Fansites Changing the Lives of Their Members

[Fana McCloud]

I found this article on Kotaku that took a look at a Final Fantasy fansite that started in the late 90's called Eyes on Final Fantasy, and how the fan culture that sprung up on their forums ended up weaving itself into and changing their lives. I personally never went there nor had heard of it because by the time I had access to a Playstation to play FF7 with there was a huge lull in my fan involvement and I had already essentially "chosen" my primary fandom, so to speak (and I had never heard of Final Fantasy games until FF7 came out, quite embarrassingly).

 

http://kotaku.com/oh-jeez-i-was-a-regular-on-eoff-during-my-early-awkwa-484688080

 

But I read it and it just got me thinking about how much my own fan community helped shape my life back in the day. Although really, it's more like fan "communities" because I've had to bounce between several due to closures or disliking the culture prevalent in one versus the other, and so on. It's a big, long stretching lineage of Star Fox communities going way back to Papetoon/Mouth Off and the CEF (Cornerian Elite Force) back in the 90's, then on to SFNet/Lylat.net for awhile, then a much more listless time bouncing around a bunch of other places, usually less known ones. Then by some fluke I ended up here after Dermot, whom I had known from Mouth Off, told me about it. XD I kinda wanted to share stories in the vein of how we got here and what the community means to us.

 

My story more or less starts with Nintendo Power, a magazine that actually recently ceased production, much to the sadness of many. I had a subscription I kept up, because honestly video games fascinated me and at the time Nintendo was pretty much the big dog and I had their systems exclusively. I wanted to know and read all I could, learn about new games so that I'd know what to ask for when my parents were generous and had the means. Well I say parents, but it was mostly my dad buying the stuff. In any case, I got some promo videos in the mail as part of my subscription. There was one that was showcasing the N64 and some of the launch titles. Then there was one that featured... *drumroll* Star Fox 64! Yeah, that was how I got drawn into this silly fandom of ours - a very corny promotional video. It's actually on Youtube too, and I still have that VHS... in a closet somewhere. XD

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0i_SI63I70

 

 

In any case, it made me beg like a maniac for them to get an N64 and Star Fox 64 specifically. To this day I've never really played Super Mario 64 or any of the other launch titles. I just knew SF 64 was the one I wanted - after all, it was the one with cute animals that did awesome action hero type things. Yeah, I was definitely not a normal girl. XD I blame my fascination with both animated Disney shows as well as super hero cartoons from the time, as even the Disney shows were more action-ey and less high school drama at that point, but they usually used anthropomorphic animal characters as well. So yeah, fuzzy animals kicking butt was and still is a win for me.

 

I, like many people after playing Star Fox 64, made a fansite. Then I found other fansites and specifically the CEF, as well as Mouth Off. The CEF was more a place for bragging rights and fan works though, it never had a forum or anything (though it did have a chatroom), but it's where I got sorta quasi famous for awhile because I was in the leadership there, and got Fana written into the official CEF fan fics as a result with some cameos in others. It was really Mouth Off that was my community at the time, and it pretty much helped bolster and direct the course of my life.

 

See, when I started going to Mouth Off I had previously jumped to a completely different school with a completely different vibe that left me feeling alienated and without friends. Then I went the homeschooling route and so the Internet started to become my only real tool for socializing (you can already see why I'm so magnificently maladjusted, yes? ). I started with my dad's computer, but I only got to be with him over weekends and such. Then we started getting a succession of computers of our own at my mother's place, and when those broke down I was hopping the city bus to the library to use their computers (I became rather proficient at using our ever so lovely public transit system at an early age because my mother had to rely on it a lot due to lacking a car, and she unlike so many mothers had enough faith in me to let me ride it alone after a certain age). Mouth Off was my circle of friends for all intents and purposes - the real world was just a distraction I had to deal with in between. Back then there was no tracking down old friends on Facebook, so my life before switching schools essentially just vanished. I had always been an introvert, and so when I left the friendships I did have just disappeared. The invitations to birthday and pool parties ceased, probably because I wasn't there to receive them anymore (the parents didn't exactly keep big address books with the addresses of their children's friends, this was before many people were aware of the Internet, much less e-mail). And so poof, social life vanished. Mouth Off kept me afloat during that space of my life, and every community since then has as well in some way.

