It is unfortunate that :reddit-logo: has a near-monopoly on what used to be numerous and diverse forums all over the internet, but I definitely don't miss the Early-2000s to 2010s tendency to put pretentious and often edgy forum signatures after posts.
I'll provide some examples of what kind of forum signatures made me hate forum signatures in general, for context.
Sun Tzu quotes. :cringe:
Tyler Durden was supposed to be a malevolent presence that had to be literally shot out of the protagonist's head so he could have some peace, not a fountain of deep profound wisdom about how we're all rotting pieces of meat and anyone who says otherwise is a special snowflake, you proto-chudlings. :kombucha-disgust:
Heath Ledger's Joker, while well acted, was sort of fucking horrible for pop culture in general and a lot of weird nerds really ran with his performance and that also made his lines dreadfully common in forum signatures. Yes, I'm "so serious" because some things matter, you proto-chudlings. :disgost:
Fuck Terry Goodkind and each and every proto-chudling that quoted his Ayn Rand With More Sexual Violence And Swords garbage books in their forum signatures, too. Even the concept of "Wizards' First Rule" was just a precursor to the worst side of the Rick & Morty fandom. "Lol, everyone is stupid but me because I am sociopathic and selfish!" :guts-rage:
Oh yeah, last but not least, fuck each and every proto-chudling that quoted Ayn Rand anything in their forum signatures. :gulag:
I haven't heard anyone say "I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative" in years. Maybe they still do, but that smug libertarian shit that was popular in like the 2000s and early 2010s seems to be gone, or at least not as prevalent, thank god. Of course a lot of those people are straight up fascists now, but I guess at least the mask is off.
Also I was in middle and high school during this period, and it was always funny to hear kids talk about taxes when they're like, 15.
I've seen a few attempts at that in the internet wild but it's rarely received well anymore. It used to be the default South Parkian smart cool internetman thing to be.
Same deal with "I could care less(sic) about anything/I hate everyone equally!" chuds.
I'm not racist, I hate everyone equally!
Yeah South Park in general is another thing I do not miss, not even so much the show but just the mentality of the show. There was definitely a South Park/Family Guy guy at one point in time who was completely insufferable and that whole discourse seemed to permeate everything. It's obviously still around, but it doesn't have the cultural sway it once had.
My bio father used to say that about his own politics, before he disowned me for being a queer commie. Not very socially liberal of him. :shrug-outta-hecks:
It's like the only thing that comes on in every hotel room I've ever stayed in.
I had an ex that made me watch that show. I hated it then, I hate it now. It only worsened my allergy to narcissistic smug New Yorker comedy style.
Had to look this up, and I guess eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia haven't fallen off like I assumed. But I will say I'm glad that the beauty standard of women starving themselves has at least decreased. I'm not shaming skinny women, but when I was growing up in the 2000s it seemed like eating disorders were glamorized and endemic to women. Genuinely feels like women in the west are at healthier weights now, but I don't have data to support that.
No thanks to joyless withered boomer-brained ghouls like :jordan-eboy-peterson:
I somehow wasn't aware of those and now that I looked them up I feel like I uncovered some buried Necronomicon that should have remained buried. :corporate-art:
Boondock Saints. I tried to rewatch it recently and holy shit is it terrible. Every other dude when I was in college had poster for the movie on their wall
Yeah I just stick with watching the shootout scenes on youtube, thats all you really need
Boondocks saints 2 is super awful. 10x worse, and not even so bad it's good.
New Atheism. Unfortunately almost all of those people are now mask-off fash
I'm still baffled by how many "dunk on the creationists" became "dunk on the feminists" became "I am culturally Christian in a totally secular way just like Richard Dawkins" became "clean your room, bucko!" :jordan-eboy-peterson:
Because the movement was always about privileged white kids being contrarian and feeling smarter than everyone else. So of course, when the culture war really ramped up, they veered hard right.
No one could have predicted the saga of lobster man though :michael-laugh:
Almost every "generation meh" Xer that used to work for and be a personality on MTV became a full MAGA chud. They wanted to not care about anything that badly. Militant apathy.
Every New Atheist came to a point where they had to decide if they care about people or not, and if they chose no they went mask-off fash, and if they chose yes they’re now a Marxist-Leninist
I am the second 😔
I know this isn't the point of the thread but I never really thought about Goodkind's books from a fascist angle, has been like 15 years since I've read any of them but yeah, between the Great Man allegory and the end of the book where he magics the ravenous hordes of I'm assuming communists to an alternate reality it is pretty :cringe: Oh and also where the main female protagonist almost gets raped by assassins.
Correctively fucking the magic BDSM nuns until one of them becomes the born-great destined one's waifu, and also that thing about butchering those damn peacenik hippies that are holding hands in front of the tower for "moral clarity" and so much more are deeply cryptofash moments.
All of the fire metaphors are directly lifted from Ayn Rand imagery too, by the chud writer's own admission.
I honestly can barely remember anything aside from a few plot points, like when Richard is tasked with making a monument to the sinfulness of man and no one checks to see he's sculpting Kahlan until the unveiling ceremony and then everyone is shocked and awed by his super sweet stone working skills and starts to clap or something.
If you want some classic bad Forum Signature content, check out gun forums, ar15 is a shitmine
I have plenty of stuff I wish where still around, like my ability to feel anything or a sense of community.
Probably the cultural climate of the Bush years, where anyone that wasn't a Pro war hawk wasn't shot down immediately. I used to follow the YouTube atheist scene and I don't miss any of that, in fact I think the only ones that escaped unscathed no are either doing stuff on Climate change or held out long enough to be critical of the alt right when they immerged instead of joining them.
You kids have it good, the most leftist you could be when I was a teenager was agreeing to tax credits for the poor if you qualified.
I second that Joker thing. I want to ask someone why they're being doing serious without immediately thinking of that stupid scene.
In this, the year of our Lord 2022, I wish to show my age by mourning the humble AOL CD-rom. While great for craft projects, the sheer amount of waste created by them probably fills multiple landfills. At least, when AOL originally sent out 3.5" floppies, it was possible to reformat and reuse them. The abominable coasters sent out almost monthly, on the other hand, did nothing but clutter the mail and the trash. I would also argue that their ubiquity led to the beginnings of bad crafting on the internet as people filled forums with 101 shitty craft projects that could be done with used CDs, including windchimes, coasters, wall hanging, and other kitsch. AOL CDs, you will not be missed.
In general 2000s South African comedy, stuff like early Trevor Noah before leaving for the US, the Mr Bones movies, etc. It's aged very poorly.
Also glad BBM (blackberry messenger) isn't a thing anymore. WhatsApp may suck now that it's owned by Facebook, but at least it doesn't do the shit BBM did. BBM would broadcast what you were doing on your device to everyone on default privacy settings, and obviously teenagers can't set that up properly. Soo many notifications like "James is watching hardcore-babes-3-xxx.mp4". I really did not want to know what porn my friends were watching. Also pinging others and getting pinged was so God damn annoying.
