Hello Gamers

The only appropriate response

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Hey IBN, I'll be honest you'll probably not get much response out of this thread, but I figured I'd at least answer it so you have some "research". I'll do my best to instill some perspective from that time, at least the things that stuck out the most to me personally. Gather 'round children, Grandpappy Llave is going to tell you a story!

I think one of the things you should consider was back around that time, a lot of social media that did exist was not set up to monetize and build influencers and streamline everything into successful business models. Youtube was around since 2005, but it started gaining traction with Let's Plays and AMVs. I wasn't big on the AMV scene, but I spent a lot of my time watching horror game play throughs and happy wheel videos etc from notable Youtubers like PewDiePie, Tobuscus, and Markiplier to name a few. Skits, drama channels, and ear-rape was still big back then like Smosh, Nigahiga, RayWilliamJohnson, The Annoying Orange, and FRED.

Nowadays, if you're a fan of a franchise you'd typically follow the official Twitter/X channel, Reddit, Youtube, and join an Official Discord server. But back then, you may be stuck on a boss or can't find a certain item in your favorite game and you can't be bothered buying the official game guide book from Gamestop so you google it. Now you'll get reddit posts and youtube tutorials, but the tutorials were a little more obscure on YT back then. The first thing that came up? A thread on a fan website. BOOM. Your internet highschool life begins.

For a lot of people here on KHV, we came for the Kingdom Hearts media, stayed for the friendship and drama. The forums had a lot to offer! You could Role Play, Share your art and writing, have serious topical discussions, forum families (which was like fun clubs and sometimes cults hahah), and everyone's favorite; The Spam Zone. This was the most sacred section filled with wild west chaos! You could post about everything and anything and goof off. It needed to be within site rules parameters, but tons of laughs, memes, drama, hazing etc.

On KHV, your posts count in certain sections like here in Intros, places like Discussion, KH topic sections and certain places they didn't like Spam Zone, Playground etc. Once a member gets to 1000 posts, they become a premium member and become pink with perks like a secret section I'm not allowed to talk about, personalized custom title, and name change requests on a 2 week cooldown. A lot of us had tons of different interests, and we would change our usernames and avatars to our favorite characters from a series or game and have fun with that. One of my favorite things is when someone said something funny or relatable to you or whatever you wanted, you can "sig that" quote, and have it in your signature like a fond memory and trophy!

Memes and fads evolved and had their time, but it usually felt like every month there was a new batch of meme formats and as per the usual rules it is NOT acceptable to post outdated memes. They evolved and we needed to keep up with it. This is a rough idea of the stages of memes throughout the last 20 years -

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Honestly at the end of the day, we've all gotten older and there had been very touchy times during the sites lifetime that affected activity, but once in a while you'll find us old souls coming back to look back relive our cringy lives immortalized on this site. I'd encourage you to take a look around, and ask any questions in the future!