Gone but not forgotten - CAGs of the past

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I found some old messages here that took me back to some amazing threads.  Got me thinking about some of the better (and far worse) members that used to be here.  Many older members complain lately that CAG has changed.  (I actually agree; the atmosphere here is definitely different.)

So, let's reminisce about some of our favorite old members, shall we?

bignick

The first CAG I remember.  Back in 2003, I was a lurker that would visit the site daily.  His avatar and posts were what I remember from this time period.  Always a nice guy.

DenisDFat

Probably my favorite troll that's been on these boards.  Remember kicking the magazine rack?  Some people loved him, some hated him.  Everything sucked.

DragonLordFrodo

This guy was amazing.  I still sometimes say that I'm gonna "power down a sub".  He posted pics of himself, shirtless, licking his nipple.  (I'm not even going to try and find the pictures.)  Check this out.  And this.

x0thedeadzone0x

One of the most prominent females back in the early days of CAG.  I'm not 100% sure, but, I think she was one of the "creators" of the OTT?

JimmieMac

Picked a lot of fights.  Another OTTer.  Pretty sure Cheapy really liked him.  Wasn't he on Hell's Kitchen?

(I think he got into it with MorbidAngel4Life quite often.) 

Strell

One name most everyone would know (today).  Very nice guy.  What the heck happened to him?  I think it's been about a year since he posted.  :(

Mana Knight

Best blog ever.  I think he took it down though.  :/  Looks like his last login was just a couple months ago.  Maybe he's still around?  Anybody have old links to blog posts?

That's what I've got right now.  Gonna try and drum up some old threads.  Name some other memorable (old) users!

 
SOB (StripesOrBars) needs to be on the list.

The abbreviation of his name is ironic, and the perfect description for the type of person he was with everyone.  He then resurfaces after trying to oversell his incredibly overpriced collection on eBay, and afterwards taking it down because he was getting flooded by CAGs with joke offers on his lot due to the fact he was a complete and total ass to everyone when he was here.

He's definitely pretty high up on my CAG Douchebag Hall of Fame list.

 
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I randomly came across Mana Knight's Twitter one night. He's way into dressing up now. Some of those pics will haunt me for the rest of my days.

 
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One comes to mind, but I honestly don't recall his name. He hated every game he played and maintained a blog wherein he showcased new outfits for his collectible dolls. Ch- something.


Others? IAmTheCheapestGamer. I'd say fire_thief, but it doesn't count since he's back. Guin was an amazing mod, but I haven't seen her around of late. Dv8mad doesn't show up much either, despite starting the while lowball craze (and sharing some crazy blogs). Daddybojangles used to post some incredible blogs (the weekly "what are you playing this weekend?" was great fun).

It dawns on me that I haven't looked at blogs since the new CAG rolled out. Maybe some of these folks are still around.
 
Floopsy was not a prolific contributor but he was the first CAG I meet in real life. We chatted in a goodwill and then occasionally saw each other at yard sales. No idea what happened to him.
 
One comes to mind, but I honestly don't recall his name. He hated every game he played and maintained a blog wherein he showcased new outfits for his collectible dolls. Ch- something.


Others? IAmTheCheapestGamer. I'd say fire_thief, but it doesn't count since he's back. Guin was an amazing mod, but I haven't seen her around of late. Dv8mad doesn't show up much either, despite starting the while lowball craze (and sharing some crazy blogs). Daddybojangles used to post some incredible blogs (the weekly "what are you playing this weekend?" was great fun).

It dawns on me that I haven't looked at blogs since the new CAG rolled out. Maybe some of these folks are still around.
Oh, the doll guy. Ugh. My daughter is starting to get into those dolls, and it immediately brought back memories if that guy.
 
It's not CAG any longer, it's SD/FW masquerading as CAG.    Reminiscing in here won't bring it back to the way it was before.

 
It's not CAG any longer, it's SD/FW masquerading as CAG. Reminiscing in here won't bring it back to the way it was before.
It feels like we should all raise our glass, down the contents and sigh reflectively in unison here.

I agree entirely. It's become cutthroat, elitist or too full of in-jokes to really stay involved. There are still some classy people here though.
 
ff7cloud

You can now close the thread.






Seriously though, he started the best thread of all-time here, and it's not even close.

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/168129-well-jenna-haze-declined-my-partnership-offer/

Also great was Dr. Pizza.
That was an awesome thread.

