I knew I was going to make this post (although not the contents) for a while. It's pretty self-indulgent but I guess today would be the day to do it. I don't even know what the contents are going to be, but Im going to write and hopefully not edit too much, as I have been prone to do recently. This will be a long one folks, for newbies who don't know me, it won't be worth reading.
I wanted to talk a little about my 10 years. Nothing too much, as Im certain I've said a lot of it before. I joined the site before uni, like a few weeks before. I can't really remember why I was trying to remember the name of this game that I had played at a Scout meeting and I found it through the wikipedia page. About a year later I was in a shitty living situation and mafiascum gave me respite from the shitty flatmates I was living with. In retrospect, I wasn't the greatest housemate but as you grow and evolve and reminisce you realise things that sometimes you aren't always the good guy. I enjoyed playing and made lots of friends on-site. I got to do some things that I thought I would never do. I went to the US on my own... twice! I met some really nice people and think of them as some of my closest friends. I had a lot of friends from scumchat, which was an AIM server which to outsiders was a trolly clique, but beyond a small subsection was a closeknit group. I was sad when it shut down, more by LOL than anything else. Sitechat, is good, but in a different way, and for me at least, it will never be able to recapture some of the essence of what made the site special to me.
However, for all the benefits of mafiascum, there was a fair amount of things that I didn't like as well. I'd put a significant part of me not doing so well at uni down to mafiascum. There were nights I didn't sleep as I was in a number of games or I was chatting to people on scumchat. At times I kinda forgot what was important. It was the same at work, I never got pulled up for it, but I was on MS (and other sites tbf) a lot. There were times I chose the site over going out with friends... I can't blame the site for that, that was me. For the escapism this site provided me near the start, it did also keep me from doing things which I'm now finding help me when I get down. This site is a game site, it isn't therapy. Which I feel people should be told regularly on this site.
The wheels came off for me a while ago. A number of years ago, actually. The site meta had started to change. The idea of shouting people into submission and that was somehow fun became the aim, ridiculing them until they replaced out combined with the spam, and whilst this may have changed now. I have no desire to find out. I modded my last game not so very long ago. It became an utter shitshow. I couldn't keep up with said spam. Everyday I would receive PM's about how I was unfairly treating people, usually from the worst offenders. The line between people being my friends and people I was modding was so blurred I didn't mod very well and these people took advantage. I'd say that that game very definitely ruined at least one friendship on site and removed my desire to mod ever again either. On the GD side, Forum 62 and later, Speakeasy became a thing and both have come with problems that have never really recovered.
About 3/4 years ago I joked that I'd leave the site at year 10 at the latest. Thinking I wasn't going to last that long. But there was always things going on, or I held too much sentimentality to the site. Even now, Im enjoying playing video games with some of the oldies. But I decided around March/April now was the time to go. The site's meta has changed, as has the age range of the site. Despite my best efforts I've been getting older, and the site on average seems to be getting younger. Which is absolutely fine. But not for a 28 year old, who used to be 20 having fairly non-PG conversations with other people of a similar age on site. I've also spent a third of my life as a member on this site. That's just way too much for anyone. Especially someone who hasn't used this site for it's primary purpose for years now.
So for now this will be my last post. I want to be my best self and currently this computer is holding me back. I want to do things like discover the outside and play my trumpet again. I'll still be on the discord to play games and apparently facebook is so ingrained in my life that I have to keep that, but I've removed Skype from my hotbar and likely will avoid it for a while. If oldy mafia 3 is a thing I'll almost definitely come back for that (provided it doesn't happen soon) and if anyone ever wants to plonk me in an invitational, I would consider it. In regards to meets, we'll see. I have an urge to go out and see the world, an itch that meets don't usually scratch and limited holidays don't really let me have the flexibility to do everything.
I didn't want to leave this post on a crappy note. I wanted to give a summary of some of my highlights
Spoiler:
Anyway, that's me. Thanks for all the memories. Good luck all, you can add me on facebook if you know me (or if you don't, I just won't add you). May all your Eggnogfasmas's be merry!
Prozac
