The RMMB and this website for local women planning their wedding is the only two message boards I visit with frequency. Thanks to the getting married board I have made two very good friends that were both at my wedding. I'll second everyone else that was surprised at the shutdown of the RMMB. I have made a couple of good friendships through that board, friendships I never would've had if I hadn't opened my mind up to posting personal shit on a message board. There are a handful of people from the RMMB that I have on Facebook and they're given access to the same information that my friends are privy to. I must say tho, I am very thankful to the assorted few I've chosen to befriend. One helped me get through a rough patch in my marriage, one is keeping my hopes up about a move to his neck of the woods, one is such a sweet girl and was my sounding board during my husband's depressive days. I have a close circle of friends on both coasts but I'd say the deviants I've met on here and bonded with have enriched that close circle. There, that's my little mushy post of the day.
This is noticeable for me. I'm definitely much funnier and more able to express myself clearly than before I found the TMMB. Admittedy, might not be the highest benchmark, but you get the idea. When you have to put every sentence in writing so that it will be understood by others in a concise fashion and possibly make them laugh, it makes you put a lot more work into thinking about word economy, choice, sentence structure, argument form, etc. I agree with what Phil said about testing out material. You know how when talking about liberal arts education, they say it teaches you how to think? It's sort of like that. I'm unequivocally a smarter and more analytical person than I otherwise would have been. Like SvP said, it might have practically done so moreso than my actual university education. That, and a better repository of poop and dick jokes. I have the exact same thing. I always get a weird feeling when I share a link or relate a story from here (I'm sort of known for that amongst a few of my friends), and someone asks me where I saw it/read it. "Uh....don't remember." Why I feel the need to do this is 2010 is beyond me. I remember when I found out that my ex perused the old site. Not as in checking up on me. Just independently. Weirded me out. For some reason, I like to pretend that my real life is separate from my online life. Not that I act substantially different, but any intersection between them makes me a little uneasy. My best guess is that yes, I subconsciously feel like Internet communities still carry a stigma: they're something that guys who play too much WoW and look like Kevin Smith do. Again, why in 2010, when any intelligent person knows otherwise? Beats me. Admit it. It's all about the poop. The rest is just filler.
Okay, without a doubt I am weird and neurotic and if appearances are to be believed then I'm not as debauched as most of the people on the board. My constant nerding out should make that pretty clear. As for the weird Indian guy with glasses banging someone from the chess team? I'd rather not turn this into a laundry list of complaints about the people I go to school with. Sure, there are going to be people who appear to be buttoned down who are whores. Then there are people who, for example, hyperventilate and giggle and chatter like 12 year olds when a matchmaker survey asks them in highly euphemistic terms if they prefer to be on top or on the bottom during sex How do they know that I'm not one of them? Well, I am known to sometimes write about these issues in the school paper (i.e. how can someone be qualified to educate about sex and contraception if they can't handle hearing about the basic anatomy of sex). I could come up with further defenses but that's the biggest way people who don't know me would know that I don't hyperventilate when a piece of paper asks me about sex. As for not talking about my sex life with mutual friends; it's sort of a good point you've made. I guess it's sort of the culture that's developed among the people I go to school with. My girlfriend, for example, doesn't even talk about sex with her roommate and best friend, who only found out we have sex because she saw her take her birth control a few months back. Other people can weigh in but I gather that's somewhat unusual. And this is limited to my circle of school friends. I spend my summers away with work and I've shared more than a few high fives (with girls, even) when someone got laid on a weekend.
Here's the thing though: one rarely opens up a bar conversation with dead baby jokes. Well, maybe some of you do. That would actually not surprise me. But back to the point, people here let the below-the-surface parts of their personalities hang out a bit more online. In person, upon initial meetings, most people are polite, maybe a little timid, sort of boring. It's the nature of small talk and social protocol. Here, people are willing to launch into conversations about their anal sex mishaps to strangers, largely because they're behind the guise of anonymity and they know ahead of time that they are amongst like-minded people. Normally, it takes a bit of feeling out before you do that in normal interaction.
This is literally the only message board I use. I'd say the main thing is what drew me to the RMMB, brought me here. No smileys, no loling, none of the typical internet bullshit. 9/10 people on here have coherent, thoughtful and often insightful things to say. That being said, boards like this are for killing time to me. I never sit down thinking, 'well, it's my time for my daily dose of TiB!' At the same time, working behind a desk, this is the only human interaction I get some days. Right now for example, I'm waiting on 400 megs of files to transfer to a client. My experience from meeting people on here has been planning to meet up for drinks some common location in Georgia, me getting drunk before and it never happening. One board member in particular I was gonna meet up at a football game. I had the directions all written down on a pizza box and was ready to go the night before. Unfortunately, the drive never happened as the chick and I that were going up there with got way too drunk the night before, and ended up watching the game on TV. Still kinda bummed about that, sorry man (she was really hot and yes I got laid). My experience on MySpace (this was before Face Book) was awful. Any chick that has sex off the internet I found has been crazy. One in particular ended up being a psycho after we'd been banging around and I cut it off. She starts harassing my friends and my ex, thinking I'd been banging her, and sends an explicit email about all the fucking that'd been going on. I don't use those sites anymore. I don't trust any man that says he's on a social networking site (i.e. Face Book MySpace) for anything other than trolling for ass. I was a founding member of one of the first Madden football online leagues. It actually lasted till about a year ago, which in internet nerd time is pretty impressive (I stopped playing a few years ago). I met up with one of the guys from that down here in Orlando. The night consisted of awkward conversation, me hitting on asian chicks at club Paris, me getting hammered on 3-for-1 drinks, and me pissing into a cup in the parking garage while sitting in his passenger seat. We never hung out again. Moral of these stories? Don't hang out with people you meet off the internet, they could end up being like me.
