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Post by Jeremy on Sept 1, 2019 11:52:33 GMT -8
The end of this month marks the 10th anniversary of Critically Touched, which first launched on September 30th, 2009. That's right, folks - a full decade of awesome!
Thank you all for your continued support. And for putting up with me no matter how pretentious and/or nonsensical my writing can get.
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Post by ThirdMan on Sept 1, 2019 16:37:03 GMT -8
It's very, very difficult sometimes, but somehow we manage.  |
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Sept 1, 2019 17:07:34 GMT -8
I can't believe it's been ten years, honestly. Ah, the good old days, where FV and Alex would try to kill each other while Mike sagely nodded in the distance.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Sept 1, 2019 22:11:36 GMT -8
I can't believe it's been ten years, honestly. Ah, the good old days, where FV and Alex would try to kill each other while Mike sagely nodded in the distance. Yeah, I'm sad that I missed that. And the great "Zeppo" war. And the great "Helpless" war. And 99.9% of all Buffyverse discussion. |
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 2, 2019 5:51:06 GMT -8
Ha! You kids are so young. When I think "old days," I think of the Battlestar Galactica debate between Mike and G1000, Fray-Adjacent's music videos, RunawayMarbles praising Sherlock, and the Golden Age of the ACP.
...Oh gawd, I'm a dinosaur.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Sept 2, 2019 8:46:06 GMT -8
Ha! You kids are so young. When I think "old days," I think of the Battlestar Galactica debate between Mike and G1000, Fray-Adjacent's music videos, RunawayMarbles praising Sherlock, and the Golden Age of the ACP. ...Oh gawd, I'm a dinosaur. Back when the old forum was around, I remember coming across a thread from July 2008, when The Dark Knight had just come out. Ryan started it I believe. That was a little surreal. |
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 2, 2019 12:17:10 GMT -8
On that note, I should clarify that the website and forum community are over 10 years old - Mike started his Buffy reviews back in 2005. But for the first few years, they were hosted on the SuperJer site, and he didn't spin the Buffy/Angel reviews off into their own site till 2009.
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Post by Zarnium on Sept 2, 2019 15:53:09 GMT -8
When I first started lurking in 2013, Jeremy had a Xander avatar and so did a user named "Gon", so I kept confusing them.
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 2, 2019 19:42:08 GMT -8
I remember that! Though my avatar was eyepatch Xander, so we had some distinction.
When I first joined the forum in 2012, there were no other Xanders - just a bunch of Buffys, Willows, Spikes, Gileses, and a Harmony. (The Harmony was the original Alex - female, wrote some Angel reviews, no connection to the other Alex.)
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Post by otherscott on Sept 3, 2019 7:40:25 GMT -8
I know that when I first arrived on the site, pretty much EVERYONE had a Buffy avatar. I never actually got a Buffy avatar I don't think, but I can't remember who my first avatar was of.
Speaking of which, am I the second oldest member who still consistently posts? I know buffyholic still shows up occasionally, but I can't think of anyone else who is still around who was there when I first arrived, other than Jeremy of course. (And even Jeremy only preceded me by a couple years). Zarnium might have been there earlier, but it wasn't by by much.
I know the move to wordpress and whatever board site host this is killed a lot of the activity, but I think it was slowly decreasing basically from the point it stopped being pretty much a Buffy only site.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Sept 3, 2019 8:23:22 GMT -8
I know that when I first arrived on the site, pretty much EVERYONE had a Buffy avatar. I never actually got a Buffy avatar I don't think, but I can't remember who my first avatar was of. Speaking of which, am I the second oldest member who still consistently posts? I know buffyholic still shows up occasionally, but I can't think of anyone else who is still around who was there when I first arrived, other than Jeremy of course. (And even Jeremy only preceded me by a couple years). Zarnium might have been there earlier, but it wasn't by by much. I know the move to wordpress and whatever board site host this is killed a lot of the activity, but I think it was slowly decreasing basically from the point it stopped being pretty much a Buffy only site. Also I think the conclusion of the ATP killed some interest as well-first time there weren't Buffyverse reviews being posted. Now there's only Angel, which only ever had a fraction of the popularity of its parent show. Even when the Buffy reviews were still up, it's not like people were joining in droves. The transition also culled Stake&Cheese, Pathbeyondthedark, Iguana-on-a-stick, and Freudian Vampire, all of whom disappeared off the face of the Critically Touched planet. Sad, but I guess Mike never meant for this site to become the AV Club. I'm still the 'youngest' of the regulars. |
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 3, 2019 10:03:44 GMT -8
If memory serves, Scott has been commenting on the main site since late 2012, but Zarnium joined the forum a few weeks before Scott in 2013. No one else pre-2013 still posts regularly here. (I think the typical lifespan of a major CT forumer has historically been about 3-4 years.)
It's true that the site has been steadily losing visitors in recent years, thanks in part to brand dissolution - CT used to be a very Buffy-heavy site, with 90% of the discussion centering on the Whedonverse. (And most of the shows heavily discussed on the forum were at least Buffy-adjacent, like True Blood, Veronica Mars, and Vampire Diaries.) Now it's no longer that. And moving to Wordpress (which was necessary once Mike moved on, in order to keep the site functioning in any form) hurt the flow as well.
But I'm still happy to keep the site going, so long as there are folks willing to read the reviews and engage in good discussion. Which is why I should reiterate my gratitude to the people reading this - you're the ones who've kept it going all these years.
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Post by otherscott on Sept 3, 2019 11:56:44 GMT -8
Another major thing is that people just don't really post on message boards anymore. Everything has kind of moved to reddit and social media. We're just sort of sitting here as dinosaurs.
It's still cool here though, it's like discussing stuff with a more intimate group of friends rather than venting your opinion out to the ether of the internet.
I still read the "Why is Buffy Never a Candidate for BSE" thread every few months, though. Hard to imagine getting another thread like that nowadays.
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Quiara
Grade School
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Post by Quiara on Sept 3, 2019 22:03:25 GMT -8
I never actually got a Buffy avatar I don't think, but I can't remember who my first avatar was of. You were Scott Hope for a hot minute. I may be the holdout from that era who never got a Buffy avatar: I think I had an avatar of a character from every Whedon show except Buffy at one point or another, actually. All three of them. As an aside, while I do miss the Buffy-only days, and while I do love Jeremy, I think the writing about Twin Peaks, The Inside, and Dekalog are unironically some of the best, deepest, most loving critical analyses I've seen on the Internet. I think they're to some extent what's scared me off from really buckling down and writing about any number of shows I really really love for CT over the years. Maybe it's time to fix that? Hm. |
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 4, 2019 5:44:21 GMT -8
As an aside, while I do miss the Buffy-only days, and while I do love Jeremy, I think the writing about Twin Peaks, The Inside, and Dekalog are unironically some of the best, deepest, most loving critical analyses I've seen on the Internet. I think they're to some extent what's scared me off from really buckling down and writing about any number of shows I really really love for CT over the years. Maybe it's time to fix that? Hm. Hey, it's never too late. I'm still interested in getting new writers onboard. |
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