I started posting on gaf around 2000 or 2001, and it was pretty raw back then. It was the perfect mix of intelligent gaming discussions, actual industry insides and raw humor. It was a very elite forum at the time and it was very very attractive and interesting to post there. Then around 2007, 2008, the board started to turn to shit. Too many self important posters, too many divas, too many attention whores and too much cheerleading. Thats when fuckups like david jaffe started posting, and all those waves and waves of lame ass gaming journos started using gaf as some sort of promotion area for their shitty annoying podcasts for gaming stuff. Actual gaming industry people stopped posting 'publicly' because of the massive fucked up handling of the top sony guy being outed by admins and the coverage it got. I mean, after that, who is going to fucking trust the forum and risk their jobs over this?
Then, i think starting around 2009, gaf became too big and the offended olympics started. It didnt help that the new wave of mods over the year tried to turn gaf into a really giant version of Quarter to Three, with serious postings, all the time. I also noticed that now the forum is seen by the 'average public' as a total joke and shithole on the same level than gamefaqs, which is sad. The drama queens killed any kind of variety and spice in threads and posting; people get offended for nothing, shit posters like devilotion killed discussions with their by-the-book over stereotypical posting and ideas (and faking outrage as stuff to get other posters banned), and now, blah, I'll be honest that I spend more time getting pissed off at threads than actually browsing the forums. Strong quality posting is now impossible. It's all about following the hivemind and never transgressing the line. And by that, I dont want to say that I miss people being free to post "I hate black people, gays and shemales"; its really more about having different ideas and being able to post about them without having the typical dogpile of crying queens piling up on you. The forum has a very fake, artificial feel now, it feels like work most of the time.
People should be encouraged to make quality posts on their own and not because they fear for their account or having some idiot calling for their head because of a random word they used. I've seen in a thread that using 'gender specific' swear words is a bannable offense. Can't say bitch anymore, no matter what the context.
Once again, I'm not asking for letting people tell each other they are feggits cum guzzling shemales or things like that. It's more about giving people the freedom of really expressing their opinions.
The previous poster who talked about the old gaf jokes of having a browser with a tab opened to a shemale or watersports site is a good example.. Back then, it was funny, now it would be the source of a 20 pages thread of outrage, never ending dead horse beating by the usual suspects, and then the thread would turn into a graveyard.
Anyway.. sorry for the crappy english for this post, im tired as hell
