Featured Event Coverage That State Of Atomic... AGAIN.

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A little observation I've made: A large percentage of the folks responding to this thread are Alliance Members.

 

I'll throw my observation into this...

I've been here more than a few years and have tried to donate as much of my knowledge as possible for the benefit of the members. But I'm not an alliance member. Why? Well, first of all, $50 is not necessarily a small amount of money for me. I've been retired for 18 years (went out on a disability) and surviving on a now-fixed income can be a challenge (having three ex-wives hasn't helped either... LOL). This hobby isn't cheap, and everyday living expenses just keep going up, so I try to squeeze every $ for all it's worth (increasingly less unfortunately). I'm not claiming poverty, I'm doing OK but I definitely watch the ol' budget. Life does deal you nasty surprises every once in a while, you have to be ready...

Now, Ryan has clearly stated that alliance membership is not a forum subscription fee, but more like a Costco or Sam's Club membership, offering discounts for Hot Rod stuff. Helpful if building a Hot Rod. But I'm much more of a custom guy and frankly, there isn't much 'there' for me. I also tend to be more 'old school', preferring to build my own unique bits rather than buying ready-made parts; that's the aspect of this hobby that I enjoy the most. It's generally much cheaper too, although more labor intensive. Not to say I don't buy aftermarket stuff, but that usually entails saving up for it. The main reason my '60 Sunliner custom project is sitting static is I'm still acquiring the needed parts as I can afford them.

Note to Ryan: You need to do some house cleaning on the vendor list as at least 17 of the links are dead, whether for being out of business or failing to update websites. Missing from this list is a large number of popular vendors, maybe offering an incentive like allowing pop-up ads for them only at a discount rate to the general membership would bring more into the fold.

I don't have any objection to a small forum subscription fee (say $5 or $10 yearly) separate from the alliance. It need not be mandatory, but currently there's no way to do this. Maybe note that the member is a 'supporter'. No br*** tags needed, and maybe an 'encouragement' by limiting access somewhat more for lurkers. I would gladly pay that. Whether any of this would work with the current business model is a question I can't answer, but is food for thought.

 

I can't hit the like ****on enough for this. I'm pretty close......but some of us are weirder then others. Here's the closest I'll come to posting a pic of myself online. Was taken at work, I thought it was appropriate and hilarious, others though it was sad.


Sometimes it's by choice...

 

Long live the HAMB.

 

Hey, I'll be on here as long as this site is up. For sure one of, if not my favorite forum. I imagine you're still in the process of really moving in still and the shop won't be up for a bit, when it is I'll for sure be buying at least a shirt.

 

Kind of a conundrum. You don't want to run it as a business, but you have to take care of business to run it.

 

Ya want to know what’s funny? Well to me anyway…

My kid gave me her old iPhone. All off a sudden I didn’t have enough “cloud space” to keep the phone backed up.
Okay, so for the monthly charge of .99$ I now have some Tera/Giga, etc amount of space.
To be honest I don’t even notice the 99 cents a month.
I’m in for that.

 

I was an alliance member and for some reason I wasn’t. Perhaps my notice of renewal came while I was hospitalized or something because renewing is a no brained for me usually. I reupped the other day so I’m back in the fold. Money well spent. I could easily live without any of the other sites I have used but the HAMB is comfort zone kind of thing, like having an old Ford and my shop full of old stuff.

 

I have been a member for 20 years,met Ryan at the roundup 18yrs ago and signed as an alliance. I figured small price to pay for the knowledge I get , I am on here probably Twice a day , met so many cool folks and now even from down under , I am lifetime friends with many and talk often ,down to visiting and staying a few days and attending events, with almost family in the USA.. Awesome. This is my fake book . Life wouldn’t be the same without the HAMB. I certainly don’t do any other social media time wasting ,just doing what matters to me. I don’t care what your kitty had for dinner or what you saw on fake book, or what size undies you wear, just a waste of time for addicted ****ers.

 

There's a lot to consider here. The "zero click search" is the AI scourge - where "AI figured out how to consume the internet without feeding it" (well said Ryan.)
The core of this place is made up of the knowledge sharing, the build threads, the helping a brother out threads. On that is built the fellowship, community and yes, some real life, deep friendships a**** the core members. The stay at my house stuff, the caravans, shared trips type behavior.
Outside the core are the lurkers, the occasional posters who consume the content, build their knowledge but don't go to the gatherings, look for other members at events or connect in real life.
But each and every one of those guys had to find this place first.
The fringe traffic, the Google search, click, read, get engaged, become a member process is in peril due to the zero click. Hand in hand with that is the revenue that those thousands of visits a day/week/month brought with them.
New site users
Ad revenue.
Those are the cornerstones. We need both.
Agree with Ryan that no isle or aisle is needed; we have too much in common for that noise.
How to be ready for/maximize/adroitly adapt to AI web traffic is a conundrum. Embracing it is a rabbit hole of epic proportions.

 

Yes, Well my account was charged......I'm sure it will show up at some point.......but that's not really the point anyway

 

LOL.
Paul, I am not sure I understand EVERYTHING you said. I do agree, fwiw, with what I did underrstand.

