Haloscan Roll Call

Submitted by M-Dog on

Today is the 13th birthday of MGoBlog (see the thread below).  A lot of people have come and gone since then.

Who is still on here from Haloscan days?

For the uninitiated, Halsoscan was the hosting platform for MGoBlog from 2004 until late June 2008.

Haloscan was the wild west.

There was no Board. There were no "OP's".  You could not create content, you could only comment on the threads that Brian posted. 

Once Brian posted, it was a free-for-all in that thread. 

By the time you got to the 9th or 10th comment, the comments had nothing to do with the thread.  A comment could be responding to another comment that was 50 comments earlier in the thread.  Topics switched all over the place. 

Imagine every thread and comment on the current MGoBlog Board that happens in a given day . . . all residing in one thread.

If Brian only posted once that day, you could get up to a couple thousand comments by the end of the day.  So it was a big deal to be the first commenter of the day.  Often people would just post "First!" just to acknowledge the auspicious (and rare) occasion.  It only happened to me once.  It felt like I found money on the sidewalk.  

You could "handlejack" . . . steal somebody else's identity and comment as them.  This lead to all kinds of fun antics.  Immaturity is not a new thing on this blog.

There were no points, pos's, neg's or any kind of self-moderation by other members.  I don't recall any formal Mods either.

It was . . . interesting.

 

Brimley

December 4th, 2017 at 12:56 PM ^

Everyone seemed so smart and football savvy, I was terrified to post because everyone would think I am an idiot.  Obviously, I reached the point where I didn't care anymore and proudly show everyone I'm an idiot everytime I show up here.

mKzoo

December 4th, 2017 at 12:36 PM ^

Ah, yes. I had many a discussion about the conceptual ideas behind NMH's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on Haloscan.

Although, that particular topic didn't usually start until about the 30th comment. 

Callahan

December 4th, 2017 at 12:39 PM ^

Who could forget the Haloscan Wars that took place during the coaching search that led to Rich Rodriguez being hired?  And the guy who kept pushing for Jim Grobe, which seems pretty funny but probably would have gone better than the Rich Rod Era did.

Brodie

December 4th, 2017 at 12:40 PM ^

The Halscan threads went on the most wonderful tangents and the ability to comment with multiple handles led to some amazing gimmicks. The 2007 coaching search was really the peak of the format, too. 

Blue2000

December 4th, 2017 at 1:06 PM ^

I loved those old Haloscan days.  I went by Gnarls Woodson.  I remember the mayhem surrounding the blog's announcement of Lloyd Carr's retirement like it was yesterday.  MgoBlog - described by the NYTimes as "not exactly a rock of journalistic credibility."

BlueinOK

December 4th, 2017 at 1:10 PM ^

I remember those days. I was too scared to post anything. I would just read everything posted. It was awesome. I remember looking at the comments before reading what the articles would be about. Very entertaining stuff. 

ish

December 4th, 2017 at 1:12 PM ^

haloscan was funny and was the perfect thing to show your friends about crazy new message boards.  it provided countless hours for procrastinating.

Durham Blue

December 4th, 2017 at 8:31 PM ^

"New message boards".  I was around back in the bulletin board system (BBS) days.  Shit was all text back then in the mid 1980's.  Just me and some nerd friends trying to download the latest and greatest pirated computer games.  All hail the Commodore 64!