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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3315 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I’m reading about something awful. Namely, SomethingAwful.

They left an indelible mark on internet culture with afaik <50,000 register users. I actually can’t find the number of register users in 2008 so I’m estimating from a bad graph. Compare this to just how many registered users are on Reddit or Tumblr, but how little culture is actually created there (versus shared there).

The forum had a $10 cost of membership and strict standards of posting:

See, since its inception Something Awful was built around strict moderation. Even its $10 entry fee was originally implemented not as a way to make money but as a way to keep problem posters from endlessly re-registering or creating throwaway gimmick accounts.

How strict? Well: Not capitalizing the beginning of a sentence? Probation. No punctuation? Probation. Post a YouTube link without including a description of the video's content? Probation. Not properly rehosting and resizing images? Oh you better believe that's a Probation

Whatever happened to paid forums? They are actually not a bad idea.

I will never stop being nostalgic for the old internet. SomethingAwful included, despite Goons becoming a cult that decided to attack the entire rest of the internet later in it's life. Articles like ION Storm Begins Work on "Deus Ex" Sequel, "Deus Goatse Secx". Worry not, all the images are broken on that archive.org link. Or their evergreen review of the Water Closet hentai game. I never went to their forums, but sometimes stories would leak off them and go viral. Like a story about an insane college roommate who apparently had a psychotic break, and the POV narrator who essentially barricaded his door to ignore it, and came and went through the window. Or the guy who sniffed his sisters panties, and then a fellow goon doxed him and told his family.

I also have an intense fondness for Stile Project. Sure, there was the pornography. And terrible shock sites to trick my friends into viewing. But it was also funny, and kind of like Blues News... just with extra pornography. Basically my one stop shop from the ages of 16 to 25.

Then there were the random blogs that would blow up. Like The Misanthropic Bitch, Old Man Murray, someone even did a blog in the form of a scientist from Half-Life. Which funnily enough, is where I heard about KMFDM for the first time and decided to check them out.

There was just some different quality to the internet back then. When everything was word of mouth on small forums, IRC chatrooms, or game lobbies. Before the algorithm homogenized all internet consumption, and caused every aspiring content creator to develop schizophrenia simultaneously.

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