I keep thinking it's some big joke or the petitions will actually do something...

But no, they won't.

I've only been posting here for around 6 years, and this place already felt like a second home. A place where you could talk about modern shitposts one minute and obscure trolls the next. A place where you could have long, in depth, philosophical conversations about shit you love and get trolled with a simple "fuck you". But most of all /lounge/ was a place where shit posting lovers (and trolls) could just have fun. And at the young age of 33 I can say this has been the funniest 6 years of my life.

Lastly, thank you Lounge & NewPol.

Denial? About what?

I wanted to make a discussion board or forum, to be a place where people can talk and discuss SuperFratBoyExtreme among other things. If people are interested to join and maybe also moderate the forum, I can have it up and running in a few hours.

10 participants is a good start, you get to choose forum platform MyBBforum or similar, and the forum and sub-forum sections. Can also make a program to auto-create threads and sub-forums.

copy paste message if you like, and post on social media.

Denial? Is that a river?

My hope is that this will backfire on them, and they will reverse this decision.

I still cannot understand how this decision makes any sense. Its obviously about money, not trolls. Cutting the boards will cut a lot of visitors to this site.

How much did the boards possibly cost them to host? They already have a page for each individual board with descriptions. How much extra money does it cost to have the board for each page?

Well, I imagine the closing of the boards is a marginal decision, the cherry on top of a number of initiatives proposed to increase the website revenue.

Here's an attempt at a very rudimentary cost-benefit analysis (not exhaustive), from the outside, just for the sake of it. Hopefully not pretentious.

Presumed benefits: a) No more expenses for keeping the boards open, in terms of server space, technical staff, etc. b) Small advantages, in terms of technology and reduction of marketing dissonance, in the process of pursuing and implementing new ways of connecting 4ct with social networks, which could lead to great revenue.

Presumed costs: c) Most likely, a loss in traffic from message board users (every user visits 4ct less than before), but a small one when considering the entire traffic generated by the site. d) Very small loss of reputation on the internet.

I don't know if the a) board expenses would be greater or smaller than the c) loss in traffic. But it's my impression the 4ct doesn't care about that. Going by 4ct's words, it seems to want to clean house, to prepare for (b) Facebook, Twitter, etc., which could represent significant revenue. It's not a real necessity to get rid of the boards to do so, but it's more comfortable for them, from a technological and marketing standpoint.

It could be argued the website's reputation would go down because of it "turning its back" on the most passionate textboard posters, but I can't imagine that resulting in monetary losses. Now, one could say keeping the boards open would be more of a matter of "social responsibility" (keeping true to the vision/mission statements); something to do regardless of money, as a matter of integrity. I'd agree with this (and this would be my justification for keeping the boards running), but unfortunately for us, they can't be forced to follow that philosophy.

Denial? It's the most predictable of all human responses.

I wouldn't say I'm in denial, but I am (perhaps foolishly) holding out hope for a miracle.

Me too

Denial? It's the first step to acceptance.

"and starring mattjoes as PATRONI"

OK, I'll cut it out now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

this has been the funniest 6 years of my life.

Wow. Your life must be pretty lame.

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Maybe. Sort of. Yes. Hell no.

You never know, I have a little hope but I can't say there are any guarantees but I suppose that means I might be in a bit of denial indeed.

We could get 5000 signatures from a guy with very few friends and would look pretty impressive, A LOT of help though from strangers spreading the words with hashtags, tweets and all.