The Zombified Spirit of Articles
As you can see from the lack of updates on this section's person, the Articles section is a "dead" section: There's nothing to update with, and there's no interest in it. Many other sections have shared a similar fate for varying reasons, such as the Flukes section. The increased age of people at the site and proliferation of advanced tools like PK Hack and Photoshop caused the immature and repetitive flukes to lose their charm. Mansion Maniac attempted to revive the section by deleting all the "bad" flukes, but in doing so failed to realize that he was "deleting" the very point of the section in the first place - to be so bad, they're FUNNY.
The other sections (besides PK Hack, which is unupdated due to a mysterious, unexplained incident involving the section maintainer using his position for the sole purpose of embezzling thousands of dollars of site money) which remain "dead" are all writing sections. Poetry, Fanfiction, Songs, Mailbag... and Articles... what killed them? And why?
I decided to find the reason Articles was dead. In classic Radiation fashion, I swiftly equipped my old-school Holmes Hat, upping my defense by 10. I suavely sipped a lukewarm glass of chocolate milk, leaning back in my chair. I had searched the crime scene - no fingerprints. Glad I got there before the police, anyway. I had a long history with Articles and if I didn't skip town fast, I would be their top suspect.
I've always told everyone I started this website with Mailbag. It's true, I didn't even have a forum account. I was 12-years-old, scared out of my wits that if I screwed something up, everybody would think I was stupid and I would become like EarthBoundFan2K or another similarly-fated idiot. It's true, the first submissions I accepted to this site were Mailbag, but they weren't the first ones I made.
I loved the Articles section. I read it all the time once I discovered this website. The Articles were always informative, charismatic, funny, mysterious. I loved TAFKACC's and SimonBob's. I felt like the people at this site were hilarious self-proclaimed legends, and my eyes watered at the very idea of "meeting" them on the internet. I read almost every single article with an interesting title I could find, and I loved them all.
I wanted to be one of them. I e-mailed PappyCat articles, most of which were funny but not very good. I was 12-years-old. I made article after article after article, trying oh-so-hard to make one that would make it in, but none of them ever did. I just wasn't good enough. Everytime they got rejected, I felt ashamed because I thought I did well, but I decided to try harder. While they were being rejected, I responded to Mailbag as practice. This week's topic was "what do you think of EB No Matsuri?" except the name was misspelled intentionally, saying something about fishgumnuts or something like that. I responded. It got in.
I was excited for Mailbag every week. Every so often I would still try to get an Article in, but I never did. Eventually PappyCat stopped responding, and I was afraid she died. She stopped posting on the forums. I had no idea where she went, that Articulated Sniper. I have no idea what I would say to her now. In any case, a few weeks in a row my Mailbag letter didn't make the cut. I felt like I had erred incredibly, that my responses weren't funny or awesome enough or something to that effect, and I apologized to the mailbag people because I felt like such a doofus. I told them that I would read every single Article, and that I was already up to the letter E.
I was a liar.
I already read those.
I really don't remember most of the articles I read, but looking back, I knew why they died.
The people that wrote them "died." Like PappyCat. Not that they really did pass away, but that they couldn't go to the site anymore... or worse yet, that they stopped caring about EarthBound. People change, and as this site has gone on, EarthBound has gotten older and older. I can't blame people for not having fresh new ideas about it... but some of my favorite articles weren't just about the game, but about the community. Casgair recently made a post in General Discussion talking about how he felt the site's community has become distanced, and I have to agree. I was never there, but looking back on the old articles, the old site... everybody was always on IRC, always able to talk... they always had time. People like Luna, Tomato, reidman, ratgirl, always on IRC. The people that ran the site were right there, and the people that went to the site were there. It was close. And when I said that the people were different, I wasn't lying. Guess who wrote this?