 

Mouth Off almost kinda felt like Facebook before there was a Facebook, because it was a messageboard but without categories or threads, it was just a giant feed of messages (sorta more like a shoutbox I guess, as even Facebook threads replies) and in order to understand WTF anyone was talking about you had to scroll down the entire thing and just skim all the messages, they appeared in posting order with the most recent at the top. The only thing that honestly made it different from a chatroom is that it was persistent - if you left the site and came back the messages were still there (yes, chatrooms used to not keep logs of everything that went on in the room, so if you came in later, you'd never be able to see what transpired previously without someone sending you a text file with it or summarizing for you). I didn't remember there being a lot of browser based forums other than Mouth Off at the time, so it was kinda a cool thing to me - I think a lot of people were still using Usenet at the time. Though in hindsight there were probably lots of forums I just never bothered visiting. XD

 

The vibe in any case, from what I can vaguely remember, was one of friends just shooting the breeze. There was an emphasis on having custom avatars (not just rips of existing Star Fox graphics), and so there were a lot of people there who were artists or who had one of the artists make a picture of their fan character for them for such a purpose. It was in any case probably a very unique place and experience. There were some furries there and that's how I eventually discovered that particular fandom, mostly through links to art on Yerf! (a long defunct clean furry art site) and VCL (still around but largely surpassed by Fur Affinity and all that came afterwards).

 

...And my first boyfriend was on there too, though he didn't become my BF til much later. But let us not speak of that. There's several huge social disasters that surround that chapter of my life. I certainly learned some things from that though.

 

But basically, almost all the people I would call friends now are due to Mouth Off and every other Star Fox fan community I've ever touched. I never felt any desire to join other communities in other fandoms of things I like because honestly Star Fox has always been a perfect fit. But it's also SMALL, so I don't feel like I'm lost in a crowd in this fandom. Much more cozy, much easier to follow, and all the more meaningful because I've managed to hang onto it for so long.

[Redeemer]

Well, you're one of the familiar faces around here, it's safe to say you're a big part of the community here. I know what you mean about the cozy feeling. I think it was cavemonkynick whom I was discussing this with, but some time ago I compared SFO to something like a distant online family kind of thing.

 

Regarding online communities, I must admit that I'm a fussy biatch. I've joined loads of forums, for the stuff I'm really interested in. I even revisited an old, old Zelda forum where I was once moderator, and what I saw after years of being offline wasn't enough to make me want to return for good. But other forums have either been full of people I just couldn't bring myself to like, or were of older games that I love dearly, but the forums were inactive.

 

Do I think that online communities change your life? Yes. It's changed my life, for sure. Not only have I met my partner, I've also met some wonderful individuals that I'm so glad I had the chance to encounter.

 

I agree that smaller fandoms are more comfortable. In fact, I'm still on another forum where the whole community has moved together for years. I've known many of the members since I was 14. So, for 10 years, we've been on the same forum, and moved board whenever it was needed. I love that.

[Prince Elite]

This fansite, is certainly a community. In some cases, or maybe just mine, it's a community for those who have none, and we ARE certainly one big family. I'm sorry, this is such a beautiful concept. I need a tissue. But seriously if it wasn't for me that fateful day two years ago of typing "Star Fox forum" into google, and coming across this, then my life would be vastly different. Probably not for the better. The people I know on here are closer than my own family (although considering my brother and I are not close at all, that's not a high bar to jump) But yes, you've touched on many good points, and SFO is a life changer.

No, I am not all marshmallowy on the inside!

[DoctorAllosaurus]

I've been part of a few communities but my life hasn't really changed because of them, made a few friends here and there but rarely ever talk to them off site besides maybe the three people I blab to constantly here.

