Going back to this "bullying" mentality Big3 spoke of in the OP, I think bullying only works if you let it. I got bullied a lot initially, till I started fighting back, and by fighting back I mean getting in on the joke, laughing at myself, not taking life and this place so seriously. It took a long time before I could make or respond to a joke about my mother, who's been dead over a quarter of a century now, but now it doesn't bother me. Personally though, I don't use that experience to bully newbies, not at all. I think once you get to know the peculiar humour of some of the members here (myself included) you can see that it is basically a friendly place. And if you say otherwise I'll kick your head in. :p:

What I'm saying is that in Danish, that's one million.
Don't ask me why. That's just one area where we mysteriously don't conform to European standards.

I like short women, but that goes without saying when I'm such a Tom Cruise sized midget myself.
I still have Maria Sharapova on my desktop wallpaper and she's 18 cm taller than me. I find her intimidating.

This also plays into the part where Big3 was talking about most members being vaginas.

Eh, I never had a problem integrating here or getting bullied and I'm basically the softest piece of cheese of a human you could meet. That said, a lot of you are jerks, I just ignore it. ;)

I hope you feed her regularly!
Yes, this is true. Until you learn to roll with the punches and start throwing them yourself (and I'm aware of the irony, thank you) this place can really seem very intimidating and unfriendly. But as someone once said, that's really more of a "you problem": members, especially newbies, need to look around and see how people act and react without crying at the first thing they deem an insult, or an attack, which most of us by now would shrug off. Remember how Exo used to greet every newb (almost)?

I feel the exact same way. I was going through this thread and I saw a lot of old posters that I use to enjoy, but time moves on and things change. One thing that has changed though is how slow the forum moves compared to 7 years ago.

yeah, but everyone loves you.

I think you're probably right about this, but it's hard to say why things dropped off. It's certainly less dramatic than it used to be, which might be related to the activity, but I also feel like the constructive discussion threads were more active at the time as well.

Or maybe they weren't active and I just have all these memories of trying to boost activity as a mod.

This is true, I am delightful.

For me it wasn't Exo - I think I remember Kiii or 1BlankMind telling me to kill myself during my first couple months :laughing:

We also use commas for that in Germany.
Pi would be 3,14...