Stories and artifacts from small internet communities

[Sage In All Fields]

Tell us stories about small internet communities you were part of. What sort of boards did you browse, what characters were there?

There used to be a forum called the Yoyogames Forum, Yoyogames were the people behind Game Maker so that's where you'd go if you needed help in the beginning but at some point the Game Maker Community was also created. The YYGF ran on some forum software called Beast which was completely unmaintained, while the Game Maker Community was running on IPBoard. At some point a guy called 'P4tr1ck' got banned and apparently he was a decent hacker, so he'd regularly come back and completely vadalise the entire site rendering it unusable, this happened so much that eventually it was a major contributing factor in Yoyogames just shutting the entire place down.
We had a troll called RoyTheShort who basically went round acting retarded along with Exkakx. It was generally a fun place to be. It's also where I first discovered Minecraft and bronies.

 

[Schmeckel]

As a kid, from the old dial-up days, I frequented Headbone Zone. Mostly to play their little scrabble/anagram games, but to participate in the chat, too. I can only imagine just how many pedos hung out in the chat, come to think of it. Huge filter for both regular chat and PMs. The games were fun, and the graphics for the site as a whole had that whole totally mid-90s vibe going, with bright colors and sort of alien-ish design.

Later, Fark was a place I would go to see news and other random stupid shit. The photoshop threads were always a hoot, and some of the audioedit threads had me rolling.

 

[The Fool]

It's not much, but my favorite story is when I was a part of this really small tight-knit forum that had a 2D multiplayer browser game in it, a bit like Terraria except infinitely shittier. The web master was still developing it, and one day he added signs. You read a sign by pressing up, which also cancelled your jump. So I spammed the entire overworld with signs and called it "Sign Field" and everyone was mildly annoyed they couldn't jump anymore.

 

[Tour of Italy]

I was part of an semi-private forum where no less than 3 artists had made elaborate fanfiction comics chronicling the exploits of the various frequent posters as if they were shonen action heroes or whatever. This included an elaborate MS paint comic detailing a highly stylized founding myth of the forum back from when it was created as an alternative to a lamer, more mainstream fandom website. I wish I had saved it.

Communities do weird shit when people want to feel part of something. There's an inescapable need for group identity.

 

[Coolio55]

It's not much, but my favorite story is when I was a part of this really small tight-knit forum that had a 2D multiplayer browser game in it, a bit like Terraria except infinitely shittier. The web master was still developing it, and one day he added signs. You read a sign by pressing up, which also cancelled your jump. So I spammed the entire overworld with signs and called it "Sign Field" and everyone was mildly annoyed they couldn't jump anymore.

Was it digibutter.nerr?

 

[Helvetica Standard]

I used a small independent level editor when I was younger with its own forums. There was an incredibly rabid fanbase, and the devs were very close with the community until they got bought out and dissolved. Lots of 14-18yo guys trying to troll with shock images and shit. One of the mods was a big-brain podcaster who proselytized Hackintosh all the time, who I think also got laughed off NeoGAF for being a moron. Said devout fanbase kept trying to revive the project after it died. Good times.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I found concept art.org in my early 20s and it was the best thing ever in my eyes. I was only starting to take drawing seriously and switching careers so it was very influential for me.

For anyone who doesn't know, Ca.org was a forum for professional concept artists and commercial illustrators who gatekeeped a lot at first and was only for pros in the industry to network but then started opening up and accepted newbs who wanted to learn and get critique from the pros, keep a sketchbook thread with their progress or participate on weekly challenges. It was infamous too because a lot of popular DA artists went there, got critiqued hard and got butt lasted about it.

It ended with the usual story. Owner was a cow, got too jewish trying to monetize the site too , a good chunk of people were complaining about him
and it drove all the good posters away with petty drama, there was even #metoo type drama involved. The entire forum became deserted very quickly and became a relic of internet past.

Sad part is most people migrated to cghub but those forums got shut down quickly too. There really isn't anything like it today except a few FB groups that try to be similar but those are hot garbage.

 

[JokahBaybee]

I found concept art.org in my early 20s and it was the best thing ever in my eyes. I was only starting to take drawing seriously and switching careers so it was very influential for me.

For anyone who doesn't know, Ca.org was a forum for professional concept artists and commercial illustrators who gatekeeped a lot at first and was only for pros in the industry to network but then started opening up and accepted newbs who wanted to learn and get critique from the pros, keep a sketchbook thread with their progress or participate on weekly challenges. It was infamous too because a lot of popular DA artists went there, got critiqued hard and got butt lasted about it.

It ended with the usual story. Owner was a cow, got too jewish trying to monetize the site too , a good chunk of people were complaining about him
and it drove all the good posters away with petty drama, there was even #metoo type drama involved. The entire forum became deserted very quickly and became a relic of internet past.