[Scourge]

I never really did forums until I joined SF-O, and since then, my steam friendslist is almost entirely composed of you guys... *sniffle* I love y'all D,:

[Ori]

Wow Fana... That's quite a story there. =O

 

Well, I must say that as of myself I had a quite uneventful little online story except for a unexpected turn of events, which I can relate to Fana's, somewhat. =P Brace yourself for the nonsense. xP

 

What can I say... Since I was a little annoying brat that was basically Space Core before Portal 2, I remember not fitting quite well into socializing normally. Surprisingly, my first introduction to the internet wasn't of a home service, but one of the 'LAN houses' that are common here in Brazil. (Say, pay-to-use hourly) Actually I never knew half of what was available at the thing until I learned English to a certain degree of coherence, so I was still stuck to national stuff. After a while learning with aid of family (if little) -because school sucks here- I finally learned the required basics, and well, honestly I wasn't aware of forums and stuff, and apparently Chat rooms were where strange people hung out, so, was a no-no. :V

 

'ey, don't blame me. You don't have enough coherence and self-awareness to realize your parents are somewhat NOT right at all the time being 8. :V

 

Somewhere around '06 and '07 while you all were moaning and groaning about Command a bad turn of events threw me in to the lower tier of public school due to many, many monetary issues (that still haunt us coming and going eventually) of my family, yet still I wasn't in its 4chan. I was most decidedly NOT going back into that hell after being literally BITTEN by some random bugger there, though. (Luckily I didn't contract rabies or anything. ) Anyway, sheesh. For reasons I'll tell you all in a later time, since it's a looooong boring story, many people hated me for no valid reason at all. I became quite recluse, and very antisocial.

 

NOW where's communities kick in. Two or so years later, a long-gone Spore forum from Brazil got my attention. There I've learned about many things I was oblivious of, including fanfics, modding, etc. It didn't affect me at all, but with the years I kinda got a bit more aware of how stuff worked. Shortly before the death of that board, I got flung into a much bigger international site. That one, I must say it changed a lot that I honestly couldn't see myself here if it wasn't for it. I got introduced to many things I know and honestly, like, there, including things such as Portal, Nintendo, Sonic, and a whole cornucopia of things. Honestly some of my ignorance from that time surely preserved my innocence, but fortunately, internet pr0nz never showed up to potentially revoke my rights of computer usage. (...I find ironic how now internet tries to shove it in my face. :V) A spree of serious dedication into spaceflight occasionally led me to see SF as an occasional mention to be a motivator that led Orbinauts into spaceflight sciences back at Orbiter-Forum.

 

Then there was this long chunk of time where, um, absolutely nothing other than my eventual StarFox contact and Garry's Mod acquirement happened, and then back at last october, after a marathon of searing slices of infernal fiery perversion into the eyes from the search terms 'gmod Krystal' led me to one sane picture. And that was all I needed to stumble across an old thread by The Arcade here, that in fact I believe it's still there. The simple and dark-ish interface of SF-O made me think it was somewhat a inactive forum (lolfail xP), but I joined anyway.

 

A decision I'm honestly not going to regret anytime soon.

 

'Why', you ask? Where to begin; you guys kept me from stumbling upon OTHER parts of the fandom, introduced me to the huge trivia behind the series AND enhanced my critical sense of canon (I mean, I used to think Star Wars II/III were good! I mean, seriously, me!?) and real subjects, got me into a smarter-snarkier-darker humor style, recently got me into RPs, introduced me into dA, and frankly, SF-O is somewhat (when I say that, I say 'mostly') responsible for my recognition as Furry back in late february this year.

 

Hey, you should see that as a compliment since you somehow managed to splice a person of conservative norms with the notoriously perverted fandom creating a somehow perversion-omitted fan of anthros.

 

I changed a lot, I admit. And to better, I might add. I learned how to make decent arguments (and not some random 'because Corinthians' Chewbacca Defense), which on that note have proven to be useful when I'm demanded to dissertate a subject. Even the bad part of the fandom had a bit there: This necessary evil was what kept me from running into Really Bad Things unaware of the bad srs bzns there.

 

So you see, I had some fun crazy times when I look back at the thing as whole. I think I'd really be some derpressed bad joker impersonation or a foreveralone or something if it wasn't for this contact with online fansites. =P Most of the people I have added on online service (when I say 'online services' I say 'Steam' xP) friend lists are from here save a few exceptions like a friend or two from the Sonic fandom (of which I didn't dare -and I don't think I will given the fame- to get into to the extent of joining a community ).

 

So, yeah, you mismatch fanmob of wacky SF-O people are all awesome. (_^-^ )

 

[Also Fana, clean Furry art sites? Damn, I missed all the good stuff then. xP]

[Dr. Orange]

SF-O as also my first forum. You people gave me some great friends and great times. So many sub-cultures seen and so many threads. My gurd I feel like this place is that home I can go to... in my home. I like that feel. It makes me baw.

