Post by Akbar Le Grey on Jun 22, 2006 7:23:07 GMT -5
Editor-in-Chief: Akbar Le Grey.
Sub Editor: Robert.
Contributors: Ennui, Luna, J., Alice, une femme auteur anonyme, Eoghann, Tess, Jemima, Snicket, Sixteen.
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J.
667 was a tired old town, even in 2002 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning; ladies bathed before noon, after their 3 o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with. Although 667 had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself... That summer, I was six years old.
Well, I’m just gonna take this opportunity to give a sh0ut 0ut 2 all my peeps (well, most of them, anyway.)
Luna, you’re just too cool! And you were the first person I know personally who wrote Producers slash .
Sam and Robert, I love you and all your hotness.
Alice and Setnick, may we always be bonded by our love for The Producers, Stephen, Strangers with Candy and Stephen. (But I’m probably not seeing the movie.)
Kobolos, you’re awesome, and I used to worship and stalk you like mad. But you haven’t been on much.
Char, I can’t believe I used to hate you, because I don’t anymore! Like those stupid HOMESLICE sigs you used to make. And was it you who made silly pictures on MSPaint that I mocked?
Snicket, we’ve been through a lot together, between the awards show mess, me hating you to the point of love and me discovering you’re old enough to be my older brother. D:< But don’t let that get in the way of our <3.
Akbar, you accomplished more than—oh, crap, that reminds me.
Tragedy! Heil. Without you, none of this would be possible. Unless Swans or someone took over, then it would probably be better. Q: Just kidding, Targederiy. I love you like I’m blind.
Swans, you’re probably the person I remember the most except Sam. I’m glad you stopped calling me a Jew, but start again. I miss it. D:<
PJ, I was gonna put you with Akbar or a group of people, but I decided not to. You deserve your own section. But that reminds me that I never finished Akbar’s. I enjoyed working with you on last summer’s Hogwarts fic and our half-hearted Digimon group collaboration.
Akbar, what could I say about you? You’re just positively amazing. I mean, when Snicket brought up some ideas, everyone laughed at him. But when you bring up stuff, you actually get it done and people believe in you.
And Dupin, you too! You’re so creative and talented.
To all the newbies of the world, congratulations!
Robert has just informed me that I have to write about the history of 667. WELL, potato YOU ROBERT. (Just kidding, I love you.)
That reminds me of the first time I got banned. I made a newbie account and made a fake thread in one of the asoue sections. (I might be getting my bannations confused, but…) Swans banned me for a few weeks before election day. But she let me out a day early, because I was a little political activity back then.
There are little moments in 667 history that I thought would be big. Robert once flooded the board with hentai like woah, and he was banned and unbanned within two days. Thanks, Mama Swans.
The Mad Haxx0r was a picture of the Green Goblin, put on the main site one Halloween. His reign of terror extended as far as to make the board have background Power Rangers music (“Go, go Power Rangers! Mighty morphin’ Power Ra-a-angers!” How do I know the lyrics if I never saw the show? Anyway.) People panicked but Snicket had it “under control.” He had alerted the “proper authorities.” In a way, he had calmed the onlookers down by taking attention away from the “hacker” and drawing it to himself. Everyone laughed at him.
One day, Pan, Char and I convinced Trag to give us minimal mod powers. We made the board pitch black with an account called Guidecca and tried to terrorize the boards the best we could with out limited mod power. But the best we did was change the banner and mess up the colorization—and we don’t need a fake account to do that. Every New Year, Trag takes it upon himself to screw up the board’s colours. And every year, we get used to it.
The thing everyone talks about and will always talk about is probably Snicket’s award show flop. Poor Snicket. I’ll say it right here and right now for the last itme, it was partially my fault! Grr.
A while back, before Akbar’s domination of the newspaper industry, Kobolos, our Lord and Savior, Hallowed Be Thy Name, started a newspaper like None Other: The 667 Reporter. (They can be viewed in Chaotic Creativity.) A bunch of newbies and probably Snicket started some newspapers that failed. Why are they worth mentioning? They’re not.
I’m tired, and I’m missing The Daily Show (for you, Robert and Akbar and My Kind Reader). So I’m gonna get off soon. This is the best anyone will get out of me, anyway.
Also, sorry if I didn’t give shout outs to someone who deserved it. I’ll do shout outs on request, and submit them next week, I guess? Bye.
-J.