"So when I told my master that an old guy who was using a dead guy's name was in control of #earthbound, he said something to the equivalent of "ah forget it I'm gonna go play The Sims." After hitting him a few times with the Steel Pipe of Dishonor, I made him go speak to Tomato about the matter. Tomato said something like, "do articles", followed by my master saying "ah forget it I'm gonna go play The Sims." It was at this point that I realized my master was an idiot, so I murdered him in his sleep and assumed his personality--errr, I mean I got bored and started using my random kick script to kick people out of the chat room I was in. The next thing I knew, ChanOP said something lke "reidman is a protected user", but that is another story for another day."
That's right, it's Falcon24. Falcon24 writing something correctly punctuated and being silly? Impossible. Anyone who goes to the site today knows that if Falc types something that's not in all lowercase, he's being completely serious. People watch out for Falcon24, because they know they're going to get trolled. Falc gets upset because the moderation thinks his style is too harsh. Falc used to run MailBag and Articles and kick it with a tasty groove and write silly things, and then real life took hold of him and shook him up into a different version of the same person. This new person doesn't write articles.
And it slowly happened to the people on the rest of the site. As reidman and the others slowly got more serious about the website, the sort of close-knit EarthBoundy silly article IRC group slowly broke apart, until IRC became a wasteland and the Articles run dry. The only person who retains the same kind of tasty flavor he did at the beginning of the site is probably SimonBob, who I can still see writing articles if he felt like it.
Anyway, besides the stupid point I just made, we also kind of have the forum, whose open-feedback and M2 forum allows thoughts about the site or theories to be posted and responded to easily, obsoleting Articles by actually allowing some sort of multi-way discussion.
But I swear, Articles still have their place. Somewhere. Maybe just in my heart if nobody else cares. You might think they're just stupid articles written when everybody at this website was a teenager and thought flukes were awesome. And you're right. But I love them so, and we can't let that die. We can't let the True Spirit of Starmen.Net that flourished when we could all have fun in IRC and write stupid articles about that die. It's stupid. So let's do it. Together. (also the new site design sucks and is confusing so that's another reason)
Falcon24 will tell you how.
As you can see from the lack of updates on this section's person, the Articles section is a "dead" section: There's nothing to update with, and there's no interest in it. Many other sections have shared a similar fate for varying reasons, such as the Flukes section. The increased age of people at the site and proliferation of advanced tools like PK Hack and Photoshop caused the immature and repetitive flukes to lose their charm. Mansion Maniac attempted to revive the section by deleting all the "bad" flukes, but in doing so failed to realize that he was "deleting" the very point of the section in the first place - to be so bad, they're FUNNY.
The other sections (besides PK Hack, which is unupdated due to a mysterious, unexplained incident involving the section maintainer using his position for the sole purpose of embezzling thousands of dollars of site money) which remain "dead" are all writing sections. Poetry, Fanfiction, Songs, Mailbag... and Articles... what killed them? And why?
I decided to find the reason Articles was dead. In classic Radiation fashion, I swiftly equipped my old-school Holmes Hat, upping my defense by 10. I suavely sipped a lukewarm glass of chocolate milk, leaning back in my chair. I had searched the crime scene - no fingerprints. Glad I got there before the police, anyway. I had a long history with Articles and if I didn't skip town fast, I would be their top suspect.
I've always told everyone I started this website with Mailbag. It's true, I didn't even have a forum account. I was 12-years-old, scared out of my wits that if I screwed something up, everybody would think I was stupid and I would become like EarthBoundFan2K or another similarly-fated idiot. It's true, the first submissions I accepted to this site were Mailbag, but they weren't the first ones I made.
I loved the Articles section. I read it all the time once I discovered this website. The Articles were always informative, charismatic, funny, mysterious. I loved TAFKACC's and SimonBob's. I felt like the people at this site were hilarious self-proclaimed legends, and my eyes watered at the very idea of "meeting" them on the internet. I read almost every single article with an interesting title I could find, and I loved them all.
