Bulldrek v3.0

So, Animalball is closing down, with its administrators moving to a more family-friendly set of forums. Yeah, I know: a lot of people left Animalball years ago because it was already too "family" for you childless heathens. "Really? Recipes and what your kids are doing this week? Fuck this, I'm going to Twitter," was, in an early poll, the most frequent response. From Dutch people, anyway.

But Animalball traffic has been down lately - seriously, to within some orders of magnitude of traffic here! - largely owing to a couple of factors. Firstly, the administration has been in absentia for a while now [you all remember what that's like, right?], with Kyle leaving to work on his novel and never really coming back, and Mike presumably having slightly better things to do. Secondly, after many long years of hard work, of blood, sweat, tears, and other 60s jazz-pop-rock bands, I finally stomped the last two people on the internet who disagreed with me into snail snot. I win the internets! I win the internets! After clearly proving to everyone everywhere that my my unfounded opinions and unresearched speculations were superior to anyone else's, conversation dropped precipitously. I guess the absence of traffic-driving posters like Sal, Marius, Paul, Kyle, Mike, Zen, etc., and the lack of anyone really very stupid to pick on - like Chair Graveyard - might have had some effect, as well, but clearly, as usual, I am the single most important factor.

So what happens now? Well, apparently, nothing. I wound up my efforts for a full-scale resurgence of Bulldrek - we could call it The Return! - re-enabling registrations and tidying up code that had been left hanging for, you know, decades. This has required many hours of effort on my part - first, remembering what "coding" is, and later spending 30-40 hours a day deleting spam registrations from the board - and the results have been absolutely staggering. Since the news broke, a total of absolutely no one has registered for Bulldrek.

Does that mean no one will, or that none of our members save Jeff, Bone and I will be here more often? No, but yeah, probably. Maybe SDQ will come over, and with her, maybe Ray. Maybe Marius and Sal will come back; a very quiet forum full of people who already know every position you hold is perhaps superior to no forum at all. But I honestly don't know what might happen beyond this speculation.

For my own part, I'll be fucked if I join a "family-friendly" forum where I can't, you know, express myself freely. While I have little inclination to swear and talk about funky sex acts, the restriction of speech is something I have very, very little tolerance for. So I'll be here [and on Freespeech, for whatever good that might do] for the foreseeable future. I would rather talk freely to the three or four of you then speak with restrictions to what will essentially be the Jones Family Nerdforum. I love the Jones family, mind you, but this just isn't for me, so they can go fuck a pile of radioactive dirt, because if I don't like it, it's clearly fucking bullshit.

What can you do? Say something. Say anything. Sound off. Start a fight. Tell a friend. Bring new registrations with people who won't shut up, or who have shitty, stupid opinions. Give us all someone to talk to, or fight with, whether that's you or some other tool. We could totally let this be the End of All Things, but I don't support that. Maybe it's pissing in the wind, but if I'm going to be covered in urine, I'd prefer it be here, where I'm used to showering off.

Animalball is dead. Long live Bulldrek!

Short of a few gaming related forums, I just think forum traffic overall is much lower...unless it is a forum related to some specific game, media source (book/movie/whatever), or political theme. Outside of the folks I keep up with on Facebook, I've let a whole lot of my online acquaintances (and real life ones) go. I largely haven't made new ones. So it's tough to drag in new personalities, as I think I'm not the only one who has done that. The folks who do tend to be the outgoing folks who bring in new faces...well, they're Eva and Jim and all them. They're actually out doing stuff.

Yeah, my impression is that, overall, new 'net users are taking their conversations to Facebook and other mega-scale sites, which would be fine, except that these sites don't suit my own personal needs: they make conversation with depth and interaction very difficult [by forcing short posts and not including quoting features], and they don't sort by any sort of interests beyond shared social connections. Bulldrek doesn't have a "focus," per se, but it came from a bunch of roleplayers, and thus we all have more in common than, say, my Facebook friends, whose only connection is that they all know me somehow.

It's too bad. Forums did me, and my writing skill, and my ability to research with the internet, a lot of good. I wonder what effects - good and bad - increased participation in social-oriented social networking will have on intellectual development. I'll tell you one interesting, and quite possibly unrelated fact: 18-year-olds today can't speak, write, or think for shit. Some of that is schools, some of that is sample bias [urban community college], but some of it is definitely technology. I've seen some of this in Ana, but, being my child, she's not really getting the full "Twitter, cable television, texting" effect of being a modern teenager: she reads these lo-tech information sources called "books," which changes her thinking somewhat. And certainly, to some degree, the perception is an artifact of me being old, and having spent a decade writing millions of words a year, but...damn if all my professors haven't had to give lectures and write emails about "the proper way to communicate ideas." I don't really remember that from my first run at college.

