Board 8 > GameFAQs blasts from the past

(+) Yeah! (+)

I paid attention to how I did in UotY because I couldn't help myself, and I imagine a lot of other people who did were the same. It was a bigger relief when I failed to advance through a round than when I survived, because that meant it was over.

KamikazePotato posted...

Speaking of User of the Year - I always thought it was a super fucked up idea even when I was younger.

It was originally a contest meant for highlighting good posters on a busy board that didn't have much of a solidified community back in 2003. I liked that the original winner Amazing Telephone was a guy that didn't participate in the contest in any way, people just voted for him because they liked his posts and wanted to give him recognition.

Over time the board became smaller and everyone was more familiar with each other and turned into the "rank your friends" kind of thing that got sort of weird. It's probably good that those sort of contests don't seem to exist here anymore.

Leonhart4 posted...

I almost never paid attention to UotY or user contests in general. I didn't think anything about that could be healthy for me mentally.

UotY definitely had an effect on me mentally in the years where I would get like, all -3s in the first round (not that I didn't do anything to deserve them but still). I did much better in later years and IIRC made the top 20, maybe even top 10? one year but looking back in it, yeah it was still kind of a bad idea.

Btw, whatever happened to Rusty? I know he had brain surgery at one point but IIRC he came back here after that and seemed mostly fine and disappeared sometime later

Genoard posted...

It was originally a contest meant for highlighting good posters on a busy board that didn't have much of a solidified community back in 2003. I liked that the original winner Amazing Telephone was a guy that didn't participate in the contest in any way, people just voted for him because they liked his posts and wanted to give him recognition.

Over time the board became smaller and everyone was more familiar with each other and turned into the "rank your friends" kind of thing that got sort of weird. It's probably good that those sort of contests don't seem to exist here anymore.

Wild to think that vlado was ahead of the curve when it came to the concept of eradicating epop

iiaattgg posted...

Wild to think that vlado was ahead of the curve when it came to the concept of eradicating epop

Vlado was the visionary of our time, we were all too busy worshipping the false epop god to notice.

Time has once again proven him correct

Wasn't Vlado also a Russia fanboy or am I mixing him up with someone else?

Leonhart4 posted...

Time has once again proven him correct

I probably never said it but I'm sorry for what I did with your original account, Leonhart. It was pretty thoughtless stuff in the pursuit of e-notoriety.

being entirely fair as someone who wasn't high on the epop charts, MySpace days had normies ranking their besties too lmao

Genoard posted...

I probably never said it but I'm sorry for what I did with your original account, Leonhart. It was pretty thoughtless stuff in the pursuit of e-notoriety.

I appreciate it. I know I said and did a lot of things to you I shouldn't have because of that, too, so I'm sorry as well.

Although on the plus side, when you did your 1000 user rankings, I always got a writeup before you dropped it because I was always in the bottom 25...!

I think the things I miss the most are Create a Most Powerful Fictional Character, which was my favorite board thing, and Mercs. Not playing mercs, that was way too friggin stressful. But being on the sidelines in Mercs 3 was a blast, haha.

I miss seeing the first few minutes of an interesting contest matches. I miss the traffic and reactions and energy. Those are experiences that will never be repeated but happy we had stuff like that.

The start of the 2007 contest final match where L-Block was absolutely whipping three of the site's most popular characters was stunning to behold

neonreaper posted...

I miss seeing the first few minutes of an interesting contest matches. I miss the traffic and reactions and energy. Those are experiences that will never be repeated but happy we had stuff like that.

The magic that was Character Battle 2 will live in my heart forever.

I don't really get the issue with User of the Year. It just felt like voting for Prom King at school or whatever. I was never super invested in it though

Yours truly winning the first Oracle Challenge. We all stunk at predicting back then (except creativename who didn't predict all the matches).

red13n's bold prediction that Samus had no chance against Mario and all the x-stats guys are like "lol nope"... I think red nailed at least a couple more successful bold predictions, but I don't remember them. I know he had some crazy predictions that went true outside of GameFAQs, too (that's another story for another day). And then a couple years later his bold prediction that L-Block couldn't possibly get past Snake/Sonic/Squall (whoops)... oh, how the mighty had fallen.

MZero posted...

I don't really get the issue with User of the Year. It just felt like voting for Prom King at school or whatever. I was never super invested in it though

Voting for Prom King would be extremely fucked up if all the votes for all the students were publicly available and tallied in real time!

i liked how often UotY votes often had little disclaimers in them about how hard the decision was or little note explanations for why someone was given a particular score

Genoard posted...

I probably never said it but I'm sorry for what I did with your original account, Leonhart. It was pretty thoughtless stuff in the pursuit of e-notoriety.

Um?

KamikazePotato posted...

Speaking of User of the Year - I always thought it was a super fucked up idea even when I was younger.

yup.

same goes for rate the user, which had an even more negative impact on me mentally.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

yup.

same goes for rate the user, which had an even more negative impact on me mentally.

Yeah, I can see this. At least with UotY you could just try to chalk it up to "they like the other person/people better" but with RtU there's no hiding. You get their true feelings about you.

