OG's of DATALOUNGE

I started lurking in 1999 and posting in 2000. There was already quite a crowd by then, and the gossip that got dished in here was much more raw and more plentiful than today. But then the Internet itself was so young then, too.

Not from the beginning, but probably a year into DL. I lurked until 2003.

Off and on since a few months before 9/11.

A friend had been telling me about it for about a year and then the EW mention happened around the same tone so I looked it up. However, I missed the Red Dragon Cheese thread.

Everyone here isn't male, OP.

I guess I’m a relative latecomer. I was lured over by a “Defamer” link in 2005.

About 20 years, maybe more. I love DL.

I think I’ve been here more or less since the summer of 2001. I definitely remember the WTC being an insatiable bottom.

I took a break during the most intense parts of med school, and it wasn’t until COVID, which was during the first half of residency and fellowship that I came back on the reg.

R5 is right, there were plenty of women among the majority demographic of gay men, back in the early days. For a while there was a DL subforum/category for “Lesbian Issues.”

I’ve been here since the late 90s - probably ‘98 or ‘99. Found my way here from the Is He/She Gay message boards. Back then it wasn’t a single forum, there were multiple topic pages - does anyone remember what they were? I think there was a dedicated lesbian one. Entertainment/celebrity gossip got the most traction but there were also pages for politics and health. Maybe travel?

And of course it was so much better last year

[Quote] when I worked in the business

🤔

What is "the business?"

I started visiting in 2002. I didn't start posting until about 10 or so years later. One of the first posts I saw was the notorious 9/11 thread, and Let's Roll Cinnamon Rolls.

I can barely remember last week, but I know I started on DL sometime after Prancing Ponies and before the 2008 election, so probably twenty years.

How is Let’s Roll Cinnamon Rolls doing in this Trump economy?

[Quote] What is "the business?"

Think it’s similar to “the works” or “the high hat.”

Since 1995. I'm 61.

That's not very helpful, R17.

Since 2002. A bunch of posters joined around that time, because DL got mentioned in Entertainment Weekly. That’s where the “Concerned Team Mom” signature you will see here came from-it was originally “Concerned EW Reading Soccer Mom.”

I think my first time here was around 98-99, another one coming from IHSG. I got away for a number of years, but I keep coming back.

I’ve been here since around 2000. I’d say intermittently because there might only be two or three topics at any one time that catch my interest. I’m 72, so I was already old when I arrived on the scene.

I started before the end of the 20th century, because I remember Y2K talk here. I came because Michael Musto posted something about the Datalounge in one of his articles, back in the day. It was indeed much juicier back then, with more Hollywood staff/insiders posting things, and more gay gossip. I think the growth of the internet has lessened the need for that type of content here - it's already been posted everywhere!

Like several other posters, I came here for the first time in 1999 from IHSG and lurked for a year or two before I started participating. Drifted away around 2014, then came back as a regular reader/poster around 2021. I was 33 in 1999, and just turned 59 a few weeks ago.

You told me Mitch Pileggi was a big bush supporter and major pussy hound and I collapsed and have malingered ever since.

I honestly cannot remember, but know it was before 9-11.

1997, but just lurked for years. My first post/thread wasn’t until 2005, probably March of that year and I rarely posted for several more years after that.

I've been haunting this place since the fall of 2000, the era of a, I'm 59 now.

Not original gangster but I’ve been posting since I was 19 in 2009.

"the era of a"

I'm old, dammit!

"the era of a"

Jesus...

Is E d w i n a a naughty word here?

You can’t post that name r32

R33, how odd, but, this is Datalounge, oddness abounds.

It is which really pisses me off given my affection for that dear old cartoon matchmaker.

I was surfing DL into the new Millennium: 1999. I didn’t find my voice for a while and I was still working then so not posting. DL was great on the screen at the office less the occasional unannounced NSFW link until I sort-of retired in 2018. As one of about forty paying customers now who aren’t bots or chaos agents, I feel a greater need to contribute lest I check in and find no nothing new.

DL was a godsend during COVID.

I'm pretty sure I was here in 2000.

I got here from some other site called something to the effect of "Is He Gay or Not" or something like that.

