The good old times (ATS Originals)

As I crawl around ATS I run across posts and thread of "old/original" members.
I mean members and mods who joined back in 2002/03/04 etc.

I and a lot of other members would love to hear funny, cool, exciting stories that happened on ATS before I came along and ruined it.

I know that some complain about how things have changed now that ATS has exploded in popularity. So if you want to mini-rant about how great the old days were you can do that too.







[edit on 10/17/2008 by schrodingers dog]

I've been here a year & a half. I miss some old friends who are no longer here, and I miss the game threads....but..
I like ATS the way it is.
And for the record SDog..you didn't ruin it...you enhanced it.
I look forward to reading your posts everyday.

reply to post by AccessDenied


You are too kind my friend.
Sometimes I get insecure when "old" members act like we ruined their tree house.
So I just wanted to hear the stories of how things were at the beginning.

Im not from that long ago but i miss alot of people who i thought would never leave ats. I also miss the old chat for some reason


Does steve-o still post around BTS by any chance? or wolfofwar?

reply to post by schrodingers dog


You didn't ruin my tree house. ATS just needed to build an addition for the influx of new members.
I love new members that come and stay. It's the ones that come just to troll the boards that I can't stand.
There's a select few that have been here since the beginning or shortly thereafter, like Marg, Intrepid for sure, and DGtempe. They have seen ATS grow and change and sometimes everything experiences growing pains at the beginning, and people get used to having things a certain way and are less receptive to change. But in the end ATS is the still the best to me, so it's all good.

I miss my Mentor, Mechanic32...he taught me how to use the art program with witch I now make my avatars...

He also forced proper grammar upon me



Roswell.

Ive been on ATS for many years.
As a long time lurker before joining.


ATS has gone thru several stages since i have been a member.

Not all of them good, but most are.

With our expanded membership, we gained acceses to a bigger audience, and also, with our newfound popularity, we attracted members with agendas...

We got an influx of people who came to ONLY POST on one topic.
We had an 10 fold increase in hoaxs/nonsense.
We have had cliques develope
We have had some members reach, 'brand name' status for thier posts. When you see a thread authored by a certain member, you know with a good certainity that that member is going to be posting with an anti-american veiwpoint.


ATS also has shifted VERY FAR to the left.

When i first registared, it was probaly 30% Far left libs, 50% indepented-thinking-people, who deconstruced the meaning of the issue. With the remaining 20 % Far right bush bots.

The new demograohics are very diffrent.

The average ATS member now is no longer the independent thinking person, who uses logic and reasoning to come to a conclusion.

The demographics now are probaly 85% Far Left libs, 10% independent thinkers, and 5% far right bush-bots....

Also, i would say nearly 100% of the far left libs, are realy nothing more then ObamaCrats... and will move back towards the middle once BO is in charge.

3/4 years ago, the Average ATS member was someone who would take time to break down the issue 10 diffrent ways.

The new ATS member is nothing more then a repeater of what they hear thru the MainStream media. The New ATS member is incapible of admiting when they have made a mistake.

The new ATS member has lost thier ablility to reason logicaly.

In the old ATS, ideas were able to be deconstructed, and disscused, without predetermined outcomes.

Now, Emoitions rule ATS, if it feels good, do it. Ignore the facts if they disagree with your predetermined conclusion.


I realy just hope that this is the election season just making people over-emotional, and unable to think.

If ATS is still like this 6 months from now... Then we will just have to adapt.


In the past, you could debate someone, and put forth great points, intresting veiws, and out side the box thinking.

Now, you misspell a word, and some poster thats been registared here for a week, JUMPS on you and says that they cannot read or understand because of a mispelled word.
Now, instead of examining the issue, these members jump on an single line, and attack the wording, rather then the overall idea.



It is all these small changes that have brought about the overall lower average member.

Now, that being said, there are still MANY, and i mean MANY posters on here that do EVERYTHING that happen back in the old days. Thinking criticaly/logicly/independently.

The problem is, in the past, on a page with 20 posts, 18 or 19 of them were GREAT posts.

On ATS today, on a typical 20 posts, mabye 3 or 4 go at the issue seriously...
2 or 3 complain about spelling
2 or 3 acuse the poster of being a brainwashed right winger
2 or 3 are worthless one liners
And the rest are personal attacks between members.


In the past, threads were packed with information, ideas, and opinion
Now, threads are packed with garbage, fighting, retorich, and nonsense.

I hope people can look thru the spelling mistakes that i undoubtly made, and see the IDEA behind my post
==============

There is one last thing i must add...

