A message board I posted on since 2007 has disappeared. The admin/owner quit posting there around 2010, but kept paying the website costs over the years as a nice gesture to the posters, who he really did appreciate for being a part of the community, even after he moved on. Until, apparently, very recently, he must have stopped, as without warning, the board is gone, and the domain is up for sale. 

My posting was very limited there in recent years. Like most offshoot message boards (that board was an offshoot of an ESPN Boxing Message Board after ESPN killed all their message boards), there's an inevitable diminishing population of posters as time goes on, activity goes down a little every year, boards eventually taking on a dying mall vibe, until one day it's gone. But I never stopped checking in. It didn't matter how much time passed between my last activity there, if a big fight was coming up, there was nowhere else I'd want to go to talk about it.

It's crazy to think about the amount of hours (months? years?) I spent posting there over a 16 year period span, and how crazy it is that it's been 16 years already, the acceleration of time passing. But also, I'm kinda sad it's gone. It feels like a tiny little death, and would have felt like an even bigger one had it happened back when it was a bigger part of my life.

I  know everyone here can relate to this in some way. We are message board people, after all. Relics of a past era of internet culture, that have held onto it to some degree. Not just the original PW, I imagine most of you posted on other boards, for other subjects, since that tends to be what us message board people do (or did). I'm just imagining all the ghosts of past message boards we all have in our collective minds. Fading memories of online interactions, controversies, the unique excitement of message board happenings, hitting refresh to see what happens next, who replied to you in a heated discussion, spectacular flame outs of posters/mods/admins, these moments feel huge in real time, until the board is gone, and the totality of that time spent there seems like a dream you can barely remember.

Share them if you got them, I guess. Before you forget them. 

I used to post more on PW and then that shit with TGO happened and sorta killed my interest in it. I met some good people there and some are still friends to this day.

I wonder if all these forums still kicking all go through the same thing we did. Is it part of the cycle. I post at another place and a few years ago it mirrored what I already experienced with PW in one of those first time situations. As the internet has shifted since the message board was relevant, fuck dude didn't realize there's prob tons of "PW"s out there. We ain't special.

Also just wanna say cuz it feels like it ties together, thank you Kilgore for still rocking the signature game. A lowkey toast to forum culture.

Almost all the ones I liked are gone. Wrestlingclique the most recent one where I lost an AFL Football revision history project I operated for about 7 years. I tried to move it over here but made some minor changes that ended up turning it from a copy/paste into a total re-write that I lost the feel for, so RIP. The last couple of days I got the idea to write another football style revision history, a what if the AFL never existed, but in planning it out all I can realize is how drab and boring of a sport football would be in that universe. Literally everything attractive about the NFL came from the AFL(which was the core concept of the AFL fed that had the merger never happened the NFL could have realistically been put out of business).

The Friday the 13th message board was so cool, it was my fix for horror movie discussion. I think I first found that place around 2004 but didn't really post there until 2008ish. They went through quite a saga trying to stay alive, at one point they changed it to be a split Friday 13th/Nightmare On Elm Street board, but it didn't increase any posting. They went through the phase where they eliminated all the subforums that were inactive, condensing what at one point was a big forum down into just a few sections. There at the end it was literally 3 guys posting. It was home to the absolute best X-Files diary/review thread there ever was, it was a great reference/episode guide it really bothers me that it's just gone.

As the forums die I find myself with less and less to read online. I like to read, there was usually something interesting on a forum to read through. Now it's every article that comes across my feed is unreadable trash that seems like it was written by a robot, same with Facebook it is just a lot of nothing, no substance like the X-Files thread on F13forums or Jim's ECW reviews on Wrestlingclique.

Jan 6, 2024 1:53:20 GMT Neo Zeed said:

It was home to the absolute best X-Files diary/review thread there ever was, it was a great reference/episode guide it really bothers me that it's just gone.

Even beyond message boards, the loss of most things on the internet is such a bummer to me. I think about this study a lot. 

It's all disappearing. "The internet is forever" couldn't have been more wrong. 