It brought up another one...anybody have a link to that Spider-Man tattoo thread? That shit was amazingly funny.

Also, how about the woman with the toilet paper and wooden sppon? Another quality read.

 
That was an awesome thread.

It brought up another one...anybody have a link to that Spider-Man tattoo thread? That shit was amazingly funny.

Also, how about the woman with the toilet paper and wooden sppon? Another quality read.
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/104552-who-is-inked/

I think the wooden spoon thread got deleted.

edit - Wait. I think this is it. http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/120977-did-i-just-fall-victim-to-this-xbox-live-card-scam/

4xw0qc8.jpg


 
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It feels like we should all raise our glass, down the contents and sigh reflectively in unison here.

I agree entirely. It's become cutthroat, elitist or too full of in-jokes to really stay involved. There are still some classy people here though.
Sounds like a correct response to the cutthroat, cliquish in-joking and general disdain for helping others that the site has been party to in the last few years.

 
Sounds like a correct response to the cutthroat, cliquish in-joking and general disdain for helping others that the site has been party to in the last few years.
Do you think it because CAG has way more users now ?

I don't really know how much bigger CAG is compared to how it was when I joined in 2005, but it hasn't changed for the better.

 
Do you think it because CAG has way more users now ?

I don't really know how much bigger CAG is compared to how it was when I joined in 2005, but it hasn't changed for the better.
I don't know if it's the number of users as much as it is better members from the old days left and a lot of the newer users are shitheads from the Slickdeals mold.

 
I wish I could remember his name but there was the one kid who used to stir up shit all the time who posted one day about how he had chipped his tooth at school in a fight. Most of his other posts weren't that great but that thread was absolute comedy gold. Between everyone calling him "chip" after that and the pictures everyone ended up getting him to post. That thread must have been 6-7 years ago now at least.
 
I wish I could remember his name but there was the one kid who used to stir up shit all the time who posted one day about how he had chipped his tooth at school in a fight. Most of his other posts weren't that great but that thread was absolute comedy gold. Between everyone calling him "chip" after that and the pictures everyone ended up getting him to post. That thread must have been 6-7 years ago now at least.
Looks like the original thread was deleted. Here's the story: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/69609-chipped-tooth-thread/
 
Here's the scary, sobering reality...we're all getting older. And as we age, it is extremely common and easy to look at the younger generation as a bunch of shithead good-for-nothings. Now, did we really all act that differently when we were their age? Maybe...maybe not. But time, wisdom, responsibilities, and life's burdens can definitely do a lot to change your outlook.

In general, I feel like the landscape of video games as a whole has changed tremendously in the past ten years...not just the people who play them. We live in a world where unoriginal sequels, largely unfinished products, and pay-to-win games dominate the industry. How many patches will the next Battlefield need? And how many perks can I buy in the next MMORPG? What bullshit, breaking-the-game exploits can you use to climb the leaderboard in the next Madden?

Why do I care so much? Has everything really changed...or am I just looking at it through older eyes?

 
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Here's the scary, sobering reality...we're all getting older. And as we age, it is extremely common and easy to look at the younger generation as a bunch of shithead good-for-nothings. Now, did we really all act that differently when we were their age? Maybe...maybe not. But time, wisdom, responsibilities, and life's burdens can definitely do a lot to change your outlook.

In general, I feel like the landscape of video games as a whole has changed tremendously in the past ten years...not just the people who play them. We live in a world where unoriginal sequels, largely unfinished products, and pay-to-win games dominate the industry. How many patches will the next Battlefield need? And how many perks can I buy in the next MMORPG? What bullshit, breaking-the-game exploits can you use to climb the leaderboard in the next Madden?

Why do I care so much? Has everything really changed...or am I just looking at it through older eyes?
You may be getting older, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not. :)
 
Here's the scary, sobering reality...we're all getting older. And as we age, it is extremely common and easy to look at the younger generation as a bunch of shithead good-for-nothings. Now, did we really all act that differently when we were their age? Maybe...maybe not. But time, wisdom, responsibilities, and life's burdens can definitely do a lot to change your outlook.

In general, I feel like the landscape of video games as a whole has changed tremendously in the past ten years...not just the people who play them. We live in a world where unoriginal sequels, largely unfinished products, and pay-to-win games dominate the industry. How many patches will the next Battlefield need? And how many perks can I buy in the next MMORPG? What bullshit, breaking-the-game exploits can you use to climb the leaderboard in the next Madden?