Sad part is most people migrated to cghub but those forums got shut down quickly too. There really isn't anything like it today except a few FB groups that try to be similar but those are hot garbage.

and now it redirects to the website of the only mukbang sponsor, the coldest water bottle

 

[SnowBall]

I found concept art.org in my early 20s and it was the best thing ever in my eyes. I was only starting to take drawing seriously and switching careers so it was very influential for me.

For anyone who doesn't know, Ca.org was a forum for professional concept artists and commercial illustrators who gatekeeped a lot at first and was only for pros in the industry to network but then started opening up and accepted newbs who wanted to learn and get critique from the pros, keep a sketchbook thread with their progress or participate on weekly challenges. It was infamous too because a lot of popular DA artists went there, got critiqued hard and got butt lasted about it.

It ended with the usual story. Owner was a cow, got too jewish trying to monetize the site too , a good chunk of people were complaining about him
and it drove all the good posters away with petty drama, there was even #metoo type drama involved. The entire forum became deserted very quickly and became a relic of internet past.

Sad part is most people migrated to cghub but those forums got shut down quickly too. There really isn't anything like it today except a few FB groups that try to be similar but those are hot garbage.

I still remember when Snapesnogger got blasted by the forum regulars because she got mad at their critique. Also there was this guy whose drawing of a scorpion and a bee fighting was so bad that it became a meme on the forum. Then there was a kid who managed to get a bunch of professional artists to draw his edgy Deviantart OC.

 

[Sun Shihong]

Back in the old days of windows 98 and dial up connection, I had my first connection with MUGEN. It was fun discovering all of the characters I enjoyed in games fighting against each other, even with the limitations. When the content makers got assblasted with the whole affair of "Warehousing" (Posting MUGEN characters and stages online without the content makers' permissions), many left the scene and good shit was lost. And it was most entitlement, as nearly every character and stage ported was either from Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat or KoF.

I found concept art.org in my early 20s and it was the best thing ever in my eyes. I was only starting to take drawing seriously and switching careers so it was very influential for me.

For anyone who doesn't know, Ca.org was a forum for professional concept artists and commercial illustrators who gatekeeped a lot at first and was only for pros in the industry to network but then started opening up and accepted newbs who wanted to learn and get critique from the pros, keep a sketchbook thread with their progress or participate on weekly challenges. It was infamous too because a lot of popular DA artists went there, got critiqued hard and got butt lasted about it.

It ended with the usual story. Owner was a cow, got too jewish trying to monetize the site too , a good chunk of people were complaining about him
and it drove all the good posters away with petty drama, there was even #metoo type drama involved. The entire forum became deserted very quickly and became a relic of internet past.

Sad part is most people migrated to cghub but those forums got shut down quickly too. There really isn't anything like it today except a few FB groups that try to be similar but those are hot garbage.

Snapesnogger's meltdown was the peak point of Concept Art. I remember seeing it on encyclopedia dramatica when I first discovered it.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I still remember when Snapesnogger got blasted by the forum regulars because she got mad at their critique. Also there was this guy whose drawing of a scorpion and a bee fighting was so bad that it became a meme on the forum. Then there was a kid who managed to get a bunch of professional artists to draw his edgy Deviantart OC.

The bee and scorpion battle was a classic. I remember it even was an emoji on the boards. And I also remember Nibiru well because I participated in that thread and did artwork for it. I don't remember well who started it, I think it was android jones, but it was pretty funny how a shit post asking for free art ended up as a huge thread full of great artwork only because one of the pros there was high enough to actually comply. I think that was mostly the dynamic of ca: If I pro did or said something everyone would copy them no matter what, it was peak autism.

Snapesnogger's meltdown was the peak point of Concept Art. I remember seeing it on encyclopedia dramatica when I first discovered it.

It was a fairly common occurrence to get butthurt people from da on the critique section getting mad because they were treated as any other amateur and actually got critiqued. Snape was just the most popular because she was like the #1 most popular artist on DA or something ridiculous like that but I remember there was a list at some point naming all the da tards that showed up.

Snapemolester actually increased the population of the site considerably. The ED article brought a lot of people who would comment on it on Intro threads and Snape got so assblasted she posted on journals about ca too and gave a ton of free advertising to the boards. Instead of brigading on her behalf lots of her followers ended up opening sb and staying as regulars lol.

The best threads there imo were the personal sbs, specially of people who went from scrub to pro like Rapoza or Mindcandyman. But the drama on the critique section or general brought a lot of traffic and was usually fun.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Starting in 2006 when I was 16 I joined a forum for teens called GovTeen.

There's nothing too crazy or too specific story wise, but one thing I remember is how many of the users were gay and how vain and self centered they were, this also being the 2000s there were endless atheism vs Christianity debates and debates about George W Bush and so on.