Actually remember finding the F13 forums in 2003 in the lead up to Freddy vs Jason release, the place was buzzing over that movie so went from being super active place to a ghost town by 2012, I think it finally bit the dust in 2013 or 2014 after they tried just about everything imaginable to revive the place. I think I remember somebody posting the history of the place and how it merged with another huge F13 board in the 90's. Also a lot of theories about the forum's decline were because of the decline of the series and lack of any material released for it(other than the 2009 remake?). 

One of the first message boards I ever posted on was the IMDb boards. Posted there from 1998 to 2017 (when they got shut down). It was a totally internet combination of beauty and the most toxic shit ever posted. I really loved it.

I remember two oddball posters at the moment.

1. The Machinist Challenge Guy: The Machinist was a 2004 movie starring Christian Bale in which Christian Bale lost an insane amount of weight for the role (got down to 110 pounds, apparently). He did so by eating one can of tuna and something else (an apple or a banana, I don't remember). There was a guy on The Machinist board that kept doing "The Machinist Challenge" where he would go on Christian Bale's diet and see how much weight he would lose. Everyone would be like, "Why are you doing this?" And he'd be just be like, "Because it's The Machinist Challenge!" Like it was sweeping the nation. He did this at least two separate times.

2. Diane Lane Superfan: This fucking guy was less unhinged than The Machinist Challenge Guy, but a weird guy, nonetheless. He had a single bit. He would go to the message board of every Diane Lane movie and ask people there, "Do you have that picture of Diane Lane in thigh high boots?" Diane Lane made movies where she wore thigh high boots in literally every scene (Streets of Fire, coming to mind), so people would link many pictures of Diane Lane in thigh high boots. Diane Lane Superfan would simply answer, "No, that's not the one." He did this for years! Will never know if he was looking for one particular picture or simply trolling, but it made me laugh every time. The commitment to this for years is Andy Kaufman level performance art. 

Jan 6, 2024 1:28:51 GMT @ness said:

I wonder if all these forums still kicking all go through the same thing we did. Is it part of the cycle. I post at another place and a few years ago it mirrored what I already experienced with PW in one of those first time situations. As the internet has shifted since the message board was relevant, fuck dude didn't realize there's prob tons of "PW"s out there. We ain't special.

Also just wanna say cuz it feels like it ties together, thank you Kilgore for still rocking the signature game. A lowkey toast to forum culture.

I think part of it is, age. When I was single and in my 20s and early 30s I used to be a lot more active. Now this year I turn 40 and I'm in a almost 5 year old relationship and since the board officially died there hasn't been a lot of activity and I have less time to dedicate to it. And back in the early 2000s no smart phones unless you had God money. Now smart phones are a dime a dozen and all sorts of interesting apps and information at the tap of a button. I haven't had cable or Dish for over two years now. Just less to hold our interest. And wrestling hit it's stride in the 2000s. And that was 20+ years ago.

I love this thread as much as I hate the death of message boards. Worst part of all is the disappearance of all that content Kilgore mentioned.

I first got involved in message boards in the early 2000s, being on a number of different car related pages. As social media took off, and the ease of access to them, the car pages died very quickly.

The overall scene, splintered, but in a good way. Tuners went one way, muscle cars the other, truck this way and that and smaller more niche communities evolved.

Wrestling it seems is one of those sub cultures that hung onto message boards.

I was originally on wrestling.net.au until it crashed and burned. I can't remember the details on the official closure, but what had emerged in the 18 months prior was a very close nit group group of dweebs gatekeepinh and if you weren't into obscure independent wrestling you weren't cool and they let you know what a mark you were for liking WWE and TNA. Anyone who mattered was privately invited to join an off-shoot forum, The Asylum. And it ran side by side, until WNA going down in the late 200s and existed until the mid 2010s... but traffic died, and while it never closed, people just stopped showing up I guess.

I was briefly part of the old PW for maybe, a year. Until whatever happened happened, and someone DM'd me with a link here.

That ' Diane Lane ' story is great.