[Fana McCloud]

[Also Fana, clean Furry art sites? Damn, I missed all the good stuff then. xP]

 

Yeah, it was a big thing in the early days of my involvement but now everyone wants to be all inclusive. There were some attempts to make other clean furry art sites but they've all since vanished. Now that we have things like rating filtering on a lot of these sites though it's not so bad. XD

[Ala1n-J]

I'm usually very introverted, so I'm not involved in forums or community sites. Mind you, I don't even have a Facebook! Deviantart was one of the first real steps in Internet community, though I mainly regard it as a show gallery. This forum was the very first forum I was watching with interest, but at the time I didn't imagine joining in.

Then I heard about the Starfox Project Retro fangame (now known as Lylat's Last Stand) and the team needed a concept artist. I volunteered and I took the job. Working on this had me installing Skype to chat with the team and to join this forum. I don't have the opportunity to see my friends from art school or before (either we lost contact or we cannot see each other because of studies and/or geography), but with Skype now I can discuss with the team members much easier and I made great friends, thinking of RennardFuchs, Psy-commando and Fana just to name a few. And I can still dicuss with you people here on topics of all interests. I'll join what Fana said, it's not a super big forum. It's more comfortable and easier to follow. I may not be active on this forum a lot, but I still like looking at some of the discussions here, even if I'm not directly involved in them.

I wouldn't say Starfox-Online changed my life in a drastical way, but it kinda helped me getting steps in internet socialization. Not forgetting the friends I met without the forum's help, but I still made new friends thanks to Starfox-Online.

[LoneWolf]

Yeah, for me SF-O was the first step into networking as I know it today. It was graduating from a heavily moderated other site to a place where I could be myself, find myself, and be shaped by others.

 

So yeah, SFO has turned me into an open minded sarcastic asshole. But it's for the better.

 

I also learned that most of the people here on the internet aren't actually assholes, they just like to act like it. And that's changed my perspective of the internet as a whole.

 

So yeah.

 

That's my story in a nutshell.

[Thu'um]

I was going to post here earlier, but i need time to sit down and get a genuine thought out so excuse my lateness. 

 

 

My membership of SF-O was the result of a my desire, or as vydrach often calls it, that (NEED MOAR) phase i'm sure most of us have been in. That was spawned after my soul being crushed as an emotional 7th grader who played command and actually expected a happy ending. I became obsessed with the idea of a relationship between fox and krystal.

 

After joining i quickly came into conflict with some of the community. I think my first post was something about how the Shadows of laylat was going to be better then some other fan game. I was a baby to the internet. So i think early on i was known for my bitching with milky and all that. But belive it or not, those arguments shaped me milky . Your use of logic made me have a distaste of rationalization of human nature. 

 

In short this place is special to me, i can't write down everything all of you have done to shape me or how close we've all grown, But i'm thankful for it. Its weird feeling like there is a place i can retreat to where i know and trust everyone.  Its like the virtual "cheers" 

[Fana McCloud]

Its weird feeling like there is a place i can retreat to where i know and trust everyone.  Its like the virtual "cheers" 

 

You can't say that without posting the Cheers theme song now, c'mon. ;P

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mi0r0LpXo

 

SF-O - where everybody knows your naaaaaaaaame. >:3

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

My internet story is kind of similar to Fana's. The one thing that was different was that I was never home schooled. Growing up, I was that kid that people simply chose to pick on for no reason whatsoever. It was around second grade or so when it all began. This one kid decides to establish himself as "cool" and of course, just like mainstream media, soon enough the more he repeated it, the more the other kids were willing to follow him. Even though this one kid would only go to the same school as me for that one year, his influence on the rest of my classmates would impact their personalities for a very long time. Long story short, i went to school with basically the same group of kids from 2nd grade all the way through high school. You could imagine how that negatively impacted my view of society as a whole.

