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Famous Sites that fell from grace


Water Mage
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I get the feeling that some sites that were famous back in the day, really fell from grace in recent years.

To me TvTropes is one them. I used to think it actually has reliable information, but a recent visit disappointed me immensely. It’s so full of misinformation, and they exaggerated facts a lot. They tend to make sympathetic villains less sympathetic by exaggerating their crimes, when some them haven’t still be cleared up, and the opposite also holds true, make unsympathetic villains more sympathetic based on fan theories.

And TvTropes had this fun role-playing kind of thing called the Trope Pantheons, where characters from various form of media interact together, and it was fun, and I even used some of them for headcannons. But now it’s a utter mess of exaggerated facts and outright lies. 

But enough of my rant, what about you guys? Any sites that fell from grace in your opinion? Do you guys agree with me about TvTropes?

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Habbo Hotel immediately springs to mind. Used to go on that everyday when I was younger until one day I just stopped. Most people who used it just left, and it became a shell of its former self.

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I used to browse Escapist Magazine for great content. The Jimquisition, Extra Credits, Escape to the Movies and the Big Picture, Zero Punctuation. These content creators still exist, but this site just kept getting steeped in controversy that made it uncomfortable to hang around.

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43 minutes ago, Lau said:

Habbo Hotel immediately springs to mind. Used to go on that everyday when I was younger until one day I just stopped. Most people who used it just left, and it became a shell of its former self.

Thhiiiiis. I loved Habbo Hotel back in the day.

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YouTube.

I mean, almost all of us still go on it and there's great content to be had but just all of the executive decisions that are going on just.........ooof. The only reason YouTube hasn't crashed and burned yet is because content creators there will have literally no where else to go except for maybe Twitch.

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1 hour ago, DodgeDusk said:

NeoGAF. ResetEra for life.

As bad as NeoGAF was, at least the moderators there didn't start banning people for saying positive things about a game (*cough*Kingdom Come: Deliverance*cough*).

Anyway, Gawker Media, after a judge ordered them to pay Hulk Hogan 140,000,000 USD in damages.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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Neopets. Stopped playing when the "no RPing about anything other than Neopets" rule was made. Will never go back. Word filter is too strict. I hear you can't say "grape" there. And they don't allow romance in RPs at all.

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I used to use this site called Pokedream for its forums. I don't know if it was ever really "good" but I at least I used to be able to enjoy browsing. I just sorta stopped using it.

Youtube's content and user base has been on a consistent decline since around 2008. It's really appalling how bad it's gotten compared to what it used to be - namely, fun. Not to mention the aforementioned executive decisions.

4chan used to be a good place for discussion, especially boards like /tg/. Since Sarkeesian's nonsense it's gone dramatically downhill.

Cracked.com went full political and thus stopped being any kind of fun to read. It used to be a sort of quirky, self-aware website with interesting information (albeit information that they didn't come up with themselves). For a listicle site it at least used to be funny.

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6 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

least the moderators there didn't start banning people for saying positive things about a game (*cough*Kingdom Come: Deliverance*cough*).

Which is doubly awful because the whole controversy about that game was always nonsense to begin with.

Not enough black people in supposedly historically accurate medieval Bohemia. Oh the horror! 

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1 hour ago, Armagon said:

YouTube.

I mean, almost all of us still go on it and there's great content to be had but just all of the executive decisions that are going on just.........ooof. The only reason YouTube hasn't crashed and burned yet is because content creators there will have literally no where else to go except for maybe Twitch.

Dtube by Steemit. A fair amount of YouTubers are switching to that site, or are using both, since the recent executive decisions.

There are (and have been) others, but they either closed down (Vidme, Stage 6), or are just not trying to be relevant enough (Dailymotion, Vimeo, Veoh)

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4 hours ago, Water Mage said:

To me TvTropes is one them. I used to think it actually has reliable information, but a recent visit disappointed me immensely. It’s so full of misinformation, and they exaggerated facts a lot. They tend to make sympathetic villains less sympathetic by exaggerating their crimes, when some them haven’t still be cleared up, and the opposite also holds true, make unsympathetic villains more sympathetic based on fan theories

I think it really depends on which pages your viewing, as the site has been around for a couple of years, so some entires are more effected than others by the things you just mentioned. Then again, I do like looking at more obscure games/movies on that website, so I guess I don't see these things often enough to bother me. I do think that their decision on how to split pages can be odd at times (I can understand Super Smash Bros being separated into several different pages, but why does Awakening have different pages, while having a similar quantity of tropes to Fates, which could be fit into one?) and it's annoying to see mentions of shipping or "this character is gay/bi" in places it really doesn't belong.

They didn't fall from grace by any means, but I do remember that I stopped going to gaming website like Armor Games and Coolmath, because while the ads were far from intrusive, they did legitimately slow down the games.

