Hey guys,
I thought I'd contribute to this topic, I doubt many of you guys really know who I am as I don't think many of the old school freestylers are still on this forum or even freestyle much these days. Anyway I used to freestyle and be on this forum back in the days of Lindroth, Legend, Palle, Mitchy, John Clarke, Matte Linder, Frejd etc etc. YouTube didn't exist back then, or was still in its infancy, so to come to a forum was the main way to watch a new video. You had to download the videos to watch them, so I've got on my old computer thousands of videos from back in the dark ages haha.
Overall I'd say forums become less relevant to freestylers over time. I wouldn't say the sport is dead. Many of us guys who were on the first soccergrip were around when the hardcore boom started and crazy ass combos kicked in. That was when the sport for me was new, fresh and exciting. I remember jumping on the forum every day excited to see new videos as there was no youtube to simply search, I'd always look forward to coming and seeing Lindroth posting a video every day showing something ridiculous that he'd done that day. Back then, the scene was so small compared to now where there are thousands of freestylers that everyone knew everyone and Palle seemed like a GOD of freestyle.
A lot of freestylers, lose interest in freestyle football as they get older, I for one certainly did. As soon as I hit 18/19, freestyle wasn't a priority for me anymore. I didn't really care about checking videos anymore or learning new tricks. Other things take priority, I'm sure you can all work these out, don't need to spell it out. I'd also say that a lot of freestylers as they grow up, don't lose interest in freestyle, they lose interest in the forums, as they don't feel like they have a place there anymore. I remember when I created the NAS forum back in the day, I lost interest in that because the vast majority of the guys on there were so young, you'd get a lot of shit topics and a lot of shit posts being posted every day. I don't know what it's like on this forum now, but that is what happened on the NAS forum.
From a personal perspective I can tell you, freestyle is not dead. I run my own agency and this is definitely not proving freestyle is dead. Freestyle has definitely moved on from the days I used to freestyle, it's more commercial and is no longer something nobody knows about. I think the focus for many guys nowadays is to make money out of their talents. This is why you get a lot of crap freestylers undercutting agencies trying to gain work. That's a fact.
I'd also say that due to the sport expanding and everyone seems to be doing ridiculous things, people won't post videos of them doing a tatw nt atatw anymore because they won't get any recognition. It's harder for freestylers to stand out from the crowd now and to show how good they are due to the vast majority of freestylers in the sport. I just think it's a fact that is hard to face that once people get to a certain age, freestyle forums become a minor part in their life. To keep growing as a forum, you'll have to attract the younger generations and then the forum will gain more members and more posts, but will also get a lot of stupid crap being posted.
Anyway, I'd write more but that'll do for now.
Peace