 

As such, it was very hard to fit in with anybody really, because pretty much no one wanted to be ousted from the "cool group" for spending time with me. Yet somehow i was fortunate enough to make my first true friend in school in 3rd grade. Up until that point in time, i had never either fathomed the idea of meeting up with and spending time with a classmate outside of school. (More of a family issue here than a psychological one I think, but it's not the kind of bad influence that i would feel comfortable speaking about on the internet...It sucked, and still does, that's all you need to know)

 

In any case, it was and still is a weird friendship I have with this guy. I'm friends with him, but not so much with his friends, who of course are mostly the people who had ousted me in the first place. As such, I can never help but feel that in my presence, they don't enjoy spending time as a group. Maybe its just me going crazy, but they just sound happier and louder and more free when im not there. Basically it came down to this: While growing up, I was more than happy to invite all these people to my b-day parties, but I would get invited to maybe 2-3 of them at most, and those couple of people were my friends.

 

Here's where its weird though, generally speaking I share many interests with the people who made my life miserable in school. Because of our familiarity with one another however, I could not approach them about anything, and similarly they could not approach me (as most likely both sides would be thinking the other was conspiring to either get the other one in trouble or just create a ruckus) Anyways, like most real life friends, a lot of the people i grew up with I have lost contact with.

 

Here's the actual internet part coming up: So basically at some point in time in middle school, i started using the internet and learning about computers. One day, I was introduced to IGN.com and that was my very first "trusted" video game site. (We know how that story ends down the road...) All this occured before I had come to realize just how much I really enjoyed the SF franchise. That being said, I had played only the SF64 game up until that point in time. So really my first forum was the IGN forums, and it was great, I was literally part of a HUGE community that was split into smaller sections based on the game. So i figured it would be great to keep one profile for a bunch of little communities. Unfortunately, what seemed so great would become disastrous. I quickly realized that some parts of the IGN forums were quite cruel. Many of the members, particularly in the Super Smash Bros forums had established this idea that number of posts was a determining factor of "respect" or identifier of how much "knowledge" someone had who used the forums. I saw an incredible number of people who would gain power by simply knowing the mods in real life and people who were constantly mocked on the forums for having a low post count and being called noobs as a result. And at it's worst, new members who have so many interesting ideas would be mocked for writing up "walls of text" and meanwhile, the more well-known members would be praised and whatever, but all the ever said would be silly one-liners. Let's also not forget the entire aspect of the "Professional" Super Smash Bros. players who were also members of the board. Everything they were talking about was why you simply couldn't be good at the game unless you used certain characters and blah blah blah..... It was a horrble experience, and I felt like I was re-living the trauma from school on the internet.

 

One day, I basically figured I had enough of this online forum stuff...but somehow, I decided to check out information on the SF: Assault game that was going to basically be the next amazing SF game. So I realized that the SF forums had a much smaller group of people who communicated, and after spending some time with them, I became more comfortable with the SF fanbase as a whole. So a years goes by, and I started getting bored of all the same conversations going on over and over. I begin to drift away from the IGN Star Fox boards...and sure enough SF: Command is in the works, drawing me back in. Between 2005-2006, I would say the number of regular members on the IGN SF board dropped about 40% (obviously I'm pulling numbers out of my head randomly...but there was a very noticeable drop in numbers) By the start of 2007, there was no need for moderators to stop by because the number of people who stopped by dropped below 15 (I am being dead serious about this number). I believe there was 6 - 7 people who were the only ones coming back at all by the end of 2007.

 

At some point, our frustrations over a lack news regarding any new SF game caused us to start brainstorming ideas for a fan game. Out of the 7 people who frequented the boards, only five of us were interested at all in pursuing the project. We at first thought we could create a new SF fan-site through the use of one of those "create your own website" websites, but the limitations in terms of bandwidth and maximum memory quickly erased that idea from becoming a reality. So we figured, "let's just work on our game on the site and keep it to ourselves." Now that I think about it, that's probably the worst decision we made out of all of them. Now keep in mind the four of us who remained throughout the life of the project were all just high school and junior high school kids. We were limited to speculation and ideas. And we figured we could just give Nintendo the ideas behind a completed game and see what they were going to do with it. Long story short, stress began to come over us all at some point, and the project, and our communications crumbled. I managed to archive a LOT of the information (at least the most important things that would be needed to shape the most important ideas and concepts), but unfortunately not all of it, as I did not think that the website was going to be erased and altered into a "Terminator" movie site that also quickly died.

