Low season. Possibly/arguably the lowest season on record.
Now Hua Hin could not by any stretch of the imagination be called a gay Mecca so it's probably not the best petrie dish, but Thai restaurateurs that am acquainted with have said to me this is the worst season in their memories. " ... Farang? No have ... "
A farang friend of mine and his partner visited HH a couple of days ago and both nights (Thurs and Friday) we ended up visiting the two gay bars in town: Red Indian (a hopeless case no matter what the strength of the season) had 'just us'. Guy Bar almost the same, though it at least had host boys hanging around intently pounding away on their smart phones (AKA: The Bane of Human Existence). My friends were leaving the next morning so declined a last visit to Gay Bar. But we were there anyway so I watched them walk away and then decided to hop into Guy Bar for a quiet beer: good luck!! Here it was 10:30pm on a Friday night and the boys were stacking up the patio chairs and locking the place up. What?: " ... no cuthtomer ... " they told me.

Perhaps this tourist lethargy can be carried over onto this board's perceived malaise? Perhaps folks who have given up on Thailand (perhaps temporarily) don't feel the need to post or read on gay Thailand message boards. Perhaps many are sick and tired of constantly reading posts centered on Pattaya/Sunnee/Twilight/Boyztown/Jomtien/chuk wowing /fuck shows etc etc.
There is a noticeable dearth of topics about The Rest of Thailand on Sawatdee these days. There is an equally noticeable loss of Posters From The Past who have just let their memberships lapse and walked away: certainly Sawatdee's breadth of individual posters has become a shallower pool than it did some years ago. There is little humour on the board any more, and almost no edge: when the odd troll is the the funniest nut bar in the jar (hello Marti) we're in trouble.

Demographics play a big role as well. I was about 50 when I first started posting on gay Thailand message boards. Now I'm 68 and post much less than I did years ago (some would say that's a blessing), and I would bet the same is true for many. The Social Media mafia has taken up the slack, filled in the vacuum of Members-Leaving. Facebook, Twitter, Grindr, Line, and many more I know nothing of eat away at the growth dynamic on one type of media (in this case the internet message board) and replace it with another, totally different kind of experience. (What does Twitter allow? 50 words? 30? Talk about yer exhilarating 'Experience'. The daughter of a friend of mine once wrote on her Facebook account that " ... this morning I got up ... ". That's when I deleted my foolish Facebook life.)

Gaybutton and Gay Thailand boards are hardly more vibrant: Gaybutton (Himself!) still manages to insert Himself! into just about every post (as he has forever) ... the death of any post purporting to be 'humorous'. Nothing will change there, but hey, that board also seems to have the self same lethargy as this one. GayThailand same same: a small cadre of members post every topic and reply ... the 'Likes' button at the bottom of each post always filling up with the same Likers. Everybody likes everybody on that board ... but never ending group hugs (and circle jerks) are hardly a recipe for growth.