Posted by Spook13 as a young person (22) who saw the surge of urban exploration on social media in the 2010's as a teenager, i feel like i have the exact perspective most people in this thread are talking about

Wow, this post really made me feel old!

I really do appreciate your perspective though. Glad to hear you are realizing some of your UE goals!

Posted by Turd Furgusen Wow, this post really made me feel old! I really do appreciate your perspective though. Glad to hear you are realizing some of your UE goals!

thank you ! i'm hoping there are more younger people who are able to discover urbexing themselves while also learning to be respectful of the craft

Posted by Spook13 thank you ! i'm hoping there are more younger people who are able to discover urbexing themselves while also learning to be respectful of the craft

You're post made some great statements that I think reflect the thoughts of a lot of younger explorers. It's not entirely fair to bunch us all into that group that break glass, do donuts in parking lots and only bring heat to locations after posting it to some social media platform.

Still super amatuer myself, and most definitely still getting a footing into urbex etiquette. but I've loved the idea of exploring caves, tunnels and abandoned anything since I was super young. It's a long time passion. I really appreciate everything about urbex, and you really summed up a good perspective from the younger urbex crowd. (except the clickbait videos part, I always watched more professional content lol, couldn't get over the bad editing and obnoxious people running the channels)

Super impressed by a lot of people on this forum/thread. Hoping to go far in this hobby, not really to be known as anyone, or show a ton of pictures. But to be able to have those relationships with people, have explored places that no longer exist, and have some crazy stories to go with it.

Hope this isn't like, the worst thing to read lol. I'm assuming the older crowd in here aren't happy with amateurs being, well... amatuers. But I've got no idea.

Posted by MrBungle You're post made some great statements that I think reflect the thoughts of a lot of younger explorers. It's not entirely fair to bunch us all into that group that break glass, do donuts in parking lots and only bring heat to locations after posting it to some social media platform.

thank you very much ! im glad to see another young person join in on the conversation because we have a totally different perspective on the growth in popularity of urbexing but instead of trying to fit in with the trend of trashing places and spreading sensitive info across the internet, we are doing our own research and learning how we can still keep the community alive hopefully to inspire the next generation of polite trespassers lol

For context I'm 24, and I first joined UER and started exploring when I was 16. So I started early enough to see the evolution of the community over the last decade while still having a bit of the perspective of a somewhat younger explorer. This might be a bit long, though I hope it provides useful context for this discussion.

When I first entered the scene, Instagram exploring was in its infancy and was very much a hot button topic among the urbex community. Whereas now it's pretty accepted to have an exploring insta, back then just having one would get you ostracized by large parts of the community. By that same token, UER was still the main online hub of the urbex world, though it's decline had already begun.

Around 2015 the "urbex influencer" style of exploring became mainstream, drawing limelight and public attention to urbex. In response to this, the established community went to ground, hard. There was once a time when exploring communities would leave calling cards with contact info in hard-to-reach places of drains and buildings, when they'd frequently reach out to new explorers to show them the ropes. This practice came to an end, and as the spotlight on urbex Youtubers and isntagrammers grew brighter the rest of the community became more and more insular and secretive to the point where some enclaves stopped reaching out to new members entirely. Any community organizing moved off of public forums like UER to encrypted private group chats on apps like Signal as older explorers became increasingly worried about law enforcement attention brought on by the high profile urbex influencers.

This continued until around 2018, when many of these enclaves started to realize that turning away all fresh blood was just condemning themselves to a long, slow decline into irrelevance. The established urbex community began to slowly open itself up to younger explorers who almost all had urbex instagram accounts, though this was still only done on a limited scale with those judged extremely trustworthy.

Then Covid hit. Suddenly meeting in person wasn't acceptable anymore, and social media was the only way to interact with the urbex community at all. With many folks stuck at home and looking for something to do, a fresh wave of new urban explorers entered the scene, all of whom had social media exploring accounts. Having an Instagram account became completely acceptable in the eyes of the established community. With the moderating influence of the established community, a balance between discretion and sharing began to be found among the newer explorers who used instagram.

