Why did you come back?

[Destroit]

I have various reasons why I returned, so many old members are rushing in with new members signing up.  Are we all basically waking up to the fact that Facebook isn't a positive social outlet for ANYONE?  Are we tired of complaining about billionaires and then hypocritically posting on Facebook all day earning Zucc billions?

 

For me it was that, not only is it under new management so we can have an actual community instead of the founder's "My way or the highway" fascism, but also I'm tired of posting and feeding into the red vs blue fervor.  Studies have proven time and time again that groupthink is bad, echo chambers lead to death chambers, and that social media LITERALLY is programmed to KEEP...YOU...SCROLLING.   So people want to blame EVERYTHING but social media for their problems...the sink full of dishes...the fights with strangers...the lack of sleep from scrolling and fighting with people until 3am...the preoccupation of mental powering researching what the newest fad to be offended about is...it's ALL. SOCIAL. MEDIA. ADDICITION.  People defending it sound like people who rag on someone who is on heroin for going to rehab, because it forces them to reflect on the inside to realize that they ALSO have a problem and just don't want it to be true.

 

On here we have ACTUAL discourse, real discussions, actual friendships, without worrying about crazy Q-Anon uncles coming in and going off about Biden funding Soros' adenochrome supply or someone posting an innocent photo of their cat and someone calling them out for being "offensive towards cats".  Man it feels good to be home, and I'm mad I even wasted a single post on Facebook, since it was just feeding the addiction I feel like I threw away so many years of my life.  

 

 

[et-novum]

I'm new but I'm going to talk about why I joined. If that's not allowed, well whatever because I'm going to say it anyway.

 

I joined because you guys are local (well, localish. I'm in West Michigan). You're real people. I could meet some of you some day, and I would like to. Many of you are friends in real life and go *way* back with lot of history yet you accepted me, a baby bat stranger, and didn't run me off the forum. You guys have been welcoming on this semi-dead site, and it's really exciting to see some necromancy happen.

 

(Also you guys know where all the cool shit is and can give better info than the sterile Facebook hype machine)

[know_buddy_kares]

I am literally back because Troy died. Like I don't wanna start some shit here, but I do feel he is responsible for the board going dead for so long. I think Destroit kinda described the general feel of how he ran it. But new ownership, new day. And here we have a big group effort to raise the dead. We're gonna mung the fuck out of this board. 

[Slogo]

Honestly, I was reminded of it. I just started logging on less and less here as everyone migrated. I tried to stick around, but it was taking up more energy than I was getting from it. Troy passed and I thought "oooh..... I should really see how everything is going over there". It certainly seemed a bit more positive. So here i am again.

 

Where was that initial questionnaire someone gave us when we joined?

[Slogo]

7 hours ago, Destroit said:

On here we have ACTUAL discourse, real discussions, actual friendships, without worrying about crazy Q-Anon uncles coming in and going off about Biden funding Soros' adenochrome supply or someone posting an innocent photo of their cat and someone calling them out for being "offensive towards cats". 

 

Ahem.... I just want to say that its offensive that you think cats can't fund the adrenochrome supply

[Destroit]

1 hour ago, Slogo said:

Ahem.... I just want to say that its offensive that you think cats can't fund the adrenochrome supply

Bitch, cancel me.  

[n0Mad]

Because I'm supposed to be doing homework and instead looking for any reason to procrastinate it and get a dopamine hit.

 

Also, how do I get my name changed to nºMad?

[*Siren*]

Two reasons:

1. My friends are back and I miss you guys.

2. The person that was making me very uncomfortable isn't here anymore.

[Raev]

27 minutes ago, Spook said:

Because I'm supposed to be doing homework and instead looking for any reason to procrastinate it and get a dopamine hit.

 

Also, how do I get my name changed to nºMad?

@TronRPyou need a batsignal. This one is all you!!

[Raev]

1) I met a lot of people through here who I developed real friendships with

2) More substance and fewer advertisements than social media

3) The sources of frustration here are gone

[TronRP]

3 hours ago, Spook said:

Because I'm supposed to be doing homework and instead looking for any reason to procrastinate it and get a dopamine hit.

 

Also, how do I get my name changed to nºMad?

