I used to mostly lurk all the time back in college, circa 2004-2007. I'd listen to the podcast every week, prowl the forums almost daily, and even began posting a bit. Once blogs were added, there were a few really poignant, brutally honest, and self-disclosing ones that I used to follow; The Mana Knight comes to mind, as well as someone else who chronicled how he changed his life.
This thread makes me nostalgic because it reminds me of long-forgotten laughs that I had on this site. I also learned a lot about living a thrifty life, and I connected with a lot of the diverse ways that people were living at a time when I was kind of isolated in my personal life. Reading about everybody else's lives and troubles made me feel a bit more human. I was uplifted by some of the genuinely good folks in the community, too, who frequently went out of their way to help their fellow CAGs. As an example, one gal who worked at Gamestop sent me some free controller decals that were a pre-order bonus for Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2, which I had in fact preordered but which didn't arrive with my Gamestop order. I think I first met thelonepig over at VGTalk, and he sold me the rare (at the time) Skies of Arcadia Legends on GC for like $20--that was how I first learned of web communities like this.
Life got busy after about 2008, and over the years my time for gaming and browsing has declined to nearly nil, but I still stop by CAG about once a year to help myself prepare for Black Friday. It really does feel like a different place these days, and whereas I was once a daily familiar, now I feel like a total stranger.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I'd name some specific user names, but a lot of them have either already been named or escape me. I mostly remember the users in context of some of their legendary threads or because they had awesome avatars, schitcks, or sig lines. Subliminal Criminal (forgot how he used to style/spell that) used to have a great pic of a mullet--"Business in front, party in back!"
