Hindsight, and an Interesting Side-Effect of Online Forums

[MoonlitSunshine]

So, the topic to this thread is odd, and I may change it before I post it if I think of a better title (in which case this line won't exist... paradox!), but I was having a hard time trying to sum up what it is this thread is about.

I suppose the best way to go about this is to just explain what the hell I'm going on about.

When i saw Tore post his "I'm back" thread, it occured to me that vast majority of users who were here when I first started posting are no longer here, with some notable exceptions, the end result being most active users probably have no clue who on earth this crazy irish person is. I went looking for my original "introduction" thread - which is a barrel of laughs, in itself - but was distracted by a number of other threads that I saw lurking at the bottom of my search. Threads like This. My first reaction was disbelief, then horror. Did I really post like that back in 2006? Was I really that much of a prat only 4 years ago? This question was quickly followed by another: Did I really think like that only four years ago?

Now, I don't know about you all, but whenever I think back on the way I used to think, I (think :P) I used to think in roughly the same manner that I think now. As a result, I can never see how immature I was at any stage, because I always felt mature for my age, and I can't remember how I thought. It's an interesting little problem, to say the least. Before this era of rampant technology, finding out what you were really like a few years ago must have been quite a difficult prospect. But then along came online forums, and regular posting over long periods of time, and WOW did we give ourselves a way of embarrassing ourselves in the future.

I did this same sort of check recently on another forum that I've posted much more regularly on in the last 4 years (though I joined it 6 months after this one), and the effect was much more interesting, due to the continuous posting. I could actually tell what I was doing and where I was not by the timestamp, but simply by the way that i posted. I had thought that I did most of my growing up before I was 17, but it's astonishing looking at exactly how much I've changed as a poster, as a person in these 4 years. And not only that, but how it's been a continuous change over that time. Yeah, there's been an epiphany or two over the time, when i can say "that's when I started really being myself" or "that's when I realised who i really was", but overall, the maturity and the change in my posting has been a gradual process.

The other thing I find interesting is how quickly we lose sight of what it is to be like we once were. Having been a moderator on this other forum for 3 years now, I find it slightly horrifying that I used to post in such a way; were I to see someone posting like that now, I'd be hard pressed not to smack them around the head for posting like a total idiot. And yet, I thought I was mature for my age. That's a scary thought. Was I actually mature for my age, or did I just think I was, and in reality I was just as bad if not worse? Was it that I let loose on the forums because I knew I probably wouldn't meet most of the people I was talking to? If it's the first, I should really apologise to pretty much everyone I knew back then, cause if there's one thing worse than a prat, it's a stuck up prat who thinks he's better than the other prats.

The point of this thread is really in three parts. The first is because I needed to say this, cause I found it so crazy. The second is because I'm interested to see if other people who have posted here over an extended period of time feel the same way about their ancient posts. The third is to ask the people who have been here since the start, How bad was I, really? Did you think I was an alright person, or did I annoy the hell out of all of you?