Welcome to Gaia! ::

Here is the story behind "Congrazzles." It's not meant to talk down to anyone, it's just sort of an intentionally stupid running joke on the site.

Back in the early days, I was the only writer and Brunosmad was one of the only designers, so we were responsible for the content of just about every page. One time, we were working on some kind of fairly inconsequential project (I don't remember exactly what it was), but there was some kind of requirement in the project specifications for a "you have completed this minor action successfully" screen. We decided to go ridiculously overboard on it, even though it was just a confirmation screen for some very minor task, so we zazzed it up with all kinds of sparkles. I came up with "CONGRAZZLES" as the text, because it's a goofy made-up word befitting of such a page. Our intent was just to amuse people with a way-too-intense confirm screen, and it kind of spread to the rest of the site over the years. As Ling said, it's probably here to stay.