WickedFire just DIED (1-8-2019) while reading FatBat TumbleWeed Thread in STS

[Midas Touch]

Wondering if Jon finally let the hosting die or just server down at the moment.

Was ironic to see it die just as I saw the call to Buso here and CCarter post in that thread.

Ok, came back up now. Must have been Jon's cheap hosting.

 

[bernard]

Was Jon a bullshit artist?

 

[turbin3]

Wickedfire? Never heard of her.

 

[Tucky]

It's been up and down for a while now, must be cheap hosting!

 

[Syrinj]

@CCarter watched me post about my membership purchase not working a few months back. People thought I was dumb for it, and trolled my thread, but I knew exactly why I was doing this: I paid ~$45 once to compile the entirety of the Enlightened Threads for myself for life. If I remember where I came from, I've spent more time and money on drugs in just one day, so I think by comparison this wasn't such a bad decision.

 

[GNews]

WickedFire..... wow.. Good ol' days for me... i used to find money for everything there

 

[stackcash]

I'm amazed that people have still been posting there.

 

[potentialeight]

Whew, what a shitshow that turned out to be.

 

[pfingy]

was just reading that thread wanted to talk to people about making money instead of mindless refreshing stats

 

[GNews]

Do any of you remember an ex-pat forum that a few internet marketers were in, but it had reputable people in it?

What is STS?

I'm trying to remember all the forums from the past to fnd some new resources.

 

[TopHat]

Whew, what a shitshow that turned out to be.

True, but you and I interacted on WF, and we each had thousands of posts when we did. Shitshow or not, the joint promoted interaction without consequence. I'm averaging a post a month here, and from what I can tell, so are you.

It raises an interesting question about the cross-section of moderation and member activity.

(and I say that in fear of getting banned)

 

[CCarter]

Shitshow or not, the joint promoted interaction without consequence.

The problem I saw and BoFu made me realize was the constant shitting on newbie and struggling members. There was a 1-2 year phase where new members were roasted when they took the time to write a decent 1-2 paragraphs question about a problem. If you constantly burnt newbies, but older members slowly grow out of the scene or move on then the place will shrink double rapidly from a lack of new blood and a dying off of the old (or killing off).

(and I say that in fear of getting banned)

It takes A LOT to get banned from here unless you are straight spamming or going out of your way to cause problems. Even then easy rebuttals are more effective. Some complainers can’t handle our rebuttal or can’t debate properly and cry “tyranny” - LOLWTF? If it was tyranny we’d erase you, instead we rebuffed a claim in a debate - that’s a world of difference. If one can’t handle opposition to their idea or view what in the world is the point of participating in a discussion board?

One user went out of their way to cause constant disruption - and it took over 2 years tilll he was banned (ironically a past mod at the other place). But he has been back, within days, under different usernames carrying on now.

People that are complaining are usually salty about something they went out of their way to do and eventually after 2-3 years of ridiculous behavior - enough is enough.

Honestly you can insult my chocolate chip cookie recipe or insult our mothers and we wouldn’t bat an eye cause we got more important things IRL to concern ourselves with.

Our goal is to simply create an environment where people aren’t afraid to ask legit question to help them grow their business. At certain point the Frat House life has to come to an end; the internet needs a free resource where online marketers and businesses can seek help and get it from experienced marketers willing to put their FREE time and energy without having to waddle through the gurus trying to sell their $99 ebook/course with regurgitated content that they literally got from this forum.

 

[GNews]

Lol @ Frat house life has to end

So true. But, don't give it up without a Bang!

 

[Ryuzaki]

To be fair, this Water Cooler section is the place where there can be somewhat of a free for all. The general rules still apply but the the standard for quality is a lot lower. It's about relaxed and casual fun-having, even some civilized arguing. We just don't allow adult images and obvious NSFW stuff.