Nothing else matters: SumDumQuim is in the hizzie.

TA DA BITCHES!! Your forum overall IQ just took a header!!

That's okay: without Marius, we were around 4 or 5, anyway.

And now we have "Mike," and I'm not sure that's an adjustment I can make.

I couldn't remember Bethyaga's password, and I'm sure I signed up for it with an email account that no longer exists.

Had I been thinking, I could have just had 32 reset the email and password for me, but I didn't think of it til just now.

Here's my explanation of what's happening.

Part 1: Kyle and I created Animalball when both of us had kids who were too little to be involved with this sort of stuff. Now it's nine years later. My online life has always been a big thing for me. I loved being a part of Bulldrek. I loved Animalball. But my kids are the biggest part of my life, and over the last few years, I've found that I really want to share my games and my forums and my podcasts and everything else with my kids, and I've tried. But I can only do so most times in very awkward ways. Animalball is not an appropriate place for minors. The Animalcast was also not appropriate for minors. When Gygax became old enough, I told him I had no problem with HIM signing up for Animalball and starting to participate, but not his friends, because they're all minors, and I can't make that decision for someone else's children. But my online life has consisted of how many millions of words over how many different forums over the years, why wouldn't I want to bring my children into that process.

Part 2: What makes an online forum successful? In my experience, it's been having a core community who are on board and who are all excited every day to stop in and contribute and see what's going on. It's been a lot of work over the last nine years to make sure Animalball maintained that, and all credit for it goes to my brother Kyle. Sure, I helped, but he was the core of it. We started stupid forum gimmicks that were fun for us and kept people coming back every day. We played games. We started a podcast. We made concerted efforts to post up regular new topics when things were flagging. If stuff got too serious, we boosted the number of goofy threads. When the silliness got out of hand, we tried to find serious topics that we were actually interested in that could get conversation going. Once Kyle left, most of that stopped. Keeping the core energized gets harder and harder when they keep drifting away. What Animalball needed was new membership. And I knew exactly where I could find a half-dozen intelligent and eager new members who could revitalize stuff, and I considered trying to change the tone and Animalball and bring them all there, but logistically there was no way to make it work. Trust me on this. These are all high schoolers, but still minors, and Animalball is decidedly for adults. The only way for me was to create something new. So I did.

So I've created a new home, and I've invited everyone to come into my home and have fun, but y'know... there's kids around, so don't do anything too inappropriate. I'm wildly excited about this and having a great time. For me, it is wonderful to once again be in a position of being excited every time I log onto my forums just to see what everyone has done since I left. It's awesome.

For those of you who feel it's all or nothing, who feel that you can't visit a place where you might have to mind your manners... I'm sorry. I love all of you, and I hope you'll stop by someday. But that's up to you.

What I don't want is the animosity. And I hope that passes. We lost the Netherlands contingent a long time ago, and that was really sad. They left largely because of Angel and Lucy (I think), but in their parting, they made it clear (or at least Eva did) that they hate Animalball and everything it stands for, and by extension resented me and Kyle for creating and allowing this. They were the ones who left because it was all about cooking tips and Kyle's kids.

And hell, before that, we lost Adam Jury and Kai and a few others back in the first year or so of Animalball, and trust me--they all hate Animalball, and they hate the people responsible for it (although mostly Kyle, I think).

We also lost big forum movers in Angel, Lucy, Thorn, Riggah, and Zircher (among others whose names escape me at the moment)... all of them leaving because of the constant debate/conflict on the boards. Some of them brought stuff on themselves, but that's still why they left. And some of them (Angel most strongly) left on a note of serious and clear resentment towards Animalball in general and me and Kyle in particular.

For anyone who chooses not to come to my new forums, I understand. And I'm sorry for those of you who feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you. But Animalball's been fading for a long time. It's run its course, and it hasn't been regularly fun for me for a long time. Now I have a way to marry my online life with my family life, and it is fun and exciting and I'm taking full advantage of it. I can't apologize for that. If anyone really feels they can't be any part of that, but they can find a home here at Bulldrek or elsewhere, then I'm very happy for you. That's awesome. I just hate to see the animosity. I've been through it plenty of times before, and it makes me sad.