My friend and I were looking for evidence that Eddie Cahill (then guest-starring on "Friends") was, well, gay or not.

We had a friend who SWORE he fucked him in the late 90s before he was working regularly.

Turns out there was another thread on here with a bunch of guys who swore they had him too.

It was all the proof we needed...lol.

I started here somewhere between 97 and 99, but I'm not sure which year exactly. It all runs together after a while. To be quite honest, I'm not even sure how I found it.

My office was late to getting computers for staff, so I probably started visiting here in 1998 or ‘99 or so, was happy to share any opinions I had that I considered pertinent, and sometimes I shared gossip I had heard, generally second hand. Stuff I knew first hand I mostly kept to myself (counter to rumor, my generation of publicists often didn’t tell most of what they knew. This was even truer of older Hollywood hands who worked during the classic period. They knew where ALL the bodies were buried but would only offer up nuggets when flirting, bragging or drunk.

My old moniker for a long while was based on a character from Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge,” played by Clifton Webb in the 1946 movie version. I got the idea because there used to be a guy that styled himself ‘Waldo Lydecker’ after another Webb Oscar nominated role in “Laura.”

Anyway, I’ve dropped in and out of Data Lounge over the years, sometimes I would keep it open on my computer all day but there were periods when things got very dull here and I’d stay away for months or even years. Just lately I’ve come back more frequently, often a few times a day, mostly to share opinions about movies, Broadway shows, TV series.

As for celebrity gossip, like many oldsters, I think most of today’s “celebrities” are cheap, attention-seeking hacks, and the only gossip I know is 30 years old or more, and about the last generation of movie stars that have any real claim to the name. But I’m not as cranky as I sound, I keep my hand in, go to the movies frequently and still have an eye for a cute male starlet.

I started 2002 or 2003 with a few years break ~ 2007/8. I'm pretty sure I learned about DL from Michael K on D-Listed.

I'm 60 now and it's amusing that we now have so many threads about getting older (non-life threatening, non-debilitating conditions is the latest edition) and I really appreciate them and have found them helpful (I have photopsia! Though I didn't know what it was called)

Many of you shut off your computer with your big toe.

I've been here since the late 1990s.

When I discovered that other little boys made aluminum foil Wonder Wonder bracelets, I knew I was home and had found my people.

I've been here on and off since the late 90s as well, and I'll be 53 at the end of the month. Formerly authenticated, but that seems to have gone by the wayside for most.

First found DataLounge in May 2002 while doing a Google search. Spent several hours that night reading various thread. Great gossip. Great dish.

But I figured it was just a one night indulgence and I'd never be back again. I didn't even make note of the website name.

Next day, I couldn't stop thinking about some of the juicy gossip I'd read. Loved that there was a gay take on these things. And such insider info. I wanted to go back and see if there was any follow-up to some of the threads I'd read.

Since I didn't know the name of the site, I had to recreate the original Google search with multiple tangents that ultimately landed me here. Place was as fun the second night as the first. I quickly bookmarked it and have been coming here daily ever since.

Not an OG but have been here I guess since early 2002, before the EW mention. It was after 9/11 but the threads were still very active, the Let’s Roll Cinnamon Rolls bit was in full swing.

I pretty much looked the same but there was a filter for Politics and probably Gossip or Entertainment. There were only two choices. I never filtered the content because I likely correctly intuited it wouidn’t work anyone.

People were saying it was over even back then. It’s been my gateway to the internet ever since.

*It pretty much looked the same. I, of course, still look 35.

I remember when soap threads were banned, red tags were entertainment, and there were separate gossip and politics threads. I miss those days.

Amazingly, everyone still looks 10 years younger.

[quote] I’ve been here since the late 90s - probably ‘98 or ‘99. Found my way here from the Is He/She Gay message boards.

Hah! Same here R10.

[quote]I remember when soap threads were banned, red tags were entertainment, and there were separate gossip and politics threads. I miss those days.

We ARE big. It's the pictures that got small.

Some of us still look 20 years younger.

Pope Buck I was the funniest DL regular ever.

