Memories of a Past Virtual Life

For those of us who have been on the Web for a long time, part of the wired existence is watching  sites take root, bloom, and then wither away. Some were casually visited sites, but there are the ones we sank way too much time and attention into. They are virtual communities, that perpetual next big thing on the Internet, serving as places to socialize, argue, befriend, defriend, and quite often reflect the social order of high schools.

I’ve been online in some form or another since 1993 with two decades of watching all this happen. Experience is a great educator and a little over thirteen years ago I got quite the education about people online (and offline) thanks to a movie news and fan site called CountingDown. Due to various soap opera experiences and a decision to embrace “real life,” I departed it permanently around 2003. I never looked back.

Which makes it strange that I’d be flashing back to that period of my life this week. I had the feeling the site was no more and sure enough, www.countingdown.com doesn’t even bring up an error message. So I did a search for information about it being shuttered and at first only came up with people asking the same question.

Expanding my search terms, I ran across something nobody wants to see when revisiting the past: an obituary for someone you knew.  Tiffany Lee Hopper passed away in late October at far too young an age. She was the constantly harried administrator actually actively helping us moderators at the sprawling website.

Along with Cat (one of the few others insane enough to moderate a ridiculous number of active forums) plus all the sane mods, we dealt with problem children of all ages, infuriating technical glitches, and all the weirdness that happens on heavily trafficked message boards. Holding it together was Tiffany who came on board after I’d become a regular at the boards.

I remember messaging back and forth with her when wildfires were getting close to the offices, the craziness around the bagel cam, and dealing with banning little darlings repeatedly for causing all sorts of trouble. Tiffany was always fun to virtually hang out with, especially when she lost her temper with the idiots. I’ve always appreciated a vicious sense of humor and that’s what would emerge.

Being a volunteer moderator meant long hours, many headaches, and no pay. People unfamiliar with the Internet at the time were astounded that I wasn’t paid, since they believed the electronic frontier was a money making machine. The reality was that it was riding an investment bubble and when that burst the illusion was finally dispelled. CountingDown was affected by the bubble when Dreamworks gave up on its Pop.com project which featured the site heavily after they bought it in June of 2000.

So it was in a shaky environment that Tiffany worked, though most site goers didn’t have a clue. I always admired how she handled the chaos, which was constant. Thanks to her, I did get a few perks for all the work I did. Stored away safely are the soundtracks to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Catch Me If You Can along with a custom CD case from the changeover to the new black and yellow logo. She took good care of us and I always think of her when I look at them or listen to the ripped soundtracks.

The world is a little less brighter with Tiffany gone.

CountingDown was last archived at the Internet Archive project on December 23, 2010. Other than the news not being updated for a couple of weeks, there is no sign of it shutting down or any kind of announcement to the effect. While there are archives of some of the later message boards, the original ones I haunted are gone. Somehow that seems appropriate, since they were a nightmare to keep running with the code never meant to handle the traffic inflicted upon it.

Board crashes… I’d willfully forgotten that misery and dealing with the angry denizens of said boards. Those were worse than the death threats and at least one attempt to hack my PC by irate trolls.

Other memories are numerous, but some highlight (or lowlights depending on perspective) include:

The Harry Potter fans crashing the Lord of the Rings boards before the movies came out to claim Peter Jackson and company were ripping off Rowling. Yes, really. It was hilarious to watch the kiddies become rabid Rings fans later.

Nobody wanting to moderate the RPG (role playing games) or Dragonball boards because of the posters there. The first group were crazy and the latter were a violent, brain dead lot dedicated to giving a bad name to anime fans during the beginnings of the boom of that genre in North America.

Board wars between Star Wars and X-Men fans. It grew into something resembling high school rivalries, but less polite.

Dramatic performances of leaving the boards due to some perceived slight from management or others at the boards. This led to private boards being set up at other websites in some cases. Melodrama ruled forums before the popularity of MySpace and Facebook years later, so nothing is new under the sun.

Meeting people from the boards in real life. That was both good and bad, but no lasting friendships came out of it. That taught me the people around you are far more important than long distance “friends” who are really only acquaintances. Sadly, this lesson has not been learned by far too many people on Facebook and Twitter.

The madness at Doc’s in various incarnations on the X-Men board. Related truth or dare playing spilling over onto multiple boards, sometimes creating messes for the moderators to clean up.

Online tests to find out “what you are” sweeping through as a fad. That’s how I discovered I was neutral good.

The secret hidden board on the old system.

The FBI investigating a minor doing the equivalent of “sexting” with adults on the site’s hosted chat. Also watching predators carefully pursue minors and not being able to do anything about it. Clues would leak onto the posts from time to time, but since ICQ and AIM were where it was really going down nothing could be proven. Frustrating.

Finding out I had a strong paternal instinct toward the kids on the boards. Ever a paladin I guess, for the protector streak still runs strong in me. Adopted multiple little sisters there, hence the worrying above.

Group writing a spoof of the The Fellowship of the Ring on that board. Utterly hilarious madness, I wish we’d finished The Two Towers.

Learning more about women than any man would want to. I wish I could unlearn most of it.

Finding out what IP addresses were and how to trace them thanks to repeat trolls. Also seeing just about every perverse form of pornography thanks to said trolls posting it for kids to see. This led to discovering what 4 chan was and wondering if there was any limit to human depravity.

Trying to juggle 12 instant message sessions and two group chats at once in AIM while moderating.

Discovering Ron Howard has a very crude sense of humor.

Love found and love lost, along with accompanying drama. Betrayals, back stabbings, charity, kindness, and the full gamut of human behavior aimed at me by people on the boards.

In the end like so many things in my life, the evidence of my being at CountingDown is now gone, much like the parking lot that replaced the house I lived in while going to high school. Life is about people and places coming and going, which upsets many to hear. Yet it is the reality of our mortal existence that everyone and everything fades away eventually.

It’s just that it is so much faster and more complete in the digital world. It has been said everything we do is permanently recorded on the Net, but that isn’t true. Places like CountingDown, Friendster, and GeoCities are simply gone with a few archives of their front pages left. There is no guarantee the Internet Archive won’t meet the same end. This is the great peril of the digital age, that things can be erased and lost so easily.

Is it any wonder I’ve chosen to embrace the more solid foundations of the real world? At least I can go stand on the parking lot and look around at a few familiar buildings, unlike the one of the biggest places in my online existence now vanished. The lessons learned there remain with the biggest being the value of what is real.

This post does not mourn the passing of CountingDown, for unlike Tiffany, it was but a dream. I do mourn her death, though I hadn’t had contact with her for a decade. Her kindness was more real than most of what when on there and it’s a positive memory to hold on to. So I dedicate this post to her memory, since I never really got to say farewell.