RjainXIV 2023-11-23 05:45:50

As someone who was here since around 2001, hearing someone be nostalgic about 2012-2018 Newgrounds is kind of funny.

fuckoffasshole 2023-11-23 05:55:29

I started browsing NG actively around 2009-2010. Back then the NG already felt like it had best days behind. Already back then the NG lore was vast and incredible. But beside discovering the vast back catalog of NG, you still had not only incredible daily content for both games and animations, but also interesting creative personalities, which you wanted to follow.

For me the end happened with Africa Dudes collab - I even wrote a review there, which sums up my feelings. When I created an account in late 2014, it wasn't to be active on NG, but because I wanted to read Stamper's rants under his art again, which I couldn't do without having an account, because his art was A+ rated, which meant that it was hidden from lurkers. Already back then I treated it more as a nostalgia and a farewell matter.

Since then, the NG got some fresh blood, but frankly, I don't really care. I started collecting medals, because I thought that I will be the best medal hunter again, and surprise surprise, I was right. Nowadays I'm mostly on NG for some online games, and I don't care about anything else tbh.

There are still some interesting people, and you can compare how NG changed with the Faces of NG submission, as well as the new version, which is a tribute to the original. There is still good stuff here, but there's no point in treating NG seriously, and more importantly, social media are cancer, and internet communities are awful. Everywhere, whether it's 4chan or RYM, it just bleh.

Also, NG has probably the worst taste in music in the world. I have never seen more pedestrian, dumber, and shittier taste in music, than on NG. It's like people here are beyond super retarded. For that alone, I will never treat NG seriously. Ever.

fuckoffasshole 2023-11-23 06:08:35

@guyfromKillerRAT Lack of ambition is one thing, but the worse is their complete lack of sense of humor, and worse of all, being an internet police, telling you what kind of opinions you can have, and reporting "inappropriate people". I make shitty music, but that's okay, because I upload stuff for myself, alas I delete some stuff from time to time, if I get bored with something, or want to reduce the amount of uploads, because I don't really want to share my stuff with NG, I just wanted to have "anything" in my profile, so it doesn't look empty, and with music, some kind of calendar to see the passing of years.

About the taste of NG, it seems like people here enjoy awful overproduced garbage. Whether it's techno/rave, or even pseuo-heavy metal music, no matter the genre, it sounds so plastic here, so lifeless, so terrible, like it was done by a robot. I will never understand the appeal, and I can only puke on those who think otherwise.

DocDiegO 2023-11-23 07:09:57

I actually share you feelings with how much the internet has changed over the past decade, it's more individualist, comsumtionist, more about the numbers and rep than actual connection and the people is now more volatile than before. The death of General was a nasty blow, clearly a symptom of the current climate and it's a miracle that NG didn't disappeared like other places on the internet because it's also very difficult to manage when people are walking bombs and and lightning speed Missinformation.

The UI changes is thanks to smartphone, all the places has lost their design and customization in order properly be displayed and work in those devices. It sucks, but what can we do.

phenorax 2023-11-23 07:48:26

Yeah,i miss when the vote things were customised and shiny.Also since i was banned in 2017 i kind of stopped caring in coming in here as well.You guys are right,these losers have no sense of humour anymore.I am shocked to hear that General and Politics has been killed.What the hell happened man?

I think is that the badmins and shitmods could not be arsed to moderate them anymore and they were too scared of what the ´´wholesome 100 chungy wungies´´ newcomers would think of them if they saw NG being NG instead of a over-glorified daycare for Piece of shit parented brats.

Could you also show me what the Audio Tracks you are talking about? I occasionally trawl through the undiscovered artists and look through if theres some sleeper hits by some underappreciated artist or just report shitposts and Radiorips.

Cyberdevil 2023-11-23 08:57:55

Just imagine if you'd been introduced to this place before the 2012 redesign though, you'd still be missing that. :) Considering how the UI seems to generally be getting worse and worse - or rather streamlined/slimmed down for ease of use of maintenance - with certain loss of character and charm as a byproduct of such intentions - it's interesting to look back at how it was when I signed up, when initially the layout was actually pretty crappy, and improved gradually overtime, and the servers became more stable, the downtime went down, everything got bigger and better and in 2007 I feel like at least design-wise The Grounds hit their pinnacle... maybe more so with ease of use than with the visual elements though. The 2012 design was really visual, the 2007 was more so just cool, and new, and instead of dropdowns we had multiple menus so you constantly had an overview over everything... I miss that one, but not so much now, a certain number of changes in maybe you just started accepting change as the natural progressor; look back at what was better more as nostalgia than as something that actually WAS better, in a lot of ways the site does keep improving. It's faster. The filters are killer - you can find anything you want when you make the effort to. I don't miss the dropdowns at all. I do miss the pagination though. I miss the extra visuals too, and I hope we get those back. It is possible to make userscripts that can modify elements like this according to your own preference though, and have the site look just like it did in 2012 just for you - or anyone else who uses them, would be cool if somebody makes the effort to make something like that, it'd be a lot of work...

Anyway as for Flash: I'm proud of Ruffle. It sucks that Adobe killed the original plugin, but NG went beyond expectations in managing to maintain the content of old at least, while other contemporaries just shut down, or moved to HTML5 entirely, we actually kept Flash going! We're leading the charge. Other sites are using an NG product to keep the legacy alive - I have it embedded on my own site also. Seemed inevitable at first you'd have to resort to some wonky workarounds, play things offline, download an archive, use older Flash plugins without the end-of-life thing incorporated, try to embed those - security issues ensue instead - compatibility's not guaranteed - newer stuff stops working, the fact that we actually have direct browser emulation like we do now for old content is amazing IMO. Against all odds. I'm proud of that. Hope Ruffle just keeps getting better too.

