PixlBit

BaD # 15: A site revisited

Come Hell or high water this blog will be posted today! Internet lag be damned!

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the “death” of the gaming website that gamers use to call home: 1up.com. Though the date may differ depending who you ask, I consider Feburary 21st, 2013 to be the official announcement of 1up.com’s shutdown given that’s the date of Parish’s news posting on the site. Despite hearing about the site’s closure from Dan Shoe’s twitter feed, I had to wait for the official response from 1up itself before I could fully accept the news. And when the news finally came it hit me, like I’m sure many others, like a ton of bricks.

I’m sure many were expecting this to happen eventually. The site kept being shuffled from owner to owner and the usual traffic and faces we’d come to see on 1up.com started to become fewer and fewer over time. I can’t even mention all the people I noticed no longer visiting the site during its final days. They had either moved on to other sites or had just become too busy to be able to partake in what 1up.com had become. I won’t go into detail of what use to be or how the site was for me when I signed up for it back in 2006. Instead I’m going to mention a few things since things official “wound down” on the site.

Despite most of those on 1up.com departing for different shores, the site itself remains online and somewhat active. Originally I thought that the majority of the activity to be found on the site would be spam blogs or spam threads (which there are to some degree) but what kind of shocked me was that there were still some people still banging around on the site. It appeared that I wasn’t the only one that decided to stay on and active till the plug was officially pulled on 1up.com. And when word came down that the site would stay up indefinitely, there were still a select few that continued to blog or post threads.

I even made a few more friends off the site and still continue to run into a few old friends now and then who have either not found another place to blog or are sticking it out like me in what Parish’s recent blog post calls “not particularly caring that their party is taking place on the rotting corpse of a fallen giant.” Sure some of the blogs now on there might not be on par on what it used to be during its heyday but there are still some on there that might warrant a good read. I’ve even tried my best to help encourage other people on the site to blog and return as need be (as well as suggesting they might try out pixlbit or IGN if things are not active enough for them).

I’ve even got solicited by two individuals about posting my blogs on their websites, though I’m sure their solicitations are not exclusive to just myself.

For all intents and purposes 1up.com is a mere shell of what it once was, indeed it’s a fallen giant that hardly worth visiting given the few people that continue to blog on there. But the funny thing about 1up.com is that despite those that were involved with the site, either as staff or long time user generated content bloggers, have long since gone and place the site into their collective past I still find myself blogging on there just as much as I do now on either pixlbit, IGN and even XPstar. I want to say it’s because of my vow that I would remain on the site till the bitter end, like some lone sentinel standing guard till the end is nigh, but I have to admit it’s much more than that. Call me petty, call me stuck up, hell call me fat headed in thinking myself of some individual of grand self-importance, but the other reason why I continue to be on 1up.com is not just to meet new people, or the hope that it might “bounce back” or to try to motivate the few bloggers left on there (which I must admit I’ve done little to nothing on that.)

No I stay on because I think that people still go there to READ what I post on there. I know this might be wishful thinking, or even glitchiness on the site itself but my page counter still registers reads to my 1up.com page. When I check it on occasion I see roughly 500+ page views a day. Could it possibly be that there are still people off the internet that still visit 1up.com to read the blogs of a a humble and lowly user generated blogger like myself? It just doesn’t seem possible given how everyone considers 1up.com “dead”. Perhaps such is not the case and these are simple “bot” views from some computer program or some kind of coding error from the site itself. It just doesn’t seem correct that someone (or something) would still be reading what I post on there.  For as much as I know seeing your page counter over 500+ page views could be the norm for any blogger on 1up.com, past or present. I’m sure other bloggers better than I have received even higher page views.

But my point is simply this: I like to write. I really don’t intend to make it big as some blogger. Or sway hearts and minds what whatever subject I write about. I don’t write to get page views or comments. I don’t write to push an agenda or to prove a point. I don’t write to troll or make fun of any particular subject/theme/situation. I just like to write and I like video games. But if you had to ask me what I like most about writing, I’d have to answer that I like to write about the ideas that come into my head. One of the things I like about writing is the ability one has to be able to share their opinions and ideas from just a few simple sentences about any given subject you feel passionate about.

And at the end of the day if a blog I wrote was actually READ, I’d be happy man knowing that some fragment of my opinion or idea has made itself known to someone. It may not have changed their mind on any given subject or changed their opinion about it, but if it at least made them take a moment out of their busy life to ponder what they’ve read I’d be content.

That is if they could make sense out of what I’m ranting and raving about. My grammar and sentence structures are not the best.  

Who’s to say why people would read the “Rants and Ravings” of a Virtual Reality Sociopath when there are more active sites to follow up on. All I know is that if there are people that still read what I write I’ll continue to write there even if the site is as dead as Corduroy.

1up.com maybe dead but I’ll still continue on their till it finally goes dark. Only then will I move on.

Beard Shot!

Wise BaD Message of the Day:

 

Ta-ta

“N”