Current Events > How a GameFAQs Board Became a Refuge for the Brokenhearted

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https://egmnow.com/how-a-gamefaqs-board-became-a-refuge-for-the-brokenhearted/

What does it mean when a girl takes your phone out of your pocket? Thats the main topic of a thread started by someone only known as Ratt_Poison. Though its admittedly a strange situationa coworker to take your phone out of your back pocket for no discernible reasonthe scant responses are hardly helpful. She was deciding whether or not to rob you, a user named Wildspark offers. If you have to ask the question you will never understand the answer, OmegaRelentless writes. Another thread from user Perry_Tanko contains a poll: Would you date a girl who is crazy? The poll results are split evenly down the middle. You may think these threads come from a dating site forum or an old AOL chatroom, but youd be wrong. This is the GameFAQs board for Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force, a mecha beat-em-up for the Turbo CD.

Mad Stalker, a game that is by no means romantic, eventually became the dedicated secret forum for dating and relationship advice. Spanning over 1000 pages, the first threads ask about phone sex and other girl issues in 2008. The origins of the secret boards beginnings are even within the board itself. In to the thread Off-topic but how did you find out about this board?, user nintendofan2121 posts the following quote, which originates from an older version of the moderator-run Site Suggestions FAQ: Do not petition for a love/dating relationship/advice board. GameFAQs is not that place to be asking for that type of stuff, anyways. Adding this might also cause users to lie, troll, and flame, not to mention it could have offensive content. The closest thing you can get to this would probably be LUE, or a secret board. So with moderators denying them an official dating and relationships board, GameFAQs users took matters into their own hands. Choosing Mad Stalker for ironic reasonsjust think about how creepy that title is for a dating board when taken out of contextusers set up their own advice column for the brokenhearted. The earliest surviving posts on this forum date to February 2008, six months before Reddit first opened its community for relationship advice, and years before smartphones gave us apps like Tinder and Bumble.

GameFAQs users flocked to the board, looking for help with their dating woes, although the lack of moderation meant not all the threads and advice were in good faith. One early thread starts with a strange complaint about not being thug enough for a woman that devolves into racist name-calling. Another thread has a woman arguing with the predominantly male userbase on the validity of pick up lines and pick-up artist culture (which is now widely regarded to be extremely toxic). Looking through the boards, you notice the anger and misconstrued feelings of some of the users. Nowadays, with social media and plenty of ways to chat with others, jumping through the hoops of secret boards on outdated forums seems like a lot of effort. The GameFAQs subreddit is made solely for banned or suspended users to complain about them, which is far easier than finding a secret section of a website where one of dozens of moderators wont notice. Forums in general are a dying form of communication, when chat services like Discord can allow hundreds of users to be connected all at once, instead of waiting for someone to reply to a thread asking for advice. But until GameFAQs eventually shutters its digital doors, the 1000 pages of the Mad Stalker board makes a nice window into the strange internet culture of the past.



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Mad Stalker was one of the more talked about secret boards back in the day

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Alpha218 posted...

Mad Stalker was one of the more talked about secret boards back in the day

Seems like the article was about the board being a look into the past pre reddit and before sites like Tinder existed. Ends with a gamefaqs is dying type remark among other stuff as I didn't quote entire article.

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Lebronwon posted...

Seems like the article was about the board being a look into the past pre reddit and before sites like Tinder existed. Ends with a gamefaqs is dying type remark among other stuff as I didn't quote entire article.

People can make whatever silly statements that they want about "overall site traffic is up", but the boards are dying out, make no mistake. They are a lot slower than they used to be, and Current Events is a prime example of that.

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I don't know why, but it always feels weird seeing other websites mention Gamefaqs.

Maybe I spend too much time here.
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Wait did they really mention the subreddit? As in the muffinzorz one?
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i find it perplexing that she decided to write about the board over a decade after its heyday

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No mention of user THE dark, and his stalking of his THE girl, Fatima.
After posting many topics about his crush (I think it was on LUE), he was sent to Mad Stalker board to take as his own, and ask advice there.
That's how that board started.
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Machete posted...

Wait did they really mention the subreddit? As in the muffinzorz one?

No she was talking about r/gamefaqs. The article had a link to the subreddit being discussed.

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Do not petition for a love/dating relationship/advice board. GameFAQs is not that place to be asking for that type of stuff, anyways. Adding this might also cause users to lie, troll, and flame, not to mention it could have offensive content.

I like how the Advice board turned into exactly that.

TheMikh posted...

i find it perplexing that she decided to write about the board over a decade after its heyday

The Hard Times wrote an article about GameFAQs ASCII art.

https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/ascii-artist-sells-out-by-taking-that-huge-gamefaqs-walkthrough-gig/

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