...And you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?"
Since it was brought up in the Introduction Thread, I figured I'd go ahead and start a thread about how we all came to be here at The Orange Belt.
I know the exact choice I made that lead to me being a member of this forum, I was at Barnes and Nobel and I was deciding whether to get an issue of EGM, or X-Treme Gamer, I decided on EGM, I later subscribed to them, and in one of the issues after that, there was a little blurb about 8-Bit Theater. I decided to check it out, and I liked it. So, one day, the creator of the comic links to a comic called "Spelling the Vacuum". I checked that out, and I liked it so much I joined the forums, which at the time, were on Top Web Comics. I stayed with them through the move to Inksandwich, and then, the split off to the Orange Belt. I sometimes wonder if my life would be better or worse had I picked the issue of X-Treme Gamer.
I know the exact choice I made that lead to me being a member of this forum, I was at Barnes and Nobel and I was deciding whether to get an issue of EGM, or X-Treme Gamer, I decided on EGM, I later subscribed to them, and in one of the issues after that, there was a little blurb about 8-Bit Theater. I decided to check it out, and I liked it. So, one day, the creator of the comic links to a comic called "Spelling the Vacuum". I checked that out, and I liked it so much I joined the forums, which at the time, were on Top Web Comics. I stayed with them through the move to Inksandwich, and then, the split off to the Orange Belt. I sometimes wonder if my life would be better or worse had I picked the issue of X-Treme Gamer.
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A couple years back I went to the IS boards and found they were inactive. I tried to look up why and found the pre-apocalypse Orange Belt which I promptly never signed up for. Eventually I came back to the post-apocalypse Belt and decided to join up.
When I was living in Japan, Adam had showed me this forum a few times. He convinced me to sign up, so I eventually did. However, I never talked to people outside of the forums until sometime this year.
This led me to Inksandwich, where I proceeded to lurk for awhile. After finally making my account (as these people seemed like an entertaining bunch), I remember my reaction to having my pants stolen being "I had pants?". And then someone wondered aloud what a pichu would look like with pants, and somebody else drew a pichu with pants.
The forum was entertaining (though I eventually migrated towards the Spelling the Vacuum section more often than not, lots of entertaining curse words and innuendos for my 14-year-old self to laugh about), but after awhile I got bored and left. Forever. Almost.
A couple months later, I got a mass email from Shawn saying that he was sorry about some big event that had happened on Inksandwich, and he also said that the forum had split and gave a link to the Orange Belt. Always interested in some good event-happenings, I went back to investigate. Unfortunately, everything had already been either deleted or had occurred over PMs, so I didn't find much. I decided to check this "Orange Belt" instead.
There I found people posting things and I posted things and at one point drew a raccoon fighting a toaster and that was the moment I finally felt accepted. THE END
Anyhow, I got tired of playing Myst all the time after some months, and was bored and digging through some of the CDs and stuff that came with the computer that I had never really looked through. I came across something calld "POD" which caught my interest so I popped it in. As it turns out it was a game! Can you believe that? Invigorated with this new find I became obsessed with the game (because I had nothing else to play that I hadn't played to death) and soon found myself looking up the game on the interwebs. A quick search led me to some funny site by the name of Game Revolution. It had stuff about the this game and many other things as well. One such thing was a section of video game type webcomic links.
Soon I became hooked on bobandgeorge and 8-bit Theater. Naturally this means that when 8-Bit linked the comic "Spelling the Vacuum" I was compelled to read that too. I found that comic to be quite swell indeed. Soon I was in college and had time to kill between classes, and ended up checking out the forum for StV which proved very amusing, so I lurked on a regular basis. Later it would make a move to Insandwich where I continued to lurk and eventually gave in and joined and stuck around through the creation of the OB.
High school came around and I didn't spend so much time on the internet as much, and got an extremely active social life. I still think my freshman year of high school has been the best year of my life. I sort of stayed away from the forums, and I heard about the big ol' debacle same as hlavco, through the e-mail that Shawn Handyside made. I checked out the Orange Belt, but I still didn't hang around very often. Apparently the OB died and I just found my way back to here when I was bored one summer. Fun times!! Love you guys!!
Oh, and Bruce, the fact that you spelled Animal Crossing wrong and came across Inksandwich from that comic... I dunno, I just find that hilarious. What a great comic.
I can't remember exactly when, but I joined Inksandwich around that time, but stayed in mostly the zelda comic section. Gradually I started posting more and more in the other sections, and then when we moved to the Orange Belt and here I am!
It's kind of weird to think about how many lives would have been changed (and how drastically, I wonder) if Brian Clevinger had linked to Elf Only Inn or something that day instead...
It makes me giggle to read that so many people found their way here through Zelda Comic. Makes me feel good that I'm in the process of starting it back up again, starting with the complete rebuild of the site through WordPress. You all freakin' rock!
Speaking of which, any chance of bringing that crazy shit back?
Also, although I have "left," I have been entertaining the notion of updating the pirate thread if Bruce does not feel like it. Thoughts?
Nah, not really. She did tell me about this place, and that I should consider joining, so I did. What did I have to lose?
Life's been great ever since...
I once bought my best friend's dignity for a dollar. It came in a little camera film roll canister majig. Best buy EVAR. He said it was in such a small container because he didn't have very much left. I still have it! Can't throw that stuff away, ya know.