Absent forum members

I was searching for a post earlier today and while I couldn't find it, I came across a couple of threads from 2010/2011 that made me smile - and a little sad, looking at all the names that haven't been seen for a while. While many will have drifted away from the forum over time - and Tear and kathaksung were banned - since the sad news of Tim's passing, its made me a bit worried and wondering about other members of the community that have vanished without saying anything.

In particular Veldan Rath, Lor and Bitter Jeweller all last wrote on the forums last year relatively early in the pandemic. I don't know if anyone has any contact details for them to see if they're OK?

Bitter jeweler shouldn't be to hard to track down. Custom jeweler and all that. Anyone remember where he operated out of?
Found his Facebook and everything that's connected to it
https://m.facebook.com/DavidWilkinsonDesign/
Updated just a couple of weeks ago, but no idea if they were prescheduled.

I was curious how veldan handled the riots and insurrection.

Speak the Devil's Name...

Maine was VERY quiet...not very rioty. I've been working from home full time since this started.

I ditched my Republican registration mid year last year. I was never dedicated and only registered a long time ago so I could vote in the gubernatorial primary as the Democrat one was a lock.

Why kathaksung was banned? I do not recall kat being a jerk.

From memory he kept spamming the site without even trying to engage by the end.

He was also copying and pasting what he was spamming from elsewhere.

The concept of spam always seemed so cultural to me. Small talk and engagement is very spammy, especially among Spanish speakers. Among English speakers and Europeans, if you can talk using one word, that would be better.
In Spanish, the sole fact of taking your time to write or say many things is seen as a sign of appreciation towards the audience. It is even more appreciated if the words that are used are high culture ones. The more difficult to understand because they are high culture, the more admiration it provokes. Obviously if you talk to a redneck, high culture words will not work, and you'd be speaking foreign language to that illiterate. So a long rant with high clture words is highly regarded.
Speaking English is a tough transition because you feel like suddenly you are talking in Visual Basic, losing all the richness of language and talking to an audience who prefers one statement instead of a long rant. In a way speaking Spanish is like programming in COBOL, where a hello world program takes pages of code.
The anti-intellectual trend that has been present for decades does not help. A movie "revenge of nerds" should not exist because it ridicules smat people and glorifies the dumb "average".
In Spanish the concept of off-topic is way wider than in English. Speaking in Spanish would be very spammy, especially if you talk to people from intellectual circles. Intellectual in english normally brings the image of someone who is good at ideology, in Spanish it is about someone who is good at high culture.
Now, if you talk about unsolicited advertising, that is spam everywhere.

Except that Kath didn't really engage at all and simply wanted to re-post his diary from an alternate universe in as many places as possible. His spam had nothing of the pleasantries that can help along social interaction. Also, don't presume to know what European social behavior is. I'm European and would not be able to finish a sentence that starts with 'Europeans all...'.

It would not surprise me if the same were true for Americans or English speakers (Which makes me wonder what group of people you tried to label there. Ever checked out the countries that have English as their language?).

I mean the Europeans I have talked to in English in a large aerospace forum. A rant that would be pleasant for a Spanish, would be annoying for many Europeans from different countries, was especially irritating for Germans. They like it short, like 2 words long. To me it was quite a cultural shock. There were people from Spain there. People from Spain were very nice and welcoming.
Probably it did not help that I made some tutorials for newbies that made knowledge on space navigation accesible to everyone. They wanted people to sweat to understand orbits. And therefore I killed their "social status" as what made them "experts" was so easy to understand. They really hated me for that.
And I noticed an unhealthy sense of competition. I made addons and tutorials and they would try to make a new version to create incompatibilites. They knew I am from Latin America. Call it bad luck, but my experience with Europeans have always been bad in terms of communication. It is eaither bad luck or cultural shock.

I am sorry to learn that kat had gone bonkers.

Rand, it's pretty hard to tell if people are absent for a long while, or if they've just vanished for good. Even Dread doesn't post much but he's still around.

I remember all sorts of people that haven't posted for ages whom I miss, from Morodin to Miang to Pedexing. But then I get confused about when the Atari forums ended and moved here, so there's that time thing at play. Some of them are hanging out at Discord, like Nessus. (I tried that but didn't like it.)

But hey, since you made this thread -- Illusions, Veldan, and Bitter have all resurfaced! :D

What I miss is that this forum started as the Independence War forum moved elsewhere and it forgot to talk about Independence War.
It would be great to talk about hints and tips to pass the most difficult missions.

Well, this forum was always a combination of people who played I-War and other games. I just happen to think the I-War players were the smartest and most fun ;)

Actually I and a few others came to the site because of the Wheel of Time Book Forum.

I came to the site for UT. People on that forum warned me not to go to CC because those people will eat you alive. Of course I took that as a challenge.

Anyway, looks like Randy has now disappeared.

So when does Rand's and Khen's bans expire? Can't find that info in their profiles.

Neither of them are banned.

Well, I hope it wasn't something I said...

And why doesn't Rand show up in "Members who have read this thread" list?

I'm here. I only have so much mental bandwidth these days.


Kathaksung.

https://memegenerator.net/img/instan...-long-time.jpg

I'm suddenly reminded of the frustrating, yet amusing at times, nonsense from AlberJohns.

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Originally Posted by Being

And why doesn't Rand show up in "Members who have read this thread" list?

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He made himself invisible.

SPOOKY

Also I am here! What a rough 18 months it's been :bulb:

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Originally Posted by Wraith

He made himself invisible.

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What do you mean invisible?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

I was searching for a post earlier today and while I couldn't find it, I came across a couple of threads from 2010/2011 that made me smile - and a little sad, looking at all the names that haven't been seen for a while. While many will have drifted away from the forum over time - and Tear and kathaksung were banned - since the sad news of Tim's passing, its made me a bit worried and wondering about other members of the community that have vanished without saying anything.

In particular Veldan Rath, Lor and Bitter Jeweller all last wrote on the forums last year relatively early in the pandemic. I don't know if anyone has any contact details for them to see if they're OK?

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Tim? As in Timbuk2?

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Originally Posted by Lor

Tim? As in Timbuk2?

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In case you haven't found it yet
http://theworldforgotten.com/showthread.php?t=7810

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

In case you haven't found it yet
http://theworldforgotten.com/showthread.php?t=7810

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Thanks OG, I found it a little while ago. I'm shocked and saddened.

I've been trying to find out how gogobongopop is doing. Does anyone know?

I'm still alive