We Gotta Do Something About This!

I hear ya, and I see what you're saying. I visit most of all the English and French speaking pipe smokers forums and am a member of a total 4. Besides a very few exceptions, I have noticed a significant decrease in daily participation or participation, period, over the last 6 to 7 years.
I don't know if it's because less people smoke a pipe, pipe smokers have concurrent interests that they dedicate more time to, a mixture of both or something else.
There is also the fact that the younger generations are more Tweeter, Instagram and Facebook oriented. Sharing, reposting, liking, rather than discussing. Forums are mediums for 'elderly' (read: less cool) people, in their minds.

I think part of it could be there's always something new to learn in aviation, but once you can keep a pipe lit, and figure out you like VaPers, how much left is there to learn?

I have a book called Wiley Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilot's Real World Training, and that just covers the basics, from your first flight in a J-3 Cub, to flying a Beech Baron with a feathered engine, and the book is 747 pages long. It doesn't cover the big jets, amphibians, mountain flying, helicopters or whatever, just the basics of navigation, communications, and airport procedures etc.

I'd be hard pressed to write a 747 page book about pipe smoking that only covered the basics.

That, plus all the smokers who need but one pipe and a pouch of Capt. Black, and can't tell the difference between Scottish Mixture and 965 (WTH?!), so wouldn't have anything to add to a pipe site, or any interest in joining.

Sometimes, I do envy those pipe smokers that own one pipe and smoke only one blend.

Not me....I love the various blends and different pipes that I enjoy...I would find pipe smoking boring otherwise...and the friendships that you can develop over such a small thing such as pipe smoking...truly priceless.

I was very happy when I had one pipe and only smoked a couple of blends.

Pipe smoking is a solitary endeavor for a large percentage of pipe smokers that are content to buy a pound of True Valu peach tobacco for less than we pay for a tin.

We are a narrow slice of the pipe smoking community.

I have approached a few guys that sauntered into the cigar lounge to buy their aromatic bulk blends, and invited them to the pipe club.
More than once, I got the vibe that they thought it weird at such a notion, consequently, I let our business cards by the bulks do the talking.

😂😂 you might be on to something.

I'm a certified aviation geek, and have never owned a plane and probably never will. I do have several thousand hours flying flight sims, and thousands more in book learning, have flown in a bunch of regional transports and private planes flying for business when I worked for my rich friend's dad, and there's much more to learn. There are not ten thousand hours out there in studying the ways of the pipe.

Pipe smoking is more a reflectionary, solitary thing, though you are both surprised and delighted to find it seems to attract a higher quality, generous group of folks.

Flying a plane, even virtually, constantly engages the brain; you're calculating, remembering to check the whiskey compass every ten minutes to adjust your directional gyro, picking the field every few seconds you'll glide to if you lose the engine right now, scanning for traffic, monitoring the radio chatter in case someone says Cessna four papa frank, ensuring a pressure gauge isn't dropping or a temperature gauge isn't rising - it fires you up and keeps you on your toes, because the consequences can be worse than a burn hole in your shirt.

Pipe smoking is peaceful and relaxing, for when your adrenaline junkie brain needs a break. You can enjoy the pipe with one cob and a pouch of drugstore aromatic, and never learn a damn thing.

Good point.

According to the interweb, there are somewhere around 650K registered pilots in the U.S.

I just assumed that there were most likely that many pipe smokers?

Maybe not.

Hey Boss,

I resemble that remark!  I definitely have a pound or so of True Value Peach, and a couple of lbs of Sutliff Peach Cobbler, not to mention a pound or more of the other offerings of peach pipe tobaccos.

Although definitely an English and VaPer fan, I do love me some Peach!    ;-)

Unfortunately dedicated forums are being eaten up by social media giants like the book of faces, red it, etc. March of progress...

ETA: There is hope, though, because those platforms are increasingly persecuting anything that doesn't jive with their political correctness. Since tobacco gets a bad rap, they might start forcing those groups and subs out of existence, which will push people back to the mom and pop message boards.

The last report I saw estimated that there were 2.5 million pipe smokers in North America. That's 0.5% of the population.

It's real simple for me...I'm here because I like it here.

Son in law flys for FEDX, teaching my Grandson to fly. He asked me PawPaw you never wanted to fly an airplane, Reply No Son I jumped out of them.