Two years later, Tiktok has entered the scene as explosively as Instagram once did, and now we're having the same debates about Tiktok that we had seven years ago about Instagram. There's still small regional forums and a strong network of explorers who are friends offline if you know where to look, but they're more hidden than they once were. Many of the folks I first met up with when I entered the scene moved on from urbex and UER is more museum than community hub these days, but there's still community left to join if you're trustworthy and willing to look.

Posted by MrBungle Hope this isn't like, the worst thing to read lol. I'm assuming the older crowd in here aren't happy with amateurs being, well... amatuers. But I've got no idea.

We're all amateurs, technically. Except that one Finnish guy I guess.

For a while there were a few people on this site who would be hostile to new members, especially if they were female, but they didn't speak for everyone.

Posted by Aran ... When I first entered the scene, Instagram exploring was in its infancy and was very much a hot button topic among the urbex community. Whereas now it's pretty accepted to have an exploring insta, back then just having one would get you ostracized by large parts of the community. By that same token, UER was still the main online hub of the urbex world, though it's decline had already begun. Around 2015 the "urbex influencer" style of exploring became mainstream, drawing limelight and public attention to urbex. In response to this, the established community went to ground, hard. There was once a time when exploring communities would leave calling cards with contact info in hard-to-reach places of drains and buildings, when they'd frequently reach out to new explorers to show them the ropes. This practice came to an end, and as the spotlight on urbex Youtubers and isntagrammers grew brighter the rest of the community became more and more insular and secretive to the point where some enclaves stopped reaching out to new members entirely. Any community organizing moved off of public forums like UER to encrypted private group chats on apps like Signal as older explorers became increasingly worried about law enforcement attention brought on by the high profile urbex influencers. This continued until around 2018, when many of these enclaves started to realize that turning away all fresh blood was just condemning themselves to a long, slow decline into irrelevance. The established urbex community began to slowly open itself up to younger explorers who almost all had urbex instagram accounts, though this was still only done on a limited scale with those judged extremely trustworthy. ...

I don't think UER turned its back on fresh blood. This site has always been insular and secretive. All that's changed is there are a lot more options out there for people looking to get into the hobby, and the others have a much lower entry bar. Because of that, UER has gone from the dominant portal into the world of UE secrets to an irrelevant retirement home for old-timers.

It is a shame that the new generation of explorers are learning everything they know from influencers rather than, say, Access All Areas. Not having a strong understanding of ethics will make it hard to get far in this community -- but I'm sure few of them are losing sleep over it; why would you need UER Full Membership if you have 10,000 IG followers?

So UER and the communities built around it don't deserve the full blame for failing to stay relevant. We're just getting fewer new people seeking us out. I've noticed that difference on this site in recent years, and in real life in my region.

And let's face it, YouTube influencers who run UE channels are almost all annoying as fuck. I don't even want to look at TikTok UE videos.