I wanted to be one of them. I e-mailed PappyCat articles, most of which were funny but not very good. I was 12-years-old. I made article after article after article, trying oh-so-hard to make one that would make it in, but none of them ever did. I just wasn't good enough. Everytime they got rejected, I felt ashamed because I thought I did well, but I decided to try harder. While they were being rejected, I responded to Mailbag as practice. This week's topic was "what do you think of EB No Matsuri?" except the name was misspelled intentionally, saying something about fishgumnuts or something like that. I responded. It got in.
I was excited for Mailbag every week. Every so often I would still try to get an Article in, but I never did. Eventually PappyCat stopped responding, and I was afraid she died. She stopped posting on the forums. I had no idea where she went, that Articulated Sniper. I have no idea what I would say to her now. In any case, a few weeks in a row my Mailbag letter didn't make the cut. I felt like I had erred incredibly, that my responses weren't funny or awesome enough or something to that effect, and I apologized to the mailbag people because I felt like such a doofus. I told them that I would read every single Article, and that I was already up to the letter E.
I was a liar.
I already read those.
I really don't remember most of the articles I read, but looking back, I knew why they died.
The people that wrote them "died." Like PappyCat. Not that they really did pass away, but that they couldn't go to the site anymore... or worse yet, that they stopped caring about EarthBound. People change, and as this site has gone on, EarthBound has gotten older and older. I can't blame people for not having fresh new ideas about it... but some of my favorite articles weren't just about the game, but about the community. Casgair recently made a post in General Discussion talking about how he felt the site's community has become distanced, and I have to agree. I was never there, but looking back on the old articles, the old site... everybody was always on IRC, always able to talk... they always had time. People like Luna, Tomato, reidman, ratgirl, always on IRC. The people that ran the site were right there, and the people that went to the site were there. It was close. And when I said that the people were different, I wasn't lying. Guess who wrote this?
"So when I told my master that an old guy who was using a dead guy's name was in control of #earthbound, he said something to the equivalent of "ah forget it I'm gonna go play The Sims." After hitting him a few times with the Steel Pipe of Dishonor, I made him go speak to Tomato about the matter. Tomato said something like, "do articles", followed by my master saying "ah forget it I'm gonna go play The Sims." It was at this point that I realized my master was an idiot, so I murdered him in his sleep and assumed his personality--errr, I mean I got bored and started using my random kick script to kick people out of the chat room I was in. The next thing I knew, ChanOP said something lke "reidman is a protected user", but that is another story for another day."
That's right, it's Falcon24. Falcon24 writing something correctly punctuated and being silly? Impossible. Anyone who goes to the site today knows that if Falc types something that's not in all lowercase, he's being completely serious. People watch out for Falcon24, because they know they're going to get trolled. Falc gets upset because the moderation thinks his style is too harsh. Falc used to run MailBag and Articles and kick it with a tasty groove and write silly things, and then real life took hold of him and shook him up into a different version of the same person. This new person doesn't write articles.
And it slowly happened to the people on the rest of the site. As reidman and the others slowly got more serious about the website, the sort of close-knit EarthBoundy silly article IRC group slowly broke apart, until IRC became a wasteland and the Articles run dry. The only person who retains the same kind of tasty flavor he did at the beginning of the site is probably SimonBob, who I can still see writing articles if he felt like it.
Anyway, besides the stupid point I just made, we also kind of have the forum, whose open-feedback and M2 forum allows thoughts about the site or theories to be posted and responded to easily, obsoleting Articles by actually allowing some sort of multi-way discussion.
But I swear, Articles still have their place. Somewhere. Maybe just in my heart if nobody else cares. You might think they're just stupid articles written when everybody at this website was a teenager and thought flukes were awesome. And you're right. But I love them so, and we can't let that die. We can't let the True Spirit of Starmen.Net that flourished when we could all have fun in IRC and write stupid articles about that die. It's stupid. So let's do it. Together. (also the new site design sucks and is confusing so that's another reason)
Falcon24 will tell you how.
