Oh thank God you were pulling my leg. I'd really come to enjoy posting with you over the last couple months and I was completely crestfallen to see you list those as your underrated posters. It's even better now that Zeta popped in to accept his compliments, only to realize he was getting punked.
I share your dismay at seeing how this place turned out. It's only recently that I realized how invested I've become here, and how many life lessons I was actually able to learn by being a part of this community. It just goes to show how you get what you give in this life, and even the most inconsequential of associations can result in great benefit if you're willing to take them seriously. That was what got me to join SBR in the first place: the unbridled passion of the diverse group of posters back when the forum was at its zenith.
As we approach the eventual demise of this place, I hope everyone with sufficient IQ to draw the conclusion realizes just how destructive and evil unbridled greed is. No other force could've brought this unlikely community to its knees as we witness today, not even apathy and neglect. SBR used to treat us like people even though they didn't have to, and that was what made this place great. Once a path was chosen to turn every poster into a fully-quantifiable source of revenue, the writing was on the wall...
Honestly, even I never realized that it was Willie Bee's pre-internet era sense of social justice that made this place so special, until it was replaced with John's avarice, Bill's neglect and Lou's quest for relevance. Shari was a breath of fresh air, but it was only a matter of time before she ran out of fingers to stick in the dike. I'm sure there were other bright spots I'm forgetting, but my disgust at what we're left with now (that's right Opie, looking straight at you) won't let me recall them at the moment.
For those who are still reading, I beg you to take your posting a little more seriously. When I first joined, I was an angry, petulant 26 year old just finding his way completely out of the closet. I encountered some amazing people here, but lacked the maturity to appreciate and interact with them as sincerely as I would like to now. A lot of undeserving people (and a few very deserving ones) got caught in the meat grinder of my intense struggle to figure myself out, and it goes without saying that I have some regrets about it all.
That's the most important lesson of all, in my opinion: if you're not taking your posting seriously enough to have some sincere regrets about some of it, then you're truly just
wasting the precious moments of your life here. Call it a diversion if you want, or harmless entertainment, but those are just covers for what you know is pure disrespect for how important each of you could be to the world if you were willing to try a little harder (now I'm looking at you, Loshak).
The bonds of society are crumbling in real life as noticeably as they are here, all because nobody is willing to believe that they could possibly make a difference. Don't buy it, because it's not at all true. Even if all you do is grow as a human being, you've changed the world, but it only happens when you stop treating it like a game. You have to
care. That's why I'll be here until the lights go out, because I've spent too many years honestly caring about it all and its effect on me to just walk away. I wish I had more people here to share those sentiments with...