Posted by Aran For context I'm 24, and I first joined UER and started exploring when I was 16. So I started early enough to see the evolution of the community over the last decade while still having a bit of the perspective of a somewhat younger explorer. This might be a bit long, though I hope it provides useful context for this discussion. When I first entered the scene, Instagram exploring was in its infancy and was very much a hot button topic among the urbex community. Whereas now it's pretty accepted to have an exploring insta, back then just having one would get you ostracized by large parts of the community. By that same token, UER was still the main online hub of the urbex world, though it's decline had already begun. Around 2015 the "urbex influencer" style of exploring became mainstream, drawing limelight and public attention to urbex. In response to this, the established community went to ground, hard. There was once a time when exploring communities would leave calling cards with contact info in hard-to-reach places of drains and buildings, when they'd frequently reach out to new explorers to show them the ropes. This practice came to an end, and as the spotlight on urbex Youtubers and isntagrammers grew brighter the rest of the community became more and more insular and secretive to the point where some enclaves stopped reaching out to new members entirely. Any community organizing moved off of public forums like UER to encrypted private group chats on apps like Signal as older explorers became increasingly worried about law enforcement attention brought on by the high profile urbex influencers. This continued until around 2018, when many of these enclaves started to realize that turning away all fresh blood was just condemning themselves to a long, slow decline into irrelevance. The established urbex community began to slowly open itself up to younger explorers who almost all had urbex instagram accounts, though this was still only done on a limited scale with those judged extremely trustworthy. Then Covid hit. Suddenly meeting in person wasn't acceptable anymore, and social media was the only way to interact with the urbex community at all. With many folks stuck at home and looking for something to do, a fresh wave of new urban explorers entered the scene, all of whom had social media exploring accounts. Having an Instagram account became completely acceptable in the eyes of the established community. With the moderating influence of the established community, a balance between discretion and sharing began to be found among the newer explorers who used instagram. Two years later, Tiktok has entered the scene as explosively as Instagram once did, and now we're having the same debates about Tiktok that we had seven years ago about Instagram. There's still small regional forums and a strong network of explorers who are friends offline if you know where to look, but they're more hidden than they once were. Many of the folks I first met up with when I entered the scene moved on from urbex and UER is more museum than community hub these days, but there's still community left to join if you're trustworthy and willing to look.

This is a really good breakdown.

Posted by Steed And let's face it, YouTube influencers who run UE channels are almost all annoying as fuck. I don't even want to look at TikTok UE videos.

This.

With the rise of social media including Instagram, Youtube and the fetid pit of awfulness that is TikTok, there, at least to me, has been a split down the middle of the community pretty much. There are the old-timers who have doggedly stuck to forums like these which are considered dinosaurs but promote the traditionally accepted and correct way of exploring, and there are the social media explorers the majority of whom tend to be - but aren't always - in it for the wrong reasons. They saw the rise in popularity and exposure and jumped on board primarily as a means to further themselves, and boost their own online presence because they, somewhat naively, think that it'll be a quick and easy way to gain internet fame. For them the 'exploring' part is secondary to getting their own faces out there in whatever ways they can, either through ludicrous clickbait style Youtube videos or blasting somewhere that should be kept on the downlow all across multiple outlets because they believe it'll make them popular.

In the 'olden days' we only ever had to worry about a few desperate idiots selling their photos to online newspapers, nowadays as soon as something half decent crops up it is instantly swamped by clout-chasing social media explorers who are all equally as desperate to be the 'first' to put their photos up and to be seen to go there by everyone because they think it looks cool. It's not just isolated to the USA though, the exact same story plays out here in the UK. Something nice pops up, and then you could pretty much write a list beforehand of every single cretin with an 'exploring with' style Facebook page and/or Youtube account who you know will go there immediately because they have nothing else going on in their lives and can't find anything by themselves so simply follow the herd around to the latest tourist spots.

This unintentionally turned into a little bit of a rant which I don't really apologise for.

Posted by Steed It is a shame that the new generation of explorers are learning everything they know from influencers rather than, say, Access All Areas

About twice a year I try to promote Access All Areas on my socials, especially on IG and I always include a link to purchase it.

I'll always talk about its importance to the hobby, and I'll include some quotes and the fact that I have read it three times and that anyone serious about the hobby should pick it up.

No idea if it has made any difference.

Posted by mookster With the rise of social media including Instagram, Youtube and the fetid pit of awfulness that is TikTok, there, at least to me, has been a split down the middle of the community pretty much.

Good reply, but let's face it, the split is far from down the middle. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have a much larger share that grows all the time. Also, I assume I'm not the only long-termer on here who also curates region-based UE networks away from UER.

The whole social media UE phenomenon has carried the seeds of its own destruction. Most of those people lose focus after a couple years, because their ultimate goal is content that results in more social media validation, rather than more exploring opportunities. Their drive leads them off the path we've followed stubbornly for decades.

