[quote]Politics was taboo then. And tho it was before my time, it was as far as I can tell, a golden age. From a trolling/shit posting perspective, rules just make shenanigans that much better. I for one am not giving up on offtopic. I want this to be the dawn of a new age that will give us this generation's porch day and clockman. All we need is a little more imagination, and a little less toxicity to build for ourselves a new empire more glorious than the last.[/quote] Here's the thing, #Offtopic would never have become so toxic had the webteam never blindly enacted all the changes they made from B.old to B.next. Over time they have SLOWLY reverted the forums back to more and more of what B.old was. It should have never taken this long. The dysfunction and lawlessness of B.next was immediately evident to anyone around at that time. From day one of it I told those I knew that were ninjas that it was a terrible idea and it was going to wreck the community. Thing was, they had no say either. For what it's worth, I'm glad they are making these changes back toward when things here were more goofy, but not hateful. Back then, you had to actually try to make controversial posts and not get banned. It took actual creativity to not get banned for them. Dare I say that trolling was only done by smart people, because only they could navigate the gray areas around the ban hammer. Not discounting today's total absence of knowledge of what words can / will get you auto banned, that didn't exist and needs to end NOW. Reinstate the -blam!- filter that simply removes any offensive or "offensive" words, and no harm done. But then we had clearly defined rules, and more than not here abided by them. We had moderation people who were active with the community, and did their jobs with distinction. Everything about how this place worked was cooler. Not perfect, but blatant hate and intolerable posting simply did not see the light of day. Once posted it was usually shut down within the hour or less. The thing then was that you didn't know what the other person(s) political or theological beliefs were, and for good reason. None of us need to know them. All they do is cause division. I don't think this place will ever be what it was. Lightning rarely strikes the same place twice. It all started then with a game / games we all came here for at some point because we liked the games Bungie made at that time. For many of us that no longer applies, so the fundamental reason we all came together here no longer exists. So it's up to us to make this work, or not.