Seperation Anxiety
Insert Credit, it's about time you and I had a talk.

I've been a member of Insert Credit for a while, since about the time legalstep graced us with his awesome presence. I stayed mostly because of 4 people: DonMarco, Rud13, legalstep, and swimmy. (I didn't recognize the superiority of Another god's or Toups' posts yet). Out of those 4, DonMarco is on his own forums, legalstep is pretty much hated and modded into oblivion, and swimmy has stopped posting. Rud13 is still there, but I don't seem to agree with him much, although he's still one of the best guys around. So the original reasons I started posting at Insert Credit just aren't there.

And lately, I haven't had much reason to post there. It isn't because I don't want to discuss games in a serious manner, it's just that I don't feel like I'm on the same wavelength as everyone else. People like Aderack and Ajutla seem to be in the business of playing video games for far different reasons than I do, and we can't really seem to relate. I probably look like a simple-minded idiot to them, while they increasingly seem to look like highly polite intellectual trolls to me. We aren't going to agree, and Insert Credit is pretty much their turf. I just don't feel like I belong, now. Again, different wavelength.

Even worse is the Insertcredit channel on IRC. I really don't feel I belong there. They feel like an extension to the GAF forums than Insert Credit. I get on there because I want to make jokes and talk about games. Quite frankly, I don't understand why a lot of people are in there. They talk about anime and call people fags and link gross pictures they found via Google Image Search. I'm not saying those things don't have their place, but I go there to talk about video games and I'm not getting that, really. I try to fit in and really, I have come to the conclusion that I can't.

I've been posting on hell.oddwebsite.com for a while now, too, and I get the sense that something there is evolving. In the year and a half that I've been there, we've gone from a forum about making jokes to...something else. Something I can't describe in words. We make fun of people who are newcomers, but for the few that are accepted, it's a tight-knit community. We talk to each other through AIM about things, and we all feel we know each other. I tell people things I wouldn't admit to on this LiveJournal, and they reciprocate.

Insert Credit doesn't have that, and I want it, badly. And if it doesn't get it soon or improve in the other areas, I'm going to leave. Not because I want to, but because I feel that forums can transcend beyond what they are at Insert Credit, and we're...not. I don't know why this is, and I wish I had the answer, because I'd do my best to get Insert Credit to the next state of evolution.

Which brings me to my question: where should I go?

The little derivatives of Insert Credit seem to have many of the bad traits that the original Insert Credit has, though for different reasons. Don't Press Start is close to what I'm describing as desirable, but hasn't achieved critical mass yet due to a low population. The Gamer's Quarter forums are awesome, perhaps because people go there to talk about games and only games and we focus our efforts on that, but ironically, because of this we'll never turn into a real community, a tight-knit family of friends. So. Where do you go to talk about games? And, do you have any suggestions as to what can be done about Insert Credit? I want to save it so badly it hurts, but I don't think I can do anything about it. I ask myself what's wrong with the forums and channel, how I can get them to evolve, and I get the response "???, I need more data!" back. There's some element here I'm missing, something that hasn't been examined correctly or perhaps not at all.

I'm frustrated. I need to go someplace else. A trial seperation, if you will, until I figure out this whole mess. I simply don't have the answers to my question right now.