I've been on a few forums for a long time- long enough to see that every forum goes through a cycle. Early stages- few quality members, all tight knit. Then slow expansion with lot's of idea generation, new topics, and a good mix of quality members and increase in quality. Then there's saturation, all of the quality members have already joined- more "annoying" (in the eyes of the originators) posters join, The tight knit core of members who have been around sh!t all over the noobs. The originators slowly leave, stating that "the site has really gone downhill" or "it's not like the good old days of (insert year)". Every now and again one of the originators comes back making a big charade out of their return, and then disappears again. What's left is a bunch of new posters, of lower quality, with no new topics to discuss as everything has been talked about. There's a mass exodus and then all that's left is a very select few who only come around for nostalgia's sake (when you've been with a forum for 7 years, it's hard to say goodbye), and then a few stragglers who sit around wondering why nobody is responding to their threads.
It looks like I joined up right around saturation.
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Life is just blah, blah, blah
You hope for blah
And sometimes you find it, but mostly it's blah
And waiting for blah
And hoping you were right about the blahs you made
And then, just when you think you've got the whole blah'd damn thing figured out
And you're surrounded by the ones you blah
Death shows up... anddd blah, blah, blah.
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