Not really about eva, more about this forum itself

[BritKnee]

I'm sorry if this is completely inappropriate to post about but its something I feel (oddly) quite emotionally strong about.

I've been a lurker on this forum since I got into eva about 2 years ago. I myself am younger than this site (15) which may be comedic to some people here, but looking through the archives has incited a strong sense of loss? I obviously wasn't here in the site's hay-day so I don't have nearly the same emotional connection others may have but seeing people's interactions through the years got to me.

Reichu's leaving thread and NemZ's obituary broke the camel's back for me, its beautiful how an online community can be so respectful and close.

I'm sorry for the half rant.

[Blockio]

Nah, you're good. There is definitely a sense of the forum being somewhat incomprehensibly large; I've obviously been here for a couple of years, and even for me, there's sometimes stuff that I stumble into that I have never come across before that used to be a whole thing years and years ago.

[BernardoCairo]

I think you captured very well what makes this site so special to me. As I once told Blockio and Reichu, even when I don't feel like talking about Evangelion, I enjoy coming here and interacting with the community. I've made some good friends here and I feel like we're close (when compared to other online communities I know, at least).
There are some really good threads on this site. I hope I have helped with some of them over the last few years.

[BritKnee]

I think you captured very well what makes this site so special to me. As I once told Blockio and Reichu, even when I don't feel like talking about Evangelion, I enjoy coming here and interacting with the community. I've made some good friends here and I feel like we're close (when compared to other online communities I know, at least).
There are some really good threads on this site. I hope I have helped with some of them over the last few years.

I love my lurking on this site because of the community, but it (with its age) certainly has a lot of melancholy attached. Quite appropriate for Eva xD.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Yeah, I definitely feel it. This place was hopping back in the day and I had no responsibilities. (Not even to the forum! I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up as an admin.)

The “Rebuild” movies certainly made a commotion in the forum. The long gap between releases at the end both saw dwindling numbers in forum users, which also stained the relationships of the few remaining. So much so that during the 8 year gap between movies 3 and 4 a lot of people kinda formed hyper-tribalistic groups around various, yet unproven theories, and then broke down once Shin Eva proved that it really didn’t care to address either of those theories in any meaningful sense.

Don’t get me wrong, the theory crafting was fun! And it certainly kept me engaged, especially during the years long gap between movies. But it can get a bit contentious at times, and I kinda blame the current state of the forum on that general stress EGF was under with the lack of consistent updates and compulsion to tribalize and whatnot.

On top of all of that, the forum format is kind of falling from grace in general, with communities more likely to spread on Reddit, Facebook, or Discord. (Twitter seems eternally broken even more than usual for the last few months.)

[BritKnee]

On top of all of that, the forum format is kind of falling from grace in general, with communities more likely to spread on Reddit, Facebook, or Discord. (Twitter seems eternally broken even more than usual for the last few months.)

It's a shame, there is something to this format a subreddit or discord "community" dont fill

[nerv bae]

I've been a lurker on this forum since I got into eva about 2 years ago. ... looking through the archives has incited a strong sense of loss? I obviously wasn't here in the site's hay-day so I don't have nearly the same emotional connection others may have but seeing people's interactions through the years got to me.

1.5 years here, and same.

On top of all of that, the forum format is kind of falling from grace in general, with communities more likely to spread on Reddit, Facebook, or Discord. (Twitter seems eternally broken even more than usual for the last few months.)

It's a shame, there is something to this format a subreddit or discord "community" dont fill

In my opinion: Twitter is too ephemeral to support long-format, deep conversations (and its threading model is hopeless); Discord and Facebook are both private walled gardens that don't support public lurking (which is important, as suggested in the first post); Reddit has a voting/attention model that I don't really understand. The forum format avoids all these issues, and for this reason I'm going to ride EGF and several other forums until the wheels come off.

[JoelcrNeto]

Reading some old threads is really fun to me, I feel something that I can't describe.

I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up as an admin.

The same goes to me: I am not entirely sure how I become mod

[Blockio]

Yeah, same. To say that I was surprised when I got the dm asking me if I would be open to becoming site staff would be putting it very mildly

[BernardoCairo]

I love my lurking on this site because of the community, but it (with its age) certainly has a lot of melancholy attached

Almost everything can have some melancholy attached to it, if you think about it. After all, we are nostalgic beings and looking to the past helps us ease the pains of today. Our memory is, by all accounts, selective and only remembers what it wants. A great summer can be bittersweet at the end, when you're forced to face the rest of the year head on. Likewise, a horrible year can be nostalgic for some if their brains prioritize good memories over bad ones.
Human nature is... complicated.

To say that I was surprised when I got the dm asking me if I would be open to becoming site staff would be putting it very mildly

I was thinking of how cool it would be if I became a mod about two days before I received the DM asking me to be a part of the team. I was happy because I wanted to fix a page on the wiki and being a mod, as I expected, allowed me to do that.

[C.A.P.]

As someone who was there and was two (or was it three? Probably 3) years older than your age at that time: from what I gathered, not much has really changed. Some things have, and while many things about the community has had lore that you don't really need to know, a lot of the discourse and our understanding of the anime is more or less the same. I do miss that sense of community of that early 2010s era sometimes (age can do that), but I am of the opinion that you should just live in the present and not get sad that you weren't alive for what you read in history posts or archives. Never feel like you missed out, be happy that the future is bright and unwritten.

Back in 2010 none of us expected that we'd have to wait a whole decade for Evangelion to finish. A lot of newer fans now have the chance to go into it all with a fresh and concrete perspective us old timers can't have. The wait to the finish line probably had a huge influence on some of us: anyone that is a teenager now, you don't have that problem. IMO, that's a gift. Cherish that.

Frankly it's a shock that we're still here. If there's any newcomers here, I'd love to hear what it feels like being in an old place like this despite being used to social media.

[DTGee]

I love old forum lore. Maybe someday, someone will do a deep dive on the history of this place.

[Blockio]

An actual deep dive would be quite the undertaking; just from the things that have happened on the forum alone, disregarding any of the affiliated places, places it spawned off or the places it was created from, there's enough fandom lore here to fill a whole video essay series; I've only been here for five years and some change, only been actively involved in the deeplore for a bit over half than that, and I could already fill two hours just talking about the stuff that I have personally been involved in, and that was during a time of relative quiet compared to the heyday of EGF.

Although, by the same token, many of the incidents (very deliberately using that word here) that would make for the most clickable content for a deep dive are best left buried in the sands of time; even the parts that are accessible to the public have their share of ugly underbellies, and most of the people involved in them would rather not having all of that stuff dug back up.

[TehDonutKing]

I'd certainly rather not have some of my older posts here dug up, but if someone were to do a deep dive on the site, i'd answer any questions they had for me. I don't think any of the long-time users could do a deep dive ourselves, as we'd be way too biased and opinionated about certain things

[Tankred]

I feel that in spite of everything this forum has been through in the last 10 years, it's still the most viable format for long form posts that isn't blogging. Twitter and Discord do not work in the same capacity, Reddit is inferior in that it aggregates the most liked answer, not the most correct answer, which questions the point of the exercise anyway, I feel forums still have a place.
Evageeks suffered greatly in the past decade, an almost entire cadre of off-topic users was lost, those buoyed the forum in the off-seasons, I'm grateful the forums continue to persist regardless and weren't lost.