Too many bots. But a few users are still active. Which is why you see little to none new chats and somewhat active comments

It certainly didn't help for really big people to leave. That just disheartened the little guys, so they left. The little guy's post stopped, making way for more bot posts to crop up which makes more big people leave. It's a vicious cycle.

Well it's a bit more complicated than just the bots. There's a few main reasons:
-People started leaving awhile ago because Zeus either has sold or is attempting to sell the website. He did this process without communicating with the community, and some people got very offended and left because of this.
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-People continued leaving due to ads or other people leaving
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-Bot posts increased, which caused other people to leave
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-Some people began posting pornographic and racist posts or comments, causing still more people to leave. For the most part this seems to have desisted, but there's still the occasional destructive commenter going rogue.
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There's still several people here, but the community has definitely taken a hit from all the drama

I think the biggest turn off of this site is that the content one sees is not customizable. Thoughts?

What kind of customizing are you expecting?

As in, you can't follow people on FS. There's no way to block some content or increase consumption of other content. It's an all or nothing deal.

Yeah cause we aren't Nein g a g

Then again, this might also be the biggest turn on for FS. With no way to modify the content consumed, all posts reach every person on the site. This makes it easier to become "popular."

One thing that is a downer is that that featured post havent changed.

its less of "and some people got very offended and left because of this" and more of "got fed up with zeus actively lying to the community for years"

This would be what we would call a difference of perspective. -shrug- I'm not trying to open the can of worms and debate it all over again either way, just expanding on the fact that it wasn't strictly a bot-related issue

I believe the issue is one we've dug ourselves into. For all we know, Zeus MAY or MAY NOT be planning to sell or already sold the site, all of it is hypothetical. By not waiting on an official word or anything, really, all people have done is work themselves into a frenzy and leave. But another disheartening thing is how the featured posts haven't changed.

Zeus officially stated that he had already sold the site and that the new owner wanted "to get acquainted with the site" before revealing themselves. Users digging into it found that the site was still listed as for sale in multiple places. The new owner never revealed themselves. Zeus went radio silent after getting indignant at being questioned.
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currently the site is still listed as "$99,999.00 one time price set by the owner"
If this is Zeus lying to the community about it that is not the first nor the second nor the tenth time he has directly lied to the community. THAT is why a lot of people have left. When you can't trust the admins of a site many tend not to use that site anymore.

@bethorien what? what other times has he lied?
and to answer the question, a lot of people left. personally i left because the site was too full of trolls and because it ate up too much of my time and got stressful. i also think it’s because the humor on here isn’t really the sort of stuff i’m into, but that’s just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

back in my day posts could garner upwards of 700-1000 likes on the regular. the only thing that stayed constant is the amount of drama on here.

@rosebud Same here, man. I left because of the stress and the toxicity of the community at the time. My most popular post on my old account got 4 or 5 thousand likes. Now it's kinda barren.

We're either going to witness the death of Funsubstance or it's revival.

Tbh as long as the things I find to post make even a few that remain in this community a bit happier than that's good enough for me

@grimreaper the site has been in a consistent decline since before i left around september 2016. do you really think it’s going to recover? i highly doubt it, personally.
@cleopatra same. over the three or four accounts i had some of my highest posts would get around 2k likes. now everything is empty and depressing here. reddit filled the gap this site left because at least that website has diverse communities. this place? nah.

@grimreaper The site has declined from the last time I was on, early 2016-ish. I was surprised to find a lot of familiar faces such as @rwby_rose and others gone.