Hindsight, and an Interesting Side-Effect of Online Forums
 

So, the topic to this thread is odd, and I may change it before I post it if I think of a better title (in which case this line won't exist... paradox!), but I was having a hard time trying to sum up what it is this thread is about.

I suppose the best way to go about this is to just explain what the hell I'm going on about.

When i saw Tore post his "I'm back" thread, it occured to me that vast majority of users who were here when I first started posting are no longer here, with some notable exceptions, the end result being most active users probably have no clue who on earth this crazy irish person is. I went looking for my original "introduction" thread - which is a barrel of laughs, in itself - but was distracted by a number of other threads that I saw lurking at the bottom of my search. Threads like This. My first reaction was disbelief, then horror. Did I really post like that back in 2006? Was I really that much of a prat only 4 years ago? This question was quickly followed by another: Did I really think like that only four years ago?

Now, I don't know about you all, but whenever I think back on the way I used to think, I (think :P) I used to think in roughly the same manner that I think now. As a result, I can never see how immature I was at any stage, because I always felt mature for my age, and I can't remember how I thought. It's an interesting little problem, to say the least. Before this era of rampant technology, finding out what you were really like a few years ago must have been quite a difficult prospect. But then along came online forums, and regular posting over long periods of time, and WOW did we give ourselves a way of embarrassing ourselves in the future.

I did this same sort of check recently on another forum that I've posted much more regularly on in the last 4 years (though I joined it 6 months after this one), and the effect was much more interesting, due to the continuous posting. I could actually tell what I was doing and where I was not by the timestamp, but simply by the way that i posted. I had thought that I did most of my growing up before I was 17, but it's astonishing looking at exactly how much I've changed as a poster, as a person in these 4 years. And not only that, but how it's been a continuous change over that time. Yeah, there's been an epiphany or two over the time, when i can say "that's when I started really being myself" or "that's when I realised who i really was", but overall, the maturity and the change in my posting has been a gradual process.

The other thing I find interesting is how quickly we lose sight of what it is to be like we once were. Having been a moderator on this other forum for 3 years now, I find it slightly horrifying that I used to post in such a way; were I to see someone posting like that now, I'd be hard pressed not to smack them around the head for posting like a total idiot. And yet, I thought I was mature for my age. That's a scary thought. Was I actually mature for my age, or did I just think I was, and in reality I was just as bad if not worse? Was it that I let loose on the forums because I knew I probably wouldn't meet most of the people I was talking to? If it's the first, I should really apologise to pretty much everyone I knew back then, cause if there's one thing worse than a prat, it's a stuck up prat who thinks he's better than the other prats.

The point of this thread is really in three parts. The first is because I needed to say this, cause I found it so crazy. The second is because I'm interested to see if other people who have posted here over an extended period of time feel the same way about their ancient posts. The third is to ask the people who have been here since the start, How bad was I, really? Did you think I was an alright person, or did I annoy the hell out of all of you?

For the second, yes. I'm constantly going "Oh jesus, can we delete this friggen thing?" I mean, I was a class A **** for the first 1.5 to 2 years. Part of that is still me, I've just learned how on-line forums work and I've gotten to know these people. The other half is, unless you join when you're 30+, you're probably going to do some growing here. I joined when I was 22/23 (not sure) and I can tell you, I wasn't the same person half-year to half-year.

To the third point, most people think they post a lot because they see all of their own posts, but I only see you as a regular character as of recently. Part of this has to do with Avatars. I use user names as a secondary identifier, and only after I don't recognize the avatar. Its probably advantageous for new users to keep the same avatar for a year at least. As for the people who change their user names, I just give up on trying to get to know them. Its a hassle for me and I don't give enough of a crap.

What I've learned in my time here is that two people can be highly active users, but if their interests don't cross paths, they may never see one another. I'll sometimes walk across two members have a conversation in a thread, one I know, one I don't and think "who is this ****ing guy?"

I had more of an idea of who you were because you put your actual country in your little bio on the left there and that helps. When people put this stupid **** like "right behind you!" and "a dark and lonely place" its just an assimilator. You become just another number who's done that for god knows what reason.

