Introduction:

Since 95% of my posts have had little to no content, I decided to make my 10,000th post* really count. So I've been doing some researching and digging, looking up Shroomery events and goings on that have stuck out in my mind over the years. Of course, many of the things that stood out were drama-related, some of which people would like to forget. But its important to remember our history (lest we be doomed to repeat it ).

Please keep in mind that there is no way my memory is good enough to list all of these things in chronological order, so it might seem a little mish-mashed, but I'll do the best I can to make it somewhat concise.

*_{I realize that in no way is this actually my 10,000th post, since many posts were deleted in the great bulletin board f-up of 2006.}

-------------------------------------

We'll start out with a story penned by Papaver. HERE IS..."The History of the Shroomery".

Quote:

The evolution of the Shroomery, as you now know it, has been a long process. It's story has been unfolding slowly, in cyber-time, over what seems like countless millennia. Especially to those in the trenches.

It is a saga with many heroes and a few villains. There have been many epic battles, odysseys, and grail quests. Champions have come, and gone, and come again. Over the years, dramas have unfolded here worthy of Shakespeare himself.

However, for this post, I will concern myself primarily with the technological evolution of the Shroomery:

I) The first Shroomery forum was made of rocks, sticks and twigs, bound together with animal sinew. Making a post consisted of chipping a message onto a medium sized rock, and bringing it from cave to cave.

II) At a later date, around 1500BC, Anno learned how to extract metal from ore-bearing rock, and Ythan then forged the Shroomery out of bronze gears, wheels, and rods. However, forum threads at this time could only hold ten posts. That's how many fingers Link had, and he figured that was as high as things could go.

III) At the dawn of the industrial age, Thor attached a steam engine to the Shroomery and things really began to take shape.

IV) During the cold war, with money from the military industrial complex, Vamp and Seuss constructed a vacuum tube Shroomery. This was called SHROOMIVAC, and it took up an entire warehouse. It needed huge air-conditioners to keep it form overheating. One night, Moe_Howard spilled a beer on it, and it Geo and I had to spend all night cleaning it up.

V) The current Shroomery, as we all know it, is based on quantum computing, which takes advantage of probability amplitude, and can provide all possible states for all possible posts at once. This is what makes the Shroomery such a unique experience for each user.

So, hat's off to the Shroomery; to its Mods & Admins (past and present); and most of all, to all you wonderful Shroomerites (past and present), who make this place the best damn community on the

internet!

---

-------------------------------------

One of the forums that initially attracted me to posting on the Shroomery forums was the Music Arts & Literature forum. I believe it had a different name back then, but I'll be damned if I can remember what it was called. You had artists like HeavenlyBlue (HB), Smack31, Blastrid, Strumpling, Papaver, etc. posting AMAZING stuff. I was especially excited to participate in some of the art  collaboration threads, where someone would post an inital image and everyone else would edit it as they saw fit. We just recently had another collaboration thread after a long break, and I can definitely see the improvements we've all made over the years.

Here's a few of my first collaboration contributions:

 

-------------------------------------

Here's what the Shroomery looked like when I arrived:



This is one of the first Pub threads I remember reading on the forums. I'm glad Zepplin is still around to see his thread take its rightful place in history.

Funniest thread EVAR: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php?Number=1377613

On the flipside of the forum community, lies the shroomery IRC server and our main channel, #shroomery. #shroomery has long been dubbed one or more variations of: "the dark underbelly(the bastard child) of the internet(shroomery)".

Here's a quote by Taco that accurately describes the yin and yang of Shroomery IRC.

Quote:

What is #shroomery = What is the Matrix?

It's an entity comprehendable only in terms of itself, with sociocognitive imbalances between the proletariat and the bourgoisie ruling class, and a second sociopharmacological conflict between those propounding the glories of psychedelics, and others who just 1 2 b fukkt up.

---

In an atmosphere where you have real time anonymous conversation with no boundaries, things can get pretty crazy. My IRC experience started not long after the Ripper incident, and there were countless people coming into IRC just to ask about Brandon and what had happened to him. Even today, there are STILL people who come into IRC once in awhile with the sole purpose of raising that spectre. You'd think people would've found a new tragic story to latch onto since then.

At one point in 2003, drama (which I will not go into here) on IRC between Vampire999 and 3DSHROOM resulted in a separate IRC server/website, The Dark Underbelly. TDUB was a temporary home for those who felt slighted by 3DSHROOM and his reign of retardedness. It was also a place to talk smack about syko-bish. Some of the illustrious forum moderators at TDUB include: dobie, spud, mndfreeze, vampire999, and fortyounces2freedom. TDUB also attracted some of the 'old schoolers', like BOBs and Abudiwa.

 

Eventually, 3DSHROOM was ousted as administrator, people returned to the Shroomery, the TDUB server was mysteriously hacked, and the TDUB server came DOWN down _down for all eternity.

