So it’s the end of the year 2007 and as an observer I would like to write about the 10 aspects of
ATRL in 2007 – a year in review!
1st aspect: Angelo. I would say Angelo is the post-leader of this forum. He’s controversial, he’s an attention-***** but he never gets over the limits with no one and he’s not dirty or lazy in his answers in general. Unlike some other attention*****s here and in many other forums, he can handle the critics to his posts and he dedicates some time in answering back to people. He’s the owner of the most popular blog and the moderator of Avril Lavigne’s Thread, one of the most popular threads in the main music forum.
Being popular is not a status for him, it’s a maintenance job. So I would elect him as poster of the year.
2nd aspect: Fireman25 blog. Hard to disappoint the posters. Always funny, always with some substrate. Not easy jokes, not easy two-lines posts with abstract sh*it-thinking. Many posters would agree with me in this. I would elect his blog as the best blog of the year.
3rd aspect: The banning thing. It seems it was the latest trendy in ATRL: ban people “just ‘cause”! Almost all the biggest posters were banned at least once this year. That means that the people that brings more life to the forum is actually being banned. The forum stays alive because of these people that tend to have many friendships in the forum and tend to aggregate many groups of people. Some of them are the moderators of the biggest main music room forum. In my personal opinion, something is wrong when the most popular people are being banned from the forum. Of course there’s rules but there’s also hearts and we are all people, not machines. An aspect to think about for 2008. And I have in mind that I can be banned tomorrow for posting down this today…
4th aspect: Britney’s music thread. The biggest thread of all! Hundreds of views per week. Almost everyone in this forum had posted at least one post there. A thread that puts haters and lovers in the same room. Hard to moderate it. Hard to make peace in it. Anyway, the thread is the monster thread of the forum. Congrats to the moderator (Peepshow) for handling it always under chaos! It takes a strong person to do that.
5th aspect: ATRL's reality. The way ATRL’s reality is different from outside’s reality: Britney’s fans obsession. The whole talking about the upcoming-album, the upcoming monster hit, the upcoming whatever. It’s interesting to see how the reality in ATRL world is quite different from the reality outside. So much anticipation and it brought in almost nothing. Britney’s album was about to be the biggest musical earth-quake of the year but it didn’t happen that way. The album had modest sales so far. “Gimme more” was not number 1 worldwide. The whole party went down in just a day, the day the official charts of the first week came out. The haters made a party, the lovers were confused. The chaos was on! This week will be remembered forever in the ATRL history.
6th aspect: The controversy around Nelly Furtado Thread: the end of the thread. Nelly Furtado Thread was the third thread in the main music forum and it has an end with the ban of its founder – PortugueseDude. I’m still wondering how could one of most popular threads in ATRL be closed without thinking about the consequences. Nelly Furtado’s thread had the most amazing growth of the all the music threads, reuniting many nelly furtado fans in just one space. It had news almost everyday about Nelly. Now just because the moderator was banned, the thread was closed leaving no space to all the nelly furtado fans. How this can happen to all the posters in the Nelly Furtado Thread I still don’t know. Giving the moderator charge to anyone else (like Gábor/Paramore, the today’s moderator of the new Nelly Furtado thread) would have been a good idea. All the videos and all the post dedicated to the artist had no continuation. It’s an unfair game, it’s injustice, it’s disrespectful. Meanwhile the whole PortugueseDude/VerticalHorizon thing went over the limits, some calling it “scandal”. Besides the fact that they are not the same person, this thing had gone wild when some bashed the image of nelly furtado’s fans. This is what happens when some start a fight with no reason and publicize this fight creating “desmasking frauds” threads, putting even more firewood to burn.
7th aspect: Chris Crocker’s and Britney’s new videos. The video section was also really mashed up in September/07. At that time, the whole expectation towards the Britney’s new video was really going crazy and false new videos were posted like birds in the spring. When the video came out, the comments about it just went over the roof. Britney’s new video was, without a doubt, the most discussed video of the year in ATRL. Meanwhile, and as ATRL is quite in link with Youtube, Chris Crocker’s video “Leave Britney Alone” caused to most amazing reception (for good and for bad) in ATRL too.
8th aspect: TRL changing its rules. TRL is not what it was anymore. The new rules of TRL came out in a period where there was many speculation and discussion concerning the veracity of the TRL’s top and counting votes. The rules made a lot of controversy, disappointing many fans as those don’t take that much the fans’ effort to make their idol going to the top.
9th aspect: Most popular artists. Without a doubt, when a newbie came to ATRL during 2007, he would definitively read, even by accident, something about Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, Nelly Furtado, Christina Aguillera or Rihanna. They are all women, they were all the most popular artists here during 2007. There were so many posts about these 5 girls that even a guy trying to find some information about Radiohead would have to read something about these artists in the meantime.
10th aspect: The whole personal top members list and the awards shows. Well, this was without a doubt the biggest trendy in the blog section!! Many awards called “yournickhere awards” took the control of many blogs. Meanwhile, in other blogs, the “my personal top members list” crowned some of the most popular members. What comes next for 2008 in the blogs’ section?