what was doomworld like in the early 2000s and early 2010s?

[Grain of Salt]

Pros: circa 2011ish there was a little scene of people who used to almost unfailingly post FDAs of any slaughterish maps that got posted in wads and mods (shoutout to Phml, ArmouredBlood, gggmork, j4rio, Memfis, Dannebubinga.......)

 

Cons: literally every Everything Else thread.

[plums]

17 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

A big part of that is just changing cultural attitudes in general. Homosexuality was widely derided in 2000 with 7/10 Americans opposed to same sex marriage. Now, it's widely accepted and the numbers completely reversed in support of marriage equality. And we didn't even know what "being trans" really meant... We just laughed at the meme, "there are no girls on the Internet." In hindsight, we probably drove away a couple good members because we were just insensitive teenagers thinking they were "pretending on the Internet."

 

"That's gay" was just common parlance back then. Hell, I had to rewrite segments of urban brawl just because times changed. I don't know if Doomworld really became more tolerant... Or if the world just changed and the rest of us acclimated. 

For sure, a lot of it was just people growing up, and the world changing. Though as I understand it there was also a deliberate switchup in the moderation team and policies? I wasn't around when it happened.

 

(Canada made same-sex marriage legal at a national level in 2005, what took you hosers so long, eh?)

 

In any case I much prefer a place where people are able to put trans flags in their profile picture and not worry about being harassed, rather than the state of affairs ten years ago, even if some of the individual culture of the community has been lost.

Edited January 13, 2024 by plums

[Antroid]

It was way better. I miss post hell every day.

[Koko Ricky]

18 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

I don't know if Doomworld really became more tolerant... Or if the world just changed and the rest of us acclimated. 

I've been thinking about this, and it may be a combination of that, and the kind of social environment a game like Doom fosters. The base game is devoid of characterization; the community is creatively focused; its setting is fantastical and abstract; it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's perhaps unsurprising that this community is overall pretty chill. 

 

Now, without naming names, imagine games that are highly competitive; with macho, brutish protagonists; grounded, realistic, glorified military action; misanthropic and nihilistic tones. More than likely that community will have more riffraff. 

 

There's also the factor of the platform. Facebook's Doom groups, for instance, are more chaotic than here, as FB groups are just an endlessly updating feed of barely regulated conversation. This is an island forum that is fairly rigidly moderated, so much so that the last time I really saw someone disrupting things was a rotten.com style shitpost from years ago. It's been suggested that people cooperate better when they're not constantly crammed into the town hall, but rather can migrate between niche spaces.  

Edited January 13, 2024 by Koko Ricky

[Doomkid]

10 hours ago, plums said:

For sure, a lot of it was just people growing up, and the world changing. Though as I understand it there was also a deliberate switchup in the moderation team and policies? I wasn't around when it happened.

 

(Canada made same-sex marriage legal at a national level in 2005, what took you hosers so long, eh?)

 

In any case I much prefer a place where people are able to put trans flags in their profile picture and not worry about being harassed, rather than the state of affairs ten years ago, even if some of the individual culture of the community has been lost.

There have been several new moderators taken on board since 2016, but AFAIK no one lost their position, certainly not due to anything political. A few have resigned over the years but that was more just being tired of dealing with the thankless nonsense of being a mod, heh.

 

(A lot of socially repressed people hate individual freedoms, that's bloody what!)

 

I don't think things were all that bad proportionally to the rest of the internet even 10 or 15 years ago, though. I'll always go to bat for DW on this one when it comes up:

 

On 1/13/2024 at 8:14 AM, Scuba Steve said:

I don't know if Doomworld really became more tolerant... Or if the world just changed and the rest of us acclimated. 

I really do believe that even at its worst, DW was above average in terms of tolerance, especially for a gaming-centric community, even in the mid-late 2000s.

 

Granted, I was already addicted to internet politics and drama by the early 00s, but I still remember that while Doomworld was going "huhuh, gay" there were already other forums which were talking about how "homosexuality is the destruction of modern civilization", the result of "allowing feminine influence in a man's realm", etc.. That might seem like an extreme baseline for comparison, but what I'm getting at is that not only were DW's less tolerant types a relatively tiny minority of the overall forum populace, but the awful social ideas they presented in threads were always lambasted at length before the decision to stop hosting heated political debates on DW was set in stone in 2016. Even before the era where more bigoted ideas were just hell'd outright, they were always mocked!