One funny thing I do remember happening is a user named "Liquid Turd" and some other longtime user getting banned for trying to hack the forums, I also remember getting a private message from some pervert asking for a picture of my dick (under the pretense that they were a fellow teen and just wanted to know what precum looked like) which I promptly reported to the admins.

They tolerated 20 somethings if they were longterm members but once I turned 20 I gradually fell out of the habit of visiting because I felt a bit creepy, but the last time I logged in was 2016 to commemorate my tenth anniversary and the site was still active, but at some point since then it was deactivated and is now gone completely.

It's the kind of thing where on occasion I want to revisit it and see if I can get in touch with some old members, only to remember that it's totally gone.

 

[President Joe Biden]

I used to read a forum making fun of an alcoholic drug-abusing absentee father. They would point out that the guy employed child molesters and chronicle his life in the mid-west. I always found it funny that that forum had a thread here years before the child molester started beating his immigrant wife. I guess I learned that racists are always right, because they caught on a decade before KF even noticed a problem. Good job.

 

[L50LasPak]

I briefly frequented the forums of a smalltime Newgrounds animator named Lawrence Blair. He actually had a pretty exstensive website you can explore some of through the domain Logamation.com, but only on the wayback machine. Since his content was mostly focused on Starcraft, it natrually attracted a bunch of SC nerds. We flipped our shit when SC2 was announced. Ah, how little we knew back then.

He produced a lot of interesting Swift3D renders and was apparently working on some kind of WW2 themed project simply titled "Rifts" that he never elaborated on or explained. To my recollection, only a truck, a gun, and I think one other vehicle were produced for whatever Rifts was supposed to be.

One day the site just vanished. I stopped visiting it regularly years beforehand but got one of his animations reccomended to me on Youtube and was like "Hey, what's he up to now?" only to find the site is gone and its a parked domain. Additionally since he shares a name with some random celebrity named Lawrence Blair digging up any information on him is impossible. His stuff was primitive but talented, I legit wonder if he moved on to a job that utilized his skills or if he just never made it big and settled for a boring desk job in the end.

 

[An Account]

I found this forum where the residents seemed to, somewhat paradoxically, worship and despise that autistic guy who made Sonichu. They also had other subforums dedicated to stalking various people with mental problems. I think the lead guy ended up being chased to siberia or something? And they had little Facepunch-style reaction stickers you could give posts and almost everybody took them way too seriously.

Pretty gay site ngl.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I found this forum where the residents seemed to, somewhat paradoxically, worship and despise that autistic guy who made Sonichu. They also had other subforums dedicated to stalking various people with mental problems. I think the lead guy ended up being chased to siberia or something? And they had little Facepunch-style reaction stickers you could give posts and almost everybody took them way too seriously.

Pretty gay site ngl.

They sound autistic and gay.

 

[George Orson Welles]

I found this forum where the residents seemed to, somewhat paradoxically, worship and despise that autistic guy who made Sonichu. They also had other subforums dedicated to stalking various people with mental problems. I think the lead guy ended up being chased to siberia or something? And they had little Facepunch-style reaction stickers you could give posts and almost everybody took them way too seriously.

Pretty gay site ngl.

Oh you mean the one where the owner's name is Joshua.. Joshua Lua? or some gay shit? Yeah I remember him, he was a pretty swell guy, he seems to dropped off the face of the earth entirely after his mom got harassed.

 

[Darksy DePhil]

I found this forum where the residents seemed to, somewhat paradoxically, worship and despise that autistic guy who made Sonichu. They also had other subforums dedicated to stalking various people with mental problems. I think the lead guy ended up being chased to siberia or something? And they had little Facepunch-style reaction stickers you could give posts and almost everybody took them way too seriously.

Pretty gay site ngl.

That sounds like a horrible site full of jerks

 

[teriyakiburns]

I was part of an semi-private forum where no less than 3 artists had made elaborate fanfiction comics chronicling the exploits of the various frequent posters as if they were shonen action heroes or whatever. This included an elaborate MS paint comic detailing a highly stylized founding myth of the forum back from when it was created as an alternative to a lamer, more mainstream fandom website. I wish I had saved it.

Communities do weird shit when people want to feel part of something. There's an inescapable need for group identity.

Was this, by any chance a simpsons-related community?

 

[Tour of Italy]

Was this, by any chance a simpsons-related community?

Unfortunately no, although it’s hilarious to me that this is apparently a common enough occurrence that you had a completely different forum spring to mind.

The one I’m thinking of split off from a much larger fan forum for an anime series, although that’s not why I joined. The original one is still around but the semi private one has been defunct for a few years now.

I don’t want to power level too much, but here’s a hint just in case there’s another refugee from that forum kicking around KF (timestamp around 1 min 28 sec if the link didn’t work right):