Ray hit on a whole host of salient details about why SBR Chat is dying, and I couldn't agree more that it has nothing to do with me, I'm a symptom and not a cause. If you ask me, it's not just the quality of the chat room, which is abhorrent, it's the fact that you can never have a meaningful conversation on there because SBR is so proud of eavesdropping on private messages and hiding in Invisible Mode to overhear what's said in the room. The Mods come right out and tell you that if you want to talk privately, get off SBR and onto another program. Now they're reaping what they have sown.

I was getting text messages and e-mail from my SBR friends to chat with them on AIM and MSN rather than to meet them in SBR chat like we had done before. After awhile, I just stopped going to the chat here because the conversation had become sterilized. It's like being trapped in an elevator where all you have is small talk because no one wants to risk being overheard by the wrong pair of ears.

I predicted this would happen after the Bash and now am being vindicated. The people that make SBR what it is, the true personalities and backbones of who we are, all became personally acquainted and no longer needed this site to maintain their association. Those are the people that are most dearly missed when they choose to instant message/phone each other rather than chat here. It's a collective absence that has killed SBR Chat, not any singular person. SBR wants to treat people like family at the Bash and then like prisoners whose every move is watched on the site. Of course you're going to lose your best and brightest when you operate that way.

At my new digs they are capitalizing on a hose of mistakes that SBR has refused to acknowledge making since they opened the chat last year. They invested in a professional chat server with every feature you could think of, and if someone comes up with a new idea, they run with it. Their chat is always evolving, new features and widgets keep people interested, keep them coming back. It's rock-solid reliable too, SBR chat is a comedy of errors, while I have yet to experience a single problem across the street. They offer true discrete conversation too, a private chat window stays private. When one of their Mods told me that they believe they have to trust the posters in order to be trusted, I was sold.

I hate the fact that I found someplace so much better than SBR. I wanted to believe this forum really was special and that people here were truly valued. In the end though, a house of cards is bound to crumble. I know what it's like now to be part of a forum that doesn't have exploiting me as their top priority and it feels superb. When somebody over there offers advice, I can trust it, and when someone wants to tell me something private, I don't have to take the conversation to another program.

Sorry SBR, but from where I chat, you guys got knocked out in the first round of this fight.