Anyone remember that Max Power dude who was on this site a couple years ago, despite being hated by most of us. He was always boasting about having more social media followers than all of us, as if that made him a better explorer. He's fortunately gone silent. He was almost like a performance art statement of what we hate about UE influencers. I bet he's reviewing cute cafes or telling ghost stories now or something. Or working full-time or in jail now, who knows.

Posted by Aran For context I'm 24, and I first joined UER and started exploring when I was 16. So I started early enough to see the evolution of the community over the last decade while still having a bit of the perspective of a somewhat younger explorer. This might be a bit long, though I hope it provides useful context for this discussion. When I first entered the scene, Instagram exploring was in its infancy and was very much a hot button topic among the urbex community. Whereas now it's pretty accepted to have an exploring insta, back then just having one would get you ostracized by large parts of the community. By that same token, UER was still the main online hub of the urbex world, though it's decline had already begun. Around 2015 the "urbex influencer" style of exploring became mainstream, drawing limelight and public attention to urbex. In response to this, the established community went to ground, hard. There was once a time when exploring communities would leave calling cards with contact info in hard-to-reach places of drains and buildings, when they'd frequently reach out to new explorers to show them the ropes. This practice came to an end, and as the spotlight on urbex Youtubers and isntagrammers grew brighter the rest of the community became more and more insular and secretive to the point where some enclaves stopped reaching out to new members entirely. Any community organizing moved off of public forums like UER to encrypted private group chats on apps like Signal as older explorers became increasingly worried about law enforcement attention brought on by the high profile urbex influencers. This continued until around 2018, when many of these enclaves started to realize that turning away all fresh blood was just condemning themselves to a long, slow decline into irrelevance. The established urbex community began to slowly open itself up to younger explorers who almost all had urbex instagram accounts, though this was still only done on a limited scale with those judged extremely trustworthy. Then Covid hit. Suddenly meeting in person wasn't acceptable anymore, and social media was the only way to interact with the urbex community at all. With many folks stuck at home and looking for something to do, a fresh wave of new urban explorers entered the scene, all of whom had social media exploring accounts. Having an Instagram account became completely acceptable in the eyes of the established community. With the moderating influence of the established community, a balance between discretion and sharing began to be found among the newer explorers who used instagram. Two years later, Tiktok has entered the scene as explosively as Instagram once did, and now we're having the same debates about Tiktok that we had seven years ago about Instagram. There's still small regional forums and a strong network of explorers who are friends offline if you know where to look, but they're more hidden than they once were. Many of the folks I first met up with when I entered the scene moved on from urbex and UER is more museum than community hub these days, but there's still community left to join if you're trustworthy and willing to look.

Agree With all of this, I had a similar experience, and this is a really good way to explain things. I was lucky enough to get my start from one of the older users that could show me the ropes. Sadly seems like a lot of the older guys just are not as active in finding new spots (at least in my city), where there used to be a solid core group there is now maybe 1 or 2 OG's left. I think that led to a lack of more than just the old values here, but also the sense of community that comes from larger group meets sorta died in a lot of cities.
I think a lot of the newer explorers that are dedicated enough to reach out and learn the ropes still have avenues but im not sure if UER is a good place anymore. Hell I'm not even sure if any meetups actually get posted here vs just in local group chats.

All that being said, from what I've seen/ heard, the community Is alive and that is an understatement. The coolest shit I've ever seen and done happens with the real explorers that don't do it for YouTube/ any other cred but because they love it and the community in all its odd subcategories. Some cities have it better than others. After trying to connect our local community we found that it is not that people were not exploring, or were all in it for fame, they just didn't know that we even had a group. everyone is fragmented but there are tons of cool people out there, and I hope to at least in my area help rekindle what almost died with the generation before me. I really see it as making an effort to just reach out and bring new people in so they know that there's cool shit but that there is way more value in the experience than you'd ever get from the videos.

