Goodbye Old Friend

Earlier this week, the Big Football Forum finally closed its eyes and passed away. Though, in name, it still exists, its history has gone forever. The owner of the site, with assistance from a brand new host tried and failed to transfer across the original database. Basically, this meant that everything that made it the place it is, is now gone. Though you’ll find most would agree the forum was in a coma for so long that this was probably the best end game for it. Others might argue that had the owner acted a few years back when everyone suggested he should, the forum would still exist with its colourful past all there for people to read.

Now you see, I’m an old romantic at heart. And even though a forum is just a forum and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, it’s still a testament to the online community that uses it. So, I can’t help feel a little sad that all the wonderful threads and banter are now inaccessible to the old times that used the place for many years.

Irreverent humour was common place

Though if I wipe the tears away from my eyes, I’ll see that the place hasn’t been very good for quite some time anyway. Mostly because the owner decided to play a bigger part in the every day running of it. And as someone recently stated, he now has the forum he deserves.

Several years back, I found a link to the BFF in a Spurs newsgroup. At the time I only used one forum. Irony that will become clear soon is that the other forum (not football related) came into existence because everyone was sick of the owner of the Stile Project and it’s message board. This resulted in a mass exodus and a creation of a new place.

The link to the BFF intrigued me. My first impression was that this was quite the active little community. Not too big, not too small. Some nice banter in the football forums and decent humour in the general forums. I signed up and didn’t regret it.

Those were the days my friend....

But like anything, its glory years never last forever. And with it’s popularity came its demise. Now I know this is more of a personal thing for the 20 or 30 people that made that place great. You know how it is, you feel the place belongs to you and when others sign-up it fragments a little and just seems off balance. And as the quality demised, various clashes of ego practically decimated the place. This resulted with many of its original members (some who helped built the place) walk away. Until all the ‘old timers’ were gone. Some did stay on, revealing in that the forum threads now belonged to them.

I set up Rumourwhores (which was to go offline and re-appear a couple of times) and WhackMyBonobo was also born. Both small communities but always active and without the nazi administration (though RW did have some problems too, suffering from some BFFesque style in-fighting which resulted with an admin deleting himself. Its all rather silly, isn’t it?)

So, I’m thankful for that link and finding the BFF in the first place, mainly because of the friends I’ve made online and what better way to spend time on the Internet (apart from downloading porn) chatting about the greatest game on earth.

I actually signed up to the new forum, but have since been banned, even though I hadn’t posted a single word. Quite an honour to have my IP address blacklisted IMO. Re-writing history by deleting anything that has an anchor to the past. That’s some way to set precedence for the future.

~Spooky