Ever have a day when it feels like a good time to fall back into bad habits? Hello, world.

Doesn't really bug me either way. I switched out Animalball for NPR, and I'll just need to be a little less blunt over there. Probably a good thing, as I've been trying to avoid that in the last few years. I've been checking BD most of this time as well, but with the low traffic it's tough not to rehash what many of us have already discussed. We also lost some previously prolific posters. I'll be happy to see traffic pick up here again, if that does indeed happen.

Hooray for return to Bulldrek.

Also? I have a place where I have to mind my manners, it's called THE REST OF MY LIFE.

Mike wrote:What I don't want is the animosity. And I hope that passes. ... I just hate to see the animosity. I've been through it plenty of times before, and it makes me sad.

There's no animosity here, man. It's life. Things change, you cope. I understand why you're making this change and I wish you the best of luck with it. But being mindful of children in an environment that you have come to consider a place to unwind and speak your mind is just not something that particularly appeals to me or SDT (or SDQorwhateverthefucknameshepickedthistime).

Thanks for making me feel welcome to come by your new place, but I think you'll get along perfectly fine over there without us. I'm sure some of you will be very happy not to have to deal with our pottymouths, alcoholism, and questionable senses of humor. Who knows. Maybe some day we will learn to mind our manners and drop by. Until then, I do very much hope that you'll swing by here whenever you feel the need to discuss more adulty things or cuss in a relatively uncontrolled manner.

I also have no resentment/animosity. Except I never got a blow job. That kinda stings.

Mike wrote:What I don't want is the animosity.

Despite the fact that I so often do, I can't really speak for anyone else, but I don't personally have any animosity toward you or Kyle*. Yes, there are some decisions I don't agree with - Why close Animalball? Does this have to be a zero-sum game? And why can't it [and its previous incarnation] remain as archival? - but that doesn't mean I feel animosity, only confusion, and a slight burning from whence I pee.

You know, if the problem is that Kyle doesn't want to pay for a server he wouldn't be using anymore, there are solutions for that, like archiving the boards on a server which is going to be running anyway, like, say, NPR, or right damned here. We host three live forums, just like you've been hosting one live board and one archived board; why couldn't Animalball's totals simply be added to one of ours? Sure, putting Animalball on freespeech-alpha.com might seem like an uncommon act of trust and faith, but putting them on nerdprideradio.com? Why not?

Anyway, I'm really just filling time because Ray already said all of the stuff I meant - really, I thought about just +1ing his post, or just wholesale quoting it here - and we still have ten minutes of airtime before Robot Chicken comes on. Uh, so, I guess, let me fill some time with dumplings:



I fucking love Bulldrek.

*I do have some animosity toward civility, which might be what you're picking up if you're picking up animosity from me, which you may well not be. Not civility, obviously, per se, but rather having to be civil when I don't want to be. That's perfect for your circumstance, but it's also exactly what I founded Bulldrek to escape from. You're a better master than Dvixen, but I which to be no one's servant in this way.

Raygun wrote:...SDT (or SDQorwhateverthefucknameshepickedthistime).

Hey, she picked SDQ last time, too, but some people don't like vaginas. Which is an extra ironic joke when you realize that two of the women who objected, as I recall, actually like vaginas rather a lot.

Wait, really? How did I miss that? Was that actually the reason for the name change? Somebody complained about it?

Jeff Hauze wrote:Wait, really? How did I miss that? Was that actually the reason for the name change? Somebody complained about it?

Yeah, but I don't think particularly seriously. As I recall, it was more like when people made Paul change his avatar from the fingernail-peeling or whatever; it just made people shudder, so she actually went through a bit of a faff getting it changed [which, as I recall, administration had to do, because namechanges aren't enabled over there...or here, thank heavens]. But I don't think it was like, "I hearby protest to this woman's use of that disdainful term!"

Astonishingly, she chose the name in the first place to "harass" Ray, who didn't know what quim meant. Uncultured asshat.

Yeah, I remember that. Funny shit.

Wait, Bulldrek was dead? I hadn't noticed.

Not ever. Well, maybe the once. But not again!

NEVAR AGAIN!!! Pinkie swear.

3278 wrote: *I do have some animosity toward civility, which might be what you're picking up if you're picking up animosity from me, which you may well not be. Not civility, obviously, per se, but rather having to be civil when I don't want to be. That's perfect for your circumstance, but it's also exactly what I founded Bulldrek to escape from. You're a better master than Dvixen, but I which to be no one's servant in this way.