I looked like an immature twat in my early posts, like even more than I do now.

heh yeah, my avatar is something I've never really changed, on any forum I've used. On other forums, partially because the name I used was so ridiculous that my gf recently told me that someone had referred to me as "The Scary Dragon Mod with a name I can't pronounce" :D

I just find it so interesting just how much we can change without realising it. I remember why physics teacher once saying that as a race, we don't perceive levels of sound, but rather changes in amplitude. At the time, I found it an interesting little piece of relatively useless information, but over time I think i've realised just how much it applies to everything. Mankind is an adaptive race; we adapt quickly to our surroundings without much difficulty, but there are side-effects to this that I don't think we notice. We forget, so quickly, what we were like before the adaptation. We forget how things were, which is why we repeat our mistakes over and over, we forget who we were, which is why we can chastise people for doing things that we did ourselves not too long ago, and I guess that's also why time heals all wounds.

MLS, I feel exactly the same! I was 16 when I joined, now I'm 23. What an old hag I am now.

I used to be soooo stupid, I thought I was mature and that I knew a lot of things for my age but I didn't! Here is an example thread of mine which shows how young and naive I was:

http://www.musicbanter.com/introduct...-suspense.html

http://www.musicbanter.com/lounge/12...e-couples.html

http://www.musicbanter.com/lounge/11...unpopular.html

http://www.musicbanter.com/lounge/11...ure-fat-2.html

How awful were my thread titles. I have improved big time. I mean nothing beats Man Parts.

Now I realise I've grown up a lot. I've changed in music taste, the variety of music and I am proud of what I listen to. I used to care what other people thought so I followed what people liked. Now I loudly shout from rooftops that even though I'm an avid collector of The Rolling Stones particularly by vinyl, I also love Lady Gaga!

I remember being a real bitch on the forums, it was all about flaming back then, I got into huge fights with other members and funnily enough no one pinned us for it, not one infraction was given. These days I get one for merely hinting an insult. I learned to have attitude through not taking **** from people but at the same time only giving people crap when I'm not being respected, or when they are being just plain stupid.

Interesting fact: I have made 92 threads!

The forum I moderate has.. Threads: 193,157, Posts: 5,197,593, Members: 95,885, Active Members: 4,765 - according to the stats at the bottom. I've always seen this forum as kinda lenient in comparison to what we have to be! I think because MB was that much smaller back then, it was easier for the mods to keep tabs on people, and so they could be more lenient.

This

Made me laugh :D

Regarding Music taste, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I when I joined this forum, I was reaaaally narrow in what i'd listen to. Nowadays, I'm happy to listen to anything once, no matter what it is, no matter what people say about it.

When I look over some of my old posts from '05, I retch in disgust. Especially the ones where I absolutely ripped into anyone who so much as criticised Bruce Dickinson. I'm far too embarrassed to resurrect any of them... was I really that much of a mentally imbalanced twat when I was 16-17? :laughing:

It's quite normal for people to feel repulsed by facets of their 'foolish' past selves and former perspectives... what differs between people is the period of time over which this happens and how much they choose to retain over time. I know someone who'll probably hate everything he currently stands for in a year's time. It's the incremental growth approach to life vs the clean slate cyclic destruction approach. The difference for us forumers is that, regardless of approach, we have it all documented whether we like it or not :p:

I think I've behaved approximately the same way on the internet since about 2006.

I've changed a great deal. I can't believe I used to never leave the Electronica section. My tastes have really gotten more eclectic.

I was 30 when I joined and I'm 33 now. I don't think I've changed much except maybe getting crankier. But what do you expect from an old man.

Moonlit,

I like your thread idea and I love your intro thread! :laughing: I've never seen someone pack so many Irish jokes into a couple sentences.

In answer to your third question, since I haven't been part of MB very long I actually only noticed you recently due to the Meat is Murder thread. Then I saw elsewhere that you similarly post thoughtfully about a variety of topics. I felt your old thread about what is spam wasn't bad at all. I feel spam is in the eye of the beholder since something off-topic to one person may seem relevant to another. That, and an awful meat product people make by killing and grinding up pigs to satisfy human tastes but not needs.

In answer to your second question, I think you are very right that your sense of self may not change even as you yourself do, so that you don't recognize the changes.

