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Aftervision.com
Hey guys, long time no see, nobody will probably read or comment on this but its not like I'm losing anything as a result of posting it.
Part of this is going to be reminiscence, and a look into my thoughts at the moment and not much else really. There's likely typos and missing sentences since I'm just rambling here. Comments would be much appreciated.
http://www.aftervision.net/
This is a forum that's been around for about a good 5-7 years now. I have an extremely long history with this forum. It originally started as a sprite comic community that was insanely popular for whatever particular reason. Then it became the 3rd Fireball20XL forums (Psyguy is a faggot) and became even more insanely popular. Then another merger with another popular sprite comic website resulted in this crazy ass power struggle that almost ended the forums. At that point I asked my friend Dan to take control of the forums from that point on and things more or less went pretty smoothly after the initial massive flame wars with people telling me how adamant they were in not posting on the forum. After about a few months I gave the forum back to him since not only was he my friend, it was his webspace anyway. Since 2-3 years ago, around the time the forum stopped being about sprite comics, I believe right after the forum's last merger, the forum more or less imploded itself. Like every subsequent merger collapse before it, a ton of members left, both regulars and those who came because of the merger. From that point on a reputation of hostility towards new members was established amongst pretty much everyone else who knew about it. The forum just got increasingly less active as time went on. Any sudden burst of activity was usually short lived for a week or so after this happened.
I looked at the forums today, and in its current state, the forum is riddled with spambots (there were 6 yesterday and 3 showed up today), only 6 people (not spambots) even show up in the "People who have visited the forums today" list, for about 2 years straight there hasn't been a real front page that showed what content was being updated (despite the fact that me and a friend MSM2 were still updating. The worst part is that its gotten so bad my friend Dan, the owner of the website doesn't even visit anymore. I more or less spent my entire adolescence helping this forum along and to see it in the state I've been fearing for years just pains me. Especially in a time where the only websites worth going to these days are either owned by Google, game news websites, 4Chan (and its 100s of rip offs), or are these massive social networking websites like Facebook or LiveJournal. I really miss the distinctiveness of smaller websites like Aftervision, the many since past webcomic sites, among others.
So having an emotional connection with an internet forum is kind of sad? Yeah, definitely. It's just that in the more nostalgic days of the internet when shit existed that was actually good was still being updated and Web 2.0 didn't exist yet or was just starting, these forums were always the first place I'd be to discuss whatever was happening. Every news event, every comic I or somebody else made, it would always be on there.
The problem that the forum has been struggling with for the longest time is an attempt renovate and start regaining its popularity but every time something like it is announced it gets either little response or just criticism with no suggestions. Every time this happens, it just comes across (at least in my mind) as a slap in the face, to just any effort me or anyone else has made to help the forums and in my case it just instantly kills any motivation I had to improve the forums. In fact, anytime anyone even tries to update there websites there are little to no responses on the forum. That's probably one of the reasons why I don't update Scoot P. Graham that much anymore. My friend Dan was more worried about the direction the website was taking because since its last merger, it just wallowed while having no. Not too long ago I suggested that instead of just having the comic based shit we've always had, that we should make articles in the intellectual style of Game Overthinker videos (but instead having no restriction in actual subject matter and of course not being in video format) be the primary focus of the website. The idea was that if the website began getting more intellectual, there would be more interesting forum discussion, there would be more search engine hits because of a broader range of topics with more detailed discussion, and as a result, more members.
But when I came to take a look at the forums today. I question just kept popping in my mind: "what does it matter?" Apparently this has been the very thoughts of Dan for the past year or so. The reason for this is that I used to think that the main reason the few regulars we had on the forum weren't posting is because they had to attend to more important responsibilities like jobs and school, were on vacation, or didn't have a means to post on the forum (in the case of members Jerry and Insomnia). But no, it turns out that the reasons were a lot simpler than that while ironically being a lot more depressing, people simply didn't give a shit anymore.
About a few days ago I found that the most longtime members of the forum weren't showing up anymore. One of the admins, Caper, when I asked him about AV like a week or so ago, he said to me something along the lines of "the forums are dead man, I don't even post there anymore" and went on how he would rather post on the Cock-and-Balls TF2 Server forums. I asked him again today and he more or less said the same thing but commented that if we did go the route of making articles that he would contribute seeing as how he has a lot to say about the Pharmaceutical Industry. I then began reflecting on what he said a week back and at this point I began evaluating whether or not all this planning for massive renovation of AV would be worth it or not. Say if I do actually finish the layout, Dan revamps the news system to integrate with the forums, and we actually manage to make articles on something like a bi-weekly basis, I thought what exactly would separate our website from a regular old blog? Considering we have a horrible spambot problem where we've actually had to make new memberships admin approved, how exactly would my plan of using intellectual discourse to lure in new members actually work if they have to wait to comment on it? The thing that broke the camel's back is when I talked to Dan before making this blog post and I brought up the topic of AV to which he showed nothing but indifference to me regarding the subject. At that point I realized it was just a hopeless endeavor that likely wouldn't be followed up to anyway.
I really think the forum is on its last run, and at this point I don't think anything might be able to reverse it. The only thing that depresses me more is that I'm probably the only one who probably cares this much about this single blip on the vast shithole that is internet.
