The forum is for market research. Anyone who gives an opinion about the product the site is selling is pretty much complying with the purpose it was set up for. Everyone's lost track of that it seems to me. When I first posted stuff on here a year and a half ago I did it with the idea of putting my two cents in regarding what I thought was good and what I thought was bad about the
Broke Straight Boys world, its management, cast, product, image, its strengths, deficiencies. I did little "Slim's picks" from the bonus sites, maybe the first "critiques" of the scenes on the forum. I can write, and have a sense of humor, so some of those little vignettes came off as funny. I was catty about Danny in one that caused some problems, but it was a terrific little piece if I remember right, and Danny wouldn't have taken offense even though some of his fans did at first. But for the most part I tried to be positive and give management ideas, like improving the quality of the texts accompanying the scenes, which were really really bad, and even now have only improved slightly, and even offered to proofread them. In a little bit of banter on the forum with David I told him to auction off the futon on eBay, but to send the salmon colored sheets (that he hated the color of) to me. Very soon after that he announced the charity auctions. I tried to do here what I've done in my other lives, contribute, provide points of departure, be as amusing as I could be while at the same time calling attention to things I thought were good but could be better, or were good enough not to need improvement, or were counter productive to the business.
We've all got caught up at one time or another and to a greater or lesser extent in matters that are extraneous to the original intention management had in setting this message board up. I'm talking about our occasional use of it to congratulate each other, commiserate with friends who have troubles or tragedies, compare memories and show affection and general support. We've gotten into the spats that the "celibate gay senior spinsters" who inhabit this place would naturally tend to get into: telling each other what we have and have not the right to say and going on to outline the right and wrong way to say it. That's also outside the marketing paradigm, but hey.
Over the course of a year and a half there's been some evolution, allowing this chatty, personal stuff to flourish in a moderate way.
I remember some extremes: kodieboy turned the place into a lonely guy's blog for a while, a sort of outback Truman Show, and had to be contained in his own endless thread to keep everyone else from going mad. If you guys remember Rifle? who had every reason by virtue of his intelligence, perspicacity and writing skills, to feel that he'd be a positive and respected contributor to this little world, ended up leaving because he felt he wasn't understood or appreciated. He was perhaps, as a teacher, used to telling people what to say and how to say it, and when riled here on the forum didn't shy away from the use of disdain, or the famous patient, patronizing sneer, when when interacting with the fools he suffered so unhappily. And Mitch, who posted non-PC jibes about stuff that's essentially off limits in America today. And casper who was brilliant but unstable and probably an impostor, and seemed, like Kodie, to have nothing else to do, nothing, but post on the forum.
But I try not to forget (despite dande sometimes doing just that and every little while getting huffy at the critiques, naughty naughty) what the forum is basically for: to tell management what you think, provide ideas for improvement, lick ass (ma non troppo) when they've done a good job and go so far as to offer creative suggestions for new initiatives. And be a bit funny if you can. I love it when someone on here makes me laugh.
Those of us who are genuinely old, although we like to call ourselves "older" on gaydar, tend to be nostalgic, and lament how things have changed, and don't taste as good as they used to, when you could leave your car unlocked in front of the hardware store, when people were civil, when manners were good. That's just part of being a senior citizen; it's gone on in exactly the same way for millennia. It's no surprise to find it here, none at all, but keep in mind that's it's part of life, just a part, and endemic to a specific demographic, cantankerous and puzzled at the same time, with hurt feelings for being left behind as life goes on. I could sure tell you young whippersnappers a thing or two.