I looked in on it today and it has "account suspended". I went to Wendy Northcutt's (or whatever her real name is - can't remember any more) Darwin Award website, and there is no longer a link to a forum from that website.
I haven't been there for quite some time, obviously, but I'm sure I've looked in since the start of 2011, and I thought I looked in about a month ago or so. So I'm guessing this is a fairly recent development.
I wish there'd been an email warning that the forum was going to end, only, I guess, because I had some old Pm messages that I would have retrieved if I'd known they were going to disappear. Or a couple of people I may have passed my email address to, or stuff like that. And just because it seems, for some reason, that it would have been 'polite' to have just sent a bulk email to any leftover member, or something like that.
There weren't many people posting there the last time I looked in, and it was very, very quiet ... it did seem that something had to be done to revive it or it would dwindle off. So it's 'death' isn't so totally unexpected - just the fact that it was so ... so quietly and painlessly done without anyone at all noticing - not even ex-Darwinites with previous ties to the place who 'usually' seem to hear of such things through the grapevine.
I looked on E-P's site as well, and there isn't a mention there. I don't know where else they would have dissipated to - most of the offshoots that I knew from the old DA forum have gone. The only 2 that I know of left are CSB and EP (with this - Plan B - being a further offshoot from CSB).
The DA forum was the first forum I ever post on, way, way back. I lurked for a good 12 months or more and was getting the newsletter for ages before I ended up joining. Not long after that the CSB began. I was more active in earlier years and my life has changed very, very much in the years since then. I just feel a little flat finding this out accidentally.
Like hearing that an old boyfriend or acquaintance has died - it's not that you're still involved in their lives; it's just that their passing makes you feel that there's and 'end' to something, an era and a time has gone forever and the march of time is changing irretrievably. It reminds me of how long ago that was and how my life was at the time I joined, and how much has happened since then. I guess it reminds me a little of my mortality and how inconsequential we all are in the bigger scheme of things.
How many hours were spent posting debates and discussions, and how many strong opinions argued feverishly - and how little it all mattered, really. And the current state of the CSB just emphasises all of that.
So I do feel a little bit flat, or empty, or hearing of the passing of the DA forum. No matter how it ended, in its heyday it was a really great and vibrant site, and I used to really enjoy the interactions, 'back in the day'.
)