I don't know who's running around talking about "BuSo Bans People," but I have a good guess. I think we've only had to ban 2 legitimate users in ~5 years of operation, one of which was enough of a problem that he got banned from Wickedfire many moons ago too, the other was constantly trying to undermine the community and create schisms and all that. That's who I'd guess is spreading rumors.

What we do do outside of the Water Cooler is moderate posts that don't reach the obvious quality standard meant for outside of this Water Cooler section. We delete low-effort, one-line, litter posts and we delete posts where people type "thanks" instead of hitting the like button. That's really about it.

____

In my mind, Wickedfire died due to four things that happened in this order:

1. Resisting new users' attempts at joining the culture, which meant the active user base was steadily dwindling.
2. Penguin destroying 90% of the user base's income overnight, sending most of them off into the Bitcoin world, the closes equivalent to the EMD world of the pre-Penguin era.
3. Raising the price of the BST to just under $250 a month, while requiring you to start a new thread every 2 weeks and constantly lose all momentum. This meant the cheap stuff like social bookmarks couldn't exist there, and thus at least half of the lurkers and posters had no reason to lurk any more.
4. Forcing a paid subscription on content even to the users who wrote the content. I suspect less than 1% of the user base signed up, and most of that was for one month to scrape the content and then cancel.

That's what happens when saving face is more important than admitting you made a mistake and being seen undoing a past mistake. It's okay to step backwards and salvage something nice. Otherwise you're just patching patches on a sinking ship, applying them with a battle axe.

 

[Future State]

Shitshow or not, the joint promoted interaction without consequence.

What are the consequences of posting here? The only consequence I've seen people suffer from posting here is their income increases drastically. It's not like someone comes to your house and kidnaps your pets because you posted here more than once a month.

These days, any time I post it's 100% with the intention of being a dickhead when I see posts like yours, insinuating nonsense or misleading people. All I do is call people out while staying on topic. It's not against the rules. If I start name-calling and getting rowdy then yeah, I'm sure that would be a problem. I've yet to get a warning or PM or a visit to my house by the BIA.

Lol @ Frat house life has to end

So true. But, don't give it up without a Bang!

That's the difference between this place and others.

Wickedfire came together when making money on the internet was easy. It was the Frat Life. As soon as Penguin came around, I'd say 75% of the people there quit SEO and went into crypto currencies. The Frat Life ended there, and didn't go out with a bang. It whimpered and spattered out like the end of a balloon.

BlackHatWorld is the least readable forum on the internet. It's nothing but non-english speaking people spamming to sell signature space and other 3rd world games. Every post is essentially "thanks for your post." That's what WarriorForum became too. They're free-for-all spammer & scammer hot spots with no moderation and a 99:1 noise ratio.

BuilderSociety could easily have as much traffic as them if they let Xrumer bots post nonstop too and let people make tiddy threads and send each other to websites that give you viruses. But then again, BuSo came about at a time when the Internet Marketing industry matured. The Frat Life was already over. This forum is for adults trying to earn a living, not score reputation points and post counts and lie about your successes.

That might not be as fun and entertaining as pure chaos. But we're not here for fun and chaos. We're here for order, for the purpose of being wealthy, having nice things, creating financial security and independence, putting our kids through college, earning a retirement, helping out our loved ones...

Or BuSo could also follow in the footsteps and walk the exact same path as every other forum that's committed suicide and see where that ends up.

 

[mmm91492]

Views on moderation aside, it does seem like BuSo is slowing down a bit, particularly the Lab threads / case studies. I can't really think of any active ones right now that I make a point to follow. Most of what I read nowadays is from the same couple dozen members, none of which I would really consider pure newbies.

I think BuSo would benefit from another CC9-type event to kick a little life back into that part of the forum.

 

[GNews]

just realized.. STS was The old shootin the shit forum.... i still have nightmares about that one pic with those worm things coming out the tit

 

[Samwise89]

Most of what I read nowadays is from the same couple dozen members, none of which I would really consider pure newbies.

