveness, and demands future slack.

[JulieYBM]

I've met in real life a (currently middle-aged) fan who has been a fan since the 1970s this past year. He goes by 'Senpai' or 'Hentai' at cons and is the co-manager of an anime shop in my area. He's been doing cons for decades and has a massive collection of figurines and doujinshi. It was a really surreal experience meeting someone in real life who was as big a fan as me. He just got back from a trip to Japan where he bought a ton of new merchandise for his collection and the store he co-runs. If you ever go to a dealers room, like at Sakura Con, maybe you'll meet him! Older fans are definitely out there!

I hardly remember the 1990s and 2000s on the internet, but I chalk that up to how much new information I consume and how terrible my sleep schedule has been for years. There was a lot of misinformation and the like going around when I first got into the concept of a 'fandom' and expressing it. Reading old posts would probably kill me from the embarrassment.

[precita]

All those teens from the early 2000's are now 25-30 year old adults though. Makes you wonder how many are still around. I mean *I'm* one of them...I was only 15 years old in the year 2000...now I'm 31. All of us original teens grew up, and then we got replaced by a continuous wave of new teens in the mid-2000's, then the early 2010's, and now the 2015's. It is a never ending cycle of new fans joining fandoms for the first time.

[Hellspawn28]

I found this one from September 1991 (I was 4 months old)

From the anime that I have seen recently, Goku (Dragonball) seems the
strongest. He can take punches just as good as any of the Saints.
He even survived an exploding planet (don't know how yet). Also he gets
stronger with every "defeat", because he is a Saiya-jin.
I don't know how Goku (or anybody) would do against a black hole..

https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobi ... rnuW_wmGAJ

It looks like fantasy matches was a thing back then too