 

We thought of almost everything. We took into considerations mistakes that Nintendo and Namco had made in weapon/mission type balancing in SF Assault and how we could implement all the on-foot weapons into the main story as well as considering various online game modes. We actually went as far as to make the assumption that only certain parts of SF Command would be considered cannon for the sake of adding more characters and as such, we created concepts for more characters...and so on. It was wonderful how we were able to come up with so many ideas and mesh them together on paper, but unfortunately circumstances were so that we did not have the capabilities to bring our ideas to life. With our idea out the window, it was pretty much the end of the IGN SF board community, as our group basically had a falling out with each other. IGN and their wonderful "auto-cleaning" systems erased the fanfiction written by one of our team members, that helped created the main overarching story for our game idea...so who knows where I could find it now....

 

In any case the past was the past. I decided I needed to find a new SF community as it was the only type of fanbase I had ever fit in with. Yu-Gi-Oh was simply me enjoying the show and hating the card game. Magic the Gathering was a rip off of Yu-Gi-Oh that died off quickly. It had been years since the Pokemon vs. Digimon debate ended that nobody ever won. Metabots was a dying franchise. Beyblade was in a similar situation. And really, there's far too many anime/merchandise stuff to recall...i would be going on forever. The point is that no matter how much of a dire situation SF game series was in, it had some kind of lasting impression on those who had grown up with the franchise. And so, I eventually discovered ArwingLanding through the power of google, and I was about to join it, but SF-O caught my eye. There was a difference in the two sites. AL was a smaller site, and was composed of individuals who had basically spoken about practically everything that could be talked about to death. On SF-O, even though there was not much being discussed there either, it seemed that the chemistry between members of the site was so, that they managed to entertain one another and play off of each other's strengths in communication and creative works. So in my mind, the Arwing Landing group seemed like a bunch of older, less ambitious to discuss group, and SF-Online seemed more vibrant.

 

DISCLAIMER: I apologize to unoservix for having that mentality about Arwing Landing. I know you will be reading this

 

And so I joined SF-O, and what it gave me was not just another place to discuss SF, but also a place to talk about real world issues and a place to come together with well-spoken individuals. I can easily say that SF-O has helped me grow as a person in that I have become better at communicating with people in a professional setting. Any bit of shyness or soft-spoken-ness that I may have seemed like in the past is no longer. I have learned how to take control of situations and disputes as an adult. And certainly most important, the fact that I now see many different aspects of life from many different viewpoints, which ultimately makes me a better decision maker.

[Fana McCloud]

Magic the Gathering was a rip off of Yu-Gi-Oh that died off quickly. 

 

I feel I need to correct you on something - Magic the Gathering was the first collectible card game and it predates even the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga by a few years, thus it isn't a rip-off of that. I played it back around when it was first released so I know Magic quite well. There's a thriving professional tournament culture surrounding it to this day, so I wouldn't really call it dead either. Just an FYI. >:3

 

In any case your journey that led up to coming here is most interesting indeed. I too got to see the perils of nepotism on a lot of the forums I bounced between though, I know too well the negative influences people can have on administrative decisions simply because they're friends with the admins/mods. There was a guy on Lylat.net that was bad news, and I could see it from a mile away but he was close friends with the guy that ran the place so he generally was given free reign. He also had root access on the webserver where the forum was hosted. One day he went batshit over his GF dumping him and deleted everything from what I hear. Yeeeeeeah, that was interesting. I had left before that happened cause I knew the place would go to hell.

 

But yeah, I was an admin or mod on a few of the forums I bounced to (including the aforementioned Lylat.net) and managed to have a falling out each time that made me pack my bags, usually because the people were dickish or were engaged in obvious nepotism. The next to last one I admined on was far more tangled and involved someone seducing and manipulating my boyfriend who ran the place, so I was just flat out chased off of that one and had to break it off with him in the process, fun. I still look back at it all completely baffled and amazed and mildly annoyed. XD

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

Well first off, let me apologize for Magic. I was typing away without thinking so much. Honestly though, most of the people who i knew liked playing that game stopped playing it long before the Yu-Gi-Oh trend disappeared. So it was my assumption that it became cool and was forgotten pretty quickly. My mistake there.

 

In any case, did I make it sound like my internet life was rough? Power to you Fana for not going crazy after all that you just described. I've never been personally cyber-bullied or targeted. I would imagine in recent years its gotten worse since you hear all this stuff on the news all the time nowadays.