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Snicket’s Story: A Look Back and a Look Forward
In 2001, I first stumbled upon the works of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I devoured all the books quickly and became a large fan. As I became more interested, I searched the web for more information. While searching, I stumbled upon hundreds of links, and behind each of those links were hundreds of fans. I was excited. I knew that I had fallen into the money pit. I also knew that I would not be able to get out.
I found a discussion board on ASOUE. It wasn’t 667; instead, it was a dumbed-down message board. Anybody could come on there and post. You didn’t have to register or anything. I started posting a lot at that board, and started formulating theories on the books. I was later joined by another poster, Tocuna. She backed up most of my theories, and I backed up most of hers. All the posters there respected her deeply.
While occupied with that discussion board, I found UE.net. I registered on their forums and became a member. I posted some stuff on there too, but the WebTv system I had at the time was so slow that I couldn’t read a lot that was written. However, I found a link through the boards that went to a site called “The Lemony Snicket Informer Forums”.
When I visited the Informer Forums, I noticed how many members there were. There were 154 members when I first found it. I registered there, but I never got to make a post; my WebTv system shorted out and died.
For a month, I struggled on fixing my WebTv box. My iMac was dead also, so I had to fix it.
The problem was huge. Not only did it short out, but half the system was ruined. I took it to a dealer to get it fixed, but they wanted to charge me the same amount of money I paid for the system to get it fixed. I went next door to a computer store, and bought an HP computer for $565.00. The day after I got it, I ditched my dial-up Internet service, and got DSL. I was back on track.
By the time I got back online, it was June 2003, and The Lemony Snicket Informer Forums was now 667 Dark Avenue. They had 275 members, and BSam had joined, along with several more “Historic” members. But by this time, I forgot my username and password, and was lost. Instead of going back to get it all, I instead went back to the old message board with Tocuna. I was in for a surprise, though.
When I got back, all the posters there had started doing RPGs. I was one of the few people there actually posting theories and finding new information. I continued posting, but nobody really cared. They were all so caught up in RPGs that their interest in theories had faded away. To escape this, I wrote Harry Potter fan-fictions for a short while (The site closed down), so I was thrown back out to this discussion board. When I made my return, I saw that the site was dying. People were posting spam, and people were posting as posters that they were not. Everybody got off-topic.
As everybody knows, when I see something like this happen, I try to stop it. Well, I didn’t succeed, so I went to 667 in March 2004.
At 667, I registered with the really cool member-ish name of “Snicket” and made my first post. My first post was a theory which combined all of my old theories into one. This theory got amazing replies. One of the first replies came from J, who was amazed. Later in the thread, I was introduced to J’s wild personality.
After making this thread, I never really went back into the boards on the books, instead, I wanted to learn more about the members, and I did by going into MM every night. In MM, I met Tyler, Kobolos, BSam, Alice, Mamba, Neggie, Madam Luna, and Souffle. These were all awesome members, and every 667er should know about them. I found out later that I actually knew most of the members there.
I had a friend who had a Deviantart account at the time, and posted on LiveJournal. I realized that some of my favorite artists from Deviantart were actually prominent members on 667. It was an awesome coincidence when I found out that one of his favorite artists on Deviantart, was also a great member on 667- Madam Luna. My friend also showed me some blogs he read on LiveJournal. One of those blogs belonged to Tyler.
Through these blogs and other websites, I found out a lot about these members. I found out so much that I was able to get into the “Inside” of their “Inside Jokes”. While I was preoccupied with the blogs, Tocuna (You probably know her as Antenora) finally joined. In two months, she had made over 5,000 posts.
Here we are today. A lot has changed. Back when The Lemony Snicket Informer Forums changed to 667 Dark Avenue, everybody acted weird. They made useless posts and acted like the 'n00bs' do now. But more intelligent members came. And from that, we have evolved into a large, intelligent group of people. Who do we credit this to? We credit it to Tragedy all the time. But who should REALLY get all the credit? Well, the old members who came before us should take most of it. They helped us become what we are today. Without them, 667 would still be “The Lemony Snicket Informer Forums” and there would still be 10 members'; all of them would be annoying and stupid. Remember, we could have been that old discussion board that Antenora and I were a part of.
But the question on everybody’s mind is: What does the future have in store?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that we can all pull together and survive through anything. The final book in ASOUE is coming up. This will be our best friend, and it will be our worst enemy. It may put an end to 667. But, if we hold up, and find other things to talk about, we will pull through and continue to live on as 667 Dark Avenue.
