Is long hair less popular now? Looking to immerse myself in all things long hair

[Emila]

Hi there. I'm pretty new around here. I hope my topic here doesn't offend. I'm sorry if it's inappropriate.

I am really loving this community and am learning heaps. However, I'm noticing that the majority of the content is quite old. I think this forum may have been a bit more lively 10-15 years ago or so. I often click links only to find that they no longer work. Pictures are often missing. I can't help but feel a little disappointed that there's a lot I can't access. I found the hairstyle directory for example, very few of the links work in there now.

I have googled to find more long hair resources but I always seem to get very generic women's beauty magazine type websites that aren't actually geared towards long hair in the way it's seen here.

Is long hair getting less fashionable now? Do you think that's why?

I feel like I may have found a niche that I'm quite interested in but I'm finding it harder to immerse myself in it than I would like.

Apart from this community, I have found some YouTube vids that I've been enjoying, but again many of them are quite old videos and I worry they might not be up forever.

What's a newbie to do? Is this "problem" something I'm imagining or inventing? I wish there was a bit more modern content for long hair. Am I just not looking in the right places? Are there any key words I should keep in mind, for searching? Are there more resources in languages other than English that I'm not finding?

Please feel free to give me your opinion on this, offer any advice if you have any to give, or share any resources or websites if appropriate 😊

Thanks heaps 😊

[ArtOfNoot]

You are not imagining anything, there are so many awesome haircuts flying in and out of style that long hair is less popular. There is definitely a larger quantity of short to medium hair content on the internet. The LHC is still going strong (albeit less now that we have exited the heyday of niche message boards) and there is so much content from past threads that I have found myself falling very deep into various rabbit holes during my free time.
Many Indigenous nations pride themselves on their long hair and there are some hair-care content from Indigenous creators. There is also quite a bit of historical hair care content on youtube that usually features long hair.

[tuanyiji]

It depends on how you define "long hair", to most non-LHC'ers, APL is long, and MBL might be "very" long hair, and those lengths take the majority of female hair length in modern society.

I used to think like that as well, and my idea and goal of long hair changed drastically ever since I joined the forum, I first just wanted tailbone length, then classic, then knee, then well, terminal, I just want a crazy length that's got a WOW effect.

Growing long hair is one of the slowest hobbies in the world and it takes time and effort to grow those precious locks, and in the fast-paced modern society, most people just don't have the patience nor the genes to reach those "impossible lengths" like knee length and floor length, even in LHC, those are very rare, check out our annual survey and you will see the data more clearly.
https://forums.longhaircommunity.com...d.php?t=155735
https://forums.longhaircommunity.com...d.php?t=155736

And while growing long hair, people get other things to do, life, work, study, and hobbies... even you yourself joined the forum in 2015, yet you only had 5 posts so far, so you're not an active member who frequently takes part in conversations and posts pics, maybe one of the many lurkers who just don't like to share private things, which I fully understand, as we all know, there are many creepy dudes online and longhairs often attract unwanted attention.

As far as I know, most of the long hair YouTubers are a member of LHC, but they might no longer be active here or even on youtube.

And I think many members go through these phases as well, active, lurker, active again, lurker, no longer visit... go on with their life. Grow hair, cut hair, grow again, life happens, trauma, hair loss, grief... especially in this pandemic.

To me, for a forum with about 20 years of history, it's amazing that there are still people here posting new things everyday, not just hair-related, but other aspects of life as well (we do have a non-hair friendship board, I wonder if you've ever noticed?), so this is already very active. And the admins have gone to great lengths to keep the creeps and ads at bay and provide us with a "green" environment.

If you want to surround yourself with longhairs on a more visual (or visceral) level, you can go to Instagram and follow a ton of big long hair model accounts, but be prepared to get a lot of commercial hair product plugs/placements, not-so-modest poses and dresses, and salacious comments sections. I did that in my hair-crazed phase and just don't see the point of getting hair envy there anymore.

So, if I don't like certain things, I either accept it, do nothing, or do something about it, and that's why I create what I would like to see for myself in the long hair community.

