It was 10 years ago today when I bought pokerfraudalert.com, and decided to make that the theme of my new forum. The original plan was to start it on dandruffpoker.com, but I decided at the last minute that I didn't want the forum to revolve around me.
Here was a recap I did of the site on the 5-year anniversary, in March 2017: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...ow-5-years-old
I appreciate all of you who have stuck around all 10 years, as well as the newer users who have helped replace those who decided to leave us.
Forums have absolutely taken a shit in recent years, in favor of social media. One only needs to look at 2+2 -- incredibly active and bustling 10 years ago -- to ghost-town-like today. Forums all over the world regarding all kinds of different subjects have died, and are either gone or a shell of their former selves.
This is the age of social media. People don't want forums anymore. They want Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok. Podcasts are still a thing, but there are relatively few live internet radio shows these days. The live stuff has mostly been replaced by Twitch and YouTube.
Here we are, 10 years later, still with a live radio show (which also exists as a podcast), and still with a vBulletin 4 forum. I'd like to take credit for upgrades and modernization, but we actually took a step backwards and now have a chat room written in 2007.
Many of you got to know me in my early 30s. Some of you played poker with me in my 20s. Now I'm eliglbe to play the WSOP Seniors Event. We've all gotten old, but somehow this NWP-spawned community has still endured.
It has not always been easy, and in fact this site spawned from a painful end to two friendships I thought I'd always have. There has, of course, been drama and controversy within the site, even though I really tried to avoid it as much as possible. There have been times when I wondered why I bother with a non-monetized site which, by its nature, unfortunately attracts a bad element along with some very cool/good people. There have been times that this site has caused me a lot of stress. There was also a time that I suffered through crippling high-level anxiety and depression from a chemical disorder in my brain, and I wasn't sure I could go on running this site. The radio took a 4-month break, but somehow I broke out of it and got mostly back to normal.
I would like to thank all the regular posters and the radio co-hosts for helping create the content here, which has basically kept me motivated to run this place for the past decade. I really do appreciate it, and I've never felt that anyone owes me anything here.
I hope to be posting a similar message on March 2, 2032, at the age of 60, talking about how I never imagined that we'd be the last active forum on the internet.
Join me, past co-hosts, and a bunch of guests on tonight's radio, starting at 7:30pm PST, and feel free to call in. I actually donated $100 of my Jew gold toward the $200 freeroll. Hell really has frozen over.