Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

3/30/2012

Now, this isn't really a thread QQing about how everything is not the same anymore, because change is unavoidable, right? Although I don't agree with what Gaia has become, but I certainly remember and love the nostalgia of Gaia.

It was in 2006 I believe, I came across Gaia. I wasn't an internet user at the time, but my boyfriend was and he had an account, so did one of my other friends. I used to read her fanfiction on another (sold out >.> wink site called Quizilla.

I just remember joining and getting 500 gold off the bat, and I did a few quests that they had back in the day and I made my first 1k. I immediately hit up some of the stores to find clothes, and I believe I bought some stockings. I mean, the newness of owning this virtual character and being able to customize however I wanted was just so addicting. Not only that, it was absolutely amazing on my computer. Before my old died, I was still running windows 98, and thinking back on it, it probably had about 100mb of RAM, so I couldn't do much otherwise.

I didn't post anything on the forums for years, like, I was just not interesting in writing things. So, I found other things to do to make money. I started fishing. I remember when NO ONE was good at Gaia fishing, and all of the rooms used to be packed! Like, hard time connecting to anything, packed. I always fished in Bassken Lake, and caught guppies because Durem and Port of Gambino was mind crippling hard and pressing the arrow keys all day was hard on my fingers. XD

I remember reading a ton of stuff on Gaia and I heard my friend was making soooooooo much money from the forums, and she was making it fast, so I gave foruming a shot. I absolutely loved the Chatterbox. Whenever I thought of writing, I thought everything needed tp be professional and well written, and back then txt talk was all the craze: foruming was easy, I could talk about how I felt, and even better, the chatterbox was actually a discussion board. I remember everything from begging for money to finding little Gaian boyfriends and everything in between. It was fun and innocent...until, "bumping" was no longer fun and interesting. It was boring and repetitive.

I remember when I branched out to the ED. So many new and controversial topics arose and I was thinking "I could REALLY get my opinion out here among people who are like me. Smart people." I remained in the ED for about a year. I've made several bad threads with the know-it-all attitude and highly biased sources. I mean, I've bashed religion, I've bashed personal opinions, I've claimed people to be racist, I mean, I was really just this self-righteous douche bag. Why? Because that's what the ED was back then. You HAD to have a controversial topic or you just watched your thread die, and no one wants that when you've put time and effort into it. So, my stint in the ED was definitely a long one, and I've grown up a bit since then. I haven't even laid eyes on the ED in months. I might have peeked in to see the headlining topics and never opened any threads. I didn't need to, the ED has not changed: in fact, it's worse. I'm not proud of any of the posts I've made on the ED, and if I could go back and just delete posts from a specific area, it'd be there.

So, I realized how the ED turned me into this person I didn't wanna be, so I quit Gaia for about 3 years. I've come back and posted a few times, but nothing too serious.

A few months ago I found a new home in the GD. Every thread and post was funny or vulgar, and I thought it was quite entertaining and every now and again, I'd see an actual discussion. I thought it was way more chill than the ED, so, why not stay there? Well, after about two weeks of being back, I noticed a reoccurring trend: "Uggo drops" and "Couple Drops" and they seemed to renew themselves every few days. Reminds me of the Chatterbox: it became super old, boring, and repetitive. So, I took another few months off Gaia and I got saved. No longer do I intentionally look at nude pictures and watch people ridicule each other. Not to sound cheesy, but you really don't know the effect you have on people. I just hate to think my stupid words could have actual depressed someone or even caused them harm.

For me, Gaia went from this really innocent and fun anime-driven place, and it suddenly turned into this huge and perverted, judgmental place. However, even with all of this going on, I still have good discussions and meet wonderful people.