Which now dormant fandom do you have really fond memories of?

Hey gang,

We've all been there online. Those weird, lightning in a bottle communities that flicker and die so fast, that it feels like they weren't even there. Sometimes, it can be a niche community for a niche game. Sometimes, it's a popular game, but a speedrun community. It could be a small group for a youtuber you like. I'm pretty sure we've all had these cool little groups. I can think of probably...one that I have the fondest memories of.

I remember watching Pure Pwnage back when I was in High School (UK High School, so age 11-16)

I just remember this...insane show that I'd never seen anything like before. It was an actual show online, which at the time, we'd kinda never seen before. It had continuity. And more importantly, it felt like a show that was by gamers, for gamers. There was no bullshit, no fat, no drama, it was just a handful of cool guys making this incredible passion project. At the time, I was as obssessed as they were, so a lot of it hit home big time.

But it was also a time before social media. If you wanted to see a new episode....you just had to check their website every day. And as someone who was allowed 30 minutes of internet a day, when it was still dial up, it was so awesome. Then an episode would come out after 3 months, and it was just...all your friends would be talking about it. You were thrilled to go into school on Monday, cause you knew you could talk about the episode where Jeremy quit his WoW addiction.

What are your fandoms that have kinda come and gone?

I've gone back to Homestar Runner in recent months, and a) that show holds UP and b) they're still producing new content every now and again. But I really miss a new SBemail being the talk of the school. Also: holy SHIT, H*R might be almost as big as The Simpsons in terms of its influence on old and modern internet culture/references.

In a bigger sense: The City of Heroes in-game community was always fantastic. Fun and inviting, the raids never got big or complex enough to need stat crunching and "perfect play," so people generally didn't get loud and shitty if you misclicked. There were high-level people camped at rookie spawn-points who'd dole out currency if you had an especially bold design, or an in-depth, well-written (at least for being free online) origin in your stats screen. It felt like the game was existing in a space where the "right" way to play an MMO wasn't so calcified.

Then City of Villains came out alongside the "Headquarters" update and things changed for the worse. It was suddenly all about recruitment and one-upsmanship, and it got a lot less open and a lot more clique-y. Dunno how it ended up, but I wasn't there when the dust settled.

The IGN Indie Rock, Final Fantasy, Hip-Hop, Resident Evil and Gran Turismo communities of the early to mid 2000s were my absolute shit to the point I'm actually friends on Facebook with some of those people.

@sombre: did you ever catch Pure Pwnage when they got big enough to have a fully produced show on Canadian TV? Only Jeremy, Doug and a few others ended up on the show but it's safe to say that they didn't have the same energy and nonsense they had on the webseries.

Pretty sure Doug never "celebrated" against a CRT monitor on the TV show so they lost that certain "je ne sais quoi" in the transition.

There was a thread in the Fire Emblem section of the now defunct official Nintendo forums that was titled something like 'FE Fan Fic Thread' that was shockingly not horny at all and instead ended up being a place for roughly 15 or so people to just chat and write short sketch comedy bits involving Fire Emblem characters. It went on for a couple of years so the characters ended up becoming pretty well defined as particularly funny personalities people introduced in their skits would get used in new ones which felt like a pretty fun bit of collaborative writing.

I'm sure if I could read through that thread again a lot of it would be extremely goofy but it was a good bunch of people that I still remember from time to time and was a fun, low pressure way to exercise our creative muscles a little bit. I don't think I posted in any other part of those official Nintendo forums but I was pretty sad to see it shut down because of this thread.

The Advance Wars fandom. Around the series' heydey there were multiple fansites covering the series, with forums to accompany them. It was neat, seeing people talk shop about mechanics, create webcomics and PC mapmaker programs, and design custom campaigns, COs, and units. Each site had their own atmosphere too; it was kind of like visiting other countries in the games themselves. Sadly, the lack of a series entry since Days of Ruin over a decade ago meant that activity eventually slowed and many of the fansites have since shut down. I remember my times at those forums fondly though - many good memories and cool people I met through them.

Not so much a fandom, but I miss the half dozen or so book groups I was a part of through Yahoo Groups. Goodreads has filled that void but there was something clean about 2000s Yahoo functionality I miss, not to mention all those friends who now I no longer keep up with.

There was an on-demand horror channel called Fearnet lo these many years ago, and their site had a chat box as was the style at the time. That chat was really small and tight knit, and we'd all just shoot the shit for hours. Man, haven't thought about that in years... shame I never kept up with any of those folks, 'twas fun times.

I remember re-enacting that whole FPS doug introduction with friends on numerous occassions. Bless PurePwnage.

Back in the day, say late 90s/early 00s, AOL had message boards and "keywords" you could search for to find communities. There was a community of roleplaying boards, with community-made rules and stat books. There were a few different "universes" of Star Wars games going on and I played those for a few years. I started another board with some friends from there that was based on Master of Orion 2.

I still think fondly of that stuff, because it was my first exposure to roleplaying, even if I didn't recognize it as such at the time (my first tabletop RPGs would come some time later).

Right, i've just remember why I made this thread, and I missed it in the OP

I was a huge HUGE fan of VGCW (Video Game Championship Wrestling). Like, to the extent where I'd stay up till 1am just to watch. This was also while I was doing my teacher training, and the kids would always know when I'd been up till fucking 3am or something watching it, cause I was dead the next day.

Not only do I remember individual matches, I also remember specific twitch users who I'd share the experience with.

I remember listening to a gaming podcast way back during 2007 called Noob Toob. The hosts were crass as hell but as a youth I found their sense of humor too be amusing, and their video game takes quite interesting. The podcast really ended years ago, though every once in a blue moon they might do a new episode. Really fond memories attached to that podcast. Yow!

@sombre: Aw man, I loved VGCW too. I'd always order a pizza and chill for a couple hours of silliness. The best had to be watching Scorpion ascend from the midkard to becoming the most dominant champion in history. That and the PRATS. And Illidan. And Gaben. And pretty much everything.

A bunch of old Guitar Hero/Rock Band content creators that were really prominent back in the day but as the genre fell out of favor, most of them fell off the face of the earth while others shifted to other content altogether. There's a few that I still follow that continue to bang out content for those games but it's not quite the same anymore.

For me it’s the show Lost. I listened to a few podcasts around the show, and that lead to message boards. Lots of discussions of the previous episodes and what might come during the next one. Lots of news and fan theories, with some Doctor Who , gaming or other nerdy things rolled in too. I still miss that community. With streaming now dropping a whole season at once, I don’t know if something like that will happen again. Game of Thrones was close but not to the same level, at least for me.

A few of the people on my PSN friendslist are from those days. My username comes from a story on one of the podcasts.

The episode “Greatest Hits” might be my favorite. So much so that when the show ended and they auctioned off props from the show, Charlie’s top 5 list was the only thing I bid on. It went for way more than I was willing to pay.

I still love original pure pwnage! I used to be on the playstation message boards during the early psp and ps3 days. like 2006/2007. looking back fondly but oof were those message boards toxic haha!

The PRATS were my absolute boys. I miss William Mackey