Welcome to the Johto Times community forum, I can’t quite believe we finally have a community up and running! It is truly a pleasure to welcome you all here!

When I began Johto Times back in February 2023, the idea of creating a website and forum wasn’t even a consideration. The newsletter was just a space for me to share my thoughts and feelings that I didn’t think enough people would care about. There have been many other great fan communities out there, some which have been around for decades. Nope! There was no way I could compete with that, so why bother?

My feelings changed when I started to read the many comments and feedback you shared on the newsletter, and on the social media accounts. I realised that there were more people interested in this niche of mine than I realised, and maybe those people might like a place to meet other like minded people who grew up during this early era of Pokémon. More importantly, I realised that I wanted to speak to more people like that!

Why did we create a community forum?

Originally, we started Johto Times as a newsletter on a platform called Substack on February 6th, 2023. It offered lots of great features, with no charge on the number of newsletters you could send out each week. It was a sensible decision to start this way, because not only do you need to test the waters and see if your passion project is a success, you need to know if it's right for you too. Due to the restrictiveness in how you can display content, I knew that eventually I wanted the flexibility and freedom to do things differently. As time went on, our content expanded, and I knew that a website would be a better fit.

One month into the project, I saw how quickly Johto Times was taking off. Despite this, it wasn’t until January 2024 that I committed to the idea of a website. While I feel confident in my abilities to come up with ideas and source content, I cannot code a website, and I am not very technically minded. Thankfully, I have a very dear friend called @Darren, who agreed to create the website for us, on the condition that he would take his time, and that the whole process would be as stress free as possible. While neither of us expected it would take until July 2025 to have a website ready to launch, I have no regrets in him making something at a pace that was right for him.

Once that was done, we started to outline our ideas for a community forum. We spent a lot of time deciding on the best software to use, and how we could customise it to suit our needs. Just like our website, we wanted our community to be responsive, simple to use, and appealing to those who used forums in the past, and for those who may be using a forum for the very first time.

We understand and acknowledge that social media and instant messaging applications which offer instant discussion, have contributed to the decline of message boards over the years. We believe that there is still a place for them, and based on the comments some of you made to us via social media (ironically), it sounds like there is some agreement!

Why now?

Once the website was up and running, a community forum was the next step. Since launching Johto Times in 2023, and opening our forum in 2025, I noticed that the social media landscape had changed. It is my view that rather than people finding meaningful connections with others, social media has become focused on numbers and engagement, misinformation, and controversy. It has had a significant impact on our mental health and wellbeing, and in more extreme cases we can fall victim to problematic users, making the whole experience uncomfortable and distressing. While real-time communication between users can be a convenient and positive thing, the instantaneous nature where we are glued to our phones waiting for the next message to come through, can’t be good for us.

Some of the world’s richest people who run these platforms have completely let us down by abusing our data, and failing to protect their users. As a result, people are looking for alternatives to hang out. While we can’t ignore the popularity of social media, I believe that more people like myself are seeking something different to what we have all come to accept.

A community like Johto Times allows us to have our own space away from those corporations which choose to exploit it. We take back control, and have full control over the people we let in. Users can login when they feel like it, engage in a discussion, and then sign out and come back to it when the moment is right for them.

Challenges of running a forum in 2025

We cannot escape the fact that social media is the preferred choice for online discussion over discussion forums, with exceptions of platforms such as Reddit, much like how Discord is the modern equivalent of IRC.

I am not blind to the fact that hosting a message board in 2025 is significantly limiting the reach and potential that Johto Times could have. I’ve heard many comments from people suggesting that we create short form video content on Instagram and Tiktok, but that just doesn’t appeal to me. I would rather attempt and fail to create a space that I personally felt comfortable in, and to chat with likeminded people, than conform to a numbers game.

That being said, I have lots of ideas to keep this place active and appealing to visit. But I truly hope that our users will breathe some life into the community too, and consider it your home for all things Pokémon. Let us make a space where we can share our memories, creativity, passion and culture of the past, while being respectful to one another.

Closing

I want to end this message by saying that while I am in charge of this community, I am not perfect. I will make mistakes, I won’t always get things right here. I’m no better than any other person here on this forum, and we may not always agree. But rest assured that I love this project, and what I am doing here. I appreciate all the wonderful people I have met through this project, and I truly hope that this community will be something we can all enjoy together, for however long it lasts.

Thank you so much for reading, and for choosing our community here at Johto Times!