While I’m not at all happy about this change, I do have another tier of relief to share;
I chatted with Ken one on one tonight; and according to him, we will still be able to access the site including our DMs, for some time to come… we just won’t be able to actually interact on the interface.
Considering how much content and imagery I have posted there, this is a tiny bit of a silver lining: I have plenty of time to copy and save the content that I don’t already have in my archive.
Once again, I cannot be grateful enough that the regular mutants saw this day coming a long time ago, and prepared for it.
I know this stings, but here we can be together as a community without risking the well being and safety of our most imperiled members.
Very briefly: are there any objections to inviting atteSmythe? He’s been a solid member on the BBS for over a decade, and an old acquaintance of mine from Puzzle Pirates even further back.
I was able to do this just now at BB, and it included, among other things, every post I think I’ve ever made. The whole archive was just ~350K, but I suspect for many of you it will be significantly larger.
For me the moment i realized that the Authors really did not care was (i hope i’m recalling htis correctly) an article years ago where they talk about some kind of festival, maybe in India, where someone’s on a platform people are carrying, and the thing they’re on hits some powerlines. It was reported as a “Hey look at this crazy thing happen!” but i did the bare minimum amount of checking online to find out that person died. So you’re literally watching someone die on video and i was absolutely horrified. I called it out on the comments hoping the article would be changed but nope. It was ignored and i decided to let it go but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
There had been small similar moments since then that i had taken note of, things getting reported incorrectly or with a bias that did more harm than good. Overall i still enjoy checking the BB articles otherwise i wouldn’t have stuck around but i’ve been hoping things would improve and the Substack move is like a stake through the heart.
I do understand at a logical level why they are doing this but I would have been happy to put some money on the piggy bank if they left the BBS open, in addition to substack, even if the threads about articles are not created.
/rant on/
It reminds me when my favourite chinese restaurant did a complete overhaul of the decorations, reduced the menu and upped the prices. I congratulated the owner (longtime friend and occasional client of mine) but I told her that, even if I understood the necessity of this to compete with the other restaurants… the move alienated people like me, who loved the difficult-to-find-elsewhere dishes and the affordable prices… and for which the decoration spoke of “generic chinese chic restaurant” – good for attracting the more affluent customers, but not me
(I’m happy to say the restaurant thrives… and the only one that lost was me - it is now a place to order very occasionally instead of going there twice a week)
/end rant/
In any case I’m happy to see so many known faces and thanks again for inviting me. I second (third? fourth?) gaghalfrunt, doctor_faustus, teophrastus and I would add if they are not here already or in any list Simon_Clift, bakaneko… I don’t know how invites work and how secret is this place so for now I haven’t said anything to anyone (who doesn’t love a good cabal of conspirateurs? )
This really is a very emotional investment for me - contacting good 'uns re: Elsewhere. It really hurt to lose a lot of online friends when stumbleupon suddenly became an unrecognizable thing that was not what we’d signed up for. They also warned us a V short time in advance of the radical changes - “The gorgeous, informative blogs you worked on so hard & enthusiastically, communication with other users, the art you created and posted, the fantastic websites & media you’ve collected and shared all go POOF! in just [insert minuscule time frame]! Isn’t it exciting?” (cue sad trombone noise from The Price is Right) Not all of us were able to DL our blogs, either!
I still miss a “We’ll need to rent a hall!” party’s worth of wonderful ppl from all over the world whom I’d met there. My coping mechanism when I remember them is thinking/saying, “I hope they’re well and happy!”
I’m here, I just haven’t been here much lately. Indeed, there is a private channel a few of us have and I was just mentioning that very thing and now I’m going to have to go back and correct myself. It seems like this place has exploded with the BBS move to substack, and I’m all for that! I’ll make an effort to log on much more often than I have been.
)