Last One Out Turn Off the Lights: And don't forget to duck...

Even Dan Rather's good-bye wasn't this snippy.

Well, the fametracker forums are finally closing as they have threatened to for ages. And just like any disfunctional breakup, the end has gotten ugly. In less time than it takes for the paparazzi to follow Britney Spears to the Deli for Cheetos, the sentiment has turned from, "No this can't happen, how can we stop it, I'll never survive" to "Well, you had to see it coming," to "Why can't the mods manage the site, I know I can" to "You idiots don't know what you're doing" to "You guys are ungrateful brats" to "Well the mods started to suck, and Wing's a bitch" to It's the fault of those hateful, unfunny young'uns." to "You're a fucking psycho." Then there are the really stupid posts. Oh yeah, and a bit of nostalgia and cool people name-checking for good measure. Once in a while someone makes sense. Kinda.

Oh fuck it just watch for yourselves.

It's already made fanwank.

So as old-timers and newbies alike happily troll, self-righteously preach, and burn their meds in effigy, I have to ask, why bother?

Why am I even still looking?

Because I've never been able to steer away from a trainwreck. And sometimes someone still posts a bit that makes me laugh out loud. Or as one of the Dataloungers said, " It's more fun than a dryhump orgy!!"

Pippy DeNova

Who ARE the four famewhores of the apocalypse?

*SIGH*

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. How many times do I HAVE TO TELL YOU -- that question, ALONG WITH EVERY OTHER QUESTION, will be posted in the Fame FAQ, the publication of which has been bumped to --

Uh, never mind . . .

And while I'm not shouting to the schadenfraude hills about the forums'implosion I think it's a bit strange that I can't even work up a sense of loss or nostalgia for a place where I've spent so much time.

So long and thanks for all the fish? It was good while it lasted? Thanks for the memories?

I might as well give Wing Chun the last word, because I can't be bothered to say it better.

Wing Chun
Executive Producer
Mar 5, 2005 @ 2:56 pm
You guys, it's over. Don't bother.

The invasion of limpbone

Recently, in a discussion with , she brought up the idea of 'internet-brave', the bad-ass online, who in real life has the balls of a mouse.
Occasionally, one hits the dubious jackpot and they are not only cowards, but stupid to boot. On the net one encounters random stupidity that would be funny if these people were characters in a book. Unfortunately, they are all too real.




Yesterday, fellow FTOTZer brought one of these asswipes to our attention.

We'll call him limpbone.





He pollutes his tiny corner of the net with his rants on "niggers", "spics",

Now I dont want to hear that I am a racist cause im not, I have a black friend.

"white trash", cheating "whores", men who don't cheat

There is way too much pussy out there to not to

women drivers, old people, steroid users (?!) and both presidential candidates, etc. (An Asian reader commented that he forgot to add them in his hate speech)

Whatever. In the end, who really gives a shit about an admitted insignificant 27 yr old pencil-pusher and his online blatherings?

However, not content to simply pollute his own litterbox, he felt compelled to resond to 's criticism on the FTOTZ board with this.

You fucking dorks, dont dog me, you dont know me. I did have a threesome at 14. I didnt know tucker max or of him until after that storry. Fuck you.

Umm life outside FT...lol

You'd think a turd like that with such an overdeveloped sense of superiority would feel such criticism was beneath him and ignore it. You'd be wrong. Apparently, stunning us with his articulate rapier (rapist?) wit wasn't satisfying enough. He put this gem on his site (read by a grand total of 2 people if his site stats are accurate),

To all my fans... fuck with this bitch PLEASE


.com She cant be older then 10, judging by her website... so take it easy.

This morning reports:

My boyfriend loves me.

I recently let my guard down a little and did the one thing I hate. Flamed someone over the net. Why you may ask? How did this come about? Who did you flame? Well let me tell you.

Actually Im just kidding, I could care less I think its funny that with a few words and a little tracking down that I, jymbone could change the face of a 10 year olds website. I wanted to drop a little nugget on Ugly Ily this morning but she has changed her site around so that you have to be a friend to post. I guess that halts all posts to her site. She says that I am low rent and rejected. Nigga Please. You didn't reject me cause I never went after you. I would rather walk in front of a bus. After spending 30 seconds at your website, which looks like someone let a couple 5 years with crayons make, I realized you and I would never work. She also says that there is no way I am the ladies man I claim to be. Alls I ask are 2 very simple things. 1. Please send me a picture, only if your over 15(I don't mind bending the law)
2. Tell me why you think Im not the ladies man I claim to be.

I think my site is purty.

