Recently one of the most popular pipe forums announced it was about to close due to aggravation and death threats behind the scenes. Yes, death threats. Pipes can be serious things and you don’t mess with a pissed off pipe smoker.
Following the announcement there was a sort of panic amongst the membership. People talked about tears, losing meaning to their life, being in a daze. It was a bit like the aftermath of 9/11, or as we English say, 11/9. I make this comparison not through a lack of respect for the victims of that terrible day, but because that’s how it was starting to read.
Well, nobody died, and the forum continues to this day. One or two enterprising members went off to form their own forums, while others looked around for viable alternatives. I was one of the latter. Now I belong to seven forums, posting on each as I find something of interest. This is the norm amongst pipe smokers, to spread themselves around, meet new people and make their expertise available to as many newcomers to the brotherhood as they can.
For anyone interested in reading more on each of these forums the addresses for the four best are here:
http://grayfoxonline.com/forums/
http://tampandpuff.com
http://www.pipesmokerforum.com/
http://pipechat.netne.net/index.php
That’s insane. Hopefully everyone calms down and just enjoys the forum for what it is. Like you said, there are other forums out there and many times, we don’t frequent just one.