People are banned here on ATS more then any other site ive been at.

I just saw that another poster who i had LOVED to read was banned 9 months ago...

Over the years, i have seen MANY MANY great posters and members get banned.
Some of the mods on ATS must LOVE to swing the Ban-hammer...

And although they probaly deserved it, i have to say, i am VERY VERY VERY surprised that so many of the posters i looked up to when i was first here, are now banned.

Im the biggest skeptical/noncomformist/trouble-maker/patriot that i know... ive been temp banned several times, but i know when to admit when im wroung, and to learn from the experience...

I guess thats why i am still here posting, and they are gone...
I adapt...


I would love to see a list of ALL banned members...
It might read like an ATS-AllStars roster...

[edit on 10/18/2008 by TKainZero]

Originally posted by roswell1
I miss my Mentor, Mechanic32...he taught me how to use the art program with witch I now make my avatars...

He also forced proper grammar upon me

Roswell.

I second that..
Mech32 ..Where are you????

Originally posted by roswell1
I miss my Mentor, Mechanic32...he taught me how to use the art program with witch I now make my avatars...

He also forced proper grammar upon me

Roswell.

I miss M32... i was here during the time he disappeared. Is he still not back?

I noticed less old people (I guess a lot of them got banned?), more new people. That alone makes it very different from what it was. I also noticed more troublemakers and noticed that the rant forum was shut down for a bit. But yeah, new people will always make a forum different, for better or for worse.

The biggest thing that I miss are the April Fools Day jokes. Oh lord there have been some classics. My favorite one was the one that they did, where someone supposedly traced the ATS servers and one hit in Langley. People to this day bring that up as proof that ATS is a COINTELPRO operation. :shk:

There have been good and bad about ATS over the years, but mostly good. Shameless plug, ThreadKillers Anonymous. Probably the longest running thread on ATS/BTS. Started in September of 05 and has been running almost continuously since. It takes a few months off here and there, but always comes back.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I love reading that thread.
I often run across old threads and the people who started them haven't posted in years. Including mods I've never heard of before.
It's great that your thread is still running strong.

I shall have to come up with something for next April though.

Perhaps some of the "old timers" will chime in to discuss the "WITD incident."

That was probably the scariest, freakiest time on ATS ever. Imagine the entirety of ATS looking like this: for a few days.

Originally posted by anachryon
Perhaps some of the "old timers" will chime in to discuss the "WITD incident."

That was probably the scariest, freakiest time on ATS ever. Imagine the entirety of ATS looking like this:

for a few days.

Why, what happened?
What's a WITD?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. I wasn't around for it, luckily, but I've read all about it and it was a dark time in ATS history. Even though I didn't join until later, I almost started drinking heavily from reading it.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I did a quick search and found "Whispers in the Dark" threads from 2003.
Is that what you guys are talking about?




[edit on 10/19/2008 by schrodingers dog]

reply to post by schrodingers dog


Yep! "Watch Jakarta."
Holy hell, I was scared to death. I think everyone else was too!
WITD had been posting weird stuff at the beginning of Aug '03, implying he was a Washington insider. This was immediately before the bombing in Jakarta in Aug '03. He posted in a very cryptic, creepy manner - something in today's ATS would be brushed off but back then it got everyone's attention.

Well anyway, this bombing happened in Jakarta and someone noticed that WITD had apparently posted the words "Watch Jakarta" the day before the bombing. Cue FLIP THE HELL OUT. Everyone freaked!!

It took some time, but after MUCH concern/panic/holy-crapola, it was discovered that the person behind the WITD name had abused a weakness in the board code to alter his post after the fact without leaving the edit tag, thus making it seem like he had warned of the Jakarta bombing hours before it happened.

Drama ensued, people left ATS due to said drama, and eventually WITD was relegated to the dusty corners of ATS trivia that few remember.

For anyone that wants to see the different formats the site has gone through take a look at the internet archive Wayback Machine.

www.archive.org...
Just type in the search www.abovetopsecret.com

This site is totally changed since I started hanging around.


Edit: bad link


[edit on 19/10/2008 by anxietydisorder]

reply to post by anxietydisorder


Nice link.

i love that site.

Looking back, its like playing a Nintendo game or something...

reply to post by anxietydisorder


Thanks for that link ad.
Man, eight years ago looks like the 80's.

Thanks for the lowdown anachryon.
I wish I was here for that.




[edit on 10/19/2008 by schrodingers dog]