Of course, if my deepest thoughts were about the first time I "dropped science" in a girl's mouth I'd probably find stalking others more interesting too. Yet. another example of why humans should be required to have a license to spawn. Given his hatred of both Bush and Kerry, at least we can be reasonably confident that he won't be voting. Thank God for small favors.

Don't. cum. yet!

Annoyed by the recent rash of thread-name changing at FT I went to the FTOTZ Pet Peeves thread to see if anyone had a comment. I had already mentioned before how disconcerting it could be when thread names were changed without warning, and I wanted to see if this mass renaming was noticed and if anyone knew why.

A distillation of the conversation in the thread: (Icons used to barely conceal the players)

They replaced “Guess who, don’t sue” with “blind items”. That’s pathetic. That was one of the cleverest thread titles there.


Yeah, they did a whole bunch of them--Online Journals, Scientology--apparently, for the sake of "clarity". But the thing is, "Guess Who, Don't Sue" has been around for as long as I can remember (about 2 1/2 years) and no one has complained about it.

I wonder what's up.


I think because TPTB insisted on giving out warnings for duplicate threads, even though sometimes you search and can't find what you're looking for, they had to make the titles more literal. Which really is a shame. If you've not been around FT long enough to know that blind items are discussed in Guess Who, Don't Sue, you shouldn't be opening threads anyway. Period.


Damn kids need to get off our lawn! *waves cane menacingly*


Well the "Misunderestimate" thread has been changed to "English Language Usage". "Good Movie Manners Cost Nothing" remains unchanged for the mo. I always preferred "Get Your Buttery Hands Off Me" - but that was way back when the thread was for funny incidents.

"Good Movie Manners Cost Nothing" remains unchanged for the mo.

I seem to remember that Wing named it that. Didn't she combine several good and bad movie experience threads together on the old boards, and that's the name she gave the new uber-thread? And then someone just started it with that name again on the new boards. I think.

I'd really laugh if she decided to change that for 'clarity'.

It's really pissing me off - I can see that it does make the content of the threads more obvious, but at the same time she's changing the feel and appearance of the boards to pander to newbies who can't be bothered to click on a title to find out what a thread's about.




She changed the name of the Movie Manners thread on the new boards. I remember this because one of the two threads she merged was mine. I thought the name she chose sucked then and the new names suck now. I can understand her frustration but I agree wth Avocato here. If you haven't figured out the lay of the land at the boards to the extent that you couldn't figure out the Guess Who thread was for blind items, maybe you're not ready to start your own threads. Life would be more enjoyable if she slapped training wheels on the biggest offending premature ejaculators and stopped their thread starting privileges for a month or two.

Unfortunately the new rule at FT seems to be, when starting a thread, make the title as bland and utiltarian as possible.

Life would be more enjoyable if she slapped training wheels on the biggest offending premature ejaculators

Hee. The mixed metaphors here crack me up and make me think of penises with training wheels.


I had to mix. The thought of Wing instructing them on how to think of sports statistics or the Queen of England was making me queasy.


Just lay (lie?) back and think of England, young grasshopper. Or else...

BANNED!!!

Which left me with this disturbing vision in my head:



After I posted it jokingly commented that I should submit it for an FT Pixel challenge. Obviously it's not quite appropriate, but the FTOTZ could probably use its own.

Stay tuned for ideas.

It's a Small Web World After All

You know you've made it in the forum world when other boards devote threads to your boards.

From the Vartypants' Vigilantes' Love Lounge (Yeah, I'm amazed Michael Vartan has his own forum too. For the blissfully unaware, he's the bland guy from Never been Kissed and is also on the show Alias. I guess someone's watching after all.):
iB::Topic::Everyone say hello to FTers!


From the Survivor Sucks Board:

The "Pretend You're Posting at TWoP" Thread

The best thing about all of these boards is you don't actually have to watch any of the shows. I guarantee you the boards are infinitely more entertaining than any of these shows on their own. (Well a bit more anyway. If you've run out of toe-lint to pick.)

Or maybe it's a sign that your board is in decline. At the FTOTZ (Fametracker Off-Topic Zone), a board that's an offshoot of Fametracker, the FT/FTOTZ Metadiscussion Forum isn't even the most popular. An expansion of the once popular YKYATFTW (You Know You're Addicted to Fametracker When...)thread, the forum provides a place for fellow posters to talk about topics outside the scope of FT and get to know each other a bit better, the most popular topics seem to be the ones that treat FT-watching like a sport.

Every year there's a rash of posters predicting the rapidly approaching demise of the site. A quick google turned up scores of old journal and blog entries stating as much. So far, the site is still u and from most indication running strong, despite so very vocal naysayers and prominent defectors.

