219: Teens Talkin Trash On Gaia Online

[Sherman Tank]

Back when Something Awful was one of the biggest forums on the internet, Lowtax was invited to speak at a university (this is a thing that really happened) and mentioned Gaia briefly as one of the other big webforums at the time and basically described it as a sort of anime teenage roleplaying thing.

That was in 2005 and I had no idea it still existed until I saw the doc for this episode in the hopper.

[Sovereign]

I never truly sunk my teeth into Gaia, but I did have a few friends who were into it years ago and I liked collecting new items for a time. I had already spent a lot of time on Neopets with Petpet pages, so of course I was going to make my Gaia profile horrible to look at. I think I've since revised it, trimmed the fat and deleted some comments, but it's still not great. I used a Pokemon wallpaper because of its simplicity, despite the fact that I haven't really liked Pokemon since Diamond.. I would certainly revise or entirely delete those lists of likes and dislikes, but I'm keeping them up there as an odd and public time capsule for my past self.

I remember even back in 2009 and 2010 that the boards were filled with, well, insanity. Thread after thread of teens attempting to find their edge, college-aged users sparking flame wars over polygamy and furry lifestyles and roleplay boards that were basically impossible to ease into unless you were already part of some clique.

[izzy]

Thanks to this episode, I have discovered that the ":|" emoticon on frankwest.xyz is the funniest goddamn thing in the world.

[Ragnarok Boobies]

Phew, crisis avoided, no adults on Gaia after all

If only. Like Nutshell said, there's lots of people on there who've been posting for years and years and years. That guy from the beginning of episode ranting about the furry-transsexual slip-n-slide? He registered his account in 2004.

This episode should be tagged "teenagers?".

Maybe that movie Baby Geniuses was based on real life events?
"You think that Gaia Online is your ally? You merely adopted the Gaia. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a troll."

[Amelia Blank]

I'll say I had a gaia online account as a teen....later in my teens than I'd care to admit to be honest....And it was sorta in my prime neo con libertarian bullshit phase where I was teetering on MRA status. >< Thank fucking christ for college and finding out that I was trans to stop that fucking train dead in its tracks. ><

[Gyro]

I expected a lot of things out of this episode, but disgusting far-right-wing bigotry was not one of them.

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

GOGOL BORDELLO

E: also, holy jeez does that Nutshell Prince reading sound like an alt-right Genesis P. Orridge

[Macho Masc Sangy Savage]

I had a Gaia online account, and did spend actual money. I didn't have a debit card, so I for real sent in a check snail mail. I got a few pieces, and then $15 later realized that they were going to continually release these add-ons, and the whole system was set up to encourage you to buy more so you could be the next hot shit person who owned wings worth 1 billion gold or whatever. I had no self control, so I quit cold turkey.

As an aside, frankwest.xyz is fucking beautiful, and hope it fills out with more smilies found on different forums. XD is my favorite.

[Bodark]

I still have my Gaia account. I don't use it for anything other than to check how shit the Gaia economy is, but it's there. My guild is still up, my embarrassingly extensive post history is viewable, and I have a bunch of shitty items that are worth literally trillions of gold because of how hard the economy got fucked by the addition of the Gaia Cash Shop.

Fun fact: the Extended Discussion forum was how I got introduced (indoctrinated?) to 4chan.

[Isfahan]

Gaia Online is now older than the target age of users for which it was designed. What this means is you now have a multigenerational user base cultivated just from inertia rather than creepers coming around for the express purpose of creeping. What's worse is that the people who should have outgrown and moved on from Gaia as a matter of course but didn't are the people you least want hanging around those just entering the Gaia-Online phase of their Internet presence.

[Dr. Buttplug]

Never had a Gaia account, but I had heard of it and thought it was pretty lame in high school/grade school. No the not at all lame thing I decided to get into was IMVU, the older sweatier cousin who can't grow in facial hair but tries anyway of Gaia Online. Like most people that got into it I figured it would be a nice place to meet girls and do sex animations at them. I do remember having one informative conversation with a girl from the middle east who was kind enough to take the time to explain Islam and the Quran in the broadest sense. That was the one positive memory from my experience.

Interestingly IMVU is still around, and I've even seen gift cards for it at my local grocery. So I was curious what was going on there these days.

NSFW content. Click to show.

And if google Image search results are any indication this could be a meaty one to dig into.

Boots edit: NSFW tag added

[junior associate faguar]

Also I think they bought FurAffinity for some reason. I don't know why anyone would want or pay money for that site, but...

[EYE OF ZA]

IMVU wanted ad revenue and the admin of FurAffinity wanted money.  The site still looks like it was made in 2005 but hey, furry cash is an endless font.

[Isfahan]

furry cash is an endless font.

True dat. If your project is failing, give it furry aspects and make sure the furries catch wind of it. You will drown in money.

[Dawnswalker]

I came for the Teens Talkin Trash, but I stayed for Stormfront Babies.