I'm as guilty as the next, but what's the point of complaining that people aren't posting if you're averaging 1.34 posts per MONTH since you signed up? Are you running a Lab thread or have you ever ran one? If you want conversation to happen, you can help stir it up by contributing more.

As far as the list of reasons WF died, don't forget when Jon ran that email scam where people could pay $250 for him to answer one question they had for him, and he never replied to them and got mad when people prodded him for responses.

 

[illmasterj]

I think BuSo would benefit from another CC9-type event to kick a little life back into that part of the forum.

I'm down to partake in this.

 

[mmm91492]

I'm as guilty as the next, but what's the point of complaining that people aren't posting if you're averaging 1.34 posts per MONTH since you signed up? Are you running a Lab thread or have you ever ran one? If you want conversation to happen, you can help stir it up by contributing more.

Yeah like, you're not wrong, but I think you're oversimplifying my point.

Firstly, sure I'm a lurker, but so are 99% of the members on this and any forum. And while I don't post that often, I've definitely spent a small fortune on services from the BST, as I'm sure have many other lurkers. It's probably the one thing we're good for. In the end, posting is nice, but I bet they'd rather have my money, given the choice.

Secondly, in a perfect world, I'm sure everyone would act on that moral imperative to give back to the community by posting, but it's not very realistic to expect that. I don't own the forum or have a BST thread, so where's my incentive to post? And honestly there are better people than I to answer almost any question that might come up. I think trying to make people feel shitty for "complaining" (it was an observation, a light criticism at best) is just going to drive more people away from the forum, and is reminiscent of the flaming that BuSo sought to eliminate in the first place (OK compared to WickedFire, that one might be a stretch).

Tying it all together, I don't just want "conversation." What I think set BuSo apart and gave it an edge was stuff like the CC9 that went beyond standard forum posting and really got people involved. The content was great, but the delivery was better. Today, it feels more like a generic forum (in terms of function, not content). Without a hook, I think there's less incentive for new members to join (with velocity of new lab posts backing that theory up), and less new members means less money going to BST offers, and in turn to the forum owners. As mentioned, they already have my money; without new members bringing in new cash, where's the incentive for the BST members and forum owners to keep focusing on BuSo?

Oh damn there goes my 1.34 posts for the month...

 

[bernard]

Views on moderation aside, it does seem like BuSo is slowing down a bit, particularly the Lab threads / case studies. I can't really think of any active ones right now that I make a point to follow. Most of what I read nowadays is from the same couple dozen members, none of which I would really consider pure newbies.

I think BuSo would benefit from another CC9-type event to kick a little life back into that part of the forum.

I think we could benefit from some more "chat" here, either in the form of a chat room or some chat threads.

I brought this up before and @CCarter was against it. I know this place, and the aforementioned founder, is all about "stop fucking around", but I think it would help traffic grow some.

Why? Cause everyone is more likely to feel involved and help out, when you know the people you reply to, at least superficially. There's of course that risk that your off-topic forum turns into every other off topic forum of cliques and trolls and flamewars.

 

[pfingy]

I fully take the points that @CCarter and @Ryuzaki make about hazing and low-effort posts, but for me that was a big attraction of WF. I thought, "if I want these people to respect me, I better not act dumb". I laughed a lot while reading WF. Before WF I was on HackerNews and Reddit and just always had the feeling that they were all such faggots, when I found WF it felt so much better.

In real life, sometimes I like bullshitting and acting stupid with my friends, but the thing is, all the people I surround myself take life seriously, they're responsible, successful people that are committed to improving themselves mentally, physically and spiritually. So when I relax and fuck around with my friends, it's different than bullshitting with people that I don't know and respect. I have too much self-respect to lower myself by associating with dumbasses and acting in ways that make it seem ok to be a dumbass. But with my friends, we've already established relationships based on substance and integrity, and we've proven ourselves to each other and gotten entry into an "in" group, so unwinding with some silly jokes is totally fine because it's not going to devolve into bullshit, at the end of the day everyone I'm involved with is committed to morality, personal growth, etc.

