spoiler (click to show/hide)
A better question than why I left is why I stayed.
I never liked Evilore. Some good reasons, some bad reasons, but the end result is, I don't like the guy. I *do* respect the hell out of his ability and inclination to turn the perpetual resource-pit that was GAF into something that made money, but I just dislike the guy fundamentally. That said, I believed GAF was a pretty big house party, and I could easily avoid the host and have a good time with the people I did like. And it was fine for a while. I had a lot of fun.
Of course, when I found out I had been nominated for a moderator position and that I had lost it because of a single post made here, I was kind of pissed off and also kind of embarrassed to still be around on GAF. To top off my shame, I kind of had a squirmy apologetic conversation with EL about the situation because I wanted to save face for Dragona, and it never sat well with me that I had done that. That was the conversation where I promised I would never suicide my account. At the same time, my professional life was getting busy, and so was my personal life, so I decided to quit GAF Once And For All (TM). And I was gone a good long while that time, about six months or so. Finally, at the behest of Dragona and Aeana (both genuine friends), I came back to GAF.
It only took a few months before I got fed up again, though, and wanted to take a break and see if I could make it stick this time. I instructed Dragona and Lyre to permaban me if they saw me post again, a promise which they unfortunately could not keep. Two or three months later, at the behest of Dragona this time, - I think -, I came back. This time, though, I wasn't enjoying myself anymore. I had become tired of the unchecked idiocy of the Sony fans, the Nintendo fans were starting to get on my nerves, the Appletards were starting to rise... I became kind of all pissy and shit posting there, and nobody was really having fun with it. I decided to take another break, until the New Year, which I just about made it to before Aeana asked me to come back.
Well, this time I was having a really miserable go of it, but I started to have fun with some new kids around there (Gravijah, Boney, some others), along with my old crew. At the same time, I was getting increasingly frustrated with any attempts to have serious discussion about games. But hey - I was only ever there for the lulz in the first place, and the lulz were rolling. Then, a couple of my buddies got modded, and they couldn't really fuck around the way they used to. Red Scarlet got demodded and it was one of the most bullshit decisions by EL I'd ever seen. At this point I was pretty much reduced to trying to derail threads as hard as I could with the new kids. I was heading for another "break".
Then, Dragona got de-admin'd. Well, as I said earlier - Dragona is a genuine friend of mine. The host of the party had just unceremoniously tossed out my chum. Here's a thing about me: I always stand by my friends. Always. It's a bit of romanticism from my teen years when I really thought friends were the best thing in the world, but whatever... I'm still that way.
Anyway, a bunch of us decided to leave as a show of solidarity, but also decided we shouldn't say why publicly for a few reasons (in my case, I was trying to not make a big stink about Dragona's situation... I can't speak for the others). So the pieces were all in place - I disliked EL, I wasn't enjoying myself at GAF, I wasn't a positive presence on the forums anymore (I was a miserable prick, if I may say so), my friend had been tossed out, my other friends were all leaving... finally, I had the chance to leave the place and not come back. I just needed an excuse, and when I got into that argument with KevinCow, it seemed like as good a reason as any to leave on.
And so I did.
