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You know, I've been doing this for about two years now, solid time posting on some message board or another. I started off at opieanthony.com, and enjoyed my stay there, regardless of the drama behind the scenes. When I was there, I say the only matter on that board that almost made me give up on posting forever was the banning of Gonzo for mentioning Spaz. But, otherwise, I just went about my business, afterall , it was, in my opinion at the time, a message board whos focus was Opie and Anthony, not on the members of the board, and that as long as there was that topic to discuss, the board would go on.
It took me about 4 monthes on the board, when it finally shut down in October, to realize that any message board created, anywhere, is inherently about its own members. I believe now that the thinking behind oa.com, (Froy), was that the board was not about its members, that it was strictly thinking about one particular focus, and that thinking led the the failure, as well as the failure of other projects by said person.
I think to have a sucessful site on the internet, an owner must be of one of two types of thinking.
1) This is for absolutely no one to ever read.
2) This is for everyone who wants it.
Of the first type, it's not totally true. Everyone has, at one point or another, desired to be "known". Out of this desire comes the "personal home page". People feel the need to let others know who they are, yet they truely don't believe that they will ever get "known" to a large group of people. The "personal home page" is popular in chatrooms, where the site can be viewed by an extremely narrow and selected audience. The owner does not expect any large scale exposure. And then, every so often, one of these pages is some fucked up, demented , piece of wackiness that we all know is out there in the general populace, but never have observed it for ourselves, comes right in your face, and suddenly some person wishing for "exposure" faces the "over exsposure" of the internet, mostly from an audience that they never wished had seen their home page. The sucess lies in the fact that the owner never really intended on this exposure, and that the audience knows this and enjoys every minute of it.
Of the second type, the message board genre flourishs. An owner goes the opposite route, and says, "Yes, this is for a bunch of people that I don't know". A small portal is giving to internet miscreants, giving them full range to delve into unraveling who these anonymous people are. I think that is one of the most alluring aspects of the internet, besides being able to order from the Olive Garden for pick-up, and downloading crappy Christmas music that 106.7 has rammed into my head after only my first day back on the job, (I'm curreeeeently downloading the American Idol Christmas cd, after hearing Kelly Clarkson do a rendition of that awful "My Grown-Up Christmas List song, and Clay Aiken perform with Kimberly Locke on "Silver Bells") is the ability to play extended versions of 20 Questions with anonomous people.
That's kind of how I see this particular message board, and how it formed from opieanthony.com. Over there, we all played the game. By posting different threads, discussing multiple topics, delving into the depths of taking a thread as far off-topic as humanly possible, we all find out small bits and pieces about dozens of different people, and part of the allure of the message board is to keep coming back and finish the puzzle. And then, Sean and Gonzo decided that this game we all play with one another is vital, is relevant, to not only themselves, but, more importantly, to the people involved in the game.
By game, I do not mean to trivialize or slander the discourse that we all have taken over the past several years. By game, I only mean to draw a metaphor between the equilibrial relationship that we all share with one another and the game of 20 questions that seems to best describe the method by which we interact with one another here at CDiH, and at several other message boards.
Over the past two years, I've joined several message boards, no where nearing the posting amount that I have engaged in here at CDiH. My second best attempt at engaging another message board was ronfez.net, and while I post there from time to time (mostly in their political forum, which I concur is one of the best political discussion areas of the internet populated by total Joe Nobodys) I never found as interesting as this board. Yet ronfez.net is extremely similiar to CDiH in that, while the board runs on the theme of Ron and Fez, its members are really the center of the board, and I think that is due in part to those same members being integral to the Ron and Fez show, a radio show that no longer broadcasts in the NYC market, runs on only one station. So, I think it would be difficult to argue that the site cashes in on the phenomenon that is Ron and Fez, since such a phenomenon only exists in the minds of its members, and thus, the site is about its members.
I think it is always relevant to reflect on a portion of your life and attempt to extract some lesson that might be useful another day. I think it is relevant to admit that a portion of your life revolves around the internet, if what you're admitting is trueful. So, I just felt it was relevant to reflect on what I fekt this board was about, and just to wish everyone on here to be happy, enjoy everything, and let's keep this things going on. Thanks to the mods, the admins, and everyone.
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