Posted by Doug I'm right in front of you

Quiet, Gen Zers might not know or care about Gen Xers.

Posted by Steed So I wonder if Gen Z kids see that sort of content as a lame thing older people make.

hopefully that leaves more things for me and others to explore

Yeah I was one of those gen z kids who grew up a sheltered life and didn't do much urbexing until now, unless you count exploring old California Missions. I grew up watching the influencer phase on youtuber, of those airheads screaming and running around abandoned buildings. Over time I grew to dislike those actions, and eventually those youtubers I watched thankfully drifted away from the scene.

Now that I am older and have a car & such, I came to actually join the scene and be respectful to these locations, mostly due to the fact no one in my circle wants to urbex with me (except a few from here!). I guess I'm an outlier in my generation, not using these dumb social media apps, posting everything just to get those coveted and frankly useless likes.

Seeing these people of my generation on tiktok exposing these locations, getting them so popular with millions of views, really ruins the hobby due to the fact that it ruins the secrecy and serenity of these locations. I frequently visit some locations to just sit and read a book due to how quiet these places are, but having to look over your shoulder and be paranoid just isn't fun.

It was social media that got me into exploring. I found UER back in the day but realized it was gate keyed and did my own thing without it. IG was just blowing up in the scene when roof toppers were just starting to post pictures of new Manhattan skyrises. I think one got in so much trouble for dangling from that building he never posted anymore after that debacle. I am not even sure if he still posts under a new name, privately, or left the hobby entirely. Another one did the WTC and got caught and I think he still has issues over that episode. Social media can inspire and motivate you, it did it for me to join and it can also propel you to do even riskier exploits that can cause you lifelong negative consequences.


Seeing what fun and creating memories people were having on social media, made me want to explore too and I became hooked. I still explore to this day even though I am getting older, places are getting further away, owners are prowling often, zero tolerance police patrols, Youtube has gone the way of click-baiting, back-biting, social media drama, and hyper posting where people seem to spend the whole week exploring to create weekly content. I feel it has become a hyper-fragmented community with OGs, gatekeepers, new urbexers, Youtubers, and Tik-Tokers just traveling and exploring to find the coolest or hidden gems to bring to the masses before anyone to collect likes, build fame, and monetization. Who could blame them? Exploring with Josh [ontheroofs, properpeople] was the biggest walking blueprint in social media influence as they saw him and his friends, earn gobs of money to explore locally and overseas, television shows, sponsorships, and a certain lifestyle. I mean prank channels had their moments too before they got out of hand.



Most people nowadays want to be social media influencers now since it is so easy with a phone camera or a small point-and-shoot to rocket to fame (viral) online so easy as 1-2-3. I can see why so many people are distrustful of new people. Hell, even I find it hard to explore with new people even though I frequent and I am active on certain sites but still find it futile and almost disconcerting to find people to explore with on the regular. Younger people seem to explore with each other more often but I still explore with someone from another state and we made a connection and communication based on his exploring blog. He could have ignored me or ghosted me but he communicated and trusted me to explore with him. To this day we explore even though he is 23 years my senior and is picking up injuries like a rat trap. Through our years of friendship, we both have taught each other tricks of the trade, light painting, and composing better pictures. There is a HUGE level of distrust connecting with people on social media even though we all love the same thing. The distrust is crazy to me. We all like the same thing. The only difference I see is that we all have different values, morals, and ethics on how we approach urbex, locations, looting, graffing, and stewardship.



Today, it seems lost on the new people and the younger ones. The 0-day pictures as soon they leave it without a care in the world. The community is quite fragmented with niches, cliques, and drama-fueled problems. Heck, I have seen people turn from explorers to graffiti artists. It is why places are getting run through faster because so many people have access to it on social media that it becomes cliche in a sense. It has become good and bad for all the right and wrong reasons.

Popularity usually ruins the natural state of a place. Look at National Monuments.

Posted by Furious D 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. [...] It's a different world now, thanks to social media.

This is me. My first explores were as a kid in the late 70s. And IME nothing will beat that era up until the early 90s. Back in the day, it was like anything & everything would be left abandoned, rather than tearing it down; in the 90s that turned right around. But until then, it was comically easy to find interesting locations, even in the rural-ish area where I lived. One that always stuck with me was finding an old army half-track in a dilapidated barn behind an abandoned winery, complete with crates of live shells & mortars, among other things. Forgotten extension of an old WW2 training ground. From a distance it just looked like a big ol' pile of wood almost completely covered in vines... Anyway, after telling our parents about it that night at the dinner table... it was all gone a few days later. haha IIRC that would have been in '78.

Now I live out in the middle of nowhere (right where I want to be!) and between that & not having much free time... I now measure the time between explores in years. Unfortunately. Unless you count finding ancient logging camps & cabins & the occasional abandoned mine here in the mountains, I guess. Those are really neat, but I don't post about them. Mostly because that was never ever a thing we did - taking pictures of abandoned stuff - and so I never really got into doing that.

Anyway, I'm happy I found this place years ago, but by then I just wasn't in a great position to contribute much. As for social media degrading the scene, yeah, social media does that. Both a blessing & a curse, always. The sun rises & sets.

I got into exploring before I ever knew about the online scene back in 2016 (late ik). Exploring with some friends is what led me to discovering urbex YT which helped keep me interested in the hobby, but I am really sad about how destroyed many places have become by popularity. When I was exploring landmark mall I ran into some kids who were just smashing shit and filming it. Within a few months the whole place was trashed. Really showed me how negative social media attention can be for the hobby as a whole. I'm much more careful about where I post my pics and what I say about sites now than I was in the past