I got the time machine working well enough to go back to my present calendar year for a while, but fell into a game of truth or dare with myself late one night and chose both, so here I am again.
. . .
It’s been some time since I smote acf with sorrowful wrath, wiping all members from the rolls (after a much smaller initial smiting) and rendering it uninhabited, me and my alter egos aside.
The scattered souls, on Yacf and Cyclechat and Facebook, or off social media or dead (same thing?), will have their own versions of what happened – “their truths”, in the current parlance. Some will be what I consider trustworthy scribes. None will have enough information at their disposal to give anything like a true or full enough accounting to be worth the time spent reading it, unless they're talented at speculative fiction.
And of course, nobody really cares. I do, because it’s an intimate part of my history, but being the god who went crazy, any story I tell is naturally highly suspect. (I actually read that I had a messiah complex. More common is the opinion that I simply misplaced my marbles, there apparently being no rational explanation.) I still run into people who would just as soon cross the street or their heart if they saw me coming.
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/itburns375.jpg)
Yacf has been around much longer than its antecedant, but hasn't grown. The cliqueyness I tried so hard to avoid is hard-wired into it thanks in part to the shared experience of its initial core users and castaways. Cycling forums are naturally tribal anyway.
The stand I took on smileys seems to have worked. It’s not nearly as festooned as acf. Yay?
It's clear I will never be forgiven to the extent I have forgiven them. That they can’t return the favour suggests that they still require a common enemy to make clean their genesis.
(https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/pics/cupidbee.gif)
CycleChat continues to pull the most punters, but it too is not a patch on its glory years, at least for forum connoisseurs. Some soldier bravely on, and there are doubtless stars I haven’t seen. But from where I’m standing, there’s no there there. Which is a highly personal interpretation of blah.
Yacf is superior to CycleChat in the metrics that matter to me: better writing (in part because most of CC’s best & brightest have left the building); probably better moderation; administrators who, whatever else I may think of them, have a passion for cycling
more on this
R in particular appears to be an F-word (https://grammarist.com/phrase/fount-of-knowledge-or-wisdom-vs-font-of-knowledge-or-wisdom/) of technical knowledge. You see, I have an appreciation for stuff like that, even though I’m not like that. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1lkEEmRCI)
which is not in evidence at CC’s high chair; better set of permissions in that you can delete and edit your own content with no time limit; nicely formatted ride reports; Caption It. Though it’s all a shadow of what acf was, natch.
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/natch.jpg)
Facebook is the end winner here. Zuck’s beast has eaten the world, and the world is a poorer place for it. In addition to being eaten.
The good: It gives everyone their own platform, true equality through the ultimate in atomisation even as we are ceaselessly corralled into herds. There's no reliance on quirky forum owners with their rules and possibly capricious behaviour. Just about everybody’s already there. It can genuinely bring people together. You can load pictures until the end of time.
The bad: It’s fucking Facebook, destroyer of thoughtful writing by very design, which values reactions over all else. Replies disappear into nested alcoves almost as soon as they’re posted. Notifications are addictive, but not in a good way, and foster a constant juvenile seeking of approval. Everything gets pounded down to the lowest common denominator. The noise-to-signal ratio is epic and and expanding as fast as the universe. [Why don't you throw in the laws of thermodynamics while you're at it - Ed.]
And of course, you’re just data to be monetised, yada yada yada. None of this is news.
The ugly: What’s worse than the bad?
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/like250.jpg)
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/sallyF250.jpg)