Finding our way to forums

finding breadcrumbs
because internet
brilliant

and learning to use the snipping tool

progress ftw

I remember being on Abuzz.com, but I don't remember how I got there. Too long ago

I didn't realize how long ago it was til I went to look for the review.

I remembered the review so well.

I was really surprised when I landed in a pretty discussion forum. It wasn't like any of the raw, kinda naked boards I'd seen before. Rankings, colours, links ... it was a crazy world!

Hi, Springbloomingbeth.

Same for me. Different article, but it led to abuzz. I think my username was akaroger, or something similar. Ravensrealm followed, and finally a2k.

It's been almost 20 years. Or maybe it has been 20 years. So I would have been 36 when I started Abuzzing. Such a child at the time

I sometimes wonder how long this collection of information will remain in cyberspace. Even if A2K goes away there are many web archives which may last a very long time. I also wonder if anyone were to collect together all of my posts and read them along the timeline, if they might know me better than many of the people who surround me in my life. The things we wrote, and write here, may end up being our legacy, possibly for generations to come. If the data survives of course.

Right now historians reach back through time by looking for yellowed tatters and stone tablets. Historians of the future may reach back through mountains of cyber data and select the autobiographical writings of particular individuals.

We are the first generation to produce this kind of data.

Among others, Wandeljw is gone, but his thread with over 23,000 posts still survives. Waiting, at any moment, to be resurrected.

when cavfancier died, bogowo printed out thousands of his posts and we took them to the get-together at his parents' home after the burial. Many of his friends and family sat down with the sheaves of paper and read for quite a while. Others returned later to read them. A few signed on to A2k to read his posts. Several people stopped bo and me when we left to tell us how much it meant to them to learn about Paul's online life from us and from the print-out.

When we got together months later for the unveiling, people approached us again to tell us that they felt they understood cav much better as a result of reading his posts here.

__

A similar thing happened recently at another forum I post at. A member died and his brother printed off a number of posts to be read at the family celebration of E.C's life.

It's not quite like reading someone's private diary but there can be surprising insights.

I was fascinated by the fact that every site appeared to have a chat room. While looking for one I could fit in, I somehow stumbled onto Abuzz. I loved the spirit of the members and made some friends there, most notably Joanne Dorel and himself, as he was called. She invited me to a2k.

The New York Times was really pushing Abuzz for a while back in the early days. Full page ads and stuff. I resisted for a while but eventually figured, 'what the hell' and signed up. Joan Lee invited me to contribute to the PUP threads and when Abuzz went down I followed her over to Magginkat's forum. It wasn't the same, that's for sure, and after Jo's death I just faded away.

It was something to do with a recipe printed in the Times. I stumbled into abuzz. I was Riman.

I knew that.

the bahstin terrier in the pink bunny suit is to blame for my presence here...

My first forum experience was trade related, and it was a lively one where I was more often than not in the off-topic threads, usually cracking wise, occasionally being all too serious

Years later, in a sauced-up search for whatever, I joined philosophyforums.com, probably in late '09. As most here will remember, that forum merged with a2k in mid-2010. I remember there was a bit of turbulence, but don't really recall why

It's been fun though, and there are some great minds here that, over the years, have sent me on who knows how many hundreds of hours of researching and reading



Unfortunately, I forget all of it

You weren't merged; you was hijacked.

Kind of miss goshisdead, by the way.

Internet forums in general: I was so outraged over the left's lawlessness and sense of entitlement that "it is OK for them to break the law and wrong for anyone to try to stop them" that I had to start speaking out against them.

I'd like to think that if I were living in 1930s Germany I'd be speaking out against the Nazis in the same way. I'm just the sort of person who always does the right thing no matter what.

a2K in Particular: I was horrified at stumbling across past internet discussions, long dormant and obviously considered "settled" by the participants, that concluded that the US had deliberately targeted civilians (and for no reason) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Reality of course is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, and we were bombing Japan in a desperate attempt to end the reign of terror that they were inflicting on the planet.

I made an effort to search out current discussions of the A-bombings anywhere on the internet, and upon discovering a such a conversation I would dive into it from out of nowhere distributing facts to counter any falsehoods that I encountered. For a number of years I policed the entire internet for untrue Hiroshima claims.

As one of the world's foremost experts on the A-bombings, I had ample knowledge to slap down any untrue claim that I came across. That is the reason why whenever Camlock nee JTT cut-and-pastes an article misrepresenting the bombings I am able to debunk the entire article so easily. So my advocacy for the truth was particularly effective; I actually changed the course of society's conversation. Eventually I started finding threads on the bombings where some of the participants were already defending the truth by copying things that I had written on the issue elsewhere on the internet. And over time journalistic articles condemning the bombings evolved from "those evil Americans deliberately massacred helpless civilians" to "yes the bombs were dropped on military targets, but".

One of the many internet discussions that I discovered and dove into was the big Hiroshima thread here on a2k. After about a year of exclusively posting only in that single thread, I poked my nose out and looked around at what other threads were on a2k.

Mine was similar to yours.

Reading something in NYT online and fell down a wabbit hole.

I got a computer in 2006 and signed into a philosophy/science forum. It was like four days before I found myself in debate death-locks with supposedly intelligent people. I was just a babe in the woods, but I got by. After two years I was banned.

Then I went to another forum where I intended to leave the debating behind and involve myself in the humor threads only. After two days I once again found myself in a death lock with more posters. That site simply disappeared after four years

Then I ended up at some hippy forum where I thought that I would just stick with the humorous side of things and not debate anything. Within one day I was back in the saddle again taking on all comers. But one of the moderators started closing down threads whenever she saw that I was dragging her favorite pit bulls around by their throats. So I unceremoniously left that site and have never returned.

Then I wandered into a place that was virtually an all politics forum with real mean people. I mean civility was frowned upon judging by the lack of moderation. I was there for a couple of years, and then I got tired of fighting tooth and nail.

Finally I arrived here. Looked like an okay place; people giving advice and stuff like that. But before long . . . here, I'll demonstrate.


Not to horrify you, but that's not true. What this tells me is that you haven't even done enough research to realize that military personnel--including the president--have stated that the bombing was not necessary, and in fact, immoral.

For discussion boards in general, I was first attracted by all the bullsh*t that people posted about history. I am able to cite scholarly works, as well as quickly find on-line resources to link. Eventually, though, I gave up, as historical myths are something to which people cling tenaciously, and often displaying a good deal of hostility. I don't bother with those any longer. A good example is the persistent myth the Canadians have about having defeated the evil Americans who were trying to invade and annex Canada. They also like to claim that they burned down "the White House." (General Ross, with a small army, set fire to the town of Washington in 1814. There were no Canadians in his army. The smoke damage to the Executive Mansion, as it was then called, was such that the building was painted white to conceal the staining, and it came to be called the White House thereafter.) Americans are as bad as anyone else, and one of the most pervasive and pernicious myths is the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy.

I was very much interested in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the earliest novels in history, written in the early Ming Dynasty in the 14th century, about the fall of the Later Han Dynasty at the end of the second century and the beginning of the third. I found such a forum based in Singapore, but there is not much to be said after a while. But one day when I was perusing an article at the Times (you know, the one in London) I came across a link The New York Times, where I saw a link for Abuzz. The rest was hysteria . . . I mean, history.

WAY off topic for this thread.

I have answered you here:
http://able2know.org/topic/1591-55#post-6583734