Why do I care so much? Has everything really changed...or am I just looking at it through older eyes?
I've thought about this too. But it seems the people that are ruining cag (IMO anyway) arent the kids though they do annoy the hell out of me sometimes, it's the "older" people trying to make profits off everything.
 
CAG has definitely gone downhill.

I think it's two things. First, I agree with n8rockerasu that some of it is just being older and less patient with younger generations etc., but that's not most of it as I can post on other gaming sites like GAF with much less annoyance.

I think it's mostly that the site just isn't as well ran as it used to be. I think Cheapy just at some point decided that all that really mattered are ad views and affiliate link clicks and having more traffic, less bannings etc. get to that at the expense of the community. You don't see nearly as much proactive moderation anymore, and even a lot of personal attacks, fanboy nonsense etc that gets reported is a crapshoot on whether any visible moderation occurs.

The community could be made a lot better through simple steps. Get some more mods and be more aggressive with suspensions and bans for griefers in the deals forum, personal attacks anywhere and fanboy nonsense in the console forums. Get rid of chat threads like the OTT/GGT to lessen the clique/inside joke problems (that is mostly a generation gap thing as the younger sets are more into social media, online friendships etc than us old fogeys). The GGT hardly discusses gaming anymore anyway. Find a way to bring social groups back in this shitty CAG 3.0 software and those groups can move there. Ditch the general gaming forum all together as it gets little traffic and makes no sense to have that and console specific areas.

But a lot of that would probably drove traffic down some and hurt the bottom line, so it will never happen. And it's Cheapy's business so he can obviously run it however he wants. Just a shame to see what CAG has become. I never thought I'd prefer GAF to it.
 
Based on stuff like Alexa, cag traffic is down. (Either coincides with shitty slow cag 3.0 or the rise of Slickassgamer, you decide) Now that doesn't necessarily mean revenues are down. It could be people are clicking affiliate links and never posting.

The other possibility is that cheapy is busy with other stuff (kids?) and making so much money in his regular job (he has one yes?) that he simply just doesn't give a crap about cag much.

How about those annual awards?

I will say that maintaining a community is tough. You can't have a community without some in jokes and such but it also makes threads less than useful - see Awd. On the other hand, people who just come to cag via Seo, click a link doesn't help the community much.

Also ruining cag: fanboys. Was it this bad for the 360/ps3/wii launch era?
 
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Yeah, that proposed site of yours, Dmaul, sounds like a Soup Nazi experience.  NO SOUP FOR YOU.  BANNED!  1 YEAR!

 
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Based on stuff like Alexa, cag traffic is down. (Either coincides with shitty slow cag 3.0 or the rise of Slickassgamer, you decide) Now that doesn't necessarily mean revenues are down. It could be people are clicking affiliate links and never posting.
Personally, I think the deals just aren't as good anymore. When I joined, Amazon(and others) were giving $20 pre-order credits, Buy.com wasn't a creditcard theft magnet, LE's weren't pushing $120, and msrp drops didn't come as quickly. I mean we have 2 week old games dropping to $40 within 2 weeks of release sometimes.

Also ruining cag: fanboys. Was it this bad for the 360/ps3/wii launch era?
Probably was and always will be.

Yeah, that proposed site of yours, Dmaul, sounds like a Soup Nazi experience. NO SOUP FOR YOU. BANNED! 1 YEAR!
I'm not a huge fan of his suggestion either, but there are some SERIOUS shitheads that should be banned. But hey, apparently calling people "camel jockies" or "towel heads" is a-ok so...(wasn't me btw)
 
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Personally, I think the deals just aren't as good anymore. When I joined, Amazon(and others) were giving $20 pre-order credits, Buy.com wasn't a creditcard theft magnet, LE's weren't pushing $120, and msrp drops didn't come as quickly. I mean we have 2 week old games dropping to $40 within 2 weeks of release sometimes.
^This.

CAG was always a deal/trading site first and foremost. We had an excellent community early on (PS2/GC/Xbox days). There were so many "exclusive" deals that you could only find here on CAG. Plus, the trading forum was a goldmine for great rare games. You really could barter and trade with people under reasonable terms. During 360/PS3/Wii era everything changed. Games stopped being hard to find and game prices started to plummet a few weeks after release. To make matters worse, virtually any deal posted on CAG would soon appear on slickdeals. At which point it become all about jumping on the deal first before the slickdealers got on it. Also, virtually every thread had a fanboy feel to it.