“It's just amazing when people get together and they have the same interests and the same passions.” - Steve Wozniak
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A short memory from Eoghann.
Ah, memories. Something that we like to look back upon fondly. Well, last summer I had a rather traumatic experience. There I was, young and impressionistic, 14, and on my way to the Edinburgh Book Festival to see Darren Shan (What was I thinking?). I enjoyed it at the time, and left. Little did I know that, immediately in my vicinity, was the dreaded Pig.
I think you all know Pig. Appearing in many guises, even hacking my account and using for several months at one point. So, you can imagine the horror I felt at discovering that I had been so close to both of the perpetrators: Marc and Greg, from Kilmarnock.
I know that some of you have met up with other 667 members, and are all the better for it, but really, I think that, even though we did not encounter face to face, this was an experience that I would rather have avoided.
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There comes a time in the life of every young boy when he finds that he must move away from his childhood home and board a boat bound for New York City in order to seek his fortune. When I first set foot in the shady, rickety-looking building located on 667 Dark Avenue, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I be welcomed by the strange natives that lived within? Would I be ostracized for having arrived from exotic foreign lands? Would I be treated in an indifferent manner?
My first plan of attack was to become friends with the leader of the herd, which came quite naturally, and such and such other relationships followed. Ah, yes, the days of my youth...like the scent of fresh lemon, you see. It was quite easy to assimilate myself into this new and intriguing culture, and I made many new friends. This was due in no small part to the fact that I discovered we all had one major interest in common: that of the young adult book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by one Loney M. Setnick, accept no substitutes!
Actually, at the time I was at UnfortunateEvents.net. I got my start by posting an art thread, and hit it off fairly well with people. Then UE.net shut down and I moved to 667. Blah blah. And then something else happened.
But then I remember most vividly my blossoming fanfiction "career" on 667, if it's at all prudent to call the act of writing gay pornography with copyrighted characters a career. Ha, ha! I'm just kidding. Some of it was straight. But along the way, I posted every ASOUE-related story I finished in the Fearsome Fiction section, which soon was manned by my delightful protegé, Dupin. Ah, yes, I remember him so well! He was just a tiny tot then, but writing amazing and oftentimes horrifying stories, like Shiver, which is still getting reviewed like two years after it's been written. Seriously, what the heck.
Anyway, such and such things happened and I started doing some projects that never panned out, so I eventually sort of fell out of the public eye in FF and mostly stayed in Menacing Miscellaneous and Weary World. And this is where the fun stuff begins, dear friends. Take the time to firmly secure your face before I rock it off of your head.
MM has always been home to lots and lots of internet drama, simply because it's the most popular section. Let's go through a quick run-through of some of the more notable events that CRACKED THE INTERNET IN HALF:
o) Char, renowned throughout 667 for using Menacing Miscellaneous as her personal Livejournal, would often post threads about how she's leaving 667, for real this time oh my god I swear, usually accompanied by a poll wherein users could vote whether or not they approved of her. This was more ongoing drama. And after the third or fourth thread as such, it ceased to become "drama" and instead became "intensely irritating." Fortunately for everyone involved, she doesn't seem to do this anymore.
Here's a gif of something else that might also irritate you if you look at it too much
Also, Char is J's anti-drug apparently
o) Once upon a time there was a 667 Awards Ceremony run by Snicket, where there were many many categories and many many winners. And it was good. And yours truly designed some banners for it, even (which I've since deleted off Imageshack and am too lazy to fetch again, sorry), and withheld giving them out until the names were released, which makes sense. Unfortunately, Snicket kept putting off the whole thing for so long that someone else, whose name I don't remember but who was also affiliated with the awards ceremony, just threw up his hands and released the names anyway, and soon after I put out the images. And everyone was pretty happy with the whole affair, except Snicket, who proceeded to make a mountain out of this molehill. Much debating was had, and much pointing and laughing was had as well.
This pretty much sums up what people were feeling during this time, thanks J
o) INTERMISSION
o) There was some author in Fearsome Fiction who posted porn. Exactly what kind of porn it was eludes me at the moment, but it was definitely porn.. Me and a bunch of other people got into a big debate over whether it should be allowed in before someone brought up the fact that POSTING PORN WAS AGAINST THE PROBOARDS RULES. That helped settle the matter--well, that and the fact that we were getting tired of twelve-year-olds posting in the thread about how the story made them feel funny in their private parts. This is one of the few dramabombs we've had outside Menacing Miscellaneous, I think; FF is generally a fairly benign place. You'd be surprised how well people get along when they're all posting necrophilia slash fanfic.
