04-25-2020, 02:54 PM
Circa October 2002 there was a specific message board that I discovered by way of a family member, and it led me into total obsession with the message board format in general. I would troll this board incessantly, all day every day, and often my antics would get me banned for weeks at a time. One fun quirk was that when you were banned, this particular site used to redirect to BettyBowers.com... https://web.archive.org/web/200211060807...bowers.com You'd know you were in trouble when you saw that screen, "L O R D I N G . . ." instead of loading, lmao, classic!
Anyway, every time I got banned, I would make my own forum. It was always one of those free forum sites like Invision Power Boards or whatever kinda shit that offered a free hosting version in those days. It all had to be free of course, because I was A FUCKINGGG CHILD.
I'd make the forum, play with all the functions, fine tune it to whatever degree I could with what features were offered, play with customizing the layout and making (undoubtedly eye bleeding level obnoxious) different colored skins and stuff. I'd talk to myself all day and night until the bans were lifted at whatever site I had been a bad girl on...
Because every time people would get banned from one message board, those capable of hosting their own sites (i.e., adults) would make a "splinter" forum and usually, those didn't last, but some of them did. Then a lot of banned fuckers would go and register at those splinter forums. I'd say ultimately we ended up with 4 or 5 decent splinter forums at the height of it all (pre-2007).
I'd go on to spend the rest of my childhood and a good portion of my adult years on these various boards until I invented my own in 2016 after getting fed up with being fucked over by owners of other message boards who put the value of their patrons at absolute fucking zero.
Since then, my credo has been MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING WEBSITE. DO NOT put your time and energy into other peoples' websites, UNLESS you're at least AWARE of what you're doing and aware that it's likely the owners/mods don't give a flying fuck about you, and you're cool with that. You ALWAYS have to assume (no matter where you are) that NO ONE is going to value your work. If there's anything I've learned over the years, it's that no one cares about anything but themselves. So then why should you care about anything but yourself? So look out for numero uno. I don't care who you are... your time is valuable and should be respected by EVERYONE. But they won't respect it... so YOU HAVE TO.
Use your VALUABLE time, the ONLY true commodity/currency you ACTUALLY have, and build something for YOURSELF that you can be the sole authority on. If you choose not to do this? Save EVERYTHING you EVER write on other peoples' sites in text files to your hard drive (AS YOU WRITE THEM), don't EVER depend on any site you don't own to actually store the products of your valuable time, brain power, and hard work. And even if it is your own site, you obviously need to save it locally but lol, no shit.
Anyway, every time I got banned, I would make my own forum. It was always one of those free forum sites like Invision Power Boards or whatever kinda shit that offered a free hosting version in those days. It all had to be free of course, because I was A FUCKINGGG CHILD.
I'd make the forum, play with all the functions, fine tune it to whatever degree I could with what features were offered, play with customizing the layout and making (undoubtedly eye bleeding level obnoxious) different colored skins and stuff. I'd talk to myself all day and night until the bans were lifted at whatever site I had been a bad girl on...
Because every time people would get banned from one message board, those capable of hosting their own sites (i.e., adults) would make a "splinter" forum and usually, those didn't last, but some of them did. Then a lot of banned fuckers would go and register at those splinter forums. I'd say ultimately we ended up with 4 or 5 decent splinter forums at the height of it all (pre-2007).
I'd go on to spend the rest of my childhood and a good portion of my adult years on these various boards until I invented my own in 2016 after getting fed up with being fucked over by owners of other message boards who put the value of their patrons at absolute fucking zero.
Since then, my credo has been MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING WEBSITE. DO NOT put your time and energy into other peoples' websites, UNLESS you're at least AWARE of what you're doing and aware that it's likely the owners/mods don't give a flying fuck about you, and you're cool with that. You ALWAYS have to assume (no matter where you are) that NO ONE is going to value your work. If there's anything I've learned over the years, it's that no one cares about anything but themselves. So then why should you care about anything but yourself? So look out for numero uno. I don't care who you are... your time is valuable and should be respected by EVERYONE. But they won't respect it... so YOU HAVE TO.
Use your VALUABLE time, the ONLY true commodity/currency you ACTUALLY have, and build something for YOURSELF that you can be the sole authority on. If you choose not to do this? Save EVERYTHING you EVER write on other peoples' sites in text files to your hard drive (AS YOU WRITE THEM), don't EVER depend on any site you don't own to actually store the products of your valuable time, brain power, and hard work. And even if it is your own site, you obviously need to save it locally but lol, no shit.
