Indeed. I was never able to make it to one of the large meets. I think overall the decline in forum membership/activity reflects the change as well in the car community. How many people swing by here and only ever make one post? Let alone the number i see who post on their "profile" page and not even in the main forum areas. They post one line asking how do I stance my car? or I want stancey wheels where do I get them I need help. Then they never log on again. It's that mentality thats killing the interest.
Most meets are held by the stance crowd with the focus on low/wide/camber. It's whats popular and no one has the need for a real online personality anymore since everyone seems to just post to instagram or a FB group for likes. The inane, yes inane not insane, posts I see from people are disheartening. They post of pic of a car, thats not even theirs, with a caption "pic for attention", to ask about where to buy "x" crap unrelated product. At least those guys are holding meets and getting car people together. Yea, i'm not a stance fan but at least they are doing car stuff and I've seen quite a few come around and decide they want to raise their car and get functional wheels and tires. That whole meaty tire thing gaining traction is at least a start. I think as that crowd gets a couple years older they might be more into driving than parking.
Hopefully this is simply a lull with the lack luster start to the 9th gen. The cars have improved considerably but weren't the hit that the previous car was. Perhaps the next gen will be a roaring success and a new wave of car enthusiasts will arrive with it.
If there is still a core group interested I see no reason to stop meeting up every fall and going driving with a bunch of like minded people. Even if it ended up just being a few of us I for one would still want to do it.
You touched on a few things I wanted to originally, such as the stance / show / IG celebrity status that is primarily concerned about appearance. The people who are into driving it seems are mainly concerned about dyno numbers, highway rolls, and drag racing. And the people into Auto-X around here have such a diverse group of cars and of significantly varying ages it would be tough to get people interested for a dragon meet because of the distance. People I auto-x with seemed genuinely shocked / surprised that I go down to the dragon each year and it's always on most people's bucket lists. I guess we as a group are far more adventurous than most.
When I told people who I work with that, I drive down here each year and maybe twice this year, I got responses like:
"wow, you drive
that far?!?"
"is that all you do is drive down here??"
"Man, I'd love to go down there some day but have (bills / life obligations / project car build / no money because of project car / etc.) that I have to work on"
"Yeah, I'm not into cars that much anymore to do that"
"I'm more of a straight line drag strip person" (not kidding on that one)
Which are usual responses, but out of the 30 people that I work with there are maybe 2 others that would really like to go to a dragon like meet, but don't really have a car they want to drive down to it.
Also, I didn't want to mention it, but the 9th generation Civic wasn't the hit that the 8thgen was. Mainly the larger size, softer suspension, and more neutered engine. It isn't as aggressive out of the box like the 8th gen was. So it seems like the community for the 9th gen isn't as big or into driving as much as when the 8th gens were rolling out back in 06-10.