Post by Neo // Racing Stripe A/V on Oct 15, 2015 6:35:17 GMT 10
As of 9:33pm today, it'll be exactly 10 years since I opened my account on this forum.
Ten freaking years... that's almost two-fifths of my entire life. It's surreal to even think it. A fair amount has changed in my life since I naively registered this account back in 2005. And as crazy as it may seem, I actually have you guys to thank for some of those.
Let me backtrack for a bit:
You know that kid you always knew in school, that one who would always see something, say "I can do that!" and ultimately end up with something not as great as what they were trying to mimic? Yeah, that was me. I guess I always wanted to be some sort of creative-"jack of all trades master of none" since I draw, do music, write stories, worldbuild, conlang, make stuff on YouTube, I used to make sprite comics, dabbled with ROM hacking, Doom map building... anything that gets those particular neurons firing, I would have a crack at. And with regards to music, had one of you not linked Pandora on this forum (back when it still worked over here), I wouldn't have found half of the bands I listen to now - my love of prog would be nowhere where it is now, with it being practically a cornerstone to my own music. Hell, had I not been inspired to even make music in the first place, I would not be where I am - I went from stupidly strumming on an out-of-tune, incorrectly strung acoustic guitar that I've had since I was 11 to releasing a freaking album a little over eight years later. Because of me wanting to make music, I graduated college, University.. Hell, I'm even currently in the middle of starting my own goddamn business in this field of work for crying out loud! All because some awkward 16-year-old joined some small, random forum about some blue hedgehog. And it almost was random, because I remember first finding this place completely by accident - back in "the old days" before the likes of /r/funny on Reddit etc., I was often browsing the "funny pictures threads" of one other forum and came across the old Hoaxes that this site used to have (because I'm certain that all however many Hoaxes that were hosted on the website years ago are forever lost unto the internet-aether) and instantly became a fan of the idea. Heck, I still have my old Hoaxes from 2005 on my harddrive (not all of them; the famous (yet undoubtedly forgotten) "Ill Ne Act 1"-first Hoax of mine is nowhere to be found), and I still remember making them all those years ago. Even those dumb stories that I was putting together during my early days on this forum; they've actually been rewritten so many times that they incorporate a much larger world that I'm still in the middle of building - and I'm using my music as a means of telling those stories too. Remember when my first OC on this forum was some overpowered "genetic experiment" with a clichéd amnesia backstory? That's still one of the stories I've been working on.. granted, it's been reworked into something vaguely similar, but the core ideas are still there.. but I digress.
And yet, ten years on, seeing the near-silence across this forum honestly makes me a little down inside. I can remember when there were anywhere from twenty to forty people here online every day, just talking about whatever random crap was occupying our minds at the time. Sure, we had our own little "cliques", and the odd village idiot (and lord knows I was one of them at more than one point), but damnit, it was fun. I remember when we were in the middle of making our own game (which I still have the Engine Test for); the unfortunate "scuffle" we had with that one other Sonic forum that has also gone under "internet heat death"; the many trolls and "n00bs" that thought they were the next big thing that have either calmed down to be fellow members (Booo, Dejiko, Sonar, TimberWolf), or were never seen again one way or another (John Samer, SSDJS); the MUGEN tournaments; the weird collection of running jokes between us; the community projects like Comic Jam, SV Divided, the unreleased Hallowe'en animation, the Sonic/Pokémon ROM Hack... This place used be bustling with activity - you daren't miss a day from this place lest you miss out on whatever amount of goings on that happened here... and yet there have been less than 50 posts in the last year alone and while I continue to lurk, the only thing close to "activity" this place sees is along the lines of me and 100 other Guests.
Hell, whether we got on together or not, I'm gonna be honest: I fuckin' miss you guys. And it's almost ironic: no-one comes here anymore because well, no-one else does. And any "bad blood" between any of you and me that existed before, I've put behind me; it's all water under the bridge, we were all a lot younger than we are now. Sure, on the surface, I may have gone from some awkward 16-year-old to some awkward 26-year-old and yeah, I've still got that "self-deprecating/I know I'm not funny but to hell with it"-comedic streak to me, but I'm a lot more positive with where I am now. I may have gone through some... troubled times in the past, but I've come through the other side with a much brighter outlook on things.
I know that this'll be the fiftieth "hey guys long time no see, what are you all up to" thread this forum will have seen lately, so if this ends up being the last post on this forum for another ten years (as much as I wish for it not to be), I'll gladly share my FB, Twitter, what-have-you to those who wish to keep in contact. I know I'm FB friends with one other member here and it'd be great to catch up with everyone else.
tl;dr: Thank you to everybody on this forum for the last ten years, because it has been a blast, and for the sake of being optimistic, here's to another ten more.
