Son, I read your posts about the Flame Wars. And that's good. You need to remember things like that.
But I'm posting today to tell you, I don't just remember them. I lived through them.
They say war is Hell, and they're right. Every time you loaded a new thread, there was another Troll, looking for attention, ready to launch a personal attack on you, just because you posted your opinion.
It was a dark time. People were afraid to post. Some of us, though, well... we had to post. We couldn't let the Trolls win.
The Flame Wars had begun.
It was damned scary, let me tell you. The number of Trolls seemed to multiply, almost overnight. They'd launch insults in any thread, at any time, day or night. It got to where you were afraid to sleep, for fear a Troll would insult you while your defenses were down.
I can't tell you how many people we lost. More than I care to count. But even then, we had it easy, though we didn't know it at the time. The Mods were hit the hardest. A few sensed The Coming Storm, and knew they were needed elsewhere, and so we lost CuppaJoe and Cricket. They left a surplus of Bansticks, but it almost wasn't enough.
Still, it was amazing, how the Flame Wars were won. The top leaders of the Forum Cartel met in secret with the Mods, and showed them their secret weapon. The Mods approved, and it was unleashed upon the Trolls. You see, the Forum Cartel worked out a deal with Superstar Rick Astley. Before you knew it, the Trolls were afraid to click a link, because they never knew which one would be a dreaded Rick Roll.
The final straw came when Troy Hickman appeared. Try though they might, the Trolls couldn't insult him. He just laughed at their attempts. And the worse the insult, the harder he laughed. The Trolls also found out the hard way that he was flame retardant. With Rick Rolls in every thread, and Troy Hickman laughing at them, the Trolls beat a hasty retreat, to another part of the Internet.
It was over, but we paid a high price. We lost all of the Mods... Ex Libris, Lighthouse, Koschej... Hell, we even lost SuperMod. Sure, they lived through the Flame Wars, but their wounds took them in the end. From the ashes rose a new generation of Mods: Avatea, Moderator08, Nivene, and TheOcho. They swore that the previous Mods would be remembered with honor.
Those were the threads, son. Those were the threads.