Ben

 

When I retired back in 2019, I was able to spend more time online.

I happened to do a web search one day about something to do with hot rods, and the H.A.M.B./Jalopy Journal came up on that particular web search, I had never heard of the H.A.M.B. before that!

Just reading what I saw on that first time exposure to this place that Ryan has put together, convinced me very quickly that this is the place to be, for a variety of reasons!

The first person I reached out to was Danny, AKA @HOTRODPRIMER so he told me who Ryan is and what this place is all about, shortly there after, I paid the money to be on the alliance list, no regrets about that what so ever!
Thanks from Dennis.

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I'm hearing a lot of excuses here for not being an Alliance Member, but if you are sitting on your $1000 I-phone or your $1000 PC (plus paying for internet access) and tell us you can't afford $0.13 per day. $0.95 per week, $4.16 per month for the knowledge, entertainment and comradery the HAMB offers, Something ain't right.
And although @Ryan certainly says it's not mandatory...

... just the fact that he "thanks" those that ARE Alliance Members, that alone should tell you something.

 

Can I opt in for ads as an Alliance member to kick in a little extra revenue?

 

I have been an Alliance member for 12-13 years? Ever since I registered. I pay to play, that's how I roll. Support your local sheriff!

 

I’ve been an Alliance Member for less than a year. Well worth it to help the site. Some may not be able to afford membership IMO that’s ok if they contribute to HAMB in a positive manner.
I ended up here when I was researching paint and body. After seeing HAMB threads a couple times I started looking at other threads. WOW how did I miss this place for so long. All you knuckleheads are stuck with me now! I sure hope people don’t allow AI to replace in depth searches.
Dan

 

I'll admit I was a lurker for about 15 years...back when this was a rougher, less civilized and at times, an unpleasant place.
The late Al Casteen @Hamtown Al finally convinced me to join...it was a "different" place than I remember from years ago.
Now I can't imagine my life without my daily HAMB fix...and I will proudly continue to pay, as an Alliance Member, for that privilege.

 

Missed seeing you at Kustomville.

 

Alliance Membership would still be considered cheap at $100, that is a cheap addiction... Like a lot of us just tell us what you come up with and we will support it.

 

This is what worries me probably more than anything else. People who make big decisions can usually be held responsible for their actions. Hand that process over to artificial intelligence and when things go sideways, it's much more likely that no one person or corporation will be held properly accountable. An autonomous taxi injures or kills a p***enger or pedestrian? Who, if anybody, is going to be held responsible? And A.I. will likely be tasked with much more complicated jobs than driving.

But at least I'm hoping that this should be a fun little experiment. If you post an image of the word

I suspect that it will slip through unnoticed.

 

Truth be told, I joined the Alliance for the Alliance only Christmas party. Three days of bands, great food and fabulous door prizes. Also, the chance to rub elbows with movie stars and all the world cl*** hot rod builders.
My invitation seems to get lost in the mail every year but there is hope for this year.
See you all there.

 

If "A.I." chatbots/writing tools really do become as powerful and highly utilized in everyday life as the companies making it claim, and if that results in the downfall/loss of purely human written forums and blogs and whatnot, keeping in mind that AI chatbots can't really train themselves on AI written or polluted text (a phenomenon known as "AI inbreeding")....

That would mean that the random forum posts and messages of the last 20 years, including yours and mine, will be some of the most influential things ever written. No training data from beyond a couple years ago will ever be that pure, or that vast.

And all used without permission, and uncredited.

 

I just logged out to see if it got censored................ but it was still there!
Cool.... Now we know how to swear as much as we want.

It would also be great if the algorithms could learn what real swearing actually is.

 

I knew there had to be a reason why I shouldn't have done that.

 

I travel to India for work, maybe 2-3 times a year. While in India I cannot open the HAMB, it says blocked. My guess is the A$$ in the name is the culprit. I've tried it from my laptop and phone with the same outcome

 

My car gets 7-8 mpg. With the good stuff over $5 the car hasn't left the garage that much this year. Attendance has been way down to the things I do get to. We have a lunch every Tuesday. 20-25 generally. 11 yesterday.

With that being the case I haven't visited here as much as in the past. Re-upped my membership today.

I understand what Ryan has said about membership. All appreciated but there are maybe 4-5 sites I've visited regularly the last 20 years and one shut down recently. Bummer. Emailed the guy who ran it and he wrote me back a really nice reply. Money just got too much for him. His site didn't have anywhere the numbers this one does but still.......hated to see it go.

And AI is wrong as much as it is correct. Why people rely on it or "either side" is beyond my understanding.

 

If you haven't already, you might try using a different browser like Firefox, Brave or Vivaldi. You may get different search results or filtering. If you see any changes or improvements let us know.

Which browser(s) or search engines are you currently using?

 

I received my 2026 Alliance tag today, thank you @Ryan !

Pictured below my first year and this year.

God bless
Bill
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...ar-transport-hauling-open-or-enclosed.614419/