[CQ-Contest] Observations of a young ham

[David Gilbert]

I think you are making the very point you seem to have missed. Video 
gaming and radiosport AREN'T parallel activities.  Video gaming is 
popular with a broader range of people (particularly young people) 
precisely because it is NOT the same as radiosport. Previous posts here 
have listed all kinds of differences and the reasons they make a 
difference ... you just choose to ignore them.

Most hams make the mistake of thinking we can draw more outsiders into 
the hobby by publicity or trying to capture them at an early age (kind 
of like brainwashing), and totally miss the point that if we can't make 
radiosport accessible and interesting in the same way that video gaming 
is we aren't going to attract anyone.  We can try to persuade all we 
want, but we have at least a couple of decades history that should show 
us just how uninteresting our hobby is to to just about everyone else.  
It doesn't mean we have to turn radiosport into gaming, but we sure as 
hell should pay attention to the differences in mechanics that make one 
so popular and the other so relatively insignificant (there is probably 
a 100,000 to 1 ratio in active participation).  If we don't change 
radiosport in ways to make it more appealing, nothing else is going to 
matter.

And maybe that's OK.  There are hundreds of other  niche competitive 
hobbies out there ... competitive quilting, competitive BBQ, even 
competitive hot dog and pie eating.  Just because we once had a somewhat 
mainstream hobby doesn't mean we always will, but those of us who enjoy 
it can still enjoy it ... at least for a while.  Most likely after we're 
gone nobody else is going to miss it (radiosport) anyway.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 12/19/2016 2:33 PM, Rich K2WR wrote:
> This thread started out with a salutory goal, but now, like many, it’s gotten repetitive.  A lot of useful points were made early on, but what is most clear to me now is that we don’t know the answer.
>
> I reject the comparisons with video gaming... I just don’t see the parallel.  Maybe I can’t, at age 65, with no interest in video gaming.
>
> There is something (or many somethings) that is failing to attract the younger generation(s) that nobody has quite identified yet.
>