 

But I do need to ask, why on earth do you always have horrible things to say about yourself Fana? You say you are an introvert, and yet you seem more willing to speak about anything that bothers you than anyone on the site. You say you have problems relating to people, but here you are having wonderful conversations with people you have never even met. If anything, I should be the one who claims to have the trouble articulating his thoughts. Honestly, I sound much wiser on the internet than I do in real life. Even though I may sound like a bit of a fool, or "younger" at least in terms of how i perceive the world around me. However, upon looking a little deeper through people's profiles on the web and whatnot, I realize that is actually because the other people I am communicating with (who discuss topics that require more thought and a wider knowledge base) actually are older than me. And that's not a bad thing, as most people in my age group are quite....immature, irresponsible, selfish....etc.

 

Point being, even though I feel less capable at times when communicating on the web, I actually learn a lot from others as I gain their perspective on different things.

[Sarita]

Wanna know something crazy? Both Eyes on Final Fantasy and SF-O are responsible for huge changes in my life. And they're all related to one member who was both here and there. 

 

Long and painful story made horribly short, Sissi meets ex on EoFF, ex is a member of SF-O, through ex she meets Steve, through Steve she joins SF-O. TADAA.

[Gestalt]

Yeah, I am certainly different thanks to sfo...well mannered, temperate, kind, caring, considerate, awesome, awesome. Did I mention awesome? But mostly, I took temperance away from sfo.
 
Now who wants a family hug from uncle Shenny...5 bucks a pop. Pics'll cost ya extra.

[Geo Stelar]

Yeah, I am certainly different thanks to sfo...well mannered, temperate, kind, caring, considerate, awesome, awesome. Did I mention awesome? But mostly, I took temperance away from sfo.

 

Yeah SF-O has changed me too. Now I'm more open with my personal opinions. ^{_{I also learned how to troll without getting into trouble.}} 

 

 

Now who wants a family hug from uncle Shenny...5 bucks a pop. Pics'll cost ya extra.

 

*gives uncle shenny a great big hug*

[Fana McCloud]

But I do need to ask, why on earth do you always have horrible things to say about yourself Fana? You say you are an introvert, and yet you seem more willing to speak about anything that bothers you than anyone on the site. You say you have problems relating to people, but here you are having wonderful conversations with people you have never even met. If anything, I should be the one who claims to have the trouble articulating his thoughts.

 

It took me many years to get to this point and I still have some social hangups that manifest a lot more IRL. The Internet tends to pump everyone's confidence a bit because you can think through your actions or jump ship to somewhere else on a whim, both of which are a lot harder IRL. So yeah, I SEEM confident here, but it's all an act. ;P I mean my IRL self has improved a lot over the years obviously but if you had seen me years back you'd understand. The idea of meeting Internet friends IRL was enough to send me into full blown anxiety attacks back then, which I got to experience when I met someone from SFNet at a con. My insecurity was so strong that I panicked - I rather ungracefully excused myself and went outside and hid in my car for awhile.

 

Going through college where I was forced to deal with people helped get me out of that a lot, though I think my turnaround was mostly due to my step-father entering my life - he helped me build a greater confidence in dealing with people, as he was a lot more extroverted than me and helped me gain a sense of humor about myself and life. Before him I was rather like a crude automation, I only knew how to deal with strange people in a very cursory and terse way. I never made small talk or carried conversations because I never knew how or saw the point. If someone asked an icebreaker question to help start conversation I'd give the shortest answer possible, which most of the time was just "yes" or "no", and then the awkward pause or silence would drop in and the other person would either immediately give up or ask more questions that were met with similar responses, and THEN after seeing THAT was futile, just give up. My step-father however didn't give up, probably partially because he knew he had to get along with me if he was going to spend the rest of his life with my mom. XD

 

We're total BFFs now. It's really strange being close friends with my step-father but not unfathomable I suppose. He's only 10 years older than me, which makes him closer in age to me than to my mom. Makes for a very odd but in my case fulfilling family. People tend to think he's MY husband, not my mom's, so the comedy abounds. >:3

[Snys93]

You can't say that without posting the Cheers theme song now, c'mon. ;P

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mi0r0LpXo

 

SF-O - where everybody knows your naaaaaaaaame. >:3

 

Wow, I was just thinking that.

