I used to be an extremely active member on a car forum for about 12 years. The conversations we struck up, Jokes and humor shared, relationships that grew and bonded from simple communication on a forum was just awesome. We developed car meets and then track days and then regional and eventually national one make car type Expo's. Meeting everybody in person for the first time at an Expo was one of the coolest experiences I've had in my life. We all had name tags with our Screen Names to assist introductions. It was So unique to put the face to the Screen Name and see how the real world personalities often mimicked the online persona. Also it was funny to meet face to face the armchair warriors and internet tough guys
Years went on and cars were sold, priorites and life changed and although that forum is still around, the special spark of the community I was part of has gone. BUT I still stay in touch with a few core people I met there over 25 years ago in the Internet forum bulletin board chat infancy days. Oh and I stil have the car. But many of the people once involved have sold and moved on. Also funny enough This forums phpBB design is the same as that one is. I remember when they changed over from their old board design and onto new servers in 2000 how everyone complained etc. Funny how 25 years later this phpBB forum format is still going.