I try to focus on producing my own hair content, making hair tutorials, and working on bun variations to make my long hair journey more durable and enjoyable. I'm also an active member of the traditional Chinese hairstyle scene and there, tbl hair is very common. I don't have to update every day, I just do them when I have free time, the less stress, the better for my own hair. Also, this helps build my video/photo archive and contribute to the LHC hairstyle thesaurus, that way, our future members will get tutorial links that are actually accessible. And I make sure there are right-handed and leftie-friendly versions for each style, I even make Chinese and English captions for all my videos, so people from around the world can use my tutorials as reference.

To me, growing my virgin hair to terminal means, to some degree, sacrificing a certain aspect of common things that I could no longer partake, like using hot tools, combs/brushes, elastic ties, or chemically dying my hair, heck, I don't even use shampoo that much, just once every 4-6 weeks, and I rarely let my hair down and loose, I bun 99% in my waking hours.

Benign negligence is the best hair care and by now my haircare routine is so minimal that it actually gives me more time to do other stuff. Many of you know I am a hair shed collector who makes hand-tied wefts/extensions, woodwork for hairstick/forks/hairtoys, and I just dipped into the world of hairwork with mourning rings/hair locket/bracelet/flower/wreaths, but on the non-hair-related side, I'm really into dragon fruit gardening, Zentangle, and Hula Hooping.

Hair might grow long but life is short, enjoy it while you can.

[maborosi]

You aren't imagining it, no. But it's not just a problem with long hair info, it's a huge problem with gathering information on the internet, too.

1) Forums by and large have gone by the wayside in favor of things like Reddit and Discord- they've successfully hollowed out a lot of longstanding internet communities. Plus, you have info being shared on things like Instagram and TikTok, etc., which are not searchable via Google- they're in their own walled garden platforms, making it hard to find info.
This forum has actually done quite well in its 20 years and is still quite active. However, this wasn't the only forum for long hair, though I think it's still the most active. Others have just...vanished. Plus I think that there have been server crashes here and such, so a lot of the info doesn't actually go all the way back to its founding in 2002- there's a lot of lost information.

2) Searching with stuff like Google is awful these days. When I first began growing long hair, you could get a lot more info just from google search. Not so much any more. There are flat-out just fake sites that get promoted to near the top (listicle-type sites, content scraped and patched together, weird-sounding articles that don't really answer your question). It feels like it's harder and harder to find things like personal blogs. Same story with Youtube. It is extremely difficult nowadays to search Youtube and find things outside of the promoted/sponsored videos, or videos made by influencers. The platform nudges you toward those, and away from organic content.

Last point, long hair goes in and out of style, and it does so rather quickly. (Fast enough that it'd be impossible for most people to grow and keep up!) I have never really paid attention to the trends- you have to keep them kind of out of sight if you really want to grow long.

This community is an invaluable resource and there are a ton of knowledgeable members here. It's probably one of the better places on the internet for gathering long hair info.

[lapushka]

Welcome!

[shelomit]

Howdy! I'm afraid I don't really have enough historical perspective on hair sites/info in particular to answer your question, but I'd echo maborosi in saying that contemporary indexing practices are making it harder and harder to find any type of specialist content online.

[BVU]

A lot of it has to do with instant messaging apps. I'm in a few long-hair discord servers, and they're very lively. Forums are not nearly as popular as they once were, and that can show for any topic, not just hair. Hair also goes 'in' and 'out' of style very often. Right now its 'out' and short mullets are in, but within the next 2-3 years long hair will probably be back in, and people will likely join the forum for more direct and real information than YT or Tiktik.

[Shorty89]

You aren't imagining it, no. But it's not just a problem with long hair info, it's a huge problem with gathering information on the internet, too.

1) Forums by and large have gone by the wayside in favor of things like Reddit and Discord- they've successfully hollowed out a lot of longstanding internet communities. Plus, you have info being shared on things like Instagram and TikTok, etc., which are not searchable via Google- they're in their own walled garden platforms, making it hard to find info.
This forum has actually done quite well in its 20 years and is still quite active. However, this wasn't the only forum for long hair, though I think it's still the most active. Others have just...vanished. Plus I think that there have been server crashes here and such, so a lot of the info doesn't actually go all the way back to its founding in 2002- there's a lot of lost information.