Man imagine message boards got as big as social media influencers when we were young. I wonder how much money the Fan Ficers would’ve made it if in an alternative universe THAT was a main attraction.

I mean, to be fair, even in THAT alternative universe, instead of being banned 100 times, I would’ve just been cancelled 100 times. 😂

Jan 6, 2024 6:44:26 GMT KING KID said:

Man imagine message boards got as big as social media influencers when we were young. I wonder how much money the Fan Ficers would’ve made it if in an alternative universe THAT was a main attraction.

I mean, to be fair, even in THAT alternative universe, instead of being banned 100 times, I would’ve just been cancelled 100 times. 😂

You honestly might’ve been cancelled by the masses just for thinking the Serengeti was a desert.

I prefer message boards, up voting,down voting and likes has destroyed the fabric of online discussion.... Also threaded replies, I hate that

Jan 6, 2024 7:29:41 GMT iNCY said:

I prefer message boards, up voting,down voting and likes has destroyed the fabric of online discussion.... Also threaded replies, I hate that

Up voting this just for the destruction.

Jan 6, 2024 7:17:38 GMT KJ said:

Jan 6, 2024 6:44:26 GMT KING KID said:

Man imagine message boards got as big as social media influencers when we were young. I wonder how much money the Fan Ficers would’ve made it if in an alternative universe THAT was a main attraction.

I mean, to be fair, even in THAT alternative universe, instead of being banned 100 times, I would’ve just been cancelled 100 times. 😂

You honestly might’ve been cancelled by the masses just for thinking the Serengeti was a desert.

At this age, I would be on my Katt Williams shit talking about how the WWE stole my ideas on pduh podcast.

Can someone explain to me the Katt Williams things? I saw him babbling for a few minutes about being untalented and can't understand the need to bring Kevin Hart into it.

Jan 6, 2024 7:55:27 GMT NATH45 said:

Can someone explain to me the Katt Williams things? I saw him babbling for a few minutes about being untalented and can't understand the need to bring Kevin Hart into it.

I happened to be listening to this while scrolling through this thread, I’m sure there’s shorts of it around too.

Jan 6, 2024 7:29:41 GMT iNCY said:

I prefer message boards, up voting,down voting and likes has destroyed the fabric of online discussion.... Also threaded replies, I hate that

Reddit is basically the new message boards. No matter what your interest, there's probably a board for it. Good and unfortunately bad.

Jan 6, 2024 9:04:29 GMT kbc said:

Jan 6, 2024 7:29:41 GMT iNCY said:

I prefer message boards, up voting,down voting and likes has destroyed the fabric of online discussion.... Also threaded replies, I hate that

Reddit is basically the new message boards. No matter what your interest, there's probably a board for it. Good and unfortunately bad.

But the upvoting system is garbage, it creates a group think environment, it doesn't really matter the board there's only one accept narrative.

Jan 6, 2024 8:51:09 GMT System said:

Jan 6, 2024 7:55:27 GMT NATH45 said:

Can someone explain to me the Katt Williams things? I saw him babbling for a few minutes about being untalented and can't understand the need to bring Kevin Hart into it.

I happened to be listening to this while scrolling through this thread, I’m sure there’s shorts of it around too.

I stopped listening after he called Kevin Hart a plant and I know there was some Illuminati babbling from all reports.

Jan 6, 2024 9:46:17 GMT iNCY said:

Jan 6, 2024 9:04:29 GMT kbc said:

Reddit is basically the new message boards. No matter what your interest, there's probably a board for it. Good and unfortunately bad.

But the upvoting system is garbage, it creates a group think environment, it doesn't really matter the board there's only one accept narrative.

Yep. I posted a believable ghost video and got down voted to hell. The mods said all ghosts are dust or bugs. I'm like why the fuck are you a mod on here. If anyone wants to see it, I can post it here.

In my younger years I spent a lot of my time on forums, bulletin boards, message boards, whatever you want to call them. Most of them were tiny communities for browser based games, communities smaller than PW is right now. There wasn't much in terms of discussion. I was a shitposter who enjoyed posting memes.

