Author Topic: It's been quite a while since I last was here... What happened to this place? (Read 108835 times)

Forest Guy · « **on:** March 30, 2014, 11:00:35 PM »

Not sure if anyone remembers me, but I was super active wayyy back in the day, under the name of Meowrik/Meowrio before changing over to this username. Spent a good chunk of my junior high years on this message board. That was like ten years ago...
My fiance and I spent last night looking up old Livejournal/Myspace/etc posts to show one another how dorky we used to be, and part of my showing was looking up my earliest posts on this site. I figured I'd drop in and say hello again, see who's around. But it appears to be a ghost town. I guess specific message boards can't survive in the year 2014 :(

For anyone who cares, I'm 25 now, engaged, and am working as a medical lieutenant/EMT at the fire department. I DO have a 3DS as well as a Wii U, and SM3DW and DK:TF were fantastic. That's about it.

Weegee · « **Reply #1 on:** March 30, 2014, 11:19:52 PM »

Hey, we've had a good half-dozen posts today, with at least one even being almost gaming-related.

ShadowBrain · « **Reply #2 on:** March 31, 2014, 06:47:34 AM »

He's back! At least, for a time -- glad to hear you're doing well, in any case.

TheMightyThor · « **Reply #3 on:** March 31, 2014, 07:54:40 AM »

It's still alive...not exactly kicking, but at least moving its legs every day or so.

Bigluigifan1.0 · « **Reply #4 on:** March 31, 2014, 08:16:12 AM »

I remember when you came back the first time!

I don't typically post here without someone else prompting a response, though I remember when I used to trying really hard to come up with good topics to start on; that didn't happen a lot... or at all? But I mean, you've been gone for a while, so naturally you already understand why people would take breaks from it. I stopped being a frequent poster because I realized that if I said literally everything on my mind here, it would led to me driving people insane (I know, I used to do it), and I don't really care to get kicked out of the first memorable message board I ever joined. I can't really speak for everyone here, but "real life" kind of takes priority for me now, and I've lost the close relationships I've had with the people I like especially here. It's easier to be friends with people you can talk to everyday, which is basically where I'm at in my life to not be as active here anymore. I am in the leader boards for "most time spent online" here (I think? It's been a while since I checked), which at this point I'm leaning more toward that being sad than cool.

Koopaslaya · « **Reply #5 on:** March 31, 2014, 08:36:02 AM »

Hey!!

Some of us old guys are still hanging around, although I'm more of a lurker these days than anything. Hope all is well with you! Sounds like you're living a great life.

Toad · « **Reply #6 on:** March 31, 2014, 09:55:44 AM »

Hey I remember you! Kind of.. I've been here for almost 10 years, but I did lurk a bit before that. I thought message boards were stupid before that point.

Anyway, yeah, the forums are definitely not as active as they used to be. But there are still a few good topics and users about.

Glad to hear you're doing well. :)

TheMightyThor · « **Reply #7 on:** March 31, 2014, 10:21:34 AM »

I think that has to do with the fact that we don't really have any newbies anymore for two reasons.

The first reason has to do with the state of the internet. Back in the last decade (Yes, I mean the early to mid '00s in specific), the internet wasn't as widespread yet as it is now, so people made the best of their privilege, going on tons of forums to talk about vidya games with their fellow dudes and dudettes. Nowadays, most people (that live in places where internet isn't a rare commodity) have internet, so it's not really special anymore. (That's a bad way of conveying my point, sorry.) You can just talk about video games with some people on Facebook, or YouTube, or Tumblr or whatever you kids use. It seems like actual discussions on the internet nowadays mostly only take place now in comment sections. Forums just aren't popular anymore.

The second has to do with the state of Nintendo now. Back in the early-to-mid '00s, video game journalists largely ignored Nintendo (except for a couple games, and maybe when it came to handhelds) to focus on the Xbox and especially the PS2. I remember being particularly alienated in elementary school by G4 (X-Play in particular), which didn't show much for the GameCube at all. Nintendo fans sorta had to "stick together" during rough times, and congregate to talk about Mario and stuff. Now, Nintendo and Mario are popular again (though the former seems to be wading thanks to lackluster sales performance of the Wii U, the latter doesn't only because of increasing reliance on "retro 8 bit nostalgia" these days), so who needs to use some old forums on "themushroomkingdom.net"?

I realize that some of this stuff about the sixth gen is perhaps a bit before my time, but remembering how disappointed I was watching X-Play and seeing yet another episode entirely with PS2 and Xbox stuff even though I only had a GameCube helps me learn and understand. Basically, I think that because of the changes that vidya culture and internet culture have undergone, Fungi Forums are perhaps..."dated", you could say. Not that that's a bad thing; I may be in high school during the age of twitgram and youbook, but I'll take message boards focused on a central topic any day.

Toad · « **Reply #8 on:** March 31, 2014, 10:50:39 AM »

G4 was a joke. Their constant jabs at Nintendo made it a pain to watch. I could barely stand the one part of.. I think X-Play I watched. They were "reviewing" one of the Metroid Prime games. Review in quotes because they loosely did reviews. Instead they would pick up on some little thing in the game and run with trying to make a joke out of it.

I did attempt to watch G4 one more time when the Wii was launched, but it too was a disaster. I don't care to remember his name, but one of the guys kept wondering where the "Nintendo Revolution" was, and why Nintendo kept trying to introduce a system known as Wii (which he annoyingly kept pronouncing as "Wheeeeeeeee").

I started to wonder if the network was sponsored by Sony or Microsoft, because of all the jabs at Nintendo..

TheMightyThor · « **Reply #9 on:** March 31, 2014, 02:12:12 PM »

Aw, dude, that reminds me of this video parodying the Nintendo Revolution's name change. It had the Wii with a mouth superimposed over it while it did a stupid laugh.

Forest Guy · « **Reply #10 on:** March 31, 2014, 09:11:51 PM »

That's a good point. The internet was more pick and choose back in the good old days. Specific, specialized sites were the norm, whereas now everyone goes to big aggregate sites like IGN, Kotaku, GameFAQs, etc... And definitely social networking has sorta put a damper on forums especially.

If anyone remembers Trainman, I still keep in touch with him as well. Good to see a few familiar faces around here though!

TheMightyThor · « **Reply #11 on:** March 31, 2014, 09:23:12 PM »

I like the more specific, specialized model, personally.

Toad · « **Reply #12 on:** March 31, 2014, 09:42:35 PM »

Me too! It's more.. personal.
I remember Trainman! He should drop in and visit too!

Koopaslaya · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2014, 08:21:53 AM »

Yes, yes! Please tell him to drop in.

It'd be nice to have something of a "reunion" from the early 2000s here at the FF.

TEM · « **Reply #14 on:** April 03, 2014, 09:06:51 PM »

I'm eating Papa John's on the 11th floor of an apartment building in Beijing, Haidian district.