Oh jesus effin' christ man!

Mike wrote:For anyone who chooses not to come to my new forums, I understand. And I'm sorry for those of you who feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you. But Animalball's been fading for a long time. It's run its course, and it hasn't been regularly fun for me for a long time. Now I have a way to marry my online life with my family life, and it is fun and exciting and I'm taking full advantage of it. I can't apologize for that. If anyone really feels they can't be any part of that, but they can find a home here at Bulldrek or elsewhere, then I'm very happy for you. That's awesome. I just hate to see the animosity. I've been through it plenty of times before, and it makes me sad.

I'm torn.

On the one hand, I swear a lot. Like, a lot. More than I should. My quota of fucks per post would almost assuredly not fly on NPR. And there's, you know, kids, and if there's one thing being closer to 30 than 20 has taught me, it's that kids are fucking retarded, until proven otherwise.

And yet, the notion that I could be to Gygax (or somebody's) as Deev was to me - young enough to be taken seriously and not all respectful to, old enough to be able to say "seriously, trust me on this, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about" - that's kind of appealing.

I'm torn.

3278 wrote:

Jeff Hauze wrote:Wait, really? How did I miss that? Was that actually the reason for the name change? Somebody complained about it?

Yeah, but I don't think particularly seriously. As I recall, it was more like when people made Paul change his avatar from the fingernail-peeling or whatever; it just made people shudder, so she actually went through a bit of a faff getting it changed [which, as I recall, administration had to do, because namechanges aren't enabled over there...or here, thank heavens]. But I don't think it was like, "I hearby protest to this woman's use of that disdainful term!"

Astonishingly, she chose the name in the first place to "harass" Ray, who didn't know what quim meant. Uncultured asshat.

Man, before that I didn't even know the word to apply any meaning to it. "Quim? What, like an old-fashioned pen? Why would pirates cuss about pens? Pffft. That's dumb."

No one complained about it, at least not that I'm aware of. SumDumTrim was the original name she had way back in the AOL days (until they figured out what that meant and blocked it), so it was like the perfect storm to sign up on Animalball with SumDumQuim in order to make me feel like a dumbass for not knowing all the vulgar slang relating to vaginas. Then she changed it back to Trim. Now she changed it back again. *shrug*

I never resented Animallball or its founders. It just became boring as all hell. I used to be all about flogging a dead horse, but now I realise that sometimes things just fade away. I think Mike made the right decision to refocus his attention on something new and put Animalball out of its misery. Perhaps its death will bring new fertility to Bullldrek, which totally contradicts about me not floggin a dead horse, ha ha.

Anyway, bring it on.

Raygun wrote:No one complained about it, at least not that I'm aware of. SumDumTrim was the original name she had way back in the AOL days (until they figured out what that meant and blocked it), so it was like the perfect storm to sign up on Animalball with SumDumQuim in order to make me feel like a dumbass for not knowing all the vulgar slang relating to vaginas. Then she changed it back to Trim. Now she changed it back again. *shrug*

1. The AOL name was SumDumCnt.
2. No one complained that I remember, I was riffing off of Kyle and changed it to shame him.
3. I can't post picture threads or recipes here? Suck. But I can learn to live with it.

SumDumQuim wrote:3. I can't post picture threads or recipes here? Suck. But I can learn to live with it.

You can post anything you want. Trust me, picture threads or recipes don't come close to the annoying nature of the Elf's smilie bomb posts or Cain posting up pi to like a thousand digits. Over and over again.

Jeff Hauze wrote:or Cain posting up pi to like a thousand digits. Over and over again.

Although to be fair, that's the one time 32 put his foot down and limited somebody. But not because he didn't like what was posted, but because it was breaking the boards.

But yeah, Jeff's right. You're not just here for the right to say fuck and cunt. You're here for the freedom to post whatever makes you happy. If someone has a problem with your recipes, they'll tell you. (And of course you're free to tell them to fuck off and just keep doing it anyway... or not. The choice is yours.)

I have a problem with her recipes... i don't get to eat any of'em!

You don't get to eat anybody's recipes, including Betty Crocker. As soon as you touch it, you end up with malformed, burnt toast, probably with some sort of snack food mixed in, that it no way resembles the original recipe.

SumDumQuim wrote:1. The AOL name was SumDumCnt.

Oh yeah. Then you changed it to Trim, or am I inadvertently making that up as well?