This year's disillusionment can be traced to the most recent "great purge". Last Spring (April 13th, to be exact, why yes I am obsessed) the Fametracker forums temporarily went down to undergo much touted and needed improvements. Despite the fact that Wing Chun had been threatening the improvements for awhile, when they actually went down, it was a bit of a shock. Some people later reported actually being mid-post when the board went offline. Like many other addicts I checked almost daily to see if the boards were back up. After all in the past, they had never been down for more than a day. (maybe in 2001, but I wasn't addicted then.)

After about a week, the 'gone fishin' page finally named the date for the triumphant return. May 3, 2004. So at least the compulsive addicts amongst us could plan our withdrawal accordingly and not keep returning to the computer like a user on the prowl for smack.

When the new boards came back up, a bunch of us got damn near giddy with the speed improvements, and the fresh clean boards. All was right in the world. Then things changed a bit. It was like a new semester in school, The cool seniors had moved on to better things and the new students were trying to find their way with the help of some verteran TAs. That's to be expected of course. But then in some weird turn of events The freshman class was overbooked. They were everywhere, starting threads with reckless abandon, asking stupid questions.

And the backlash started.

To be cont. w/ Meet the freshman class.

What '80s band are you?

Back to my favorite online timewaster, the quiz:

You rule. in 15 years, you won't be as known as you
are now, but most of the people that will know
you then will like you (or else I'll beat them
with a stick). You're nice to listen to.


What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Bite Me Fan Boy (Intro)

If reality TV has taught us anything, there's nothing as entertaining as a good old fashioned bitch fight. As long as it doesn't involve you that is. I mean really, does anybody care all that much about Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff except when they're sayng nasty things about each other? Would anyone really have bought that many records by KRS-One if they didn't want to hear what smack that he had to say about everyone else and their mama? Hell no.

My sick lust for celeb gossip led me inevitably to the deliciously addictive world of online gossip. Truly the worst kind of evil, because within seconds with a mere mouse click, dirty laundry can be spread with the wind to the most remote corners of the world for all to behold. Yet I just can't seem to get enough. But today, I don't want to talk about the celebrites. I wanna talk about their fans.

I discovered the fan forum accidently through the "Hey it's that guy" articles at Fametracker. At first, I just read the articles, laughed at the witty, hipper than you, but not really, comments and sometimes gentle, often vicious deflating of our best known personalities. Eventually, I became intriqued by those little teasers in the bottom right corner. This week's Popular Topics:

Lindsay Lohan
Yes, she's making aaaaaaaall the right choices in life
Shall We Dance (2004)
No, we sha'nt
Rock Star Crushes
Which ones do you like to imagine singing or playing just for you?
Guess Who, Don't Sue
Blind items ahoy!

Heh. Was it possible that there were others just as bewildered that every magazine and T.V. show was tryng to sell me on the fact that Gwnenyth Paltrow is a timeless beauty? Or that Sharon Stone is a member of Mensa? That Jennifer Lopez can sing? That Whitney Houston doesn't use drugs? And I could be mean about it without being cast onto the next outbound boat to Hell? How is it possible for anyone to resist such temptation? So like the sailor to the siren I entered the Fametracker forums. That one fateful decision introduced me to an entire world located just beyond a computer screen that can be even more seductive than the one outside it. People are faceless and as such less inhibited. They are available for any of your needs 24-7. And when you've had enough, or want a second chance you just walk away, change your name and try agan. I tipped my head over the rabbit hole and found myself tumbling heels over keister into online land. I have yet to find my way back.

At first it was like finding a family of kindred spirits and souls, a community, blissfully lacking the stress rampant in "real world" relationships and friends. Your co-workers might annoy you, but your buddes online would never let you down.

Then the honeymoon phase wears off and you get to know more about your so-called online "friends". She's a Republican? He thinks Forrest Gump is a brilliant work of art? The bloom is off the rose. You find yourself noticing which posters you "like" and which ones you don't. You find youself getting riled up where before, it all used to be good fun. You wonder why you keep going back, when all you feel is aggravated. You start realizing that your fantasy world has suddenly become nearly as complicated as your real life. You realize that it's still too hard to stop now.

This, my friends, is the stage I have reached. I have successfully cut back on my online time and started reintegrating myself back in the world. Obviously, though, I haven't given it up completely, nor do I particularly want to. But I didn't want to completely lose all of the time I've put into my adventures online. I decided I might as well document my slide into the world of online fandom. Beware, all ye who enter. Watch out for the landing and bring a flashlght.