(Continued from previous page. . .)
But some of the old-timers, who assumed ‘hierarchy’ implied that their status as long-serving posters meant the ‘old ways’ of the boards were still acceptable for them to use, started to get unstuck as the mods would give temp bans and have a conversation with them in Forum Feedback about their conduct and that sometimes got a bit ugly.
Role-playing began to creep onto the boards around this time, too. There was a lot of ‘huggling’ going on and ‘throwing things’ at each other etc.
I had found a great allegiance with Sham, RJ and Psyphun.
We would be in threads and silliness would happen and we’d remind people that it was only a message board, and to stop taking it all seriously and basically to just ‘keep it real’.
This was fast becoming a daily occurrence when me, Sham, RJ and Psyphun would all be in threads and end up ‘engaging’ posters who liked to give others a hard time, so we’d, as we used to say, ‘own them’, then they’d run off to the mods crying about us. It really did become a spectator sport, with other posters calling us ‘The Four Horsemen’.
To cut a long story short, RPing was banned, which really upset a small group of posters, and they ended up leaving and creating their own message boards and no one else was allowed on there. They would plan to come and ‘own’ ‘The Four Horsemen’ by creating sock accounts on the official site and it would all be great fun, until one day they all just disbanded and we never saw them again.
In the 10 years that I frequented the boards on the OS, I was lucky enough to see and be involved in lots of ‘episodes’ and so in this ongoing article, I will serialise much of what I can remember in my old age, and of course, if there is an ‘era’ you’d like me to expand on, just ask.
Keep it real!
JQG
