RACK fvckING VELOCET.
CALLED IT BACK IN 2006:
This is the slowest roll call thread I've ever seen. And it is good to see FRAG is still alive, if not posting.
Tempus fugit, mang. I recall a time that seems not so long ago that we were calling Rome fans from newsgroups, SCI &II old skool.
Now the third iteration generation is considered that.
Though I'm not exactly a well known poster (I never did rack up big post totals) I've been around long enough to qualify for "old skool", I guess.
Well I'm gonna dispense a little advice to any n00bs aspiring to smacker status: don't lose sight of what makes this pastime fun.
Look at ppanther's post above. "Message board boredom" ? And why is that? She's been posting since before SCIII, but does that have to mean everything? If you're new, you have no idea what a great smacker ppanther is. But now she can barely get motivated to show up even. What changed, smack itself or ppanther's perspective? The latter, mainly.
Two things have worked together to undermine the enthusiasm for smack in a lot of long time posters. One, the untenable notion of smack having to be completely "fresh" every time out. Sure, the pimp in the box has a point with respect to encourgaing folks to have their game be as fresh as possible, but I think that whole trip is far less important than his "have a take and do not suck" commandment (something even the most avid Rome-haytas would invoke back in the day). The sad fact is a massive wave of apathy crashed down upon the community because people would post something as smack and some bozo would chime in with some variation..."that's old, that's not fresh, that's been done, yadda yadda". The person posting the smack had to put a little effort into it, even if it was just searching for a funny pic. But the bozo had to post only one fukkin line to counter it and unfortunately, it counted as refutation in the minds of the mostly jaded crew. It is true that the FORMS of smack were being recycled. So the second thing is, more and more people bought into the whole "it's not fresh, therefore it is not tight smack" extreme trip even though that thinking was eliminating whole fukking categories of smack from consideration. People just stopped trying when that became rampant. What SHOULD have happened was something like the "that's not fresh" parrots should have been roundly piled upon every single time. For example, folks used to use uglypeople.com a lot. It was good for a laugh every time it was done well, meaning someone would find just the right fukked up greel to represent a certain poster. Sure, the tactic failed on occassion but that's true of all forms of smack, win some, lose some. But the fate of that more widespread form was nothing like some others... for example, EuroClone, one of the best ever, took a comic strip and photoshopped the thing so that the dialogue balloons were changed to the story smack he was running in one of our SmackOffs. Great stuff, funny as hell. Well, along comes some utter fukking douchebag who says nothing more than "that's been done." Followed by some of the idiot parrots as well. Of course Euro's effort was racked by those who understand smack, but the AD/HD dumbfukks outnumbered the racks! I never saw Euro or anyone else use that tactic again after that. Why go to the effort?
Its a good thing the 'Skins coaching staff doesn't fall into this sort of thinking-trap during staff meetings:
Gibbs: ok, I think at this point we can probably catch them being aggressive and we'll run an end-around to keep 'em honest...
Saunders: no, that's been done.
Gibbs: hmmmm, yeah but... ok a flea flicker or HB option play...
Saunders: no, can't do those either. They've been done.
Gibbs: (exasperated) well then we'll run the ball...
Saunders: nope
Gibbs: pass
Saunders: Not fresh, sorry...
Its a good thing great artists and scientists kept at it and didn't fall prey to the words of that possible asshole who wants the completely unique at all times.
Ass: watcha doin'?
Picasso: painting!....?
Ass: sorry, that's been done.
Picasso: Oh, you're right, what was I thinking? I'll cease this right fukking now.
You get the picture. Bottom line is, though there may be a finite number of the forms of smack, there are far more possibilities for instances of good smack run when you factor in many motivated individuals and their creativity. Keep the goal in mind: laughs. Once upon a time one could check in on SCIII at roughly 3:00 pm every day and find pages 1-3 loaded with side-splitting funny threads. I shit you not. At those times, there was a high percentage of folks wanting to contribute and the whiny naysayers were an insignificant minimum. You can have that here at the board of the next generation of smackdom. Don't have the expectation that everything that qualifies as epic has to be completely unique in all respects and you'll avoid our mistakes of the past...
velocet
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