// THE SUPERTALK 2025 – 2050 THREAD //

[julian-wolf]

AI’s options B and C both have some appeal

A “dedicated IG/Tiktok etc” has the opposite of appeal from a health-of-the-forum perspective, but I guess you’ve got to make money somehow

(Honestly, I’ve been consistently active on here for close to a decade and this is the first I’ve ever been aware of the PDF city guides aspect of the site)

[superfuture]

I think the IG/Tiktok angle - more for the exposure - though doubt they would contribute much to the revenue side. Then again, its all reels these days so that would need to be the focus... As for PDF city guide... it's fascinating that there are so many different demographics across superfuture - and they rarely overlap. The people on the main site would equally never have visited supertalk... hence the reason it is easy to split the two...!? 

[Broark]

I’m with Julian, options B and C are interesting.
I think option A is a short term fix for a long term problem, I don’t know how many additional users you might get that are willing to sign up after the initial offering.

[Bus]

Would a short form video watcher even want to join a forum? Like imagine going from some "Are skinny jeans back?" "aura farm performative male" 15 second videos to reading long form text and having to lay out your thoughts instead of making a one line comment. Forums are browsed optimally on computers, tiktok and IG are better on phones, it just seems like 2 different markets.

Monthly subscriptions with a small flat fee like Double 0 said sounds the best to me, maybe add some extra tiers with perks for any ballerz. AI option 😄 seems a bit goofy to me considering that this site probably makes nothing, and I don't see it changing in the future. Option B is the best AI option, IMO, but if option A came with superfuture t-shirt I might change my mind.

[julian-wolf]

7 minutes ago, Bus said:

if option A came with superfuture t-shirt I might change my mind.

Alas, if the SuFu tees were printed on SuFu-approved blanks the buy-in would need to be $299 for there to be any profit left

[Double 0 Soul]

The bike forum i contribute to is completely infested with rolling / renewing ads.. those type of click bait, lowest common denominator appeal for shit like Temu.. Born Between 1947 and 1975 You Could Be Eligible for... Scientist Discovered If You Do This One Simple Trick.. Don't Buy A Heat Pump Until You've Read This.. ect running across the top of the page.

Sufu has always looked clean af! .. even in the days when we did have larger brands on board, Lynx, American Apparel and such, those ads had at least some correlation to the forum whereas these junk ads have nothing to do with bikes.. the folks running the forum have no control over what is advertised but obviously they bring in the $$$$s

Everyone on the site runs an ad blocker so the site still looks super clean / no ads at all.. they do suffer from a lot more AI bot posts (the two things are probably linked) .. so the mods have to be on their toes deleting junk threads (god help us with our mod team) 

How does one go about pimping sufu out to malvertising ?

Edited October 17, 2025 by Double 0 Soul

[Dr_Heech]

.. didn't mind the American Apparel one's 😊

Edited October 17, 2025 by Dr_Heech

[ATWM]

For me, it’s option B that I probably prefer most. I totally understand owning this site and needing it to be comfortably solvent, and wanting it to be profitable even. There is something unique here that probably has untapped potential. 

However, from a user perspective, I’d love for it to cover it’s costs and not attempt to be profitable beyond that for the simple reason that profit chasing is a black hole that leads many sites (like 00 mentioned) towards a path of internet shittery. How bad online ads have gotten is really no joke. A total user experience dumpster fire for so many once good, or at least tolerable spaces. But also speaking from the place of taking my first love and businessifying it - it is no simple thing to keep the true motives front and center and when necessary reject what the market wants to keep true to your motives. As much as SuFu functions as an enabler for consumption/consumerism it is also more than that and the best parts of it really are not located in that spot.

When profit is considered the market is a strong pull that can lead you very quickly to a place of being involved in something looks sort of like what you loved or believed in, but is actually a version of it that is not what you had wanted nor that you enjoy. In the end I think you sort of have to choose - do you value the pursuit (hobby, whatever you call it) more, or do you value the fact that you have this knowledge/resource/etc that can be used to make money off more. These aren’t always clear cut, and sometimes the motives can point in the same direction, but in the end with many decisions made that will be the final question and it will have to be asked. 