 

(For those who are like "lol wtf why the FUCK did DW used to openly house political debate threads", remember that DW comes from an era before 100% of the internet was 100% political 24/7. It was kind of like a novelty, back in the day. These days, it's more of a novelty to have refuge from heated political debates.)

[A.K.]

I always liked reading The Newstuff Chronicles. Didn't matter who wrote it. I understand it takes work and effort to make that though.

Oh well.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I mostly remember 2016-2017 as there were nonstop posts about random stuff and people fighting over.. I mean discussing heretic and hexen balance for a change. Then I never really interacted with any doom site until 2023. Returning to 5 year old unread pms from people who no longer come online is kinda a strange feeling.

[Scuba Steve]

On 1/13/2024 at 8:40 AM, plums said:

In any case I much prefer a place where people are able to put trans flags in their profile picture and not worry about being harassed, rather than the state of affairs ten years ago, even if some of the individual culture of the community has been lost.

You could have done this as far back as 00 when the forums were first implemented. There was never a time on this site where you could deliberately insult people based on their culture/interests/gender/sexual orientation. Furries were an early target of the internet, but we had several prominent furry members who openly posted about it despite general attitudes ragging on them... but you weren't allowed to target them. We also joked about "boys pretending to be girls" on the internet because that was the culture of the internet at the time and we didn't really understand what being trans entailed. However, had any of the early members (some of whom would later transition in their offline lives) actually come out at the time (very few people were even openly gay at this time), site moderation would have protected them from direct attacks. Come to think of it, the first openly gay person I ever knew in my life was (and still is) a member of this forum.

[Decay]

40 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

 We also joked about "boys pretending to be girls" on the internet because that was the culture of the internet at the time and we didn't really understand what being trans entailed.

To be fair other components of the Doom community (zdaemon, skulltag/zandronum) did have boys pretending to be girls for the sole purpose of trolling others and/or having desperate guys do things for them rather than any trans aspect. This caused several players to leave at various points in time and was often a source of drama. It was hard to pass up joking about the player who admitted he would he eat the shit of a girl player if it meant he could be with her forever, who then ended up being a guy who was just trolling him.

[Koko Ricky]

6 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

There was never a time on this site where you could deliberately insult people based on their culture/interests/gender/sexual orientation.

This is simply not true as I recall being picked on by a very prominent and respected mod for being sexually odd, as well as my ickyness toward much of sexuality being treated negatively by others. I was also given shit for having unorthodox views on futurism, and for my interest in psychedelics, AND for having learning comprehension issues (that was especially hurtful). Nowadays no one hassles me because I've learned to shut my mouth when it comes to certain subjects. 

Edited January 15, 2024 by Koko Ricky

[Scuba Steve]

Were you always Koko Ricky?

[Koko Ricky]

7 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

Were you always Koko Ricky?

I went by Goatlord up until a few years ago. Sometimes I forget I changed my username. 

[Decay]

Without the iconic *hits blunt* tagline he became invisible.

[plums]

4 hours ago, Decay said:

Without the iconic *hits blunt* tagline he became invisible.

The thing is that that was something one of the forum mods (or admins?) went out of their way to code to show on his posts in Everything Else, that he never typed himself. A few other people got similar treatment IIRC. I think it only stopped because of the forum software upgrade.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1566039

Edited January 16, 2024 by plums

[Scuba Steve]

Yeah, custom titles were only available if a moderator changed your account... And even then, it only happened if you did something incredible, or unbelievably stupid.

[roadworx]

6 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

Yeah, custom titles were only available if a moderator changed your account... And even then, it only happened if you did something incredible, or unbelievably stupid.

no, what goatlord (koko) had was an involuntary signature that he literally could not change. it wasn't a custom title. that's a pretty great example of the many, many instances of this website being toxic in the past. i remember seeing him say several times that he wasn't okay with it, but, of course, it was never reverted because "haha funny".

 

look, i miss pre-2020 doomworld quite a bit too, as well as a lot of people from back then. there were threads full of chaotic arguing and shitposting, people like darknation and dew were around to consistently keep things interesting, and it had a much stronger culture that set it apart from the rest of the internet (even if it did take a lot of it from somethingawful). however, that doesn't mean any of us should lie to ourselves about it. it was absolutely much more toxic than it is now, especially towards so-called "weird" people.