 

3 hours ago, Raev said:

@TronRPyou need a batsignal. This one is all you!!

~~~~~

You mean as in your Profile Name?!? 👀

[TronRP]

Not gonna lie, I had to look this up: adrenochrome supply

However, among other things, I found this 🤣

 

Fact Check-‘Adrenochrome’ keg is an art project, not a Heineken barrel transported by Shell

[WhiteLines]

Pure adrenochrome... from a living, human body... lol.

I returned up in this mu'fu¢kuh for the gawd damn atmosphere, and over the fact that fb and most all other top social media platforms are repulsive and annoying to me. Reckon I just came on back o'er yonder here to DGN so I could go and be repulsive and annoying in my own signature style or whatever. Plus the scenery's more better and all that.

[Scary Guy]

16 hours ago, Destroit said:

I have various reasons why I returned, so many old members are rushing in with new members signing up.  Are we all basically waking up to the fact that Facebook isn't a positive social outlet for ANYONE?  Are we tired of complaining about billionaires and then hypocritically posting on Facebook all day earning Zucc billions?

 

For me it was that, not only is it under new management so we can have an actual community instead of the founder's "My way or the highway" fascism, but also I'm tired of posting and feeding into the red vs blue fervor.  Studies have proven time and time again that groupthink is bad, echo chambers lead to death chambers, and that social media LITERALLY is programmed to KEEP...YOU...SCROLLING.   So people want to blame EVERYTHING but social media for their problems...the sink full of dishes...the fights with strangers...the lack of sleep from scrolling and fighting with people until 3am...the preoccupation of mental powering researching what the newest fad to be offended about is...it's ALL. SOCIAL. MEDIA. ADDICITION.  People defending it sound like people who rag on someone who is on heroin for going to rehab, because it forces them to reflect on the inside to realize that they ALSO have a problem and just don't want it to be true.

 

On here we have ACTUAL discourse, real discussions, actual friendships, without worrying about crazy Q-Anon uncles coming in and going off about Biden funding Soros' adenochrome supply or someone posting an innocent photo of their cat and someone calling them out for being "offensive towards cats".  Man it feels good to be home, and I'm mad I even wasted a single post on Facebook, since it was just feeding the addiction I feel like I threw away so many years of my life.  

 

 

 

Back?

Also I hate to break it to you, but this counts as social media too, always has.

The only difference is I don't feel like my data is being scammed (even though it probably is by webcrawlers) nor do I get ads shoved in my face.  You would get the same thing from a Failbook group.  But maybe it's having it in a different format that makes things seem less bad?

 

 

15 hours ago, et-novum said:

I'm new but I'm going to talk about why I joined. If that's not allowed, well whatever because I'm going to say it anyway.

 

I joined because you guys are local (well, localish. I'm in West Michigan). You're real people. I could meet some of you some day, and I would like to. Many of you are friends in real life and go *way* back with lot of history yet you accepted me, a baby bat stranger, and didn't run me off the forum. You guys have been welcoming on this semi-dead site, and it's really exciting to see some necromancy happen.

 

(Also you guys know where all the cool shit is and can give better info than the sterile Facebook hype machine)

1.  This is the attitude I like.

 

2. I've never been accepted and I accept that.   I don't get invited to parties or even to hang out 1+1.  Except for online, there is no community for me the asshole lone wolf (unless maybe I crash a gathering.) I am happy you will do better than I have though.  You seem like a nice kid and deserve it.

 

9 hours ago, know_buddy_kares said:

I am literally back because Troy died. Like I don't wanna start some shit here, but I do feel he is responsible for the board going dead for so long. I think Destroit kinda described the general feel of how he ran it. But new ownership, new day. And here we have a big group effort to raise the dead. We're gonna mung the fuck out of this board. 

 

Honestly that's why many of the people have returned I think, so don't worry we get it.  I considered him a friend and even I get it.  I'm even pretty sure that's what a few of the posts below are hinting at too.  I've typed a bit on that already though.
 

He had his issues, but despite those he built something great for the community for which the community will be ever thankful for.

The king is dead, long live the queen!

[Anna Phylaxis]

Why am I back? I don’t know. I would pop in, every so often, over the years. Just to take a peek in and see what’s going on with everybody. But a lot of the old guard wasn’t here. And it kind of made me sad for what it used to be.
 

Some of you know me really well. Those of you that know me well or part of the reason I moved to Detroit in the first place. But mostly because I met my husband on here. I was once a moderator, keeping the peace, but still making some of the worst jokes, and definitely some of the most posts lol. 

 