Apart from PW, the first message board I properly contributed to was AllMetalForums, which does not exist anymore. It was active years after I left because I checked from time to time, but it must have disappeared relatively recently. It wasn't a particularly great forum; most of the posters were trolls arguing about stupid shit, but a handful of people were capable of reasonable discussions. I didn't get anywhere nears much about it as I did PW.

I agree about Reddit and other message boards of its ilk: the upvoting system is garbage. Reddit is a fantastic resource for getting community based advice on something, but as a place to discuss it's not very good at all. The main problem besides the upvoting is the sheer activity. On the busier subreddits, if you don't reply to a new thread within 10 minutes of its creation, your post is going to be buried underneath hundreds of other posts, unread for eternity. So it demands you be online refreshing all the time. I don't get why people do it.

As it is now, on PW it sometimes feels like I'm talking to myself when I write a long monologue on New Japan Pro Wrestling or an obscure film. However I know deep down inside people are reading, and that's enough to motivate me. Long live PW.

Been part of a few message boards over the years; a couple of comic book ones that shuttered overnight, an anime board I lost interest in over the years (and don't think I know anyone active there anymore, though the board is still going) and the only other board I'm actively on -- mostly lurking -- is a local motorcycle forum where the age skews much older.

I've met people from message boards, here and others, who I feel honored and privileged to call friends. Not on Reddit, nor on big FB/IG groups so don't know if that sort of thing happens anymore, where otherwise-total strangers who would otherwise never know each other bond over common niche interests.

Car boards seem like they would have suffered greatly in a transition to Reddit/FB, or at least the ones I was on. There were threads that were step-by-step instructions about how to change automatic transmissions to manual, questions and answers and tips that would seem innavigable in a upvotes/thumbs to the top format.

For PW.com specifically, didn't we have a OT Friday Night Fights at Walgreens thread? Also vaguely remember a TNA wrestler occasionally posting here, I think he was known for a 630 splash

Jan 9, 2024 2:04:40 GMT Michinokudriver said:

For PW.com specifically, didn't we have a OT Friday Night Fights at Walgreens thread? 

Chall

The one thing I found interesting was prior to " social media " most of us went out of our way to not be recognised online. We all had handles or user names and then Facebook showed up and suddenly everyone is publishing all their personal details without any care.

With message board there's still some mystery.

Like, I don't know anyone's real name here, let alone what you guys look like.

Jan 9, 2024 5:41:48 GMT NATH45 said:

The one thing I found interesting was prior to " social media " most of us went out of our way to not be recognised online. We all had handles or user names and then Facebook showed up and suddenly everyone is publishing all their personal details without any care.

With message board there's still some mystery.

Like, I don't know anyone's real name here, let alone what you guys look like.

On the contrary I have all your names, addresses, social security (or whatever you dang foreigners equivalent is called) Mothers maiden name, first kiss. Web history.



Nah that is weird though. With message boards there is an element of shit posting that anonymity aids. That has now transferred to less anonymous sites. Like did message boards pave the way for less anonymity? You get used to sharing without people knowing who you really are, does it eventually make it easier to share with your real face and name? That’s what it seems like anyway.

Jan 9, 2024 5:41:48 GMT NATH45 said:

The one thing I found interesting was prior to " social media " most of us went out of our way to not be recognised online. We all had handles or user names and then Facebook showed up and suddenly everyone is publishing all their personal details without any care.

With message board there's still some mystery.

Like, I don't know anyone's real name here, let alone what you guys look like.

Name’s Joe. Nice to meet you.

Jan 9, 2024 13:19:04 GMT mikec said:

Jan 9, 2024 5:41:48 GMT NATH45 said:

The one thing I found interesting was prior to " social media " most of us went out of our way to not be recognised online. We all had handles or user names and then Facebook showed up and suddenly everyone is publishing all their personal details without any care.

With message board there's still some mystery.

Like, I don't know anyone's real name here, let alone what you guys look like.

Name’s Joe. Nice to meet you.

Colonel Joe?! From Missouri?!