-------------------------------------

Arguably, some people would claim that the depravity on IRC was NOTHING compared to the depravity in OTD. Here's a screenshot of what OTD was like when I first started hanging around:



I would imagine I was greeted somewhere along the way with "hello.jpg", although I have since blocked that out due to mental anguish.

Here's OTD a little later on:



And here's OTD now:



As much as I bitch now about the quality of posts in OTD, it looks like they've generally remained the same over the years (at least the years that I've been here).

I used to spend a lot of late nights in OTD and chat. A conversation with LiquidSmoke inspired me to take a series of photos that showed how the sunrise was progressing:

   


Looking back on it, camwhoring was rampant during that period. Here is the only n00d I ever posted:



I love OTD around Christmas. That means its time to make red and green avatars for the OTDers!

 

In the fall of 2003, it was announced that OTD would be closing. A huge uproar ensued and drama spread throughout the community. Rainbow avatars were made and sported by most OTDers; I believe the idea was we were protesting how "gay" the OTD closing was by gaying up our avatars? I don't honestly know. That's the only explanation I can think of though.



I could go on for hours about all the drama over the years that hatched out of OTD. Skyobish, Tookie, OTD Magazine, Loki/Paid/Ganja vs. fortyouncestofreedom, the emergence of bucketofnines, MrMushrooms, LSAuser, star trek puppets, etc etc...

But I'll spare you.

-------------------------------------

Somehow, after experiencing all this insanity, I still felt the urge to meet some of you people. In November of 2004, I flew to Arizona for my first Shroomery gathering. The attendance was low compared to more recent years, I had almost missed my flight, and the weather was a little chilly, but for the most part, it was one of the best experiences of my life. Since then, I have been to every subsequent AZ gathering, and even managed to make it to the Ledges in 2005.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/4337405#Post4337405



The gatherings are a very special time for me (and everyone else). To me, the gatherings are a period of time where this world of death, taxes, jealousy, and hatred are thrown aside and all that's left in its place is goodwill. Honestly, I've never met a shroomerite I didn't like.

 

Once when I was in Arizona, senordoobie and I took a trip with vamp to see THE shroomery server at its colocation site and I touched the shroomery with my own hand. My index finger hovered around the button, jokingly. Raw power coarsed through me like lightning. And then Vamp slapped my hand and made me go sit in the corner.



-------------------------------------

Now, I'd like to end with TheShroomHermit's wonderful satire of Shroomery n00bs.

Quote:

I'd just like to say that this site is a crock of shit and you guys all just plain suck. Your FAQ was the most unhelpful peice of crap that I've ever stumbled upon.

Yeah, I sent away for the magic mushroom seeds with money I stole from my freinds, but when they came they were in this big ass needle. FUCK THAT! It was way to big to put into my arm... So I enlisted the freind that I stole the money from (he still didn't know about it, that trusting fuck) he actually read your stupid FAQ, went out and bought... a fuck load of flour... What a pansie, he  started cooking up flour in little jars he kept calling "cakes" what a woman. I took a jar of peanut butter and squirted the juice into it (the fuck who sold me the seeds totally ripped me off... There were no seeds... the fuck sold me water) Any way I waited.. nothing happened. Mushrooms grow on the shit of every animal in the world, so I knew I got bad seeds. My loser freind said the shrooms
were growing... after 2 weeks he showed be his jars which had changed color into white... I snuck into his house when he wasn't around the next day and stole his jars with magick fuck-you-up mushrooms in them... I also took some more money. When I got back home I took the white blocks of mushrooms out of the jars and burried them in the yard, I put 15-30-15 fertilizer on them and waited... nothing happened. What a bunch of horse shit mushroom growing is.. you are all a bucnh of liars if you say you've dun it... anyway what I am getting at is I just picked about 30 of these mushrooms with red caps on my lawn and ate them, and i was just wondering what kind they were. They were about an inch tall if that helps.

---

Thank you Shroomery, for 4 wonderful years.

adrug said:

Yeah, I sent away for the magic mushroom seeds with money I stole from my freinds, but when they came they were in this big ass needle. FUCK THAT! It was way to big to put into my arm... So I enlisted the freind that I stole the money from (he still didn't know about it, that trusting fuck) he actually read your stupid FAQ, went out and bought... a fuck load of flour... What a pansie, he  started cooking up flour in little jars he kept calling "cakes" what a woman.

---

Ive never seen that before, fuckin great.

Shroomism said:

Best spot on the internet.

---

there are other websites? whoa....

Sheepish said:

Congrats. Shroomery has always been the most interesting place to browse for me, and I'm sorry I couldn't make it to the AZ gathering this year. I hope someone keeps the AZ gathering going because I can always come next time!

---