I’ve been here since the beginning. We originated on the Is He/She Gay? Message Board. I was 30. I turned 60 this year. I’ve wasted half of my life here! I don’t post with my authenticated name often because there are more nasty posters than there used to be, but there are also good people, too.

[quote]I want to know the people who have been posting here since the beginning.

[quote]Of course, I'm just waiting for the rude responses but if you are one of the originals make yourselves known men.

You're rather a demanding old cunt, aren't you? And then you state you're waiting for the rude comments.

You started it, Carpetbagger.

I found this place in 2004 searching for some political info. This place was frenzied! You could not keep up with the hundreds of threads and comments—and the red tags! I loved the WW sidebar which I made a few times. The wit was off the charts.

This place has changed me—some for the worse (I’m much more bitchy and cynical) and for the better (critical thinking skills improved.)

I know a girl who posted on Datalounge in 1999. AND THEN SHE DIED!

I've been here since 1999 and I just turned 34!

I've been here since 2013, and I have been a much-beloved, respected, and even cherished contributor right from day 1.

I stumbled upon this lunacy in 2018/2019 after I found a thread on Gay Male Soap Opera stars (Russell Todd, can you imagine) and the much reported sudden death of Phillip McKeon. I didn't figure out how to pay my $1.99 or actually post until 2024!

I came here shortly before 9/11 and I remember" the sky was so blue that day".

Much like Cheryl herself, R59.

I still can not unsee Tubgirl.

Well, if we ever have a DataLounge reunion, Christian Bale will undoubtedly skip it. He's such an asshole.

I first arrived around 2001 via my job at the power company call center where I was relentlessly bored. I left for a few years but came came in the 2010s.

I'm 61 but easily pass for 22.

I started lurking then posting in 2000. I remember David E., Blue Agave, shobe, Libby, and all the old gang.

And I remember when we had a separate "Flames and Freaks" section for trolls

R61, I think I might have actually started “the sky was so blue that day” when I posted about my escape from the WTC on 9/11.

I was 35 then, 58 now. I discovered DL a few years before that.

I just got here! I wasn't allowed on the internet unsupervised until I turned 18.

I don’t know how soon after DL’s launch I became an habituae, but I have a memory of an old layouts, where you could only access maybe twenty posts to a given thread before directed to an ensuing page.

This thread made me fall in love with Datalounge

How soon after DL started did we see posters who would point out to an OP the folly of his or her inappropriate apostrophes?

Pardon me miss, but with all due respect. I have problems of my own.

R71 The first post and the second responder on that thread.

^YES, r71, 2 seconds. And there was no Spellcheck/Grammerly. For years, I only lurked and posted simple sentences due to grammar intimidation.

I've only been here since 2004, but before that I used to post on ASG and I bet some of you bitches did too.

Somehow I missed IHSG.

Was a very early adopter

Late 90’s

There were separate sections for politics, etc. “Wit and Wisdoms” were prominently and hilariously highlighted.

August of 2001 for me and I was 20!

I believe I missed some of the shit that was brought up here for years like The Sumerian Housewives, but this place was a saving grace during 9/11.

The soap I watched, One Life To Live was hugely popular here then, so that was cool.

But 9/11 formed some kind of eternal bond with this site that I cannot shake, even when I hate it or the posters hate me!

R74. For FUCK'S sake!! GRAMMARLY!

R70, that's about when I started. I also love that thread.

I miss the days when the first response to any thread no matter what the subject was incredibly bitchy often accusing the OP of being a CUNT.

Some of us remember the real Cheryl.

Also, DL swag. I still have the ballcap.

Op you’re a fucking liar.

I came here because MLOP on the All That Chat website was talking about how sick this place was.

I have been posting here for about 25 years…man those were the days

R6 same for me. My work was boring most of the time and our online activities weren't really policed so I spent a lot of time reading Gawker, Defamer, etc. Once I navigated to DL via a Defamer post (I think it was about Linds Lohan), I was in bitchy gossip heaven. Still love it here to this day.

DL was absolutely a godsend during COVID, R36. I kept a tab open constantly so I could switch back and forth from actual work to the various threads.

