I joined my first Huskers message board back in 2004. But I began posting on message boards back in the mid-1990s.
Most of them featured popular franchises and were populated by teenagers and young adults--and loosely moderated by the same. So they tended to be pretty 'wild and wooly' places with frequent arguments ending in a banning or a melodramatic, "I'm leaving forever!" post.
But when you have subjects that attract like-minded people, communities will inevitably form. And on rare occasions, really good ones. But the challenge of an anonymous posting forum is that is while you naturally form friendships over time, you recognize how fragile they are. They can--and sometimes do--disappear overnight.
People leave boards for lots of different reasons, including a loss of interest in the subject. I don't know why she left, but Husker99 has been signaling for over a year now that she'd 'had it' with Husker Football. If that was the case, that's her right. I'd be a hypocrite to grouse about it because I've done the same thing on various boards over the years.
BHF relationships are not really any different from the physical kind. For a variety of reasons, people come and go in our lives. The best we can do is to value our friends (internet and otherwise) while we have them.
Most of them featured popular franchises and were populated by teenagers and young adults--and loosely moderated by the same. So they tended to be pretty 'wild and wooly' places with frequent arguments ending in a banning or a melodramatic, "I'm leaving forever!" post.
But when you have subjects that attract like-minded people, communities will inevitably form. And on rare occasions, really good ones. But the challenge of an anonymous posting forum is that is while you naturally form friendships over time, you recognize how fragile they are. They can--and sometimes do--disappear overnight.
People leave boards for lots of different reasons, including a loss of interest in the subject. I don't know why she left, but Husker99 has been signaling for over a year now that she'd 'had it' with Husker Football. If that was the case, that's her right. I'd be a hypocrite to grouse about it because I've done the same thing on various boards over the years.
BHF relationships are not really any different from the physical kind. For a variety of reasons, people come and go in our lives. The best we can do is to value our friends (internet and otherwise) while we have them.
