While the game forum and the classifieds can be seen as having slowed down where topics are slow and not many people seem to post the one forum that seems to have bucked this trend is the off topic forum. We at the Buzz decided to find out why.
We first contacted some of the players whose topics have reached the 10 thousand comment threshold, however only two were online at the time of interviewing.
We first spoke to Dtox, under the name of DTOXOLUSII about his topic named Sean Bar. Which at the time of writing have over thirty thousand replies. Our first question was why was it named Sean Bar? He told us that it was named after an old Buzz editor and ex-hdo. He also confessed that he wasn't the original creator of the topic and that honour goes to a guy named Stuart. The name started as an “Inside joke, a tongue in cheek gesture, placing an ironic importance on the person that is Sean” As Dtox put it himself.
However Dtox had a feeling that his topic would reach a large number of replies due to it having few regulars who keep the topic going. Yet some creators have no idea what they have started will grow to such large numbers, for example BasedFei who started That Big Kpop Thread who told us that would last maybe for few weeks and would eventually die. This could be because of the reasons he had for starting the thread he said that “I originally created it as a joke, I liked Kpop but it was mostly there to annoy people.” He went on to say that previous cycling topics were just there to create arguments amongst their readers.
We wanted to know why they thought that the off topic forum had become the most active public forum on the site. BasedFei thought “The game isn’t popular any more; most people still playing have been playing for a while and don’t need to make topics asking certain things, there’s not many game related topics that are being made aside from bust competitions and crew recruiting. There’s not much you can talk about in the game forum especially since graveyard has been added. The number of possible topics in the off topic forum is much greater that the number possible in the game forum. I think the off I think the off topic forum is more fun, it can be serious and a joke at the same time.” Dtox had a similar point of view and said that “Because the game forum’s over-regulated and generally boring. I guess it’s supposed to be that way but denying the forums the social aspect of the game is silly, it’s what makes Bootleggers, Bootleggers. I personally never used to go to the OTF, I thought it was filled with retards and Dutchfgts and it is. I’m just one of them now.”
Finally we thought that it would be nice for some tips from our semi-professional forum creators. Dtox suggested that “Get your friends in on it. It’s the best way to procrastinate and have some fun. But I shan’t give people false hope ever even coming close to the greatness of the Sean bar. Many people have tried, some are still trying but they end up making a topic about a certain music genre and talking to themselves in there, spamming music videos no one watches. It’s sad really.”BasedFei however had this to say “If you want to make a popular topic, it needs to be one that'll have people talking. For instance if you look at the Dutch bar, it is popular because it's just Dutch people talking about pretty much anything. The KPOP thread is popular because it causes a lot of arguments, so it has people talking, there's also a few of us dedicated fans bumping it.” So obviously there are different ideas on what makes a great topic like these two. However it’s always best to give it a go and maybe you will someday you too will become a hit in the off topic forum.
We ended our interviews and asked if either of them had anything final to say to which Dtox asked us to say this. “Shout out toSean, Nate, Stu and all the other half-witted, social outcasts that make the Sean bar possible. I should thank Stu in particular, he knows why. Usurper's gon usurp.”
