Viewing Thread:
"How to win GAD and make friends along the way"

Hi there everyone, I'm Grix Thraves.

(Hi Grix!)

I've been here quite a while now. I've had my fair share of strops and leaving and coming back and God knows what, but for some reason something keeps me coming back here.

Sometimes I like to convince myself it's Gameaday. But you know what? There's something else here that I find very peaceful. I guess from coming here for so long you begin to find it quite comforting to return to this place.

I've seen good times and I've seen bad times here. You miss a day and you hadn't a hope in catching up again. These days, not so much.

But what I'm writing about, like I'm some sort of master or something, is about how I think perhaps these forums could become a little more like something people truly want to come to. To maybe invite people to come here.

I was bullied at school, I didn't have many friends. When I started coming here to win Gameaday, I noticed, over time, I was allowing myself to be a bit more free. A bit more open, let loose something in me that my day to day habits had caused me to hide in fear of everything.

And it became easy to come on here, show my heart, and talk about myself in a way that I wouldn't dare in real life. Of course there was a barrier, I could walk away from this place at any time and I could put that distance there.. but that didn't stop me from trying to be open.

Sometimes, when the mood hits me, I become quite passionate. I like to write about what I feel in my heart, and there's something quite liberating, more so than a personal diary, of opening your heart to strangers, to strangers who became friends.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but personally, I don't find topics like 'how's the weather' or 'what are you eating' very appealing. I don't think I'm the only person there.. they have their purpose, and it's always nice to chat. I'm not putting it down! I just think it's not something that really attracts people to post so much. But then what do I know, it's got hundreds of replies.

But when it comes down to it, this is a discussion forum. And I think well, if people are going to win gameaday for posts here.. perhaps there's more we can do to encourage people to stick around.

And I know I've been going on about it a lot recently, but the thing that kept me coming back here was the people. Their sheer honesty, their compassion. When I would have a terrible time in real life, I could come on here to people I genuinely cared about, and spill myself in a way I never knew I could.

So what I'm trying to get across here is the feeling of passion. They say nothing great is accomplished without it. Everyone has something inside them that they can feel passionate about.. maybe you don't always feel it, maybe you could convince yourself you don't feel passion at all.. but trust me, it's there.

So the title of this thread, how to win GAD and make friends blah blah.. what I would love to see, and what I think could get this place into something not necessarily better, but perhaps get more people talking, and visiting, is if you talk about what you feel is your passion.

It could be anything. To some, I imagine, it's their children. To some, it's their love for another person. To another, games, their job, their friends. All you need is a spark of inspiration, just that little something, and you have fuel, emotion, to write something that could get people talking, get people reading. And, heaven forbid, win GAD.

I don't write these things to win GAD anymore. It's always a joy, but to me, the expression of what I'm trying to say is more important.

So.. in this thread, I want you to just sit down for a moment, think about something that makes you feel passionate inside. Then I want you to write about it. You can start your own topic if you want, but if you're too shy or you don't think it's worth it, drop it in here.

What's been on your mind lately? Have you been thinking about life, about death? About the future, the past, or how about right now? I guarantee you people on here will be interested in what you have to say. I can say that because I've been babbling about myself for the last six years and people still take an interest, even though I've never had anything particularly interesting to say. I suppose that's an insult to the people that read it but hey, er, sorry.

Give us some stories. Open yourself a little. Talk about what makes you happy. Talk about what makes you sad.

Talk about what you like to do at the weekend, or what you wish you could do. Talk about the guy you met at a party that you can't stop thinking about.

And I reckon, if enough people started really opening up on here, showing us their passions, it would not only encourage the rest of us to do so, but maybe make this place somewhere where people really want to be.

And perhaps win some money vouchers at the same time.

Open up! Tell us what you desire. And don't be afraid, I know for a fact that it'll be received warmly.

If you don't feel you want to open up, that you're too shy.. well ok. No-one's under pressure to do so.. but hey, you might even win for it.

Besides, I want to learn more about you all anyway.

Isn't visited much? Loads of people read the short stories. Ok, so I'd like to see many more people write in the forum, but that just requires getting new people in. Having stories in the chat forum just means it'll get messy trying to find any of them and there won't be any more than there are in creative.