 

yeah, it was far more tolerant than other places online, even with fuckheads like tracer and phml. regardless of that, it was still a remnant of the early internet, and as such was still rather harsh at times. i definitely miss aspects of that seeing as how i myself grew up on forums, but it's for the best that it's different now.

Edited January 16, 2024 by roadworx

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

47 minutes ago, roadworx said:

no, what goatlord (koko) had was an involuntary signature that he literally could not change. it wasn't a custom title. that's a pretty great example of the many, many instances of this website being toxic in the past. i remember seeing him say several times that he wasn't okay with it, but, of course, it was never reverted because "haha funny".

Besides that, what exactly did Goatloard do that was "something incredible, or unbelievably stupid"? As far as I know he was known for making posts that were either a little eccentric or for "shower thoughts".

 

In fact, I've yet to see any evidence that the "forum retard" whose thread and aforementioned title lead to the implementation of custom titles to begin with did anything incredible or unbelievably stupid. Well, they did create chocorenderlimits, so I guess incredible things were awarded with the same kinds of titles as unbelievably stupid things.

 

Now, I have no problems with Doomworld now and I highly doubt I would have had personal problems with it back then. But why not be honest and just admit that the titles were bestowed upon people not because they were genuises/dumbasses, but because they were simply easy targets? Why defend what is basically a different forum entirely when you can just say "some of the mods back then were assholes", which seems a bit more honest. It's not like it's insulting to any of the current staff. It's also not true that you couldn't insult people's sexuality/culture/interests. Anyone who has browsed through old threads knows this. Using Steve's own example: I custom-searched the word "furries" with results even up until 2016, not just 2000-2010. On the first page of results, you can clearly see users calling furries "autistic" "weird" "retarded" and a post targeting trans people. Again, as Doomkid said, that's the way the internet was and posts like that were mild compared to the rest of the internet at large. But to suggest that this was some sort of squeaky-clean utopia of kindness where only the biggest imbeciles were made fun and nobody got targeted because of who they were/what they liked, is demonstrable as false, and the demonstration consists of nothing more than clicking the search button.

Edited January 16, 2024 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Koko Ricky]

11 hours ago, Decay said:

Without the iconic *hits blunt* tagline he became invisible.

 

I recall that. I really didn't appreciate it because my interest in genuine thought experiments was undermined by an intentionally mocking element, to the point that I largely stopped posting them because the threads quickly became mean-spirited. Now, that said, I don't really get hassled these days, so it's all good...but after two decades on here, I've found I have trouble getting people to pay attention to my maps, which feels a bit like a residual effect of my status in the past. 

Edited January 16, 2024 by Koko Ricky

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

1 hour ago, Koko Ricky said:

but after two decades on here, I've found I have trouble getting people to pay attention to my maps, which feels a bit like a residual effect of my status in the past. 

Anyone who would dismiss your maps just because you made threads that they didn't like probably can't be trusted to give useful and fair feedback anyway, so it's probably no major loss. To be honest, I didn't know you were a mapper. If anything, I would have been more likely to look at your maps just because of the *hits blunt* thing and your reputation for oddball threads. Now, if a member that's a complete dick posts a map, I'm not going to rush to check it out, but I don't know why anyone would dislike you to such an extent. Hell, tbh I never knew that *hits blunt* was something that a moderator came up with. I thought it was something you said in the past yourself, which is another example of why moderator-appointed titles/signatures are no good.

[Mr. Freeze]

This whole "Doomworld was an island of niceness among the rest of the internet" is making me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I know DW's always been good in a lot of ways, but there is some serious historical revisionism at play here. 

[Gothic]

Wasn't there an user with a giant red custom title "If my post were worth reading, you wouldn't have to scroll right"?

[Mr. Freeze]

6 minutes ago, Gothic said:

Wasn't there an user with a giant red custom title "If my post were worth reading, you wouldn't have to scroll right"?

 

Multiple, if I remember correctly! 

[roadworx]

ah, page stretchers...classic. shame they don't work anymore (afaik anyways)

 

[Koko Ricky]

5 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

If anything, I would have been more likely to look at your maps just because of the *hits blunt* thing and your reputation for oddball threads.

 

I've released 10 maps over a 5 or 6 year period, and have more in the works. I'm very interested in entertaining people to the best of my abilities, but it would seem my reputation (which I'm sure wasn't helped at all by the "hits blunt" gag, and for the record, I dont smoke blunts) made me hard to take seriously as a mapper. So I release my work a bit more quietly these days, because I know most people will skip the thread. 