In my 20's I had a solid 12-15 joke set of dead babies jokes that I would constantly bring out in bars, specifically to women. When I was in college it was because I was an idiot and thought offending 18 year old girls was funny and it made me the 'edgy' guy, in B-School it was because I used it as a litmus test to find girls who I considered had a sense of humor from those who only cared about their career and future status and then when working in Banking I would use it simply because it would amuse me endlessly the whoreishness of some women that I could be incredibly offensive but they would pay no attention as I was in a suit. In each stage of my life dead baby jokes held an important function in my social life. I guess my point in a rambling way is dead baby jokes will always serve a function as a conversation starter, that function is up to you, but ignoring this utility is doing yourself a disservice.
This. Meeting people from boards is great and all for some but sooner or later you're going to run across a freak of some kind, just like in real life. But, in normal life you don't know the things about them they've divulged on that board. Sure it came turn out perfectly fine, most times, but what about that times its not? It's not anything I'm interested in for many reasons, I'm older than most of you being near the top. This is the only board I post to. Many years ago I was part of one for a local radio station at the time, admin even as I knew one of the DJ's personally but it was no where near what the old and this one is like. It was too skewed, part of the draw here, to me, is the variety of both topics and posters/posts. As for me relaying tales or whatever from here to my friends, nope. Due to my age if nothing else, I fear they'd laugh me out of town. You cannot explain this place, you can only experience it, to what degree you're willing to is the issue.
TiB is only one of two message boards that I frequent. The other is for an online game that I play, and I usually only check up on that board when I have some question that needs to be answered. That message board is full of smilies, LOLs, text speak, and other atrocities that make me want to take a spoon to my eyes. My feelings towards TiB are multifaceted. I feel like this is a close-knit community and that is attractive. There are a few members who wander in and never come back, but for the most part, you have people who post weekly. You get a feel for each others' personalities and viewpoints. It's kind of like an internet pow-wow. I also feel like this board is much better than TMMB, because there were a lot of douchey frat boy types that were attracted to the Tucker persona that found his site and message board. When TMMB dissolved and TiB was created, the core members stayed and the chaff fell away. On the other hand, TiB is a major time waster for me. I have an excessive amount of free time during the day and TiB is partially an answer for that. There is relatively stimulating conversation here, and I don't feel quite like my brain is rotting. I'm not sure that I would meet anyone from this board. I might consider a group outing, but that's the extent of it. I admit that I have met people from the internet world in real life. Some were weird, some were nice. One was really nice; he is now my boyfriend. However, none of my family members know this. My close knit friends do, but we share everything (yes, I even talk to them about my poop).
As a couple of you may have noticed, the TMMB, and now the TiB, have functioned mostly as an escape for me. I post in bunches, sometimes not for weeks, then frequently for a few days. I like the funny. I enjoy some of the heavier discussions, but honestly, I'm involved in heavy discussions all day. The TiB is where I come when I need to relax and have a laugh. At one time I was also active on a couple of other boards, at the invite of old RMMB members, but I lost interest. I've met two people off the RMMB, Thapa and Suapyg. Both were good guys, and very interesting people in their own ways, and I'm glad I initiated the contact. There have also been a couple of other people that I kept in touch with via e-mail for a couple of years, but that has since petered out. Meeting people off of message boards is like fucking people you work with - use discretion and good judgement, and it can be a rewarding experience. However, all of this is part of my "secret life". Unlike many of you, I have the generation gap to deal with. If I told most of my friends or family that I had actually met any of you derelicts they would think I was out of my mind. Most people my age assume there is only one reason a 43 year old guy would want to hang on a message board, much less meet people from those boards. And while I may occasionally try to imagine what Shegirl's boobs actually look like, hooking up with any of you isn't why I'm here. Which some people may think is even more strange than being here in the first place.
Do you remember the clusterfuck that someone already mentioned was the TMMB/RMMB event? Between that and what was said after the tour about many of the members at the stops, I'm scared.
