There’s no doubt that social media and “flex culture” influence much of the consumerism in Pokemon card collecting. Would you still be interested in collecting if social media didn’t exist? How would it change your priorities?
I generally dislike social media and flex culture, so I think I would be interested in the same things and carry on as usual. However, I would know considerably less about Japanese products, Japanese-exclusive promos, and other special releases outside of the U.S. A sense of mystery would be back for set and game releases. The whole hobby would feel 1990s-esque.
Gut reaction was absolutely would still be collecting but I think E4 is technically social media and I can’t underestimate the influence E4 has had on collecting goals.
I guess it would depend on how we define “social media”. I could care less about places like Instagram or Facebook and would still collect with or without them. E4 on the other hand has actually kept me increasingly interested in collecting because there’s so much useful info that is shared here, and you find cards/sets that you normally wouldn’t find without digging more thanks to all the info and discussions that happen here.
Obviously, E4 is considerably different than the usual social media outlets. But I think there’s an argument to be made that a place like E4 is a big driver at keeping interest in the hobby for a lot folks who wouldn’t be more engaged otherwise (online or offline). You can’t really have the same discussions on other sites like you can here, so it fills a unique spot in the hobby to me.
So overall, this is the one place I can go and trust to get good info and has kept me even more interested in collecting. I can’t really say that about almost any other Pokemon hobby related site, with few exceptions.
I don’t think it would change much for me now. I wouldn’t miss the poketubers of today but if Youtube didn’t exist a decade ago then that would’ve been a big loss, no doubt about it. But I’m not sure I would define that as social media content per se, at least not by todays standards. My interests wouldn’t have changed, but a great source of enjoyment would be gone.
Social media didn’t get me back into collecting. At least directly. And I don’t collect for social media. But I can’t deny that social media helped spread the interest in the hobby, and the fact that my friends that got me into it probably got into it because of social media. So in a sense, if there was no social media, I may not have come back to collecting.
There’s always the chance that I still would’ve collected, given that I got into retro gaming not from social media but from wanting to play older entries to series that I enjoyed playing. So maybe I did eventually move to collecting cards.
Also, there’s the fact that social media, whether it’s this site, pokebeach, Reddit, and Instagram help me find out about new card releases, or just random obscure promos that no one really brings up. And having a middle man on Instagram simplified getting Japanese cards to the point that I decided to go for foreign languages at all.
Started collecting again in 2011 so Id say for sure! Though the social media has its positives and negatives. With it, it has pushed me further into the money pit. Not really for the comparing aspect but for the exposure. I’m exposed to much more through others now, so that inspires me to pursue greater goals myself.
mostly consume social media rather than post, so it doesn’t have a lot of influence on collecting for me. However, it is through social media that I discovered a bunch of cards that got me into the hobby.
My initial reaction was no since I don’t have any of the traditional social media and could care less about the “flex” culture and would be totally fine if it went away. However, like other people have said without Youtube and E4 I probably wouldn’t have gotten back into collecting.
When I first started to consider getting back into collecting I stumbled upon Smpratte videos and then E4. This showed me that there were still people who were around my age that were still into collecting and it made me feel less weird about buying shiny cardboard.
I also wouldn’t know half of the releases that took place outside the US without some pokemon related social media.
I get a lot of information from social media. If none of that ever existed, my experience with the hobby would definitely be different. I spent a ton of time binging card content on social media when i first became interested in collecting again lol not to mention, watched a lot of primetimepokemon when i was younger
Much of my network in collecting has come through Instagram and I always discover new cards through that as well.
I think without social media the search for some cards would be much more difficult for me and this would also affect my collecting behavior in the medium and long term.
