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.