Excuse my cheery attitude about it. But it takes real restraint and vision to go for profit and not lose the spirit of what makes a place like this a draw for many of us I would imagine. That said, maybe that’s possible given the group here. 

[Cold Summer]

16 hours ago, chicote said:

so many of our users write great, in-depth posts, not just reviews of jeans but tours of our neighbourhoods, hobbies, etc.. and when I think about the size of our forum's active membership, i feel like we have actually a really nicely-sized and committed group to take on that sort of a project. Now that I'm in school, I'm only on here maybe once a week just to scan some of the new threads, so the constant availability of the forum isn't as much of an appeal to me, and japanese magazines like Lightning I obviously can't read so am not as inclined to sit down and page through, but something from our side of the world would be wonderful to flip through for a couple hours once in a while, and would perhaps help build relationships with retail & online shops and brands who could carry copies, run ads or promos, etc...

I would be happy to contribute to something like this. From 2012-2015 or so I was a semi-regular contributor to Rawr Denim/Heddels, I basically stopped when I ran out of ideas, had less free time, and was increasingly being asked to writing boring advertising puff pieces for brands/stuff I didn't care about. I think a SuFu denim enthusiast lifestyle magazine would be very cool and I'd certainly be interested in contributing/subscribing.

I'm quite surprised by how costly it is to host/run a forum like this, twenty years ago I was on various forums for games, music, other hobbies, and it seemed like the bar of entry for hosting an independent forum was very low, but I'm sure there are all kinds of factors involved. If you asked me, I would've expected that $5-10 a month from frequent users would be enough to keep the place going, but it seems to be quite a bit higher than that.

Personally I don't use anything at all on SuFu except Superdenim and never have. In theory, it would be pretty easy to save/archive the whole forum as it is, and host it on Dropbox for anybody to download, and then... move to a lower cost forum or something? However, if someone were willing to pay me a whole lot of money I could probably be convinced to consolidate it into Superdenim: The Book.

[Double 0 Soul]

6 hours ago, Dr_Heech said:

.. didn't mind the American Apparel one's 😊

I bought Sarah theses AA thigh highs on the strength of those ads.. 

..when she put them on, she still couldn’t do the splits? 

I think it was a case of ‘don’t believe everything you see on sufu’ ..

 

Edited October 17, 2025 by Double 0 Soul

[superfuture]

[superfuture]

Moved all the excellent posts related to this topic to it's own thread... (as you may have noticed!) 

[superfuture]

 ho ho ho 🎅  Have crunched some numbers and am setting the 2026 starting subscription for ALL new and existing members at USD 5 / month (Free for first month). 
I've also reopened supermarket forum.
You are welcome to hit the new subscribe button.
https://supertalk.superfuture.com/subscriptions/ 

Possibly going to lock superdenim and supertech to guests from February 1st.

 

[superfuture]

Bienvenue new 2026 supermembers !

[conqueror]

i can't believe i signed up here just shy of 20 years ago after lurking for a solid 12-18 months. i personally think forums are (unfortunately) a thing of the past now and there is no point of return. my interest in fashion and many other things sufu-related also dropped considerably since becoming a dad etc.

will i still be be able to read posts with my account if i'm not a subscriber? if not, i get it - but thanks for everything you did over the years, wayne. it was (genuinely) a great "community", particularly in the glory days.

see you outside uniqlo.

Edited January 12 by conqueror

[kicks79]

I'm afraid that a membership fee would make me bow out. I understand the need for funds to continue the site.

The board and I have largely moved on from brands that interest or excite me. So I rarely post here, nor do I have the time to browse new threads. 

I hope there is a concerted effort to archive some of the threads. There is a wealth of knowledge, and it would be a shame to lose it to the ether. 

It's crazy that Sufu is only one of two forums that are still in existence since I joined here in 2008 ( RIP 5th D ) 

Good luck with it all!

 

[Double 0 Soul]

I’ve already backed up one of the threads just in case 

[kicks79]

That leaves 6758 threads to go! 😆

 

[superfuture]

FYI... Techs just did some fixes over the past few days...including software upgrade.
It *should* have fixed that hell page reloading error. 🤷‍♂️ I haven't been able to reproduce it.
Can anyone else confirm?... or report anything else that isn't working properly. 🙋‍♂️