Hey - it has been over a decade since I browsed these forums but was curious to take a look after reconnecting with a few people recently. MFGG not only served as really inspirational to me when I was younger (I first registered when I was about 10-11 years old) but also helped carved the career path I wound up following. It has been crazy still seeing so many people around to this day making things, recently seeing Freakzone doing AVGN Adventures, Thunder Dragon being up to a new project - so many people really stuck to their guns and have been killing it!
This has been a community i always have wanted to return to but that's not really something easy to approach considering just how much of a mess I was just before I stopped browsing altogether. When I was young I started off much more mellow but eventually began making a lot of posts on the old PPP that were cries for help about abuse at home, things were pushing really far, and as I weakened at home the intensity from others built up since I was making a fool of myself. I remember having a lot of jokes poked at one topic I had made mentioning a drunken family member that stuck around for weeks. It's not something I am fully going to go into, but as life was changing I was a became more unhinged and unstable at age. Using a message board when you're just crawling into your double digits seems like a bad idea, but really my worst behavior was by the end. I started trying to toughen my exterior since I needed help at home that I couldn't find anywhere and asking for help led to a lot of ridicule. Eventually I was just a gigantic angry bitter snot lashing out at people before they had the chance to throw something my way, trying to be a tough guy on the Mario message board at age 14. None of the behavior was excused, it was all ridiculous, and honestly it was why I eventually just went away completely rather than trying to reconnect since I was just a broken miserable person.
(08-13-2019, 10:30 PM)Fourside Seven Wrote: It was apparently him playing pranks with another member of the forums but this was also at a time where I was frequently dealing with strange people calling my phone so on top of the stuff I was dealing with online, I was also dealing with massive privacy and safety concerns.
I remember this instance because I felt terrified during the whole ordeal (being young still and barely understanding technology) and what could be done to my own end alongside realizing the weight of just what it was I was going along with. There was a specific user I looked up to a lot and did a lot for, initially out of respect (he taught me a LOT about how computers worked), but more out of fear by the end. At one point they showed me a fake AIM client they made in MMF that was to phish info (my introduction to the term "phishing"), later they introduced me to a website where you can get someone's public information, fun introductions to technology soon becoming nothing but links towards potential tools to weaponize. They had a specific obsession with your end and sent me a web page on AIM telling me type the number and specific messages to go along with it. I knew they were calling you so it's not like I was guilt free - I was a little brat puffing my chest trying to be tough so I wouldn't be hurt. Submitting that form was my only contribution during that specific ordeal (did not call multiple people) - but I do remember the forum situation since I was asked to infiltrate it after I was getting a long with people there settling in. I remember I'd get scared to wake up to my computer certain days since I didn't know what other shenanigans I was going to get wrapped up into, and from what I remember they said they were an adult at the time of all of this, so having some adult stranger online hovering over you with this kind of power was intensely terrifying. They were really obsessed and were looking up everything they could, I never realized just how much someone could do off so little. It felt like being some bizarre henchmen to some evil scientist invested in bullying people on a Mario forum (eventually migrating that discussion to their own forum). We both acted like turds, it was all completely petty and ridiculous, and by the end I think I became so much of a jerk that they didn't want to deal with my end anymore. Ultimately though, running with a bad crowd for awhile doesn't excuse the behavior nor does a messy home life - I acted like a massive turd and continuously kept getting worse.
I don't know what I can really do to make things up to you for something that was over a decade ago but I am not even kidding when I say this - I get haunted thinking back to all of this with just how rotten I acted on the forums. I loved so much about this community and by the end I was swinging a sword around wildly trying to keep everyone away out of fear. It was really terrifying the lengths some people used to go to back then, and with unfamiliarity to technology especially at a young age, someone doing this sort of thing had to have been INSANELY scary to deal with. If you want to PM me, I'd really like to figure out some way I could resolve this - even if it took almost a decade. It was absolutely insane what you got put towards with that one and you didn't deserve it.
Any insults or ridicule from those days are warranted (although I'd advocate for accurate info rather than a flubbed doxx!) The person I was when I was a little kid was a deeply miserable confused little brat. I still really hold a lot of fond memories of a lot of you guys over here at MFGG and I'm sorry again for what behavior I demonstrated as a wonked up youth. I'm glad the site has stayed strong over all this time and that so much of the community still exists.