Before we dive into the topic, let’s briefly look at what we’ve built together in just over 6 years.
Created: 6+ years ago
Registered members: 29,452
Topics: 6,423
Posts: 433,021
Private messages: 74,300
Chat messages: 116,541
Reactions: 1,066,629
Accepted solutions: 1,338
Bookmarks: 1,470
Page views: 23,995,838
Petition signatures: 5,766
This represents hundreds of thousands of conversations, over a million community interactions, nearly 24 million page views, and almost thirty thousand registered members.
At the same time, it’s probably no surprise to anyone that activity is not what it used to be a few years ago. This is what we want to talk about.
Lately, we’ve encountered several people who express thoughts about the declining activity in a rather simplified way, treating them as facts. However, we see the situation as much more complex.
The activity of the Hungarian vape community has decreased overall. This is noticeable not only on Vaperina but on almost all domestic vape community platforms. There are fewer new conversations, fewer active commenters, and many people prefer to read silently rather than write.
Why has visible activity changed?
The decrease in daily “buzz” on Vaperina is not the result of one or two people’s decisions, but a consequence of the drastic transformation of technology and the environment:
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Technology simplification (The era of disposable devices): In the past, vaping was a kind of subculture and hobby. You had to build coils, wick, mix, and understand the interconnections. This made the community and exchange of experience essential. Today, we live in the world of disposable or pre-filled devices: you buy it, you vape it, you throw it away. About these – no matter how you look at it – there’s nothing to talk about, no technical background, so the need for community interaction has ceased for most new users.
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The generational shift stalled due to the legal environment: In the past, knowledge transfer was smooth. Today, new entrants who want to switch from smoking find themselves in a legally extremely restricted and suppressed environment, where the old, experienced members – who could help – have become tired or more cautious due to continuous regulations and tightening. The official restrictions have created general uncertainty: we’ve seen countless times that members dared not share information because they feared controls. This paranoia has pushed open communication into the background – it’s no coincidence that a significant portion of assistance has shifted to private messages. While private messages save individuals, they remain invisible from the perspective of the community as a whole: others cannot learn from them, they are not integrated into collective knowledge, so classic, public “succession training” has become almost impossible, and the new generation no longer receives the natural mentoring that the old base once provided.
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The “settling in” effect: Over the years, long-time members have found their perfect hardware and liquids. If something works stably for years, one less often starts a new topic. They no longer ask because they don’t need to. This is success, not failure.
The transformation of online habits is well illustrated by our most popular traffic sources. The vast majority of visitors today do not arrive aimlessly but search for specific questions on search engines for immediate answers:
- Google: 669,800+ clicks
- Facebook: 9,150+ clicks
- Bing / DuckDuckGo: 3,080+ clicks
But we haven’t stopped
While life has become quieter, we have continued to build Vaperina: a new knowledge base was created, the fact (presumably referring to a specific section or feature) was launched, we are building European connections, and together we have collected over 5,700 signatures against the odds for a petition aimed at making Hungarian regulations more sensible.
We don’t want to pretend that everything is fine. Activity is indeed lower than before. But we also don’t want anyone to think that the community has ceased to exist or lost its purpose.
For a community this old and this large, it’s a huge achievement that it hasn’t collapsed at all in this suffocating environment – compared to that, we are doing quite well, stagnating and persevering.
Where are we headed?
In our view, change is expected when the situation in Hungary is resolved – and we are putting all our energy into making that happen behind the scenes. If we succeed in achieving a breakthrough, it could revitalize vaping in our country: hopefully, our currently passive members will return, and of course, we will be joined by many new entrants. There will again be questions beyond what to get from where, and proper professional discussions can begin.
We also have big plans for functionality, as I mentioned in a previous post. We want to fully connect the domestic vape ecosystem. In practice, this would mean, for example, consolidating future new, legal shops on an interactive map and providing a technical interface for everything the community needs.
When life picks up again, there will be a need for a place that has been a fixed, stable point for the domestic vape base for years.
We are here, we will stay here, and we are ready…
