Mer Community

[Merfin_Aurora_Oceania]

I'm amazed to discover that this appears to be the only mermaid forum available on the net.

I was wondering since mermaiding is popular if there would be other people making their own forums, I'm surprised that its not as popular as I thought.

[Mer-Crazy]

Mertailor made one I believe basically because a lot of people here don't like him. I went on it once when it was first made but I can't remember the address.

[Merfin_Aurora_Oceania]

I'm happy here and I have no intention of joing another mer forum. I'm beingt a curious catfish being *bad pun, I know*...

[Mer-Crazy]

I think the main thing is that this one is perfectly fine, everyone is happy here so there's no need for others to make their own forums.

[Winged Mermaid]

There have been a few others. Seatails (now seatails.org) was around before us, but at the time they were for all part-human creatures and not much centered around the costuming aspect. Plus they moved around a lot (at least 4 times they site was started over on different platforms/domains) so it lost a lot of traction.
Mertailor's was merforum.com, which when I went to get the URL looks like they gave up on it, because it no longer exists. There's Wavedancers of Atlantis (made by Kanti and Morticia), but last I heard it was a ghost town there. There's a german mermaid forum (http://www.mermaidmania.de/forum/) but it's not centered around costuming like this one is, and looks like it's been kind of inactive.

Mermaiding is mostly thriving spread out on social networking, rather than on specific websites/forums. A lot of people LIKE mermaiding as a passing trend or minor hobby, but there are few that think of it as a passion. So I guess that's why there aren't more sites centered solely around merfolk costuming.

[Merfin_Aurora_Oceania]

I'm appreciative of this forum's existence, some of us are even making careers out of our mer passions which is what I inspire towards.

[AniaR]

there were others. they failed. lol. seems whenever someone gets mad about mernetwork they go off and make their own and they never last. Mernetwork has a long history as mer yuku and then previously a strong group of dedicated members on myspace

[OrcaMatt]

Yeah, the community is big, and growing, but it's not SO big that it can really sustain a lot of different online forums. Certainly not in terms of other large specialist community forums that are out there. I used to be active on the main food/cooking forums, and those things are (er, 'were', now that I go back and look...) monstrously big. Heck look at cosplay.com...they have (nearly) one hundred times as many users, and they're still, as far as I'm aware anyway, the only big game in town for that category: a huge, global fandom phenomenon that's been around since the early 90s, give or take.

The 'network effect' will likely keep Mernetwork the only relevant mermaiding forum for a long time. The only thing that can really threaten continuity at this point are owner burnout and/or funding problems (there's a fundraiser going on, bty!) Anybody can set up a free forum, but it will be next to impossible to get over that content and activity hurdle to keep people interested, and to get new members to sign up and stick around.

Honestly if Mertailor couldn't lure enough people away to their own forum, nobody can. Well, maybe Raina can.

[Echidna]

I was briefly on the German forum, when I was looking for potential merdance group members.

Besides the admin, there are maybe 2 people reading it.
The main focus isn't costuming, tailmaking or mermaiding, but talk about mermaid related things like TV shows, merchandise, and books.

MN is pretty unique in this regard.

[Merfin_Aurora_Oceania]

I agree that Mernetwork is a unique forum, I believe I found uot about this forum through a book or a person discussing it through a youtube video.

[Theta]

I think, too, that this group is pretty active, by which I mean most of us have goals of getting out and into the water. It's one thing to be really into mermaids omg! and quite another to put on a tail and go swimming. I've talked to many people that are initially enthusiastic, or love mermaids or whatever, but are reluctant to get out into the water. That keeps the community smaller than I think it might be otherwise. Not that we exclude anyone on this site, but the focus in general is more on the real-world aspect of mermaiding than the ephemeral. I know we've had members in the past that felt excluded because so much of the emphasis is on swimming, and they don't go in the water for various reasons.

[Princess Pearl]

There are quite a few mermaid groups on facebook, but I've noticed they tend to be more focussed on posting pictures found off google image search than actually dressing up and being a mermaid.


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