There was a period of about 4-5 years where I wasn't on Avi sites much at all. :/ So I probably missed this period. But I can see how that might bother some people?

But Inso made a post back in 2010 about how it had been dropping for awhile. He correlates this to "drawing anime" and anime fandom being less popular. But in reality there were other things going on at this time:

- The internet was shifting from different websites spread all over the place to social media sites and apps taking the lions share of traffic.
- Mobile use becoming more frequent to taking up over half of the browsing that takes place these days. Without a mobile version of your website, you're shooting yourself in the foot in 2019.

I work directly with anime and the anime fandom (a bulk of my work is with conventions, planning, and handling the print/web media) and most of our shows have been seeing a steady increase. It's not really going away, but all nerd fandoms are kind of getting cannibalized into one big thing, this has been ongoing since the late 2000's. For example, one show went from maybe 3k attendees to about 25k. Others see a steady but slow increase over time. So I'd wager that anime isn't really the culprit, so much as how people spend time online and what they do.

If you look at social media, you've got notifications to let you know when there's been a reply or when someone posts something, or when something is going on. In the old days of forums, even with updated forum software, you still have to check back to get a clearer picture of everything going on. It takes a lot of bandwidth to send constant email notifications on a large forum. Forums were bigger in the days when you spent a few hours online at most. These days, we are constantly connected everywhere we go. Everything is instant, and I fear this is why forums are falling out of use.

Also, with avatar sites, you are taking a pre-drawn base and dressing it and expressing yourself with that image. You can make yourself out to be a Unicorn Princess or a Dark and mysterious rouge. With social media, you present an image of your true self (sometimes with filters) and show your life the way you want people to view it. We all do it. Even those of us who don't filter ourselves into oblivion. We're more or less doing the same thing, without having to post on a forum with strangers to get to the level to do that. We just download snap a picture and upload. This has evolved.

YET, dress up games like Love Nikki are super-popular. How many memes are out there about creating a perfect character in an MMO? People still love dress up games, people still love being social. But it's different.

I don't know if Mene will be able to evolve and change into something like that at this point, as it would take a lot of time, money and dedication with a lot of risk. That's probably a job better suited to new games. Likewise, Gaia has also been struggling for these same reasons. Most people don't even know Gaia is still around or a thing. (I get asked this often).

IDK. :/