Back in September, I helped share the news that the Goth Subculture website VampireFreaks.com would be facing an inevitable sunset (discussed HERE). Today, that dawn has come and the popular social network has ended. Below the grim graphic you can find the official statement from management.
The Statement:
The Vampirefreaks Social Network is officially laid to rest.
We had an amazing 20+ year run and I’ll be forever grateful for the experience. To the many people who have reached out to us and expressed their gratitude and shared their VF stories – it really means a lot.
I’ll always remember the VF social network as a community for freaks and outcasts to be themselves and support eachother and being weirdos together. These past few days have been really emotional and i’ve shed quite a few tears about it. It’s been so great seeing everyone come together the final days for one last hurrah. VF touched so many people’s lives and I know I can’t take credit what it became, it was an accumulation of all the members worldwide who made this place their home.
I started VF as just a fun project for myself and it snowballed into something bigger than I ever imagined. The goal of VF was to create an open forum for like-minded individuals to come together. We had something special at just the right time with just the right members and it was really magical for awhile, something that we simply can’t replicate in these times. And we had a really good run for years, and I’ll always be proud of that.
I’m shutting down the VF social networking site for a number of reasons. It’s just been a steady decline over the years and honestly it’s my own fault, I could have done better. I could have kept putting countless hours every day into it but it just stopped being fun after a while when there started being a certain level of negativity from some users. We’ve had to deal with trolls, haters, ddos attacks, hackers, ridiculous rumors, drama and stress. We survived it all and stuck together for years and I am eternally grateful to all the supporters. There’s lots of things I could have done differently but when it comes down to it, I’m proud of what we accomplished.
VF was a big success and we had our time. I poured my heart into VF for years and it’s depressing to let go of something I’ve put so much work into but it’s time to move on.
It’s always been a labor of love and I’ve always believed in doing what makes you happy. Sadly it’s just time for a change.
Times change, people change, and businesses change.
The good news is VampireFreaks as a company is still around and doing better than ever in our other ventures. So I’m focusing on what works for us. The VampireFreaks Store is flourishing as a top goth clothing store and currently has a huge variety of products. VF is also a successful event promotions company and we host frequent concerts, club nights and conventions in the NYC + NJ area.
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PiercingMetal Thoughts: Over the course of my own website history, I can say that I used to have a profile on that network but it was for PiercingMetal.com and not KP per se. The original logic was to tie up ones branding on as many things as possible to protect it and to direct the occasional visitor from somewhere else over to our content. After meeting a number of the staff and some of the cool people involved in the network I used our calendar to list their concert events and conventions and according to the statement up above, these things will continue going forward. Hopefully those diehard fans of this place on the web will be able to deal with it and I guess your only option is to rally behind their Official Facebook or Instagram (the latter is an owned property of Facebook too in case you didn’t know). I give site founder Jet a whole lot of credit for keeping it alive for so long and for pressing forward to keep it interesting. Running a website is not free or easy to do. Trust me I know this for a fact and instead while it looks easy peezy to you readers, there is a lot of work in the background, research, negotiations and politics and the earnest effort to be successful in a space where there are currently 1.9 billion websites. Good luck to all the administrative staff at VampireFreaks, I will see you out in the field I guess.