[Vosseleri]

Starmen.net helped me get out of my weeaboo phase.  Before joining Starmen, I spent a lot of time in communities where being obnoxious and ~*OMG random desu*~ was encouraged.  Due to a combination of autism and self-preservation mechanisms, I subconciously pick up on the attitudes and behaviour of others and mimic it.  This lead to a number of unintentionally rude and horribly unfunny posts that I was called out on.  I can't begin to explain how embarrassed I am by my earlier posts on Starmen.  I'm seriously surprised that I never even had a mod give me a warning.  I guess they went easy on me because I was thirteen at the time (this would be five years ago) and quite a few people would provide excellent explanations as to why what I said was really not okay.  It took around two years, but eventually I did get the hang of how to act in a socially acceptable manner in most places on the interwebs (again).

[psy_commando]

scourgeclaw, on 14 May 2013 - 3:06 PM, said:

I never really did forums until I joined SF-O, and since then, my steam friendslist is almost entirely composed of you guys... *sniffle* I love y'all D,:

 

Same here !

Well, mostly when I began playing tf2 on the server

 

Fana McCloud, on 15 May 2013 - 1:17 PM, said:

It took me many years to get to this point and I still have some social hangups that manifest a lot more IRL. The Internet tends to pump everyone's confidence a bit because you can think through your actions or jump ship to somewhere else on a whim, both of which are a lot harder IRL. So yeah, I SEEM confident here, but it's all an act. ;P I mean my IRL self has improved a lot over the years obviously but if you had seen me years back you'd understand. The idea of meeting Internet friends IRL was enough to send me into full blown anxiety attacks back then, which I got to experience when I met someone from SFNet at a con. My insecurity was so strong that I panicked - I rather ungracefully excused myself and went outside and hid in my car for awhile.

Going through college where I was forced to deal with people helped get me out of that a lot, though I think my turnaround was mostly due to my step-father entering my life - he helped me build a greater confidence in dealing with people, as he was a lot more extroverted than me and helped me gain a sense of humor about myself and life. Before him I was rather like a crude automation, I only knew how to deal with strange people in a very cursory and terse way. I never made small talk or carried conversations because I never knew how or saw the point. If someone asked an icebreaker question to help start conversation I'd give the shortest answer possible, which most of the time was just "yes" or "no", and then the awkward pause or silence would drop in and the other person would either immediately give up or ask more questions that were met with similar responses, and THEN after seeing THAT was futile, just give up. My step-father however didn't give up, probably partially because he knew he had to get along with me if he was going to spend the rest of his life with my mom. XD

We're total BFFs now. It's really strange being close friends with my step-father but not unfathomable I suppose. He's only 10 years older than me, which makes him closer in age to me than to my mom. Makes for a very odd but in my case fulfilling family. People tend to think he's MY husband, not my mom's, so the comedy abounds. >:3

Oh my god, that thing about the awkward pauses in discussions, It happened lot before, and it still happens from time to time to me !

I never know what to talk about, and you can only talk so much about the weather XD

I don't follow sports anymore, I don't watch the news either. So I have no ideas what to talk about that would get a discussion started !

Though, a really funny thing happened when I began taking anti-depressants in college. I became really uninhibited and in 2-3 weeks I became the complete opposite of what I became when I entered high school ! I developed a great enthusiasm and talent for repartee, and could make jokes with pretty much anything anybody said ! I wasn't shy anymore, not afraid of everything, and when discussing with others words just kept pouring out of my mouth ! I made lots of friends in a short period. I wanted to try everything and I had much more motivation !

But, when I had my vagal episode and had to stop that very specific anti-depressant, things just kept going downhill since then

And now I'm back to my high-school self, well, maybe not. But social anxiety is back, along with very bad self-esteem.

My psychiatrist said I might have a personality disorder, and when I stumbled on this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defeating_personality_disorder

I think it might just be true!

Anyways. I heard that the reason why anxious people have trouble discussing is because the anxiety triggers the fight or flight "mode" in the brain, and that has for effect of disabling the cortex, which handle the logic and decision making, and favor instincts instead.. But, I'm not a psychologist..

But, yeah, SF-O has had a great impact on me. And I met a lot of very sympathetic people here ! I just hope I can fix my issues to be able to take even more part in the community XD