I LOL'd all the time reading STS shitposting and watching people get hazed. I understood that some of the people on WF were actually making serious money and some people were seriously contributing to the forum, and that earned them the right to unwind by shitposting. If I want to waste time with a bunch of random losers I can go make low effort posts on 4chan, but that's not what I'm interested in. It doesn't make sense for me to expect BuSo to just pickup STS where WF left off... my guess is that if enough people are seriously committed for long enough to building a community here, then the community's culture will evolve and maybe, based on building substantial relationships, there will be some more WF-esque unwinding in WC threads. But there's no point in trying to force it or whatever.

So yea, I agree that I'd love to see more general "chat" for when I've worked enough and I feel like I need to just fuck off, but that's gotta be driven by other, more substantial mechanisms on the forum. I guess Labs is that kind of thing and so is Commerce/HR. And maybe it will never really happen, and that's no big deal. I'm here to get rich. WF gave me tons of ideas to make money and through WF I got started making my living entirely online. Maybe I'm here out of gratitude for the part IM forums played in giving me the freedom and affluence I enjoy today. Honestly, I don't know what role something like BuSo plays in my moving on to the next stage of entrepreneurship. I'm looking back now on some stuff I read on WF that I didn't fully understand at the time and realizing that I've gone through a shift in my experience-level and just now understanding the attitude some people were expressing. I might post sometime trying to articulate my thoughts better, but basically it's the difference between chasing bullshit and being a shallow, "me too" marketer, or having a vision and knowing what you're doing, and not giving a fuck what other people are doing or saying, and making more money because you're legit, instead of picking up a few cents doing the exact same shit for the exact same offers as a million other greedy, uninspired leeches.

I'm hoping BuSo does help me get to the next level of income and experience, and hopefully there will be some good ol' fashioned shitposting along the way!

 

[TopHat]

It just can't be put any better than pfingy just did. Bravo.

The problem I saw and BoFu made me realize was the constant shitting on newbie and struggling members. There was a 1-2 year phase where new members were roasted when they took the time to write a decent 1-2 paragraphs question about a problem. If you constantly burnt newbies, but older members slowly grow out of the scene or move on then the place will shrink double rapidly from a lack of new blood and a dying off of the old (or killing off).

That's not what killed WF. You and me and BoFu and everyone else knows that without the sudden laughable paywall, WF would today still be the monster it was. But "the shitting", to your point, was a terrible and maybe terminal problem.

 

[GNews]

What's Jon from Wickedfire doing today ? still riding NYC in chauffeured limos?

BuSo could become a greater site honestly

The way it's moving now is great, just the volume of content is down and i think people here are older generations, that have tamed down

The Young Blood new to money, talking their shit, is always entertaining...... and when they post here, over half of the older ones shy away from it. in WF it was a hungry wolf pack, topics like that were a piece of meat

 

[Golan]

In my mind, Wickedfire died due to four things that happened in this order:

1. Resisting new users' attempts at joining the culture, which meant the active user base was steadily dwindling.
2. Penguin destroying 90% of the user base's income overnight, sending most of them off into the Bitcoin world, the closes equivalent to the EMD world of the pre-Penguin era.
3. Raising the price of the BST to just under $250 a month, while requiring you to start a new thread every 2 weeks and constantly lose all momentum. This meant the cheap stuff like social bookmarks couldn't exist there, and thus at least half of the lurkers and posters had no reason to lurk any more.
4. Forcing a paid subscription on content even to the users who wrote the content. I suspect less than 1% of the user base signed up, and most of that was for one month to scrape the content and then cancel.

I would say, 3,4,2,1.

I don't think shitting on noobies was an important factor. Well WF was for survivors. Besides, trolling noobs in Beginners section or how ever it called was strictly forbidden and bannable. I remember even most scorching guys were explaining something politely to noobs that politely asked something in the Noobs section.