I don’t know if I would consider myself goth, technically. But I’ve always been a misfit, and I never was the cool kid, and when I found this place, it felt like home. For once, there were people like me, and I wasn’t the only oddball.

 

But it’s nice to be back. It’s nice to be here with some of the people that I count as some of the coolest people I know. Sorry if that offends any of you.☠️

 

This site is a community. It is a community of people who absolutely changed my life on many levels. And it gives my little black heart a warm, fuzzy feeling.

 

so yeah, I guess I’m back 🖤🩷

 

 

[Destroit]

5 hours ago, Scary Guy said:

 

Back?

Also I hate to break it to you, but this counts as social media too, always has.

The only difference is I don't feel like my data is being scammed (even though it probably is by webcrawlers) nor do I get ads shoved in my face.  You would get the same thing from a Failbook group.  But maybe it's having it in a different format that makes things seem less bad?

 

 

1.  This is the attitude I like.

 

2. I've never been accepted and I accept that.   I don't get invited to parties or even to hang out 1+1.  Except for online, there is no community for me the asshole lone wolf (unless maybe I crash a gathering.) I am happy you will do better than I have though.  You seem like a nice kid and deserve it.

 

 

Honestly that's why many of the people have returned I think, so don't worry we get it.  I considered him a friend and even I get it.  I'm even pretty sure that's what a few of the posts below are hinting at too.  I've typed a bit on that already though.
 

He had his issues, but despite those he built something great for the community for which the community will be ever thankful for.

The king is dead, long live the queen!

Noooo not even CLOSE watch A Social Dilemna and read "Why We're Polarized" there's a reason Facebook is chemically addictive and socially divisive, it is LITERALLY engineered to keep users scrolling (they make their money on ads, every third post is an ad) regardless of the damage to the users life it causes, it's eye opening

Edited July 28, 2023 by Destroit

[NocteSpiritus]

I came "back" as it were since I was kicked from the discord server due to what I call the Fallout between me and Troy. That's a story on itself I'll provide if asked. In short, he accused me with little proof that I saw on my end of various things including in his words that I was a traitor and committed sedition against the emblem (the spiral dragon) and House Spiral. 

I did consider Troy a friend of sorts despite that and wished him well given all between he and I. He was ... stuck in his ways in how he wanted the group to go. I know it had changed in the short time I had stepped away at the tail end of 2020 and into 2021 as the group had went from a casual get together to wanting to have it in a style modeled after the Free Masons.

[et-novum]

3 minutes ago, NocteSpiritus said:

the group had went from a casual get together to wanting to have it in a style modeled after the Free Masons.

 

So I never knew Troy, I was only introduced well after he died. But WHAT.

[Scary Guy]

46 minutes ago, Destroit said:

Noooo not even CLOSE watch A Social Dilemna and read "Why We're Polarized" there's a reason Facebook is chemically addictive it's eye opening

I'm very aware of Facebook/similar networks and there's a reason I haven't been on it in years, or Instagram, or Twitte...  X, or Twitch, I also left Discord, and while I do browse Reddit I only do so through a third party app without an account (for as long as that continues to work.)  Though you're probably talking about the walled gardens turning them into echo chambers which I do agree is a major problem, but you'll get that on any platform where you can ignore those you don't like too (however they don't all actively try to suppress that information like FB does either.)

Yes marketing is evil and free is a lie.  They make it so you can't live without their services.  All your friends are on them, all the events you want to go to advertise on them, all the little bullshit games it has, and FB marketplace has even replaced Craigslist so now people only think scams exist on CL (it still works for me but you need to be careful and know what to watch out for.)

I'll be the first to tell you it's bullshit.  Do you know how hard it is to be a DJ in this scene when you can't advertise?  Not that I should need to promote myself (that used to be the Venue's job) but I have my little network on Signal that I yell at whenever I actually happen to land a gig.

Still, the core of all of this is social networking and I try to use mostly open sourced federated apps for that.  This and other forums, electronic mail, internet relay chat, Matrix, and Jabber are just a few of the other networks I can be found on.

I'm still very much going to watch the videos I found, but I probably already know most of that from other sources.  Thanks for the heads up though.

 

11 minutes ago, et-novum said:

So I never knew Troy, I was only introduced well after he died. But WHAT.