I started exploring as a kid, and had no idea it was a scene or that there was a community of likewise people behind it. I was just a kid exploring an abandoned house next to where my mom used to work as a cleaner.

At 19, I picked-up a camera and started photographing the old buildings I like to walk through, and that's when I started searching online for abandoned places and discovered UER. This was the first time I had a definition for my hobby and a community to share my adventures with, backed-up by a common code of ethics.

Now, at 35 years old, with a career and a family, I barely have time to explore, let alone photograph and produce any art from it. It's tough.

I've seen many, many of my beloved places disappear, become heavily vandalized to the point of not being worth visiting, or becoming locked-down tight because of too much traffic. I'm also of the age where it's more awkward to encounter a property owner, because as an older adult, I'm no longer just a bored innocent kid, but am often assumed to have a sinister goal, or given less forgiveness for trespassing because I should know better by now.

It's a different world now, thanks to social media. I give it credit for being a platform I used to help further my hobby and encourage me to be creative, but I also have seen how the inspiration it gives others often results in too much traffic, good and bad.

I'll share an experience a friend of mine had:

I first met my friend in an abandoned farm house, funny enough. He used to be heavy into researching abandoned homesteads. He knew all the owners, had permission to be on the property, and even started hosting exploration tours, where he obtained permission to guide curious photographers through an abandoned place, teaching them about the history and trying to impress on them the ethical side of exploring and preserving the buildings they walked through that were often on farmers fields and part of the owner's family history.

At first, he had great success, and had a great relationship with the property owners, but after a while, people that went on his tours would return without permission, bring others along, or revealing the location on their own social media. These once hidden gems became quickly over-run with traffic that had no care or concern with respecting the property owner. Many of the owners began declining any more proposed tours, put up large fences and signs, or even bull-dozed the buildings because of the liability they were becoming.

My friend tried to call-out people, asking them to respect the land owners and keep the properties a secret. One particular photographer who went on one of his tours later wrote on his blog a scathing post about my friend, calling him a selfish gate-keeper, and asking people to boycott him and his artwork.

My friend wrote a long, emotional post on his website about how he was shutting down his tours and was even going to stop exploring abandoned places all together, because of the conviction that he was adding to the problem.

Myself, I've began changing my tune when it comes to exploring. I have started seeking out permission a lot more. The popularity of exploration has seen so many places ruined or very difficult to access, with owners becoming more hostile than in the past. I've had a few bad encounters with owners completely fed-up with trespassers in recent years, which never happened before.

While UER seems to have far less traffic than the past, I still have a soft spot for it. There's still some great people on here and I like to check in from time to time, even if I don't post as much as I should.

I wouldn't say Urban Exploration is more popular these days... I'd say narcissism is, along with all the problems it brings with it.

Posted by Furious D My friend tried to call-out people, asking them to respect the land owners and keep the properties a secret. One particular photographer who went on one of his tours later wrote on his blog a scathing post about my friend, calling him a selfish gate-keeper, and asking people to boycott him and his artwork.

Social media created an environment where people expect everything to be open and freely available, with no secrets, gatekeepers, elite groups or hierarchy.

The problem with this mentality, which we used to call "dot-communism", is that it drives the value of everything to zero. When you don't have to work for something, when everything is free and easy to get, there are no gatekeepers or gates to get through, it becomes low quality and worthless. Urbex is a good case in point.

I've tried to explain this to some of these people, but they have this weird (to my old-school way of thinking) ideological commitment to "equity" and hostility to "gatekeeping" that sounds like a mob mentality to me. Not looking forward to the low-quality world these social media mobs will create if and when they get enough power. Actually it's probably too late; that world is already here.

one thing that I have noticed in the decades i have been doing this is how locations are just evaporating... property values increase, development increases, things are demolished. The really neat industrial sites are all but gone because heavy manufacturing has moved to other countries.

or so it seems... your experiences probably vary from mine.

