From what I have found at this point the cosplay groups starting popping up around in the late 90s and the turning point was when Spat Oktan built his first armor set for his friends in association with Almeyer's Folly cosplay group.
The forum was founded in the late 90s by Dan (Aliensarchive) and was taken over by Tony (Spellbinder99) a few years later. About 15 years (give or take) after the 1986 movie release of Aliens.
Around 9/7/03 we had our first major revision of the website to the format we all know and love by Mike Rush who has made a logo that has stood the test of time. The look of the website had not change substantially if at all since then.
Previous system admins:
USCM Section Moderator: Tony "SgtTony" Leach (2012-2014)
Airsoft Section Moderator: Alex "uscmCorps" Ko (2006-2007)
System Admin/Owner: Tony "Spellbinder99" (2003-2006)
System Admin/Owner: Dan "Aliensarchive" S. (1999-2003)
This is a history lesson here and not meant to be an complete history, but briefly covers why forums like ours have stayed around:
In perspective dial-up internet access was king until the late 1990s. Starting around 2000 high speed internet came into play giving a whole area of growth for websites and around 2000 social media websites started to supplant forum and bulletin board based websites (in use since the 1980s) like what we use here.
AOL instant messenger launched in 1997 and quickly replaced IRC (created in 1988) along with other instant messaging services such as Yahoo messenger, msn messenger and others.
Myspace launched in 2003 followed by Facebook in 2004 and reddit in 2005 (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_social_media.)
AOL shut down their messenger platform as has yahoo in late 2018.
Right now there is a lot of debate going on over who is going to replace Facebook as there is an exodus away from the platform some would argue and multiple platforms are popping up to fill the need and desire.
Right now there is a slow trend away from social media and there is a rise in folks moving back to using forum based websites that encourage information sharing and discourse.
Forum websites that have stayed around throughout the entire rise and ebb of social media giants and continue to be a thriving community for discussions on a myriad of topics. The sites that remain since the beginning have continued to have a strong core following and active contributors with top notch admin teams running them.
First Edit.
Second Edit.