Edited January 16, 2024 by Koko Ricky

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

1 hour ago, Koko Ricky said:

I've released 10 maps over a 5 or 6 year period, and have more in the works. I'm very interested in entertaining people to the best of my abilities, but it would seem my reputation (which I'm sure wasn't helped at all by the "hits blunt" gag, and for the record, i dont smoke blunts) made me hard to take seriously as a mapper. So I release my work a bit more quietly these days, because I know most people will skip the thread. 

I looked at your "Return of the Icon" map and I can't believe nobody commented on it, even with two threads. It looks well above average based on the screenshots, and immediately stands out thanks to the colored lighting. I love colored lighting, so I added it to the top of my list. The only recommendation I have is to include some full-size screenshots. I think a lot of people, especially more casual players just looking for something good in general, tend to just open a thread and immediately look at the screenshots to see if the map catches their eye. I'm sorry that the map got no attention though, that really sucks. I know I would be disappointed too if that happened to me.

[Deadwing]

As a lurker since mid-2000's, "pic of the day" and "/newstuff" reviews were really cool. As many mentioned, level of toxicity/trolling was higher tough lol, I enjoy a lot more the trend to focus in positive/constructive aspects instead of bashing stuff which was way more common early on.

 

My early work receiving lots of 0-2 star reviews with short mean comments in /idgames also sucked - even though nowadays I think they suck anyway, still, it made me take large breaks between some of these releases.

Edited January 16, 2024 by Deadwing

[Varis Alpha]

there definitely were people talking shit about furries back then from what i remember. i don't recall being too open about it back then because of this, it's definitely a more healthy community now.

[Mr. Freeze]

49 minutes ago, Varis Alpha said:

there definitely were people talking shit about furries back then from what i remember. i don't recall being too open about it back then because of this, it's definitely a more healthy community now.

 

Same. I didn't dare identify as one until the pfp and moderator changes. 

[Scuba Steve]

13 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

But why not be honest and just admit that the titles were bestowed upon people not because they were genuises/dumbasses, but because they were simply easy targets? Why defend what is basically a different forum entirely when you can just say "some of the mods back then were assholes", which seems a bit more honest. It's not like it's insulting to any of the current staff.

That's the thing though... the higher powers have barely changed since then. Mordeth? Ichor? Linguica? Arioch? Bloodshedder? Fraggle? Lüt? Julian? A lot of us were dumb teens and young adults, but the core group of people have been pretty sane and reasonable. Some moderators have come and gone, but the site has been unnaturally consistent given the unstable nature of the internet.

 

I think it's less that mods were assholes and being intentionally cruel, and more the nature of the internet of the time and just how generally hostile online interactions were across the entire world wide web. I've been on countless forums over the past 30 years, and very few of them were moderated in a way that made them feel safe and welcoming. Doomworld, the Ghostbusters forum, and the old Pixelation site were the only three I visited that weren't complete shitholes... I don't think it's an accident that all three of them survived to this day.

[LadyMistDragon]

11 hours ago, Mr. Freeze said:

This whole "Doomworld was an island of niceness among the rest of the internet" is making me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I know DW's always been good in a lot of ways, but there is some serious historical revisionism at play here. 

No kidding.

 

When I first considered signing up to Doomworld in 2007, I took one look at the little rules thing they had at the time that said effectively "Never ask a damn question when you can find the answer by using the search function" and I knew then things would probably incur at least some sort of hostility if I wanted to engage, even if I completed the sign up process. Because unfortunately, this was just when I was getting into custom wads and I had literally no clue how to play them "Command lines?" I hadn't done that shit in a decade! Eventually, I found from another site that wads could be clicked and dragged into ZDoom. Granted, this was still at a time when I was making an effort to not spend all my time on the internet (I'd already joined another community totally unrelated to games at this point) and it's doubtful I would've been especially active after a time even so. But that sort of gatekeeping BS to someone who was kind of ignorant of most Doom modding was a huge turn off and I'm sure I'd be banned once or twice from losing it.

 

Far as its friendliness toward different lifestyles was at the time, I was in the sort of "be as normal as possible despite an embarrassing tendency to put foot in one's mouth" so I suppose the mean comments would be more directed at possible signs of autism, and yes, it wasn't just Kiwi Farms at one time that made fun of people for such reasons!