I've been here almost from the beginning. Maybe five years into it. I wasn't a paid member back then. I simply adjusted to Prime Time when it was on. I remember the old website, too. ant to say we really got some good gossip back then. We were also incredibly bitchy. Seriously. And there were grammar police. And there were so many distinct, wonderful personalities that gave DL a real identity and uniqueness.

JE SUIS LEGACY!

I became a subscriber in 2006, so probably lurking a year before that. I too was lured by Defamer. Remember "Butterscotch Stallion"?

Friends talked about it in late 90s - lurked 2001 or so - began posting 2002.

I've taken time off - up to 6 months - but I keep coming back.

23 fucking years - yikes.

I started posting in 2000. I'm now 51.

A latecomer, also in my forties like OP, I arrived in 2010.

DL is the longest relationship I've been in.

Been posting since 2005

I still remember where TheVoiceoftheNight got his username.

That was a looonnnggg time ago. I’m glad he’s still around.

I don’t remember people stalking peoples posting history like people do now even when trolldar was a thing. That defacto person did a number on some posters. I guess the retirees logged in everyday and started accusing everybody of being him. Now it’s a become a culture of tracking people’s comments. It’s annoying.

Yes, I was also here when Voice of the Night adopted his moniker. I thought it was a rather clever moniker to take one.

I guess we should say kudos to Al Holden for coming up with the name that inspired Voice of the Night.

I loved making wit and wisdom back in the day - I felt like a STAH!

This has been such a community for me.

TWOP, Defamer, Gawker, Jezebel, IMDB boards all ☠️ and none of them meant as much.

My pussy is wet.

R97, that thread on the demise of TWOP was classic DL.

I've been here since 2011. I think it was a Dlisted link that sent me here.

R89 HA! Owen Wilson! Damn I loved Defamer.

[Quote] That defacto person

So desperate for attention you even invoke yourself, r95. Ok are you happy now? You got attention.

I'm guessing I've been here since 1995. That would be thirty years. WOW!

Of all the old posters, I miss David Ehrenstein the most. He was reliably crazy, opinionated, and fun. His infamous "Friday night meltdowns" were a work of wonder. Sadly, we lost him this March.

[quote]Not an OG but have been here I guess since early 2002, before the EW mention. It was after 9/11 but the threads were still very active, the Let’s Roll Cinnamon Rolls bit was in full swing.

Same. 9/11 had happened and the Widow Beamer was EVERYWHERE. I was thrilled to find a like-minded community of cunts who saw through that opportunistic bitch.

I do miss opening DL and looking to see if any of my comments made Wit & Wisdom in the sidebar rail.

I can also tell you when I posted my first "Let Me Tell You About Deb Messing" thread — it was late 2005 or early 2006. I was on an extended business trip and bored out of my mind. It grew from there.

Probably not one person in 10,000 today could tell you who Joan Steffend was, but I used to amuse myself posting as the incredibly embittered Joan, drunk on Yellow Tail and incredibly jealous of any other home improvement show with a budget, no matter how small. Joan would dig in dumpsters to find things like a broken old school desk which she would turn into a "Kicky Santa Fe-style Study Nook" before getting drunk again.

I was also on DL the night Liza did her Home Shopping appearance and was shrieking "TURN THIS ON! TURN THIS ON!" Those who did made a party in the thread.

I’m not an OG, I’m a relative latecomer. I started here in 2011 and soon after that posted my first thread, a game-thread about actors with confusingly similar names attending a fictional party. You know, “Tony Franciscus and Tony Franciosa just called — they will be there!”

I remember the drama surrounding Obama’s reelection campaign and the liveposting during the debate when Obama phoned in his performance, and you could almost FEEL the datalounge hyperventilating.

After that some of my favorite threads were several on Marilyn that went hilariously off the rails, and the first (afaik) dead bodies on Everest threads (2013?) which oddly stayed quite focused.

In 2016 I ran a thread about what online gambling was saying about the election.

I also first learned about the whole delicious Anna Delvey story from the DL and I still recall sipping a martini after work and enjoying that thread, then switching over to NY Magazine.

