Yes, very true, I met Serg for dinner a couple of years back in London too. Oh, thinking about it, there was a York meet too - that was after London I think

From a quick search I count at least five meats in the past ten years...

2024-04-03 msg:43024.1 Manchester Mini Meat
2020-01-20 msg:42105.1 Leeds mini-meat, Saturday 20ndsth Jan
2017-06-24 msg:41942.1 June Meat
2014-12-20 msg:41295.1 Saturday 20th December
2014-07-19 msg:41092.1 Teh Northern Meat - Summer 2014

None of those combine "London" and "well-attended", but I have photographic evidence of three that do, in Sep 2013, Sep 2010 and Dec 2008.

Oh I'm very out of touch then! I think that Northern Meat one was the last one I attended

That was also probably the last one that had more than four people at. :(

We need a new big meat... one to celebrate reaching a quarter of a century, which we actually did last year if the dates in msg:34805.35 are correct.

where's Fozza. He was always good at forcing people to do fun stuff, some kind of sales magic skill.

Last person I've seen from here is Mouse when he drove by where I was living and I happened to be doing some gardening in the front. These days we live relatively local to each other.

I miss you all. This place was really special.

As William said, my mental health has been in a slow decline for a long time. Nothing new, still just the anxiety, panic and resultant agoraphobia. A couple of years back, though, my mum died and that sent it all off a cliff. Had a very rough couple of years. I'm levelling out again now though and that's *good*.

I'm still doing the same old stuff - chatting online, playing games, watching and reading stuff.

I think of the people from here frequently. You all had a huge, formative, impact on me and mean more to me than I can express. It was an amazing place to 'grow up' online, we were all incredibly lucky to have experienced it.

It also kinda ruined me for the modern web. Everything is so *disappointing* in comparison.

I do seek out places which capture some of those old internet vibes. I messed around with Gemini for a bit and I'm on Mastodon (and sporadically active - let's be friends if you're over there!). I've avoided the Facebooks and the Twitters and whatnot.

Spending most of my time when I'm not in voice chats watching/reading lefty political stuff and wondering whether, in the upcoming election, I'm going to not bother voting or cast a pointless vote for the Greens.

(hug)

 

Lovely way to put it. That's exactly how it feels  :') 

I shall try to catch up with you on Mastadon although I become increasingly poor at managing complexity. I set up a Mastadon account a while back just for this reason.  Meanwhile, don't be a complete stranger here. There are a handful of things associated with this site that have changed my life. You're there in the mix. 

Yeah, I'm going to try making logging in here part of my habits again.

And please do get in touch on Mastodon!

There's complexity and there's faff. Mastodon, much as I love a lot about it, does involve a fair bit of faff. 

So many hugs to you Xen - i was so happy to see you had posted! I don't know what else to say except i hope you are more than ok and will post something again.

I just read through all the posts and I love that so may of you came back to reply. Back when, logging into TEH everyday to see what you all had to say that day was a part of my daily routine.

I know we can never go back, but its awesome that so many think we shared something pretty special.

I think the knowledge that we can never go back often stopped me from logging in when I thought of the place.

But that's okay, it can be whatever it is now!

Yeah, it'll never regain the popularity it had in the 2000s, but it is good that it's still going and it's nice to see names from the past popping in here and there. Hello by the way :)

I dunno if I'm happy or sad reading the posts above. Kind of feels like we all feel very similarly about modern internet, and modern communications.

Like many, I spent most of my day with Teh open - I remember some threads were basically realtime

Hello! Nice to see you :)

And yeah, you nailed it there, Dan. I remember I'd make a post, refresh the thread list and have like three more things to answer. We had *discussions* here in a way that I've never found elsewhere. Chat apps come close but the asynchronicity of forums allowed for a bit of consideration. And unlike something like Twitter or Facebook it didn't feel like it was there for the whole world to see and rip apart. We could explore ideas safely.

also we could start doing silly side-things like GOFL without diluting the main dealio. Nowadays there's so many bloody things and so little time. I've got a Mastodon account somewhere but last time I tried I couldn't get back into it.

Hey man, I very briefly met your mum once and she was lovely, I'm so sorry for your loss. Wish you the best with everything. 

 

Thank you. She really was very lovely.

Everyone grows up and gets busy. Except me. I'm in a perpetual state of hanging out with 20-30 year olds who haven't got real lives yet.

GOFL was great though. And IL-2 and all the stuff we used to play.

 

Adding to the "I miss the internet before it died" chorus: All of the social media plaforms have gone completely downhill in the last couple of years due to sheer volume of algorithmically generated "suggestions" swamping any real-people interactions which were ostensibly the point of them. The recent trend of obvious bot accounts posting obvious AI art for obvious bot accounts or maybe boomer to comment on is a pain. Especially the really dodgy "classical architecture/mythology but really white supremacism" ones that are cropping up with frightening regularity.

The last post I did on FB that got any kind of decent engagement was me complaining about the incessant (and impossible to avoid) plugging of the Dull Mens Club and various derivatives. (And it was interesting to see how many Teh-ers are similarly afflicted.)

I kind of wonder whether it's just that I can't be arsed in my old age, or what the online experience is for people of the age we were in the golden era of PCFF/NotPCFF/Teh .

Hoping that things continue to be *good* for you. It sounds like you've had a rough more than a few years and I'm sorry you lost your lovely mum.

I stick to mostly interest based forums on t'Interwebs, these days. I do have a twitter account that I use on a read only basis, these days, because I would quickly get myself banned if I said what I thought to certain characters on there and then I couldn't be nosey. Mumsnet, like the rest of it, is troll and bot infested but can be entertaining /interesting. I'm on a local bus forum with littlewibbly, as bus nerding is one of the things we do together as a bit of a mum and son activity but there is very little off topic chat, there and an awful lot of arsiness that the grown ups with ban hammers have to keep under control. I'm on a couple of sewing forums and one of them is a lovely community and I've met a few other members but I'm always aware of being one of the youngest there. How things have changed :D

I do think we lived in a sort of golden age. Back before everything was a transaction or about 'clout'. Despite this community being forme around a very specific interest, it grew way beyond that and we had people with varied backgrounds and interests and I think that was really healthy. Communities now seem kinda hyper-focused.

I do think the fediverse (mastodon etc.) recaptures some of the good of the old net. It's fundamentally twitter, but without the algorithhms (it's just chronological) and (bad) bots and, importantly, it's populated by people who tend to feel the same way about the internet. It brings it back, at least, to genuine interactions and conversations.

(actually spent yesterday setting up a fedi server since I fancied being on a single-user instance again. @uoou@fedi.drew.monster if anyone fancies adding me!)

Yve: I do love that there are still little pockets of old internet around. PhpBBs that have been going for decades and stuff. And a local bus forum sounds lovely!