I suspect a lot of the activity is down to performative busywork by really bored, underemployed it hacks.

I suspect you're right. It's not exactly a bustling hub of enthusiasm anyway. It should be, considering that Topaz products have created quite a stir in photographic and video circles in the last year, but I think the forum software is really stifling discussion. Plus, any time things kick off, the arsehole mod steps in, declares the discussion "off topic" or "not relevant" and either edits posts or cancels the thread altogether.

The video categories, in particular, are dire. It's a product that is clearly designed for high-end NVIDIA GPUs. It will run (just) on a very high-end CPU but may take multiple times longer. Yet the discussion has far too many posts along the lines of "it takes 60 hours to do 10 minutes of vid on my Matrox Mystique, what's wrong?" and "will this work on my Atom-powered notepad?"