Posted by Samurai one thing that I have noticed in the decades i have been doing this is how locations are just evaporating... property values increase, development increases, things are demolished. The really neat industrial sites are all but gone because heavy manufacturing has moved to other countries. or so it seems... your experiences probably vary from mine.

No being honest its a fair shout. Think over the years you get a transitioning period between era of the type of building out there. Same thing is happening in the UK and Europe. Certain types, style of places are rather thin or getting scarce on the ground being replaced by a younger generation of the type coming through.

Some people will have been lucky in the timing others not. The Old Victorian style is now disappearing in hospital or industrial scenes, being replaced by 1950-80 time frame.

I have been lucky enough to catch a lot of these places over the years. Think it is a case of urban exploring is evolving, only time will tell for better or worse. I used to welcome newbies and take them out for a introduction to exploring, sadly got my fingers burned there so no longer do that.

Today's explorer does not chase the buildings and history of the past they held, its now likes or Views or shares that count! I tend to no longer belong to forums this and 2 others are the only ones. Rarely post my explores anymore in UK forums.

Over time most of the explorers i have know have come and gone. Turbo zutek(old Mod) was the one who invited me in here years ago. One of the missing, one of many over that time(think Dazzababes his exploring partner) still explores though not spoke to him for few years. i can count the number of old timers on one hand sadly with the new generation style of exploring we tend not to share stuff.

Still explore with same 2 clowns i started out with in 2006 still doing stuff, just very little goes public now. As in amongst the new explores there are other light fingered individuals.

I agree that urban exploring is evolving, in terms of locations not just social media trends. You lose sites, and you gain more sites. Sometimes you figure out new types of exploration to try out.

If too many other people are doing it too, I just try to stay ahead of the pack.

I think this community was a lot more active and we were a lot younger, now it is hard to get as excited by the newer locations when we had such monumental places that are now gone. I never post here anymore, but that has more to do with life getting busier and my explorations becoming less planned.

I do have to say that the complaints about social media are the same complaints people had in the early 2000's with this site and others like it. People want to feel like they can plant a flag. Nothing changes while everything is changing. Kinda weird.

I can give some insight, as to why I got interested (17 y/o). For me, it had a lot to do with the popularity of liminal spaces and the like. It really made me want to go visit places that looked like that. That was a couple of years ago, and plus I already knew about urban exploration before from people like Shiey, but was too scared of the law to actually do more research. I lurked this website for at least a year before making an account, and then continued to not say anything when I did until recently.

From what I've seen now on social media, other teens who explore are pretty good about not giving locations away. Some that try to hide it leave in key details about the surroundings... (I talked about one in my journal haha). The ones that actively give out locations are hard to come by, but usually do graffiti, litter and party, or take wires. I don't mind graffiti that much, but I hate when it's somewhere really unnecessary. Anyway, there's a little bit on urbex popularity with the youth.

Posted by cybr I can give some insight, as to why I got interested (17 y/o). For me, it had a lot to do with the popularity of liminal spaces and the like. It really made me want to go visit places that looked like that. That was a couple of years ago, and plus I already knew about urban exploration before from people like Shiey, but was too scared of the law to actually do more research. I lurked this website for at least a year before making an account, and then continued to not say anything when I did until recently. From what I've seen now on social media, other teens who explore are pretty good about not giving locations away. Some that try to hide it leave in key details about the surroundings... (I talked about one in my journal haha). The ones that actively give out locations are hard to come by, but usually do graffiti, litter and party, or take wires. I don't mind graffiti that much, but I hate when it's somewhere really unnecessary. Anyway, there's a little bit on urbex popularity with the youth.

Kind of makes me wonder if this is a generational thing. In the mid-2010s, millennials were driving the genre into the ground with too many YouTube videos that turned a lot of things into dull cliches. So I wonder if Gen Z kids see that sort of content as a lame thing older people make.

Posted by Steed ...a lame thing older people make.

I'm right in front of you