There are also relevant time issues. If your'e an elite athlete, you're playing club soccer and/or club basketball year-round. Between practices and games, there's little time for much else outside of school.

(fortunately, the big clubs are sponsored and don't cost. Otherwise, that'd be a completely different issue).

There's a surprising amount of support for diddling little boys in this thread.

Fortnite streaming > Boy Scouts

I was in the Scouts but there was nothing really to do with yourself in the 70s. Today kids would rather hit progressions on a video game than earning and upgrading their badge collection. Or go outside.

No offense to gamers at all -- just like newspapers can't compete with the web I can see how the Scouts had trouble keeping kids who are used to dropping nukes on battlefields interested in learning how to start a campfire.

Having not read the thread and seeing this as the first comment before the one I left is a little sad... :(

I say it in jest, but it's just odd to me that people are longing for the "good old days" here.

They're not shutting down because of political correctness. They're not shutting down because of the homosexuals. They're not shutting down because of the girls. They're not really even shutting down because of declining interest.

They're shutting down because scout leaders kept molesting kids. Period.

I want to go on record that I'm not a diddler.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d2jBBQQkDL0/maxresdefault.jpg

It was a last ditch effort to get attention and boost enrollment.

Royal Rangers also has had complications at summer camps.

Laughably stupid comment there sport.

A minutely small percentage caused the lawsuits.

They are victims of shtbag people that abused a fine organization that did good for decades.

Yes but are you a fiddler?

You're right. It's clearly the fault of the girls and the gays.

Everything runs it’s course eventually. The Scouts has its day. Just doesn’t register with the majority of today’s youth.

Not saying that’s good or bad, it just is what it is.

Truly is. This nation is going to be a shithole in our lifetime. We’ll just be too old to do shit about it

If an organization can't learn how to get smaller as well as get larger, they're hosed.

Getting smaller doesn't fly with alum, though. So they die.

The BSA had it's heyday while americans were still largely composed of "joiners".

Elk's club, PTA, City Council, Church groups, Masons, Fraternities/Sororities, etc. There was a steady stream of people who not only wanted "in", but ever after a steady stream of volunteers and "leadership" reveling in the good ol days and the traditions and pomp and the all the moral aspects woven in.

We're no longer a "joiner" society.

So all those organizations, plus any that were just riding the coattails of the joiner wave are having trouble. This goes for so many club-type of orgs. Everything from model railroading clubs to old tool collecting orgs.

They're for the most part getting older, not replenishing the membership, and largely baffled.

To be fair, they are often equally baffled by google groups, web pages, GroupMe conversations, and so much more.

They come to the fork where they change their ways, or just ride it to the end.

Old guys aren't fond of changing their ways, so it's a case by case basis as to what they do. They are SO unfond of changing their ways, that the thought of not being able to continue bothers them LESS than the hassle of doing things differently.

Hardly any of the youth want to "work their way to the top" of those orgs, and nobody dreams of being president of it. Meanwhile current leadership often has a "already paid my dues, someone else needs to step up" mentality, but they want it done the old way.

The younger guys are not loyal to brands and orgs, but causes and people, so they're just as soon start their own group (or 12) rather than battle it out with old guys who won't use their phones.

Interesting times, these.