This had to be called more than once when dealing with certain people
o) I distinctly remember some member (I can't remembre who it was--apparently it wasn't Luckylemon) getting their own subforum as a total joke, which everyone then proceeded to TP and egg relentlessly. It might not have been so much dramatic as very very fun, but I think it still managed to make at least a 300m crack in the internet so I'm putting it here anyway.
Also, Luckylemon was a troll that nobody was very fond of.
This was also produced around this time, perhaps? (Linked for size)
o) I'm getting a little bit sleepy so I think it's time to wrap this up! Hope this was a nice little trip down Memory Lane for you. Good night, sports fans, and here's a bonus picture by Bsam I had on my hard drive.
-Madam Luna.
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EXTRA-SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY EDITION (DOES NOT COUNT TOWARD NUMBER OF ACTUAL COLUMNS)
The date of the forum's anniversary approaches. I think it's rather amazing that our forum has been able to survive for four years-- avoiding any really conspicuous Terms of Service violation and keeping at least one or two members from its primordial past, even if they return only when called by an apparent mass e-mail. We have a mysterious locked section (no doubt the password is "swordfish", now that it actually has a password entry box, as previously I was simply unable to access it), apparently containing hidden boards with possibly quite sinister contents. The numbers of posts in it vary, and new sub-boards seem to be added occasionally. I think it completely likely that it'll be thrown open seconds after I actually send this column in. Oh well, I'll be writing another one in a few days.
So, what are some of the accomplishments of our forum over the past four years?
Statistics
-Gained over 5,000 members, at least several dozen of whom currently post, and perhaps a dozen of whom were registered by existing members to get the count up to the next round number.
-Gained over 20,000 threads, at least a couple thousand of which weren't repeat topics or incredibly dull.
-Gained over 544,000 posts, at least some of them coherent and more than one sentence.
-Had over 60 members online at one time, at least 25 or so of who weren't multiple accounts, glitches, or Googlebots.
-Gotten several members into three-digit karma levels, at least one or two of whom didn't bribe a G-Mod to acquire it.
-Inspired me to write over 15 columns, at least in the past few months.
Changes
-Got some new moderators, at least half of whom do their jobs.
-Been subjected to Proboards v4, at least some of which wasn't totally ruinous.
-Had some varied color schemes, at least some of which were readable.
-Used several different banners and collections of buttons, at least some of which didn't contain the rather popular "Red X" design.
-Inspired a number of lurkers to post, at least a few of whom weren't returning older members or gag accounts.
Third Pompous-Sounding Category
-Had several newspaper franchises, at least one of which I have enjoyed enough to want to participate in.
-Possibly left some people emotionally scarred for life; at least a few of whom probably deserved it.
-Mocked and maligned a number of world leaders, but at least managed to evade their constant surveillance programs.
-Made UE.com members look incredibly stupid.
-Inspired a lot of rather poor running jokes, at least a few of which weren't in this column.
-Une femme auteur anonyme.
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(A=Akbar Le Grey.
S=Swans.)
A: Swans, is there anything you can reveal about the kidnapped members?
S: Well, Akbar, I can tell you that three out of four of these photos are not one of the kidnapped members.
A: Swans, how is that helpful?
S: Hold on, hold on a minute, my phone is ringing.
A: Okay.
S: Akbar, who said it was?
A: Who said it was what?
S: Helpful?
A: Okay, okay. Well, can you at least alert, or somehow hint, to the media as to how you knew about the kidnappings in the first place?
S: Well, I was alerted of the victim situation by way of private message. It was casually poised in such a silly fashion that at first I laughed off the matter believing someone was a few files short of a case. Oh, shoot, my phone is ringing again. Hold on a second, please.
A: Holding.
S: Thanks; so, where were we?
A: Does that mean you received more than one message?
S: Oh, yes, indeed I did, especially on the stalking Hitler theme day. I was flooded with threats and someone even sent Tragedy a letter supposedly written in blood.
A: Supposedly?
S: Well, it had obviously been created in paint. Take a gander for yourself, Akbar.
A: Woah.
S: I know! I mean really, and I once read that a sign of a disturbed mind is constant change in one's handwriting. Oh, oh, and that a person that has a love of hedgehogs is less likely to be a kidnap victim than a person obsessed with cats.
A: Interesting. Well, thanks for the hints, swans. I hope we find the poor kidnapped 667ers soon. Let the hunt begin!
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