The only way to properly do it all in one forum would be to have a filter, the same way as the Games forum does.

If we're saying we shouldn't have a creative forum, then why have any of the others; why have Wrestling or sport or games? Chat should be for chat, whether that be long winding chat or short pithy chat. Chat can have it's own stories, nothing stopping them appearing here for those people too lazy to follow a quick link. It can have movie posts, game posts or posts about how buff the next wrestling star is (sorry, couldn't resist an old dig), but the other forums are there for us serious posters who want to express our specific interests in a forum that will house them.

Garin wrote:

> Now if you asked me about the reviews and creative writing. I'd
> say waste of space and counter-productive to the forums. But
> each to their own. :-)

I agree to an extent about Creative, after all, it takes a lot of inventive material and encourages it to be put in one place, that isn't visited much. However, there have been a lot of efforts to get people to visit the forums and it has encouraged older and newer members alike to post some good material. Each thread may not get posted much, but it gathers a reasonable number of views :c)

As for Reviews, it does collect all the reviews into one place for people to read and for Staffies to judge for a GAD without trawling all through Gen Chat. However, again, it takes attention away from Gen Chat, isn't visited much except by those posting and so doesn't gain the amount of feedback for each thread that GC would probably create.

N.B Sticky removed by 'popular demand'.

I think we should only ever have a maximum of 2 stickied threads.

But to your question Grix, the thing I get passionate about, well for me it's actually an odd but I suppose common one.

I seem to find, that the prospect of a challenge ignites me into doing the said challenge. This can be a huge range of things, from bulding a cuboard to reading book to solving a maths problem.

It's more of a feeling of doing something that others can't, or something people believe I can't do. Am I trying to be defiant? I'm not sure, but the idea of repeating anything bewilders me, I find it a waste of time and all my energy depletes at the thought of it.

Moreover, if I fail at a task once, I won't attempt it again. At least not for several months to come, it seems too illogical to my mind.

This of course, often affects my learning in school and in college. My teachers favourite saying is "You have the potential, why don't you apply yourself?". The only subject where this hasn't happened in is Maths. I love it. Its always seemed to intricate and infinte, if I was a little wierded, I'd say it was beautiful.

I've also, in past few years, taken a keen interest in the Universe. Probably for the same reasons, seeing as the Universe is as good as infinite, and still expanding it poses and never-ending series of challenges and problems to be solved.

I love trying to wrap my head around the creation of the Universe, and many of the other problems that seem to leave us in innumerable questions.

My other main motiviation and passion for doing things, is knowing that someday, unless I do something to change it, no one will remember me. I'll be a plain footnote in the evergrowing book of our time.

Anyway, I'm babbling now... Excellent thread Grix.

Nah you don't need to defend the weather thread, that's just my own opinion and it does it's job fine.

I'm glad this thread got people talking, but it's not really what I intended, to have people talking about this thread. I still want people to go write big topics.. and yes, perhaps intelligent discussion is the place for that, but then, would it get seen? I guess it's a toss up between getting a wider audience, or effectively killing off the intelligent forum.

The thing I've always noticed is that the best way to get people to write about themselves, is to write about yourself. Nothing seems to motivate people more to open up than by opening yourself up. I'm not entirely sure why that is but it seems to work.

Thanks for the replies people. I'm not entirely sure why this was made sticky either but hey. Now then..

I think the Weather thread is just the scapegoat of the Freeola forums, due to the fact that most threads these days consist of YouTube videos or word games like 'Word Association Game'. Why on Earth was this thread stickied though? In my mind there should only be three stickied threads, and they are the Gameaday Winner Thread, the Freeola Bingo Thread, and The Worlds Longest Thread.

We should be grateful however as these forums are very friendly and most members get on with each other and you rarely see arguments that aren't related to a discussion. I agree however that it would be good to see Freeola Stories and songs and stuff to see more of a creative side to some of the members. What I will say is that there is always a nice atmosphere around this place, the newbie and JAT bashing has stopped, and i'm sure most people enjoy posting here. More members would be nice though!

