Ever been on a forum...

I've been victim and perpetrator.

Example: A small forum I once frequented (and became well respected on) went to hell in a handbasket, and the mods banned 4 of the most popular users. I left not long afterwards because of what it had become (and lost a few friends for a stupid reason: I didn't defend them after their ban)

Kino, you should change your sig back in his memory. Besides, I love that quote of his.

There's been various people at different forums that have all done that. The only times I've gotten pissed off was on a play-by-post forum, two different G Ms started awesome games, then about 3-4 months into it, suddenly vanished. One of them came back a year later, apologized for dropping out from RL stress, started it back up ... and two months later did the exact same thing.

Then there's another debate forum I frequent, where we've had people vanish (with and without warning). Some of them have come back ... and while a few have come back with better attitudes than when they left, a few came back just to troll.

Victim and perpetrator.

In perpetration, one time it was because of a virus (followed by an avoidance of the computer). Most of the time? I just can't be arsed to keep at it.

@Barkey: Change it back to what? I've had this one since before he left.

This has happened to me in real life before - one of my managers just upped and vanished one day. Apparently the first day she was seeing her sick mother or something, but that may have been a cover by the other one. To this day no one we worked with has ever seen or heard from her again.

Also done this myself in the past, and actually just yesterday returned to one such forum (one created by banned users of Six Billion Secrets, where I'm a notable and successful troll, who seems to avoid a ban simply through Refuge in Audacity).

I think I may have perpetrated this, albeit not on a "forum" per se; there was a period of about two years where I avoided the Vanity Plate fandom at least partly out of declining interest. One of the things that drew me back was that I was an admin on a prominent wiki about them, and still am.

I miss DLC. She was...entertaining.

Nope.

People don't disappear on me, they just stop talking to me.

I've done it before.

@Kino: The when were Scrye talks about how he just hits the send button.

I've always had that one up, it's only since yesterday that I changed to this.

The previous one was better IMHO.

I might be a perpetator of this. Haven't logged in to Wikipedia for a (somewhat) long time.

Barkey; You know if that crazy bastard is still alive or if he decided cock slapping an RPG out of the air was a good idea?

No often, but it happened a few times too me.

However, it happens pretty often with me as the culprit. I think this forum is the only one where I'm on nearly all the time, while I tend to vanish on others for some time.

edited 2nd May '11 2:04:35 AM by Nyarly

I duck in and out of TV Tropes as my life demands. I think I was actually on this briefly a couple years back before dropping out and just coming back again recently.

The folks in Maple Story still don't know where I am and it's better this way.

There's a Teen Titans forum that I used to go to all the time back when the show was still on. Naturally, when the show ended, a lot of the more frequent posters there started leaving (with only a few coming back infrequently, myself included).

There's only a few people left there who post with any sort of regularity, including myself. It's a shame; I made some really good friends on there.

Although I managed to catch them on Facebook from time to time, which is nice.

Scrye is an interesting guy, but man does he get an attitude at times, especially when he's drunk. Jesus.

I was actually with my tracker group on Sunday, and we had this very same discussion while out in the woods for a few hours. We're all loners at heart and we're also very busy professionals, so the idea of just leaving an online forum doesn't phase us much.

In fact, I see this happen offline fairly often, as well. Because many of my training partners are study-abroad college students, lawyers, police officers, firefighters, and military personnel, I've had to get used to people just up and leaving without notice. I suppose this is still on-topic because my groups are technically forums for discussion, but it really sucks to plan a hiking trip or a wilderness survival seminar when John Doe #877032 magically vanished. The only reason you guys even hear from me as often as you do is because I can just type a few points and go about my business in the real world.

There's that, and there's the simple fact that I honestly can't stand to stay on this website for too long. I believe that if you want to find someone badly enough, you'll get a hold of them. There's not much of a need for major announcements about where you're going or what you're doing unless you're inviting online friends to go with you.

Guess people want one last hurrah before they fade away into oblivion, looking at the people here, you can't really blame them.

Well, I miss Scrye's "in your face" sense of humor. Just don't piss him off.

I've only made one person I consider a "friend" here. We have ways to contact each other off the site.

That reminds me, I need to punch him in the kidney when I see him.