This is one reason I feel the idea of an immortal "soul" is untenable. Which self of mine would be the one that remains immortal: the shy little girl me? The quirky, cocky high school me? The more experimental, self-focused college me? The troubled post-college me? The level, more outgoing and caring me of my late 20s? And if you were to say ALL of them...well, that wouldn't really be me, would it? Ergo: the concept of an immortal soul fails, since who we are is temporal and ever-changing.

(That, BTW, was an example of slightly off-topic, wasn't it! But was it spam? :D)

I think my posts (and the self behind them) haven't changed much since I joined, except that I now know some people better so we share a history that can be the basis of jokes. Also, I now try to separate my l o n g paragraphs into short sentences after having received several complaints. Apparently some of you don't read books, so you aren't used to reading real paragraphs. (And by this I mean mr dave.) :p:

Here's one of my early posts that I still feel stands as a great monument to all that "Vegangelica" is:

http://www.musicbanter.com/introduct...tml#post677204

The post you linked to is fantastic, I love finding people who in the face of argument will approach it with gusto and good humour :) I've also had problems with the... length of my posts before: My record on any forum thus far is 3000 words in one post, on the subject of moderation (the reaction of one of my friends when he saw it was "oh sweet jesus, I have to read all of this?" :D). Personally i'm a great fan of expressing one's self, and so long as the paragraphs don't go above 10 lines or so they're generally easy enough to read!

I wouldn't, however, say that you are going off-topic. The "topic" in itself, is primarily how Forums can reveal interesting information about who we are and how we develop. Surely whether or not our souls are eternal as evident by how we change is an interesting concept? certainly if forums can be used to argue this immortality, it is related, and relevant to the topic by definition of its interest...ing...ness. I have to say though, that I would disagree with you with regards to your reasoning: I was me 4 years ago, 16 years ago, 21 years ago, and I still am me. And yet, everything that is me is different to how it was then. I have grown, and changed, and yet I am still me. If I can grow in such a way, who is to say that my soul cannot too?

I think however that you hit the nail right on the head when you said

This is, I think, the effect that fascinates me the most out of everything that I came to realise when writing this post. It is quite incredible that even as we change so much in who we are, that the way in which we view ourselves can remain so constant. Originally I had thought that it is because the change is so gradual that we simply don't recognise the change over time, but if that were the case, we would be able to remember how we used to see ourselves, and once a sufficient amount of time had passed, we could see that distance growing between our past and present selves.

Hmm. And now we reach the reason why one should never write a post while thinking about the same ideas. But what about those moments in life, those epiphanies, in which our perspective of ourselves and the world changes?

For example, July 2009 I met a group of people who were to change my life forever, and how I saw myself. It's funny, before I met them, I thought I was happy, and that I was totally comfortable with who I was. But when I met that group... it was like I suddenly realised who I actually was, what I liked, what I didn't like, how I acted. It suddenly didn't really matter what other people wanted me to be. I was me, and that's what really mattered. Up until that moment, I hadn't realised just how much of who I was I was suppressing for the benefit of people who thought I should be different to who I was, namely my girlfriend at the time (amusingly enough, i think she wanted me to be who i was but she didn't like who I really was, which resulted in the problems that occurred :P) And yet, as I look back on who I was, I can't detect that suppression at all, I can't "see" myself the way I used to, i can only see myself back then the way I see myself now. Does that mean that there's an intellectual block which means that we literally cannot see ourselves in any way other than the way we see ourselves now? Or does it mean that, deep down, I haven't changed at all?

Oh man! That's a pretty good back and forth we had there, Erica :)

I don't think I've had time to change much since I came. In MB age, I'm still fairly young. I came here in november 2008 I think, so two years. That's nothing!

I've dropped by other forums I spent time on years before I ever came to musicbanter and thought that I was a bit different, but I've generally been well behaved at least. I wrote helpful guides and stuff back then too, but I think I do it better now. ;)

Pictures of me as a young teenager, now those are embarassing!

Hindsight is definitely an interesting aspect of foruming. The first forum I ever regularly posted in was over at Wizards Of the Coast's Magic The Gathering forum back in 04. I was... 12. My account has since been deleted, but shortly before it was, I went back and looked through my posts. Scary stuff.