The weather thread has over 600 replies and 3500 views. I dont think anybody needs to defend its existence, its doing that itself quite well. Although I think the main point about such threads is that they provide easy non-threatening ways for new people to start posting. And they manage to maintain the flow and connection between users when there isnt a "big topic" about.

Now if you asked me about the reviews and creative writing. I'd say waste of space and counter-productive to the forums. But each to their own. :-)

Okay this is the last time I'll defend my weather thread. =( I've noticed the negative remarks about it on PM, even by yourself Grix (on more than one occasion I might add).

The reason why it was created, not as a thread for people to spam in, but a way to reduce spam. We use to get lots and lots of threads about the weather (snow, rain, hail, floods, thunderstorms, heatwaves especially etc). It's been so crazy the last few years that topics would pop up all the time about it.

Perhaps it has become a bit spammy with people posting in it because they're bored, but I think that's changing now. =) PM still gets the odd new thread about the weather from time to time. But we still have just the one I created almost a year ago. With the exception of that one I just posted earlier lol.

As for encouraging people to have a go at GAD, yeah I've done that many times (the GAD thread below is just one example). =) Thanks to pb's work with the SSC and my determination to get a review forum up and running. We now have more and more people winning GADs for chat posts.

In the past it was absolutely terrible. On several week as many as 4 people would win a GAD for posting cheats. =/ I'm glad to say that has never happened since, and I hope it'll stay like that. Hell I even posted on PM several times, saying "look, some of you have free time, go and win some GADs so people who copy and paste cheats don't keep winning all the time".

I post a lot of threads, sometimes as many as three/four a day. (Though I would rather post them in a social bookmarking forum, but staffies wont give me one *sigh). I mainly do it so there's atleast something new for people to look at. My last GAD win for a post was something I did because I thought it would be something interesting, like you say, a good way to find out more about the people on here and their dreams. Perhaps the name of the thread put them off or they couldnt think of anything as it didn't get many replies unfortunately =/ It was that "10 thing to do before you die" thread. I thought some of my choices show a lot about me.

I hope this thread works, it would be nice to see new people posting and old people posting more threads. =)

I thought it was well worth a sticky.

To my mind, there's no reason why there shouldn't be longer threads in GC. Before there'd be a load of spam posts filling up the forum, and while it's still true to whatever extent that people don't come on GC necessarily in the frame of mind to write the same as they would in ID.. a good topic or something controversial usually brings good results.

As for being more 'open' I agree the forums here are one of the friendliest and most supportive online communities, yet for the most part I've never really 'opened up' on them. I find I can write lucdily about a topic which concerns me or that I have a real interest in, in an intellectual way that I wouldn't always have with mates, yet I've mainly used a formal approach.. as if I was writing an essay rather than a post to another person. I don't tend to let all my feelings out, rather, bottle them up so I don't seem weak, I s'pose.

Recently though I've started writing more as I sound outside of the computer ('in real life' is a stupid expression). And again, I've included personal touches. However, I still try to write with the grammar I'd use in an essay, rather than with the msn approach. Anyway, not to drift off topic... I think for some opening up on the Internet, especially when not using the forums much is a hard task. Perhaps there are concerns about sharing feelings with 'faceless people'. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mean people without personality.. I believe many people here, if not most, are very genuine.. yet, there's no proof of who a person is.

I would suggest that general chat is just the place for short topics, as well as the odd long one. Unfortunately, Intelligent Discussion forum doesn't get as many visitors, for this is where most of the soul searching or personal discussions should really go.

The idea of seperate forums for everything is good in principal, it makes it all easier to find, but the problem I think you're finding is that many new people will head straight here and never venture to the other forums.

Obviously I do my best to get people to come along to the creative forum, but unless they make the effort, what can we do? Even in the old days we had FOG Prime and Chat as two seperate entities (albeit at one point with a bridge between the two). Prime went quiet for a long time back in 2001, if I recall, but then got going again before all the changes.

I agree that it would be great to have more long discussion topics on these forums, but I'm not sure General Chat can take it!

I read it all. And it makes sense actually, thinking back.