Decentralized Kung-Fu Forums

[yutyeesam]

It's been a hot minute since I got on this site.

So many martial arts/Kung-Fu communities have moved into Facebook.

But I think we can all agree that Facebook is the embodiment of the ugliness of humanity! But, like McDonald's French fries, you keep going back for more.

I feel like there is a desire to have some sense of decentralization again. I'm glad the KFM forums are still around, because that's what it has been.

The interesting thing though is that the word "decentralization" is being thrown around in the world of banking and finance, in relation to cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

There are attempts at decentralizing social media through concepts such as Mastodon, Diaspora, PeerTube, etc. All noble attempts. But I think what might be desired is having forums again, where it is a decentralized niche community.

So, I'm going to try to push some of my Kung-Fu friends to come back on here, so we can be in a Kung-Fu space and talk about Kung-Fu things, and the only ads we'll see are for Tiger Claw products (which we will invariably need, lol).

Do you think people will be willing to escape the matrix of big tech social media, and come back here?

[ShaolinDan]

I don't know, but I would love it if that happened.
This forum was an amazing place. I haven't seen anything else like it.

[GeneChing]

Nice to hear from you, yutyeesam.

Although the number of daily posts is way down (just me mostly) the viewership is decent. There's usually 100+ people on here at any given time. I credit this to being a searchable database - meaning that we come up on search engines - where sitonmyfacebook is only truly searchable by facebook...and then just to get your viewing habits to feed their advertising algorhythms. I assure you we have no such algorhythms here.

I'm okay with less posting. That also means less spam and less flame wars (although some of those flame wars were fun, even for us mods...you know what I mean).

[ShaolinDan]

I'm glad it's still getting enough traffic to keep maintaining. There's a wealth of hard to come by information buried in those flame wars.:D

[Royal Dragon Pi]

I am trying to make an effort to spend more time here again.
Life is bringing me back to my practice, and thus my research interests are also returning.

My two main subjects at the moment are the Qi gongs from Ta Mo (as well as the other main Qi gongs of Shaolin Temple) and history research on the oldest Tong bi and Tong bei sets of Shaolin.

[YinOrYan]

My two main subjects at the moment are the Qi gongs from Ta Mo (as well as the other main Qi gongs of Shaolin Temple) and history research on the oldest Tong bi and Tong bei sets of Shaolin.

Wonder how you determine which are the oldest. Is it based on what some lineage claims, or the content itself, or perhaps other sources...

[Royal Dragon Pi]

Wonder how you determine which are the oldest. Is it based on what some lineage claims, or the content itself, or perhaps other sources...

I have mostly been comparing as many sources as I can.

From what I can see the Tong Bi set from Han Tong is the oldest one. It dates back to the early Sung Dynasty. Other sets are dated to later time periods.

Theres an old thread on it in the Shaolin forum. If you dig around some, theres links to several Tong bi forms, including the one said to be from Han Tong.