Ten freaking years... that's almost two-fifths of my entire life. It's surreal to even think it. A fair amount has changed in my life since I naively registered this account back in 2005. And as crazy as it may seem, I actually have you guys to thank for some of those.
Let me backtrack for a bit:
You know that kid you always knew in school, that one who would always see something, say "I can do that!" and ultimately end up with something not as great as what they were trying to mimic? Yeah, that was me. I guess I always wanted to be some sort of creative-"jack of all trades master of none" since I draw, do music, write stories, worldbuild, conlang, make stuff on YouTube, I used to make sprite comics, dabbled with ROM hacking, Doom map building... anything that gets those particular neurons firing, I would have a crack at. And with regards to music, had one of you not linked Pandora on this forum (back when it still worked over here), I wouldn't have found half of the bands I listen to now - my love of prog would be nowhere where it is now, with it being practically a cornerstone to my own music. Hell, had I not been inspired to even make music in the first place, I would not be where I am - I went from stupidly strumming on an out-of-tune, incorrectly strung acoustic guitar that I've had since I was 11 to releasing a freaking album a little over eight years later. Because of me wanting to make music, I graduated college, University.. Hell, I'm even currently in the middle of starting my own goddamn business in this field of work for crying out loud! All because some awkward 16-year-old joined some small, random forum about some blue hedgehog. And it almost was random, because I remember first finding this place completely by accident - back in "the old days" before the likes of /r/funny on Reddit etc., I was often browsing the "funny pictures threads" of one other forum and came across the old Hoaxes that this site used to have (because I'm certain that all however many Hoaxes that were hosted on the website years ago are forever lost unto the internet-aether) and instantly became a fan of the idea. Heck, I still have my old Hoaxes from 2005 on my harddrive (not all of them; the famous (yet undoubtedly forgotten) "Ill Ne Act 1"-first Hoax of mine is nowhere to be found), and I still remember making them all those years ago. Even those dumb stories that I was putting together during my early days on this forum; they've actually been rewritten so many times that they incorporate a much larger world that I'm still in the middle of building - and I'm using my music as a means of telling those stories too. Remember when my first OC on this forum was some overpowered "genetic experiment" with a clichéd amnesia backstory? That's still one of the stories I've been working on.. granted, it's been reworked into something vaguely similar, but the core ideas are still there.. but I digress.
And yet, ten years on, seeing the near-silence across this forum honestly makes me a little down inside. I can remember when there were anywhere from twenty to forty people here online every day, just talking about whatever random crap was occupying our minds at the time. Sure, we had our own little "cliques", and the odd village idiot (and lord knows I was one of them at more than one point), but damnit, it was fun. I remember when we were in the middle of making our own game (which I still have the Engine Test for); the unfortunate "scuffle" we had with that one other Sonic forum that has also gone under "internet heat death"; the many trolls and "n00bs" that thought they were the next big thing that have either calmed down to be fellow members (Booo, Dejiko, Sonar, TimberWolf), or were never seen again one way or another (John Samer, SSDJS); the MUGEN tournaments; the weird collection of running jokes between us; the community projects like Comic Jam, SV Divided, the unreleased Hallowe'en animation, the Sonic/Pokémon ROM Hack... This place used be bustling with activity - you daren't miss a day from this place lest you miss out on whatever amount of goings on that happened here... and yet there have been less than 50 posts in the last year alone and while I continue to lurk, the only thing close to "activity" this place sees is along the lines of me and 100 other Guests.
Hell, whether we got on together or not, I'm gonna be honest: I fuckin' miss you guys. And it's almost ironic: no-one comes here anymore because well, no-one else does. And any "bad blood" between any of you and me that existed before, I've put behind me; it's all water under the bridge, we were all a lot younger than we are now. Sure, on the surface, I may have gone from some awkward 16-year-old to some awkward 26-year-old and yeah, I've still got that "self-deprecating/I know I'm not funny but to hell with it"-comedic streak to me, but I'm a lot more positive with where I am now. I may have gone through some... troubled times in the past, but I've come through the other side with a much brighter outlook on things.
I know that this'll be the fiftieth "hey guys long time no see, what are you all up to" thread this forum will have seen lately, so if this ends up being the last post on this forum for another ten years (as much as I wish for it not to be), I'll gladly share my FB, Twitter, what-have-you to those who wish to keep in contact. I know I'm FB friends with one other member here and it'd be great to catch up with everyone else.
tl;dr: Thank you to everybody on this forum for the last ten years, because it has been a blast, and for the sake of being optimistic, here's to another ten more.
