Chatterbox: Down to Earth

This is in response to a couple of threads I've been following: 

The CB was different in multiple ways, and I think it's mostly changed because of Crowd Sorcery.

Firstly, new people came in far more slowly. I can't remember what the rate was, but I do remember that it was far slower than the current rate. A big part of this has to do with how the CB is advertised in Cricket- after a couple intial months of large banners with announcements, the CB address and a small description was put in the lower left hand corner of the letters pages. Chatterbox quotes did not have a separate column, that was only for lines from the letters and the occasional email. I think this is the main source of change - a ton of people came on to the CB for Crowd Sorcery, and now that it's more obviously displayed, more people take more notice and thus more new people come to the CB. These readers seem to be younger.

The old CB: there were less people and the average age was higher. There were far less recently active threads because of this. RP posts tended to be wayyyy longer - I know that my average post on the Dragon RP was about 1,000 words and that several of mine clocked in at over 2,000. In general, time between replies were longer, and alter egos did not exist outside of a couple SIs. (There are a couple notable exceptions to this, but those were actually fully formed alter egos writing as different people). We knew each other better as a result of smaller numbers, and it was easier to keep track of each other because new people arrived less frequently. Random things were far less common, and when they were, they were confined to threads (perhaps mentioned outside of them, but they didn't spill over). There was stuff like the Jelly Bean Debate (which I know very little about) and the Great Lemming War (which I gracefully surrendered) but all in all, it was a lot calmer. I hesitate to use the word mature because I feel that it doesn't have the correct connotations, but I've done four hours of chem hw today and my brain is failing me. The old CB felt more mature- there was a structure in there, somewhere, even if some of us did sometimes leave the capslock on and held the exclamation point key down more than was necessary, not everything was covered in it. I think we read all of the current active threads, even if we didn't participate in them. We were more careful in how we interacted with each other.

The new CB is a lot more active and a lot harder to keep track of, espcially if - like me - you're just checking in a couple times a week and not being very active. I really don't know that many of you, and I find it hard to keep track of who you are and assign a concrete identity to you in my mind. So many of you have joined so quickly.

And: I do miss the old CB. I miss the people, I miss the Dragon RP and I miss how integral SC was to my identity. I miss knowing exactly who everyone was. I miss a couple specific people a lot even though there are several that I've been able to keep in contact with. I miss Tiffany W. and Red, I miss TNO dropping words like "saccharine", I miss that one Hunger Games RP where my character lasted until the very end and was stabbed in an undramatic fashion. I miss people whose names I've forgotten.

But missing something does not mean I want it back. 

13 year old me is not the same as 16 year old me- I am not the same person I was as an eighth grader. I do not have the same interests. I am not who I thought I was when I joined the CB - I've learned a lot of things about myself. 

The old CB is not the new CB. The Chatterbox is you- it is what you do and what you say, it is how you interact with your fellow CBers. It is your writing; it is your creativity; it is your opinions on the newest book series and your favorite type of dragon. Yes, quite a few of us old CBers do come on, but a lot of us have moved on to other places and/or are no longer participating in the same way we used to. The Warrior Era before me passed, and so, I think, our time has passed too. Don't try to be us: you are your own crowd, with your own thinking and your own personalities. If you would like to go easy on the caps and exclamation points and randomness, that's fine.

The Chatterbox is what you make it; one way is not better than another.