Grimlyn posted...

being entirely fair as someone who wasn't high on the epop charts, MySpace days had normies ranking their besties too lmao

vlado was a white supremacist boasting about the beauty and intelligence of the white race and the importance of a culture maintaining a pure gene pool

This is true, no disputing that and he should be held accountable for that in the history books. But on the flip side, he is arguably the sole reason all of us are not speaking transiencese

Underleveled posted...

Yeah, I can see this. At least with UotY you could just try to chalk it up to "they like the other person/people better" but with RtU there's no hiding. You get their true feelings about you.

plus it's just a rating and nothing else. a 0/10 (which i got a fair amount of, the several times i got the honor of being featured in rate the user) just communicates "you're an utterly worthless person diaf" to you.

i remember ed bellis used to post in the rate the user topics but instead of rating them, he would give them writeups, because he felt like giving a score to a human being was harsh and unpleasant. i quite liked that.

bellis was a real one

RoseChevalier posted...

Yes, Bidoof comics were from Board 8!

I thought it was Zen but I could be wrong

it was dels, although I helped with the Bidoof movie (which I think is lost media now)

NCAA Character contest

I just remembered it and man I loved it. Deciding the Top 25 each week was fun.

Thorn posted...

"do you text in the shower?"

I have no idea why that one thing (and the whole "explanation" behind it) sticks in my mind as emblematic of the alpha/beta/PUA phase this board had to endure but dammit it does.

Agreed. I occasionally tell real-life friends about this move/fad and it gets side-eyed so hard.

While I am here I will share some things I enjoyed on this board back in the day

when brawl came out, especially those first few nights where it was pretty much all of ours first times playing such a thing with friends

same with pokemon diamond and pearl, while it was not as community heavy as brawl was, being able to trade and battle with people on here was super fun

i always thought people here were legitimately creative and funny. As social media became a thing we saw that that applied to a lot of people. But the board before that was an outlet to express yourself in ways that real life didnt allow for at the time and it really allowed for a lot of people here to succeed with that

a lot of us were pretty terrible to each other. Obviously I include myself in that list. I think a lot of us faced things that were out of our control in our lives at the time and the board allowed us to have some feeling of control in the different ways that we were lacking. Which of course only resulted in us hurting each other when it could have been a much more supportive and therapeutic environment

Maniac64 posted...

NCAA Character contest

I just remembered it and man I loved it. Deciding the Top 25 each week was fun.

Yeah, I wish I still had the time to do something like that.

Hey Smurf!
Sess too!

I get confused over who everyone even is anymore since so many left and came back under new names.

was texting in the shower supposed to be alpha or beta

MoogleKupo141 posted...

was texting in the shower supposed to be alpha or beta

"Do you text in the shower?" was Realo's bulletproof opener. As I recall the rationale was that it makes the girl think about you while they are in the shower, which I guess makes them more likely to sleep with you or something

MZero posted...

"Do you text in the shower?" was Realo's bulletproof opener. As I recall the rationale was that it makes the girl think about you while they are in the shower, which I guess makes them more likely to sleep with you or something

i loved realo but that sounds like a really bizarre and extra alternative to just talking to someone normally

There were some useful tips in the alpha discussions but also a lot of say random shit to someone that wants to sleep with you already.

Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, I wish I still had the time to do something like that.

Same. I feel that way about a lot of board project type stuff.

MZero posted...

"Do you text in the shower?" was Realo's bulletproof opener. As I recall the rationale was that it makes the girl think about you while they are in the shower, which I guess makes them more likely to sleep with you or something

i'm so glad I missed this phase of b8 lmao

RoseChevalier posted...

i'm so glad I missed this phase of b8 lmao

It was by far the worst the board ever was or has been since

What were the other B8 podcasts besides The Show?

didn't icehawk have something

although i don't think i ever listed to any podcast

Serious Business

there was also a time people had interviews over AIM

ed bellis tried to interview me but my antisocial 15-y/o ass could never give more than direct 1-2 word answers

Honestly I feel like the alpha stuff was fairly contained. Maybe Extha brought it everywhere with him.

The worst for me was Brawl because that was every topic.

I remember the endless Melee/Brawl debates and then the hype when they met in GotD, resulting in the only live episode of The Show.

8.8 my ****ing ***!

shaped like a boot to kick your ass

More votes

Dantezoid posted...

Well, if whirly hasn't already gotten to him anyway... anyone seen commodore lately?

Still alive and kicking! Whirly never showed up to shoot me even though I gave him my home address. Just been super busy with work and life, no time to be active over the past 6-7 years. I stop by occasionally to catch up.

I'd say my fondest blasts from the past were the b8 AIM chats (before Discord was a thing) and whatever website the late night crew would use to video chat with each other. Lots of laughs and I'm pretty sure almost all of us passed out drunk at some point still on video for everyone to wake up and make fun of the next day. Oh, and the first couple years of Gauntlet. Great times.

Oh, and my bro-mance with Lockes. All time favorite part of b8. We met when he posted "I'll take a shot of beer for every post in this topic" and I almost single-handedly got it to 500. Instant best internet friends. We actually tried to meet up several times in person but could never make it work. Pretty sure I still have his number...I might text him for the first time in 8 years or so.

one of my most memorable b8 things was with a guy I think named justin crossing? something like that. we were paired in some challenge where we had to post back and forth as many times as possible without someone else breaking our chain. We both stayed up super late and got hundreds of posts. very fun