Yay. I'm glad someone read it. I actually cut out a lot of stuff when I realized how long and rambling it had gotten but about the third time through I was just over it.

It was just a different time. I feel like new sites are always something special when they are young and broken and limitless. When they grow up, they lose their charm and become all corporate. Even though I bitched constantly about the fail whales and wanted it to be better and more stable, the reality is all that all that comes at a cost. Once you have those things, it's like you lose the exclusivity because everyone can easily use it. The fact that it is broken is a barrier to entry of sorts - the people on it when it was ugly were like...hardcore people who were willing to wade through some shit to get some valuable.

I think we saw the same sorts of things with reddit, usenet, chan boards, etc. They were terrible looking...weird...hard to navigate....etc. The only people who stuck around were people willing to put real effort into it. I think that's why we aren't seeing the same sorts of subculture developing into something truly massive and remarkable with any of the new start ups / social media sites these days. They're all so pretty and usable.