There's a reason this place was a wasteland up until two months ago.  Troy was pretty much trying to start his own cult near the end.  He wanted only the most devoted followers around him and if you contradicted him he'd cast you out.  I only survived because I can be very diplomatic but I'm pretty sure he knew how to covertly make me leave and did that because he knew I'd never "bend the knee" (he loved GoT so I figure I should use that phrase.)

I think some of those that followed him the most are avoiding the forum because they're probably still on the Discord server, and also because they don't want their illusions shattered about who he was.  I know exactly who and what he was, and I don't think he liked that much.  He basically became a raging narcissist and started to compartmentalize people from the main group, so a lot of the people who were forced out really didn't deserve it and some probably didn't even fully know why.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Scary Guy

[Raev]

15 minutes ago, NocteSpiritus said:

 wanting to have it in a style modeled after the Free Masons.

Can't lie, I'd love elaboration on what that means lol

[NocteSpiritus]

7 minutes ago, Raev said:

Can't lie, I'd love elaboration on what that means lol

 

There's different levels of Free Masonry, and Troy had worked it that there were to be three levels within House Spiral: White Dragon, Red Dragon, and Black Dragon. I think it went like that in order of increasing membership levels. There were other requirements to reach each dragon level. 

 

https://freemason.org/masonic-ranks/ A brief thing on Mason levels.

 

14 minutes ago, Scary Guy said:

There's a reason this place was a wasteland up until two months ago.  Troy was pretty much trying to start his own cult near the end.  He wanted only the most devoted followers around him and if you contradicted him he'd cast you out.  I only survived because I can be very diplomatic but I'm pretty sure he knew how to covertly make me leave and did that because he knew I'd never "bend the knee" (he loved GoT so I figure I should use that phrase.)

I think some of those that followed him the most are avoiding the forum because they're probably still on the Discord server, and also because they don't want their illusions shattered about who he was.  I know exactly who and what he was, and I don't think he liked that much.  He basically became a raging narcissist and started to compartmentalize people from the main group, so a lot of the people who were forced out really didn't deserve it and some probably didn't even fully know why.

 

That very well maybe another highly likely reason why I got booted; I refused to bend the knee. He used one reasoning of me making another server and inviting others to "bash leadership" to kick me out of the HS server. I did my best to not bash, just vent about how he acted/behaved. As we're doing here. But hey, whatever helped him sleep at night despite claiming he was torn over the Fallout.

[BladeOverBullet]

Actually, I signed up for this forum decades ago back when I was in college.  I had totally forgotten about it since it was associated with an email I don't use anymore.  I somehow remembered my old password and managed to get it back.  Horray!

 

Plus, one of the mods is a friend of mine and actually posted on FB that this site was back up and running.  I had no idea it was still active until a couple days ago.

[Raev]

7 minutes ago, NocteSpiritus said:

 

There's different levels of Free Masonry, and Troy had worked it that there were to be three levels within House Spiral: White Dragon, Red Dragon, and Black Dragon. I think it went like that in order of increasing membership levels. There were other requirements to reach each dragon level. 

 

https://freemason.org/masonic-ranks/ A brief thing on Mason levels.

Ok, so just three levels. Gotcha.

 

Let's just say I am intimately familiar with the internal workings of Freemasonry 

[TronRP]

37 minutes ago, BladeOverBullet said:

Actually, I signed up for this forum decades ago back when I was in college.  I had totally forgotten about it since it was associated with an email I don't use anymore.  I somehow remembered my old password and managed to get it back.  Horray!

 

Plus, one of the mods is a friend of mine and actually posted on FB that this site was back up and running.  I had no idea it was still active until a couple days ago.

~~~~~

Actually, it never went offline or anything.  I joined in 2012 and have been hosting it since as Administrator since 2018.  It's just that by then, the majority of the original members had migrated away from the site.

 

 

 

[know_buddy_kares]

I don't think anyone is bashing Troy. But everyone is sort of passively acknowledging things and traits about him that were toxic. We can't deny he did do a lot of people really dirty in life too, and some of those people are the ones coming back. Yes, he did put a lot of energy creating this board, and for that we are grateful. But a long the way things did grow toxic, and it's important to acknowledge that as well. It's currently being run (and from what I hear, essentially has been run for the past decade) by Tron. I see a better direction for this board thanks to her and rather focus on that.