I also stopped going to Stick-Page, but that's more because the site can be a little difficult to navigate at times, and I could find the video I wanted to see faster on youtube, rather than the site itself dipping in quality. I also wish they gave content warnings about their videos and games. I'm fine with some of them having blood or swearing and the like, but it would be nice to know about such things ahead of time, instead of getting a nasty surprise.

1 hour ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

serenesforest

The forums, maybe. The actual site, no. They promised to give the hard data on the games, as well as to provide Fire Emblem related news, and they do not disappoint.

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15 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

 

The forums, maybe. The actual site, no. They promised to give the hard data on the games, as well as to provide Fire Emblem related news, and they do not disappoint.

I more of meant that as a joke, but I can kinda see it sometimes in the forums. Thought I haven't even been here a year so I haven't seen the history of this place and what it was like before today.

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I have to agree about Cracked getting far too political, although my issue with it is that it exagerates to bring its points home (not necessarily about politics). They can go as far as twisting facts and misrepresenting things to make their views seem more plausible than they actually are, and that is when they are not using questionable studies to back up their claims (I remember an article on Cracked that said dogs yawn because they are imitating humans, for example). If its only issue was having questionable opinions I'd be fine with it, but it's not.

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53 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

I think it really depends on which pages your viewing, as the site has been around for a couple of years, so some entires are more effected than others by the things you just mentioned. Then again, I do like looking at more obscure games/movies on that website, so I guess I don't see these things often enough to bother me. I do think that their decision on how to split pages can be odd at times (I can understand Super Smash Bros being separated into several different pages, but why does Awakening have different pages, while having a similar quantity of tropes to Fates, which could be fit into one?) and it's annoying to see mentions of shipping or "this character is gay/bi" in places it really doesn't belong.

Yeah, it’s not the obscure entries that are the problem, it’s the popular ones. You see a lot fanon being treated as fact, as the site even lost that sense of comedy that it had before. 

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newgrounds

The days when flash animation was very prominent.  And everyone went there to see awesome original content from various groups.  Not much to say after around 2005ish.  It's definitely gotten lower traffic and publicity these days.

This site is still up despite hardly or never updating.  I remember it was the go to kirby fansite.

http://www.kirbysrainbowresort.net/

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From what I've been seeing the last few days, Channel Awesome/That Guy with the Glasses had lots of shady things going on, as seen on Twitter et al with #ChangetheChannel.

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1 minute ago, Rezzy said:

From what I've been seeing the last few days, Channel Awesome/That Guy with the Glasses had lots of shady things going on, as seen on Twitter et al with #ChangetheChannel.

I completely forgot about them, I used to watch a lot in middle school. But stopped when there egos grew, and did more unfunny skits than reviewing stuff.

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Can I say DeviantArt? You used to be able to find a lot of good stuff there, now…I dunno, maybe it's just me but if I see one more slutty cosplayer while trying to find Fire Emblem art...

Also, the greatest douche move Nintendo has ever pulled...

Spoiler

UBZo9bi.thumb.png.d8836610c2655bc0cf759aa81b4aaf7f.png

Seriously, screw you, Nintendo. That was the one place in my life where I could be proud to own a Hitmonchan.

EDIT That screenshot isn't mine, btw. Also, I suppose it didn't fall from grace so much as it was pushed had an unfortunately-chosen name.

Edited by SoulWeaver
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Anybody here old enough to remember the ancient (by internet standards) webcomic Megatokyo? Way back in 2001 it was the bee's knees. Then an extremely erratic update schedule and a series of questionable creative decisions pretty much tanked its popularity. I went back and looked at the site a few years ago, just to take a trip down memory lane, and the comic was still going, to my surprise. No idea why anybody still reads it though.

I saw somebody mention Shoryuken.com and I can't disagree there. It also reminded me of a sister site, called Eventhubs (yes that is one word in this context). They put up a paywall to access the site a few years ago and it killed their reader traffic. Actually, I used to cruise through a whole bunch of fighting game centric communities, and they went through something of a renaissance after Street Fighter 4 released. Almost all of them have since deflated back to their default state of half-death since then due to the fact that fighting games don't get annual releases and are not popular with the tween and college bro crowds.

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3 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

The forums, maybe. The actual site, no. They promised to give the hard data on the games, as well as to provide Fire Emblem related news, and they do not disappoint.

FE14 and FE15 pages are pretty disappointing, honestly.  Still doesn't have all of the calculations for FE14 lol.

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Tons and tons of forums. I really think forums in general aren't as prominent as they used to be.

Flash game sites, in general, too.

Pages like 4chan fell greatly too, now it's mostly shitposting or edgy opinions. At least most of the boards I frequent.

There's also pages like YTMND, I can't believe that page even still exists.

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