And that's about it, so how are you guys doing?
Part of this is going to be reminiscence, and a look into my thoughts at the moment and not much else really. There's likely typos and missing sentences since I'm just rambling here. Comments would be much appreciated.
http://www.aftervision.net/
This is a forum that's been around for about a good 5-7 years now. I have an extremely long history with this forum. It originally started as a sprite comic community that was insanely popular for whatever particular reason. Then it became the 3rd Fireball20XL forums (Psyguy is a faggot) and became even more insanely popular. Then another merger with another popular sprite comic website resulted in this crazy ass power struggle that almost ended the forums. At that point I asked my friend Dan to take control of the forums from that point on and things more or less went pretty smoothly after the initial massive flame wars with people telling me how adamant they were in not posting on the forum. After about a few months I gave the forum back to him since not only was he my friend, it was his webspace anyway. Since 2-3 years ago, around the time the forum stopped being about sprite comics, I believe right after the forum's last merger, the forum more or less imploded itself. Like every subsequent merger collapse before it, a ton of members left, both regulars and those who came because of the merger. From that point on a reputation of hostility towards new members was established amongst pretty much everyone else who knew about it. The forum just got increasingly less active as time went on. Any sudden burst of activity was usually short lived for a week or so after this happened.
I looked at the forums today, and in its current state, the forum is riddled with spambots (there were 6 yesterday and 3 showed up today), only 6 people (not spambots) even show up in the "People who have visited the forums today" list, for about 2 years straight there hasn't been a real front page that showed what content was being updated (despite the fact that me and a friend MSM2 were still updating. The worst part is that its gotten so bad my friend Dan, the owner of the website doesn't even visit anymore. I more or less spent my entire adolescence helping this forum along and to see it in the state I've been fearing for years just pains me. Especially in a time where the only websites worth going to these days are either owned by Google, game news websites, 4Chan (and its 100s of rip offs), or are these massive social networking websites like Facebook or LiveJournal. I really miss the distinctiveness of smaller websites like Aftervision, the many since past webcomic sites, among others.
So having an emotional connection with an internet forum is kind of sad? Yeah, definitely. It's just that in the more nostalgic days of the internet when shit existed that was actually good was still being updated and Web 2.0 didn't exist yet or was just starting, these forums were always the first place I'd be to discuss whatever was happening. Every news event, every comic I or somebody else made, it would always be on there.
The problem that the forum has been struggling with for the longest time is an attempt renovate and start regaining its popularity but every time something like it is announced it gets either little response or just criticism with no suggestions. Every time this happens, it just comes across (at least in my mind) as a slap in the face, to just any effort me or anyone else has made to help the forums and in my case it just instantly kills any motivation I had to improve the forums. In fact, anytime anyone even tries to update there websites there are little to no responses on the forum. That's probably one of the reasons why I don't update Scoot P. Graham that much anymore. My friend Dan was more worried about the direction the website was taking because since its last merger, it just wallowed while having no. Not too long ago I suggested that instead of just having the comic based shit we've always had, that we should make articles in the intellectual style of Game Overthinker videos (but instead having no restriction in actual subject matter and of course not being in video format) be the primary focus of the website. The idea was that if the website began getting more intellectual, there would be more interesting forum discussion, there would be more search engine hits because of a broader range of topics with more detailed discussion, and as a result, more members.
But when I came to take a look at the forums today. I question just kept popping in my mind: "what does it matter?" Apparently this has been the very thoughts of Dan for the past year or so. The reason for this is that I used to think that the main reason the few regulars we had on the forum weren't posting is because they had to attend to more important responsibilities like jobs and school, were on vacation, or didn't have a means to post on the forum (in the case of members Jerry and Insomnia). But no, it turns out that the reasons were a lot simpler than that while ironically being a lot more depressing, people simply didn't give a shit anymore.
About a few days ago I found that the most longtime members of the forum weren't showing up anymore. One of the admins, Caper, when I asked him about AV like a week or so ago, he said to me something along the lines of "the forums are dead man, I don't even post there anymore" and went on how he would rather post on the Cock-and-Balls TF2 Server forums. I asked him again today and he more or less said the same thing but commented that if we did go the route of making articles that he would contribute seeing as how he has a lot to say about the Pharmaceutical Industry. I then began reflecting on what he said a week back and at this point I began evaluating whether or not all this planning for massive renovation of AV would be worth it or not. Say if I do actually finish the layout, Dan revamps the news system to integrate with the forums, and we actually manage to make articles on something like a bi-weekly basis, I thought what exactly would separate our website from a regular old blog? Considering we have a horrible spambot problem where we've actually had to make new memberships admin approved, how exactly would my plan of using intellectual discourse to lure in new members actually work if they have to wait to comment on it? The thing that broke the camel's back is when I talked to Dan before making this blog post and I brought up the topic of AV to which he showed nothing but indifference to me regarding the subject. At that point I realized it was just a hopeless endeavor that likely wouldn't be followed up to anyway.
I really think the forum is on its last run, and at this point I don't think anything might be able to reverse it. The only thing that depresses me more is that I'm probably the only one who probably cares this much about this single blip on the vast shithole that is internet.
And that's about it, so how are you guys doing?
tired
Proud
content
my head hurts
angry