@Null
I used to run a website that was moderately popular in the 2000s, and I started it in my late teens. In the beginning, it was a lot of struggling due to my lack of expertise, but a lot of fun nonetheless. Getting new users, seeing new posts and threads, seeing what people were talking about, seeing communities form, I loved it. After a few years, I had become friends with the people I made into moderators, a lot of the community knew me and I knew almost all the active users on some level. It was honestly probably the most fun I've had online in my life. Eventually, the website got too big for me, and it escaped me. As time went on, the old guard started to leave one by one, and they were replaced with people I had very little interest in catering to. I got older and I started to get on the website less and less, and the frequency of stupid shit being posted by idiots on the site pissed me off more and more. It was growing, but not on a scale that made me happy. Business was booming, but it felt hollow and unfulfilling.
I ran my website for 7 years until I started seriously thinking about it in the long term. "Is this something I want to be doing when I'm in my 30s?" "Do I really want to have to deal with this when I've got a family?" "Do I get any enjoyment out of this anymore?" and the more and more I thought about it, the answer was overwhelmingly no. The breaking point for me came when my last "old guard" moderator told me he had to quit, and that his sentiments echoed mine. It wasn't fun anymore. We were getting old, and the community we loved had been largely replaced with one that we couldn't relate to anymore. All of the people I considered my friends, the people who were apart of "my community" were gone. and I feel like when something you run is no longer fun to you, it's time to end it.
At some point in time, I had these lofty ideals that I'd keep it running forever. I was big on the "I'll always provide people with a place where their dipshit opinions won't be censored!" I prided myself in the fact that I never needed to take money, my ads had never been intrusive, etc, but in the end it doesn't matter. A majority of the users don't give a shit, they don't give a shit how hard you work, the sleepless nights you spend logged into the server trying to fix things, adding features, or how you never sold out, you stuck to your guns, keept the website up at a monetary detriment to yourself, whatever. They don't care. The website is just a distraction to them, and if it goes away, they'll find a new distraction. Most people on the internet don't see internet community building as something worth their time and something they should protect and enjoy; they just see websites as a free place to shitpost and call people niggers.
It's been a while since I shut down my website. I'll occasionally think about something funny that people posted, something that became a meme on the website, or a user who pissed people off a lot, the list goes on. While there are times I wish I could go back to being 20 and chatting with my mods and the well known users on IRC about dumb shit, I don't regret shutting it down. It was a product of its time, and everyone moved on. Sometimes it's best to let good things remain in the past.
I'm by no means a poweruser on the Farms, I mostly just use the site to occasionally talk shit about Ethan Ralph, Metokur, or some other niche internet retards and occasionally lurk in some choice cow threads. If the Farms were to go offline forever, I'd be bummed about it for a bit, but I'd go about my life and very little to nothing would change. As would it for everyone on here. Maybe it's time you went about doing the same. It's not selfish to put yourself first for once. Nobody would blame you, and if they do, fuck them. You've provided them with free entertainment for years, and you owe them nothing. The internet is a hell of a lot of fun, but not once has shitposting ever been worth more than a fulfilling real life.
