We Were Young Once

[Madonna]

Some of you still are, but you do not matter in this thread! Neither do the senior citizens, actually, but I just want to make sure you kids know someone is waving a stick and keeping you off the lawn! But this is not about stick-waving or ragamuffins causing ruckuses which raise the dead; no, most insistently this is about my being able to make cooler threads than the younger generation! You kids are so intrinsically woven into the Internet that you cannot even imagine a world where you cannot order pizza electronically! I remember sending carrier-pigeons to Pizza Hut back when they had only one and it was a real darn tooting hut! You probably do not even know half of what I am saying, since I have not contracted every other word and replaced words with slang web gibberish! I would go more on this vein, but I get tired easily; remember you are getting off easy this time!

Where was I? Oh right, threads and how we made them better! We did; arguments to the contrary are not welcomed because they would be wrong! But our thread quality was not because we were old, because, no, we were young at the time, and our backs had not quite given out! I recall the days when I could post three threads in a hour and get fifteen replies by the time I checked back after a nap! Three threads and fifteen replies probably does not sound like much now, but back then, our Internet connections were so slow, an Atari could show it who was boss! Now, back to why our threads were great! Uh, why?!

Why!?

I am asking you this question! Often do I get to hear grumblings that our time was so great, we were so funny, and Eyes on Final Fantasy was so interesting back in our memories! Yeah, can you codgers tell me the reasons?! Do you have a list about what was so cool!? I might admit fora might move at a snail's pace these days, but while these kids nowadays have a lot of gumption best beat out of them, far am I from heaping the blame upon them! If we were so wonderful back then, why have we long-timers failed to keep things going now?! I think someone needs to give these hellions some direction and teach them how a thread is made! So I want to see some fogies posting some better threads than these damn kids and the latter show how mature they are and how I have misjudged them!

Now I got a glass of prune juice calling my name, so if you will excuse me!

[o_O]

This thread is like a double hit of cool viewed in classic.

[Tavrobel]

You know, I've found that lying to children is the most effective way to get them to learn anything.

[rubah]

i dont unnerstan wat dis thred iz talking abowt butt i think i lyk it

[Iceglow]

We were better because we were us and no matter who comes or what happens we done it first and we done it better. I think it's that really summed up. We done it so much better first time round in fact the first million times round now when we see the same old thread ideas/titles being thrown out there we just yawn and click back to index because we can't be bothered with it these days. We're victims of our own greatness. Also I think why we can't come up with great stuff anymore has something to do with the fact that maybe, just maybe we weren't as great as the rose tinted lenses we like to wear make us believe. Perhaps we were only on a common level with our newer members, perhaps we were even worse but pride and arrogance as always have their place in our society and to even contemplate this line of thought for more than the space it takes to type it out and immediately dismiss it with the famous words of; "Nah, who am I kidding, we were amazing back then" is heresy.

[NeoCracker]

I think what killed the quality of both threads and posts is people using 'done' when 'did' is the far superior word in those circumstances.

[Meat Puppet]

You can never have too much soy sauce!

[Moon Rabbits]

tl. dr.

[theundeadhero]

I think I've made three good threads the whole time I've been here.
I blame the lack of alcoholic inspiration these days.

I do miss the days of the EOFF Pope, Ciddism and Joy's evil revolution as she corrupted me with her girlish charms.

[Jojee]

I had an evil revolution? xD

Oh, and I've made plenty of good threads! Plenty!
I'm just too lazy nowadays to try.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

Yes, you were the Anti-Cid. Remember?

[NorthernChaosGod]

tl ; dr

[Loony BoB]

Back then, if I was to start a thread that was clearly made for spamming in, people would spam in it like crazy and it would increase in pagecount about as quickly as a Ciddies Winner Revelations thread. But these days if I start a spam thread people reply about 30-60 times and then it dies out. Alternatively, people actually do spam-spam in it, like, you know... say "+1post" or something. Urgh!

When things are new, they are neat. And it was new, so it was neat.

When your online world is about talking somewhat anonymously about your life offline, then it's neat. When you can't talk about your offline life anonymously because all of the people involved in your life are at EoFF, then it's not as neat for that kind of thing.

Uhmmmm.

More activity. More silly events with no real purpose but to entertain.

[Raistlin]

Not only were the threads better, but the quality of the posts in response was also better. Though I'm not sure BoB's pointless spam threads are a good indication of that -- good riddance those die out.

I'm pretty sure between Jojo and I, we had the best thread sprees. Who wants to turn the Squeenix forum into the Xenogears forum again?

[Loony BoB]

Pointless spam is crap. I'm talking quality "spam", such as the Stuffed Unner thread, etc. Those kind of things just wouldn't work these days as people post once and move on, if they post at all. The lack of active members doesn't help, I'm guessing.

I don't agree that the quality of replies were better. I think people have just as much to say now as they did then, it's just a case of some people having said it so many times before that they can't be arsed doing the whole thing through once again. But for genuine threads, I think the replies these days are just as good as they were back then...

I also think there was more drama back then, and not only in the genuine drama way, but also the more silly variety. When someone did something, it was always somehow rather significant. Remember the Dawn Warriors or whatever they called themselves? The so-called "other unofficial rivals to the Cid's Knights" or... whatever. That was kind of amusing. If someone did that now I'm not sure they would have as much heart in it. Or maybe the CK's were just more responsive back then, whereas a lot of us on staff these days are rather apathetic.