I thought it would be interesting if we all described which message boards we've been part of so far. Here, without further ado, is the weird and wild history of ItsGotSugar.
NAMCO
This particular version of the Namco forum doesn't exist anymore, but it was the first forum I ever joined, back in March 2005. Technically I only posted in the "Xenosaga Episode II" section. It was an okay place, although some of the best members were leaving by the time I showed up. This was where I made most of my best online friends. Together, we had plenty of interesting conversations and even put together an epic fanfiction that went for 37 chapters. There were occasional trolls that showed up, and we enjoyed tearing them apart. The board disappeared sometime in 2006, and was replaced with a new one. Fortunately, by then I had started a board of my own with all of my friends from Namco, and I called it...
THE ICEBOX
I don't think I'm really that good with computers, but somehow I was able to properly use a free forum hosting site to create my own board in September 2005, and even give it a great skin and buttons. As I said, all my Namco friends are members there, and we're still using it after almost two years. In general, we are an intellectual and polite crew who always respect each other's opinions, type correctly, and have no trolls to worry about. You can't ask for a whole lot more than that.
FINAL FANTASY SHRINE
…Wow. How to begin with this one? Well, basically, it’s one of the largest gaming forums on the Internet, centering specifically on the Final Fantasy series. But the majority of the posting goes on in the General Discussion section. Try to imagine a huge board where half the members act like trolls, the rules have been rendered meaningless, and the staff is completely ambivalent.
Despite its vast membership, the board was ironically hostile to new members. Any attempt by a newb to speak his or her mind was often met with a public outcry. On the other hand, the staff and many of the more established members were allowed to get away with murder. I mentioned that half the members acted like trolls, and it was quite true. Particularly in the General Discussion section, they produced countless topics rife with needless profanity, unmitigated flaming (the site has a sordid history of flame wars, sometimes between various cultic factions), and behavior so obscene that no respectable board would ever put up with it. And of the other FFShrine members, some were smart and/or nice people who could have been much happier elsewhere; the others were spammers, ideological fanatics, clowns, or online blowhards looking for a fight. In the summer of ’05, I had the bad luck to stumble onto this message board that was one half trolls (though many of them wouldn’t have considered themselves trolls, due to the board’s abysmal standards), one-quarter decent, likeable people, and one-quarter assorted miscreants. With a biased and undisciplined staff that, despite its many mods and admins, didn’t even try to effectively manage the chaos.
The experience was about as fun as it sounds. I made a few friends, but most of the members didn't like me because, as I said, I was a newb speaking my mind. Examples of the characters I ran into: “AtomNarmor”, a fundamentalist Christian who probably had some kind of diagnosable mental disorder. He made crazy, ignorant statements about the depravity of modern society quite often. And whenever he was challenged or even questioned, he would never intelligently debate any of the points we brought up. In fact, he would often call us "animals" and sinners". Seriously…AtomNarmor had problems. Another character was Sarah, an administrator who was allegedly a pedophile. (Don't ask me whether "she" was really a girll; it was hard to tell.) I think Sarah had been expressing an unhealthy fixation on children from the very beginning, and I could only hope it was all some disgusting in-joke that had gone on for too long. Yet another character I remember was Cassie, who threw a fit whenever someone criticized a thread and didn’t see anything wrong with the rampant spamming on the board, as she apparently thought it “kept things interesting”. (Maybe on boards like PW, where the spam is kind of a side dish, you might consider it fun. But on boards like FFS, spam iss the main course; and before too long it will not only be uninteresting, it’s likely to make you sick.)
I only posted there for a few months, but that was long enough to see a silver lining; the friends I had made on the board would eventually abandon it and make their own forum…which, incidentally, was called
EXCALIBUR EXPEDIA
This was a forum on a site called Invision that offers free board hosting, which many people have taken advantage of. When EE was first created in July or August of 2005, it was a heck of a place to talk and hang out with friends. Solaris, Rinoa_Heartilly, theGuyWatchingYou, and at least a few dozen others made that board a great place to be. It was a very good experience while it lasted.
Eventually, however, the board’s active membership dwindled. Once the novelty had worn off, quite a few of the original members just moved on to other things. I myself became a sporadic poster; there just wasn’t much left there to get excited about. Rinoa handing the administrator position over to Solaris was, for me, a sign of trouble. Solaris was a smart girl and a very capable board manager, but the move suggested that Rinoa had lost interest in her own creation, as she stopped posting at Excalibur soon afterwards.
The board still had its circle of committed members, and a few of them eventually gave into the boredom and left, or just flamed everybody and got banned. Some of this may have been the result of the people Solaris chose to add to the moderating staff, but this was probably just an excuse. The only unwise choice Solaris did make was to promote a member called Espanha to a mod position. It hardly mattered by that point, as only several members were posting with any sort of consistency by the early spring of 2006. But it would definitely contribute to what happened next.
In late April 2006, the overwhelming boredom and sense of isolation on the board got to everyone who was left, even Solaris (though she was also very distracted by personal and academic concerns). One of the committed members, Red Falcon, was generally known as one of the board’s least popular members—and even then he wasn’t all that bad; only a little unrefined, naïve, and too persistent in asking for a mod position. Instead of going to town on RF personally, Espanha invited a friend of his—known as Piet—to join the board specifically for the purpose of flaming the hell out of Red Falcon so all the other members could watch and laugh.