2) Searching with stuff like Google is awful these days. When I first began growing long hair, you could get a lot more info just from google search. Not so much any more. There are flat-out just fake sites that get promoted to near the top (listicle-type sites, content scraped and patched together, weird-sounding articles that don't really answer your question). It feels like it's harder and harder to find things like personal blogs. Same story with Youtube. It is extremely difficult nowadays to search Youtube and find things outside of the promoted/sponsored videos, or videos made by influencers. The platform nudges you toward those, and away from organic content.

Last point, long hair goes in and out of style, and it does so rather quickly. (Fast enough that it'd be impossible for most people to grow and keep up!) I have never really paid attention to the trends- you have to keep them kind of out of sight if you really want to grow long.

This community is an invaluable resource and there are a ton of knowledgeable members here. It's probably one of the better places on the internet for gathering long hair info.

100% agree. The information is more dispersed and hard to find. Plus, I think there's a lot more people who purport "ways to get longer, thicker hair" that are just selling products. That makes it harder to find the good info. As for pictures, there are a couple issues. We had "the great crash" a number of years ago that deleted the really old posts from around 2007-2008. Plus, most of us used to use Photobucket. But now Photobucket pics are behind paywalls. There is a go-around with an add on, at least on Firefox. It's called LHC HTTP Image Fixer but I'm not sure how to link it.

And I think many members go through these phases as well, active, lurker, active again, lurker, no longer visit... go on with their life. Grow hair, cut hair, grow again, life happens, trauma, hair loss, grief... especially in this pandemic.

Definitely. I have phases where I'm busy or what not and I mostly lurk. Then, I do something like host the swap and I'm on all the time. It definitely ebbs and flows.

In general, I think long hair hasn't been the norm, at least in Western society as a whole since around the 1920's or 1930's where shorter, styled bobs became popular. Back in Victorian type times, we think of very long hair. I think it was a mix of Christianity (a woman's hair is her crowning glory) and culture. I think shorn hair in Greek culture was associated with slaves so you didn't want short hair. I'm not sure if that association was that strong in England or in what era. I know that long hair was associated with youthfulness and having long hair put up was seen as good and proper. Young girls wore their hair down or in braids. Women wore their hair up. You can see that even in Little House on the Prairie where Laura wishes to be old enough to wear her hair up. Sometime in the 1920's, I think it was, styles began to change and the bob became fashionable. Wearing your hair down became the default and that made it necessary to wash it more often to get rid of styling products. More frequent washing and the advent of easier to use styling products (electric curling irons, etc.) meant that it was harder to grow long hair without damage. Plus, wearing super long hair down means more damage. Basically, society changed the default from "hair up" to "hair down", added more accessible hair dye, styling products, and even extension and all these changes made it possible to change your hair frequently and that became the fashion. I'm sure there's a more detailed (and correct) explanation somewhere on the internet.

[lapis_lazuli]

I don't think long hair is any more unpopular now than it was 10 years ago. The problem is forums are dying out and it's so sad. No social media provides the same experience and I truly value what we have here at LHC and appreciate the people keeping it running.

As far as accessing old content...
>A lot of pictures are missing due to Photobucket discontinuing free hosting. There are browser extensions you can download that will fix the links and make them visible again.
>Try the Wayback machine for archives of other broken links.
>Use Google to search for LHC content by putting site:forums.longhaircommunity.com before your keywords.

And if there's anything else you can't find, don't be shy about asking! New posts, threads, and discussions keep the boards active and help create new resources.

[Stagecoach]

I'm a long time member here, and I think like others mentioned, a few things have happened.

I think the biggest difference is when LHC was rocking busy things like TikToc, Instagram, even Facebook and such were not nearly as popular, and way more of us spent a good deal of our time here. Nowadays, there are far more platforms that dilute our time.

As to the picture issue, thats frustrating but really just how it works with the dramatic shifting in digital services that the last 20 years has seen.