3. I can't post picture threads or recipes here? Suck. But I can learn to live with it.

There's a bunch of picture threads in the Artistic License forum already. Jeff and 32 contributed a lot of recipe stuff over on Animalball, so I doubt they're gonna throw a fit about it if you post some here.

Just about anything goes here. Breaking the site isn't tolerated, but short of that, this is a successful experiment in Anarchy and self policing. It's still a bit of an anthropological quandary, however.

Eliahad wrote:It's still a bit of an anthropological quandary, however.

Yeah, what Mr. Smartypants said. It's anteaterprofessional.

SumDumQuim wrote:And Eli is here? WINNING!!!!!

No. I'm the bookie, I collect all winnings. I win.

Bethyaga wrote:

Jeff Hauze wrote:or Cain posting up pi to like a thousand digits. Over and over again.

Although to be fair, that's the one time 32 put his foot down and limited somebody. But not because he didn't like what was posted, but because it was breaking the boards.

That's not quite how it went down. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I had a completely different recollection of those events altogether.

Quim, I'm going to make a post in the next few days that'll help clarify things for newcomers, 'cause this has just reminded me that a lot of the new people who've joined - Zombie and Pdyx in the hizzie, my nizzie! - haven't necessarily been here before. But in brief, let me say that I believe so strongly in freedom of expression that I let my worst enemy break the board that I and 200 of my closest friends had made our home for 5 or so years, and my action was to negotiate he voluntarily edit the offending threads.

Which, of course, isn't really what you were asking: you were jokingly wondering if people were going to metaphorically scalp you for talking about recipes and shit, and to that my answer is: probably not. People here are really good about just not reading threads they're not interested in. Which doesn't stop them from coming into your thread and telling you they're not interested in it, or you, or your fungus casserole, but that's the price for freedom of speech.

I'm really looking forward to recipes, personally.

What about your mispelling "wish", bitch? Don't act like I didn't catch you in the act!

Sorry, sorry! I saw your post, and didn't get around to making the excuse that if you wrote a few hundred words on a 3.7 inch touchscreen, it's not impossible you'd have an errant auto-correct error you didn't catch.

Just so long as you can spell target market correctly.

J-E-F-F-I-E?

3278 wrote:Sorry, sorry! I saw your post, and didn't get around to making the excuse that if you wrote a few hundred words on a 3.7 inch touchscreen, it's not impossible you'd have an errant auto-correct error you didn't catch.

Horse shit, excuses. Excuses. MAN UP SON!

Well aint this a welcome si(gh)t(e)!

3278 wrote:J-E-F-F-I-E?

And don't you forget it, son.

I need a spoon.

Could someone please point me to where I said I hate(d) Animalball? I have a godawful memory and I'd really like to see it. I went to Animalball just now to see if I could find it, but the user 'Eva' doesn't exist there anymore so my options for search are limited.

I think I sent both Kyle and Mike a private message about this at one point (again, can't look this up right now) but for once and for all: I don't now hate Animalball and I never have. It was fun. I had a great time. It became boring. I left. You may have seen me do this on Bulldrek too. That's all there's to it.

Again, I unfortunately don't remember what I said when. I certainly used to be a lot less polished and I'm not excluding the possibility that I said something mean to someone at some point. I just don't remember doing it and can't imagine meaning it.

Well, you still very much exist at Animalball, but that's beside the point.

It was mostly what you said over here, but maybe I read too much into it. You made it clear you were never going back to Animalball (which you have stuck to). Then when you got here, you said what you really wanted was for people to post more on Bulldrek. Then you clarified and said what you really meant was that you wanted people to post more than on Animalball. Additionally, you commented that you were pleased with the exodus. Exodus being a "flight from somewhere," I took that to mean you were happy to see people abandoning Animalball. I interpreted all that as animosity towards Animalball.

I was hurt by it at the time, but I admit that maybe I read more into it than was there, especially since you don't remember ever being bitter with AB. Maybe it was just me.

And I didn't comment on it, because I never want to stir up inter-forum rivalry. We've all been one community for a long time, and even though there's occasional bitterness and arguments, I never want to encourage any sort of "us vs. them" mentality. 32 has put his heart and soul into this place, and it has been a huge part of who I am. I know he's always wanted a true Bulldrek renaissance, and I really hope that he gets it. It's been sad to see it so slow for so long.

You never wanted to stir up an inter-forum rivalry?

Speaking of which...

Clicky!