I was appalled when I checked up on the board in early May and found a slew of threads in which Piet was serving that exact purpose. It was also painfully obvious that the entire board had more or less turned against RF, accusing him of being condescending, plagiarizing some sort of post or document, and claiming sole ownership of all the images on Google. Despite the fact that absolutely NO evidence existed to back up these allegations, they abused Red Falcon so much that he left the site. That was when I came in and expressed my outrage. I mean, considering what a fun and fair board this used to be, it was like a slap in the face. Excalibur Expedia was supposed to be everything FFS wasn’t, and yet in the end, it pulled a stunt that reminded me all too clearly of the Shrine. If Rinoa_Heartilly had seen it (and fortunately I don’t think she ever did), she probably would have cried. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.
Espanha (who had renamed himself “Anti-Plagiarizers” based on one of the unsubstantiated complaints against Falcon) and another member called Buttercup predictably disagreed with me. They didn’t understand that anything was wrong. Espanha was smart and witty, but also insensitive and rude. These two had become so desperate for kicks that they’d gone way overboard, and when forced to rationalize the situation, put all the blame on Red Falcon for a premeditated character assassination that was obviously beyond his control. I ended the argument gracefully, but that didn’t stop them from starting a similar campaign against me in retaliation. But before that could get going, Solaris—who had stood by and watched the flame campaign happen, but unlike Espanha, had some kind of moral compass—got my PMs advising her to delete the board before it got any worse. She locked a few threads in General Discussion (including the one where I was needlessly flamed), and soon suspended all activity on the board. A few weeks later, she officially locked Excalibur Expedia.
SOUL CALIBUR II
This was a prolific and entertaining board with more than its share of trolls and spammers; as a result, there were plenty of mods and admins around to deal with all the traffic—and, unlike in the Shrine, not only did they make an actual effort, they usually succeeded pretty well. Granted, most trolls who bothered to join the place made ridiculous and nonsensical threads; consequently, they were pretty easy to spot.
One of the most inspirational mods there was called “The Surgeon General”, whose extremely dry and cynical humor had gained him a lot of friends. You could easily tell who the credible members were; most of them liked TSG. All of the mods, however, were extremely proactive and had no problem using colorful language before locking threads. Although I was not a frequent visitor, The Soul Calibur II forums (which are now closed, since SC III came out a while ago) featured some of the most hilarious threads and posts I would ever have the pleasure of reading. A “Worst Threads in the History of SCII” thread went for about 28 pages, there were so many threads to point out. I read them all, and it turned out to be one of the greatest nights of my life. Really, you would have had to see this stuff to believe it. And, as obvious as they were, the trolls on SCII were light years funnier than any I have yet to see as an Internet poster.
Posting in the place wasn’t as fun as reading the bad threads, generally; it was so big, everything went too fast to really matter. But the board was a lot of fun while it lasted.
PW FORUMS
The Pro Wrestling Forums of
www.prowrestling.com contain some of my greatest posts ever. I’ve been a pro wrestling fan since 1998, but I only came across this place in August 2005. I quickly signed up, and went on to enjoy a very challenging and amusing membership as “Novus”. The place is huge, but unlike FF Shrine, it is fun to be a part of, and there are lots of credible and intelligent members. The place used to have more than its share of trolls, too. I'm known for being pretty hard on trolls and gimmick posters. I’m often quite blunt and outspoken, but can still produce good arguments to back up my rather cynical views on the business and the WWE’s problems.
Although the board has an “Ignore” option (there were occasional trolling epidemics that made it hard to talk about anything there), I have never used it, nor will I ever. I believe in seeing everyone’s point of view, and I consider it my duty to report bad posts to the moderators. (Can’t report the trolls if you can’t see what they’re doing.) As far as the staff goes…some of the mods just weren't doing their share. This was remedied in January 2007 when they basically purged the board of trolls, crowned a number of new mods, and assigned them all to the general sections. Despite that, they're becoming rather complacent again, as some members who are obvious trolls are still surviving on the site.
The forum always has a lot of topics active in just about every general section you can think of besides the wrestling ones, and it’s one of the best boards I’ve ever been a part of.
XGAM FORUMS
A limited number of members, since it's a fansite for the PS1 game Xenogears. However, most of them are quite intelligent and their posts are quite impressive to read. I don't post there very often, though.
THE FINAL AEON
Like FF Shrine, this was a Final Fantasy-themed board, but smaller and more exclusive. Most of the members were agreeable, but there was this one mod called BlueFireIce who was a dedicated Christian. Why they promoted him, I don't know, because he wasn't exactly a shining beacon of objectivity or competence. He was a nice guy, don't get me wrong, but when you got into important issues, he based his arguments on religious convictions and logical fallacies.
I didn't spend too much time there, but we parted on good terms.
DIGIMON SPIRIT FORUM
I love Digimon, even though I'm 22 now. I guess it's one of those shows I'll never get tired of. This is definitely the best Digimon forum on the net, with lots of members and a genuinely fun atmosphere. If there's one real problem with it, it's the admin. She's a really nice person--but she's also a little too dedicated, in that she doesn't allow anyone to criticize the show. Freedom of speech violations, anyone?
Other than that, it's a great place to be.
SILENT HILL FORUM
By far the best forum on the Internet for fans of the dark and gruesome video game series. I should probably spend a lot more time there.
EDOROPOLIS EMPORIUM
And, finally, there's this place. I'm too busy waiting on Princess Vi to post here as often as I'd like, but it's a fun place to talk about one of my favorite shows ever.
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