I still feel that some of the OT threads are quite enjoyable. Communities change and that is part of life.

 
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Yeah, that proposed site of yours, Dmaul, sounds like a Soup Nazi experience. NO SOUP FOR YOU. BANNED! 1 YEAR!
Hardly. I wasn't saying over moderate the place like GAF. Just mod it on the level it was 4-5 years ago. Stop letting trolls and fanboys run wild and pull threads off topic and devolve into flame wars.

The other suggestions are just organizational in hopes of getting more discussion flowing as the site has been super slow since the move to 3.0 with few threads having much back and forth discussion anymore outside of flame wars.

But may be it's just a lost cause. Deal sites are always going to attract a lot of crappy posters just due to bringing in hoarders, resellers and other broke ass losers.
 
This thread is actually a great example of "the new CAG", haha.

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/332215-gamestop-treasure-hunt-thursdays-challenge-free-5-xbox-credit/

It's unreal the levels some people in that thread have gone to. And I keep forgetting about the damn promo. Haven't even gotten one code...and some people have hundreds of dollars worth.
I really hope those people get their microsoft accounts banned but not right away, like 1-2 months from now similarly to the multiple accounts from other regions bannings. Can't wait to see the thread bitching about it.
 
The old school Internet forums that are largely dedicated to one primary topic have declined in popularity relative to the rise of Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. Reddit's video game deals forum eclipses this one in terms of active users (though they could measure this differently).  

These are the Walmarts of the Internet. Facebook handles all your social interaction and stalking. Reddit handles all of your discussions and circle jerks. Twitter handles all of your trolling. Facebook and Twitter tend to be real name affairs (and companies), while Reddit has gobbled up most of the posters who go with pseudonyms. It's kind of funny how people complain about big corporations controlling most of the media, yet they are allowing big web sites to control a greater and greater proportion of the discussion. 

Many of the forums about focused but general topics that I frequent have declined. "Last Post" dates keep getting older and older. The problem with a place like Reddit is that most subforums are even more specialized. With a traditional forum you might have a general topic like video games. But on Reddit it gets into subforums about PS4, Xbox One, then individual game series, then specialized demographics like girl gamers or whatever. Then the circle jerks, groupthink and bans for wrongthink get really out of control. It's part of the bubbling of the Internet. People love these sites because, combined with upvoting and downvoting, it makes it easy for them to rarely see a negative or contrary opinion.  And when they do, they usually have many more people who have their back. The traditional forums always had an element of this, but these super-specific forums have thrown it out of control. 

 
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I was going to say Shimrra, but looks like he was on today.  I miss his blogs and the extra haha.  Another blog I miss are the ones from the CAG that would order things and review them.  I think he said he was from Canada and he would take a picture of all sides of the stuff.  I remember he built a really nice PC once and posted from the start of ordering parts to the final build.  At one time I would load of COD 4:MW on the PC and think of Twinzor(SP?).  Got into the beta for that on the 360 thanks to him and all we would do is run around and try to kill each other.  The people on the team hated us.  Once we both got kicked out and then got back in.  All I heard before getting kicked again was "These two are back" then I saw we were kicked.  I think it happened one more time after this.  I'm going to have to read all of this thread when I get the chance.  I saw some members I forgot all about.

 
I haven't seen rezound for months now. Yo D, take the "cheap" off the name now. Don't forget to remove "gamer" too.


I went into the wooden spoon thread. Pookymeister is into some weird stuff.
 
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People think that 5 dollar M$ thread is new cag? Thats been cag for years now.
Most people in this thread are talking about how things were 8-10 years ago. By comparison, the last couple years would still be "new". Regardless, the larger point is that those types of things used to be greatly frowned upon and were regulated by the CAG overlords. The inmates now seem to run the asylum.

 
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My favorite CAG will always be this one.

[attachment=6218:spoooon.jpg]

Edit:

I see it was already mentioned. Boooo. I'm usually the first to mention it when this thread pops up every year. I even have the pic saved lol

 
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I dunno, there's always been shady people on CAG. And likewise, moral people Slickdeals. That's why generalizations suck-- Slickdeals seems like a cess pool but I feel like that's because they don't have the manpower to moderate that site. And by that token, shitheads have always been on CAG

I miss Strell too. :( I was going through my first breakup, and I was depressed late one night. I messaged him and he gave me some good words. Nice guy.
 
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