I say it is still a little hard to relate what Ive experience here to people who don't frequent message boards. I here a lot of good ideas and positions on a wide range of topics here and when those topics come up in real life conversations with friends it can be awkward relating how I heard of them. More recently some of my friends have been getting big into sports boards and blogs. They've started referencing online people and have actually started hanging out at sporting events with these other superfans (fat balding middle aged alums who are still hard core into the sports thing). This is the only board I frequent. I check out IGNs boards from time to time when I have a video game question I want to see if they have covered. Most of the time it is a clusterfuck. I want to join the INstrength board and get back to working out at full tilt again but that forum never seems to be that active. Whats really odd is seeing my retired mother getting into the whole facebook/gmail culture with her age group. She got a mac for christmas and took a few genius bar classes at the mac store and is a whizz at sharing all the latest youtube video clips with her pottery friends and such. There seems to be about a month lag between when I see them and when she will show me, "this funny video I just found." I won't lie, like others have said here, I kind of like having something to myself (or for my age bracket at least) and it feels weird having her on the same page in a pop culture sense. I refuse to "friends" her on facebook, and she kind of feels the same way about it. This was kind of sealed after I had to de-friends my aunt, her sister, for prying a little to much about my facebook content.
For me, TiB cannot replace real life but Facebook and WoW can. "Keeping up" with new TiB topics takes 5 minutes every 3 days. You can usually join in on topics even after a few days since it was originally posted. "Keeping up" on Facebook with 300-500 people's status updates takes at least 1 hour everyday. If you respond to one of their status updates from a week ago, it may be a little awkward. (Last year, I actually missed a whole IM-like convo of one of my friend's pictures since I was at the library studying during Finals: in between 4 people, 40 comments were posted in the course of 2 hours). One of the reasons I found facebook addicting is that I felt "left out" if I didn't participate in everything I wanted to because I wasn't on it enough (that my real-life friendship with a friend would be worth less to them). Then, the more time I spent, the more likely I would find another real life friend on it, requiring me to spend even more time on it. http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html This was posted on RMMB last July in case anyone missed it.
Ahem. I present to you exhibit A. And part of the point I'm trying to make, Sack, is that people get too involved and begin to take a messageboard far far too seriously. Huffing and puffing as the bang away on their keyboard in yet another retard slapfight.
I don't really care for message boards and to be honest for a while I was hell bent against joining this one. Having never been on RMMB, knowing it was Tucker's board and that this new one was basically a lot of the old members I thought I'd hate it. Now I have nothing against Tucker I think the guy is hilarious, but I expected the old board (and to a degree this one) to be a bunch of adoring fans jerking each other off with stories where they attempted to recreate some of his adventures. I was prodded into signing up here and thankfully I was wrong. The vast majority of you are retarded and some of you are jerking off a lot, but thats part of what makes it so great. It's been a pretty eye opening place. Does it consume my life? No. But it's there when I need it. Focus: TiB has really been growing on me and I find it to be a great source of entertainment every now and then. Like someone mentioned before, you don't have that many places out there where you can get so many varying opinions about pretty much any topic you want with witty, meaningful and intelligent feedback. Plus you had a boobie & bootie thread so how the fuck do I say no right?
You should be. I've met several members from the board in real life too (all female). None of which I would consider normal. Several of them had such deep problems it scared me. But all of them were fun! I think this had to do with our love for alcohol. I drink because I like to get drunk. They drank to cover up deep seeded personal problems. I only keep in touch with two of the girls now, and it is via facebook. We all came from Ohio, and now live in different parts of the US. No, I won't get into specific stories, and no I won't give user names. I'm probably one of the few people still here that enjoyed the RMMB more than TiB. The RMMB was driven by two things mainly, funny things and story telling. You had to be able to tell a funny story or you had no business there. It got me through long days at a job I hated. I didn't need the social aspect of it. I just liked laughing. Then it degraded into a PC website with such threads as "List your morning routine", and "what flavor of gatorade do you like best". Chater lets this board run much more like a social club than Tucker did. Which is fine by me, it isn't my website so I'm not going to tell him how to run it. I was pretty attached to the RMMB around 06/07 when the community thrived, and the thread topics hadn't gone south yet. I just prefer funny, well written stories, more than inside jokes and drinking by myself while I post in a thread about it. You also couldn't post in a thread unless you had something funny, or something relevant to say. That rule doesn't seem to exist here. Could I live without the TiB? Yes, but the work day would become way less tolerable. And I make it a rule not to talk about it to any of my friends. I got made fun of a lot when I told people I learned something on the RMMB. Now I just pretend like I found it on some news website.
Wait- are yall telling me that you assholes are REAL PEOPLE?!? I'd always assumed that I was just talking to some of those animatronic things from, say, Disney World or Chuck E. Cheese, and have just been constantly amazed at how smart Bill Gates and Al Gore have made the internet to make it talk back to me when I wanted to share pictures of my boat. I'll be damned.
I actually like the way this board is run more than TMMB. Sure, there are a few nitwits here and there that say something asinine, but it's not as prevalent as with TMMB (back to the whole obnoxious fanboy thing). I feel like this board is more relaxed and people aren't as ready to jump on each other. I rarely posted at the other board; this place is much more inviting.