this thread is super refreshing to see in 2023. it gives me a flash of something i feel like was around a decade ago
i probably won't spend too much time waxing poetic here since i'd rather save my energy for whatever sob story i drop in colten's inbox. but i will say this
i completely agree on the topic of badspot's negligence and the community it fostered. i've been preaching that outside of the forums to other former players for years now. but i'll spend the rest of my life trying to find the words to describe the actual
impact that about five (active) years of the forum had on my life. it's crazy to think that it's been equally as long since i removed the forums from my bookmarks bar in 2016 as it's been since i first started playing the demo in 2009. ugh.
i think some of that description i'm looking for i've found in the emotional roulette i go through every time i meet someone random on the internet who later reveals themselves to be a "former blocklander." most of the time you get someone who just played the game. but sometimes you get split between two completely opposite groups of people that were raised on the forums:
- those that soaked in the toxicity and still bear some kind of allegiance to eric hartman. the people that stayed because they became more like the loudest people already here
- those that will spend the rest of their lives growing in spite of the parts of the forums they hated the most. the people that stayed because they had nowhere else to go
i definitely won't imply that it's a good thing that the forums were like this; it would've been better if it had just been a normal game that suffered a totally ordinary death. but there are definitely some good people that were born out of the blockland forums. i'm not sure where i would be today without it
Show Posts
