What amazes me about this forum is that I felt like it was old and probably going to die soon when I first started visiting in ~2011. It would be nearly impossible but I would want to know when the first "___ goes home devastated" was.
Jason Rexing 13:53 in Trainers had to be one of the earliest and it might have been before that.
You mad 'bro? was also in the early days
There was a clown phase, someone always talking about clowns only to get deleted, banned, and thrown under the bus.
The guy who crapped in his shorts in a race was huge. Potty humor, about what you'd expect from this sub-sophomoric, neanderthal of a site.
Fkking Deno/Larry/Brutal has been all around the distance running internet for 25 years and he's his own random meme generator. What a dick!
Is update was much later. 2012 give or take a couple of years.
I was the 🤡 guy. When the mods were being stupid, which was constantly, I'd flood the board with clown posts. It was my goal to have the entire first page consist of nothing but clown posts. That got me banned a few times.
I went through similar phases with monkeys and eggnog (sometimes during the holidays, sometimes not). Also led to multiple bannings...every one of them well worth it.
I'm sitting at work remembering old threads - who was the fitness guy who claimed he could run a sub-3 marathon (or something) based on his ability to do lunges around a track with a weight belt on?
How can we forget the real man thing? Vi believe I had a double role in that one
There used to be a guy who called himself Flagpole / Flagpole Willy who believed himself to be an expert on every topic under the sun. He had a list of criteria needed to qualify as a real man.
One day, he was bloviating about something, and I responded, but does it make you a real man?
He responded, "So you want to bring up the real man thing again?". And he enumerated his criteria.
Well, I copied that post into hundreds of threads. Some poor kid would ask about training for the 3,200 and I'd respond with the real man thing. It was hilarious to see the people who had never seen it before, and those who had.
Like clowns, monkeys, and eggnog, the real man thing also got me banned. Many times.
So, you want to bring up the real man thing again? Ok.
Criteria for being a real man: 1) Military service 2) Primary caretaker for elderly or disabled person that's NOT your vocation -- so like a parent or other family member. 3) Worker in some way in a war zone -- construction, journalist, whatever. 4) Married, active father to 2-4 children. You must live in the same house with those children and the mother, and you must take care of them financially and emotionally. You can't be a BAD father and be a man. You also do not have to procreate. You could be a father to them by adoption or marriage (wife had kids from previous marriage for example). Need at least 2 to fully feel what it's like to be a father, and more than 4 just allows the kids to take care of themselves too much, so 2-4 kids is the range. Now, if you had 4 and then one moves out and you had a 5th, then I'd accept that.
Those are the main ways to be a man. I would consider others if you want to provide them. A single guy though who never has children and works to support himself and his lifestyle and doesn't fall into any of the other criteria I spelled out isn't a real man in my opinion. To be a real man requires serious responsibility, and that isn't fully realized for most people unless they are a GOOD father to 2-4 children.