In a lot of areas NG still keeps pioneering - with Swivel too - with our new APIs, it's awesome to see.

The closing of General though: I agree. Nothing good about that. Maybe a few more users chime in as Supporters, and chat on the Lounge instead, but it's really not the same thing... not in the same sprit of community and all either. P-Bot and news are suddenly way more commented on, but the userbase is fractioned, I don't recognize most of those who post there now...

I still love this place, but some things could be better for sure.

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-23 09:24:13

I completely agree. This site is complete and utter shit compared to what it once was. As someone who's been here since the early days (albeit with a different account), I think its safe to say this site died the day or shortly before the Tumblr migration happened. Now the site is a woke mess that shits on creativity and rewards mediocrity, a site where seemingly anything and anything gets allowed onto it in vain attempt to keep peoples interest, when back in the day, you had to prove your worth not to get blammed. Nowadays, you're lucky to blam a blank Scratch template someone downloaded off of the internet and put a single picture into. The site, and many of the people on it, have become the very thing they once used to mock, and it breaks my damn heart to see all of this happen, not to mention all the awesome flash games and animations that disappeared due to DMCA's and other such nonsense.

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-23 09:25:22

@fuckoffasshole I agree

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-23 09:26:44

@fuckoffasshole @guyfromKillerRAT If only they hosted two seperate versions of the site (One thats like the old days and one thats what we have now) so we could choose which one we actually want to use.

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-23 09:30:03

@fuckoffasshole I wholeheartedly agree. Modern day Newgrounds is a corrupted, festering cesspool of overproduced woke mediocrity. Every time I try to give this site another chance, it stabs me in the heart with a corroded dagger radiating with the darkest, most cringe inducing magic one could conjure.

nevermindnirvana 2023-11-23 11:55:45

No more time for people to talk shit anymore. Newgrounds don’t like drama chat, trollers or people having fun. Only to accept it nowadays

TheShokBlok 2023-11-23 14:37:32

I wasn't able to get the full old NG experience so idk much about that.

But nowadays I still feel kinda sad about general closing, I feel like a lot of people disappeared along with it, while also making interaction with other users less approachable.

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-23 14:54:19

@guyfromKillerRAT Exactomondo. I still remember the days when there were porn ads everywhere on the site and the rate at which people posted their own parodies was slow enough for it to still be shocking / controversial whenever it happened. But sooner or later, it became the norm and when the whole Tumblr thing happened, that basically sealed this sites fate as another porn gallery. I dare you to look at your followed accounts recent activity, I guarantee you 99% of it will be porn or suggestive imagery. Or hell, just go to the art portal in general. You'll be lucky to find a normal piece of art.

poopypeter 2023-11-23 15:31:56

Thank you for laughing at all my shitty posts love you guys

SignMyPetition 2023-11-23 19:56:31

Damn. To be honest, I felt the same way. Sure, Discord is there, but what for? People in Discord ain't as good as in General, and it never will be. Newgrounds is the pinnacle of social media. It just isn't the same without our beloved Forum. I may still be new here, but that doesn't mean that I can't socialize or create fun memories with everyone here.

Edit: I tried to ask Tom to open the Forum every once in a while. I don't know if he'll just ignore or actually grant my plead. I don't know anymore. I miss the Forum.

Mindblade16 2023-11-24 10:37:06

I envision the creation of "Newgrounds Hel." This is a proposed new
function of the site that uses a Large Language Model trained on Text-Based Toxicity. The Toxicity-Trained LLM places the Toxic Users in "Newgrounds Hel" as "Hel" is the proper spelling of "Hell." This is a copy of Newgrounds that is only different in one way. Users placed in this version cannot communicate with anyone other than others placed there as well. This is a Shadowban. It doesn't exist. The admins deny involvement. Don't listen to the Conspiracy Theorist. Newgrounds Hel does not exist. The level of Toxicity has gone down. Certain people seem to have dropped off. Maybe they just got bored...

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-24 14:16:14

@SignMyPetition @guyfromKillerRAT The same scenario plays out every time I try using Discord as well.

ProjectAnarchy 2023-11-25 05:24:27

@Cyberdevil @guyfromKillerRAT This.

Cyberdevil 2023-11-25 14:28:52

True that, less soul but... certain usability improvements too. I guess it all comes down to what you prioratize; how you define 'better'. For a lot of people that might be just a faster load time. Seems peoples aesthetic ideals change too, for a while everything was getting squired and flat, seems rounded corners and gradients are coming back again, so maybe visual design will too...

I do wish we had a balance. You could remove visual elements as resolution gets scaled down too, and just streamline for mobile resolutions. But a lot of the streamlining does feel like an effort to make the site more PG as well, like less guns, less tanks... at least we still have the level icons...

Hell yeah. I miss Fireworks too, they bought it along with Flash and Dreamweaver when they bought Macromedia, but ended up killing in favor of Photoshop. It was (and is, I still use it) the best digital design software to ever have been made IMHO.

That definitely is a danger... maybe they'll try opening it again when the userbase has shifted a bit; see if it can start again without the same drama. But then what's the point. It's not so easy to regain trust. If you kill free speech once - or alter it/limit it/somehow show that it's no longer a priority... the fear of things shutting down again will always be there. Users will censor themselves if naught else. Unfortunately General probably won't ever be exactly as free reign as it used to be, if it ever does come back. I'm still hoping though.

Mejson 2023-11-27 02:08:45

Well, I hope you won't forget.

Newgrounds looks like it used to be.

I'm sorry you're sad, good luck.