I know I’m a new poster in comparison to many, but I can’t remember what it was like before DL — positively antediluvian!

I’ve been here since around 2005 or 6. When ever the prancing ponies were all the rage.

Didn’t know that!! R20

Same as R1. Started posting around 1999. I was 28 😕

2001. I was looking for gay social sites on my first computer: a hand-me-down Apple a wealthy friend gave me.

R70 mine was “Claire” and the damned bread pudding

I believe I was the one that introduced/encouraged the use of "You fat whore!"

(which was something a friend used to say all the time.....regardless of whether one was fat or not)

I recall blow outs between authenticated posters, like Judy “pills” and Justin and such

ElderLez, are you 'Ellen From Iowa'?

R112 - Judy Pills was a trainwreck. just batshit insane. Talking about helicopters over his house and threatening suicide.

I didn't enjoy reading all that. Felt like I was unwanted participant in a suicide / mental health hotline number.

[quote] I guess we should say kudos to Al Holden for coming up with the name that inspired Voice of the Night.

Moment of silence for Nate Marston. I’m glad he’s free of his demons now.

That just unlocked a memory, of the first long, dishy soap thread we had, at least during my time here. It really ramped up during OLTL’s week of live episodes in 2002. We were all having a blast watching together, and it was beautiful because the week culminated with the show winning its first (and I think only) Best Drama.

It may be gone, but if DL had an official soap, it was OLTL.

I’m also having a hard time deciding my favorite red tag memory. I wasn’t present for it, but there was the time (very early on, it was a low number tag) where a racist troll got tagged….which also resulted in White Belt Man’s posts given the same tag. And suddenly, we were calling him White Sheet Man. There was also a thread, again in the early days, where someone posted a picture (this was before even camera phones, so it was a bigger deal) of a twunkish torso and (boxer brief clad) pelvis. There were a bunch of posts telling the guy how hot he was, and then WHAM half the thread was red tagged. Someone said something like “OP, take a look at this thread and ask yourself what you think about yourself.”

Helen Lawson, bitches. The original OG!

R115 Ah, Nathaniel was so lovely and beefy.....sad his demons got the best of him.

Oh, gosh

Datalounge was really great during the last golden age of broadcast television. Most people were watching the shows at the same home, so it had a lot of real time reactions to plot twists and sassy repartee.

whet rumpy??

VOTN wore a purple safety helmet to ride the bus and they will never be allowed to forget.

Unless, this my afternoon dementia kicking in…

“Purple?”

Miss R121, what kind of homosexual are you? That safety helmet was *mauve*!

[quote] Found my way here from the Is He/She Gay message boards.

So I guess you can always go back there.

“The business” is obviously prostitution. Always has been.

The "I'm in Love With my Father-in-Law" was the Gold Standard for an Elaborate Scenario Thread.

Sordid, tawdry, addicting, preposterous.

Hundreds of DLers bit hook, line and sinker for it and hung on for a wild ride.

Then the OP, with a deft, subtle shift in tone let us know he was pulling our leg.

It was glorious.

The OP/OG eventually came forward and took a bow.

I asked him for more installments of the plot. He politely stated he had "retired those characters".

It was glorious.

Whenever I’m near the Port Authority, I keep a lookout for Denny and his suitcase.

I usually manage to get Autumn Harvest for the price of a Once Around the Garden.

Can someone let Griselda Medina out of her drawer?

Apparently the ancient CURIOUS caps queen.

I think I found myself here like R10 also

Price Leatherbarrow wore the purple safety helmet. He was always fun. I read he is no longer with us.

At the other end of the spectrum we had Luca Magnotta. I missed most of that one. I vaguely recall being suspicious and curious but having some big social obligation. By the time I came back it was all over and a bunch of threads had been erased.

I missed the meat of the story, so to speak.

Ah yes, Umpy.

So inappropriate but a few of his "questions" and the responses had me laughing until I was sore, and the "Let's Be" thread parodying him was *chef's kiss*

Dustin, dear. You had your own drama.

Wund is Love.

R131 - That I did! Life is much better now.

I am happy for you.

We had some good straight women as well. Lynn, for one.

I used to love when the Webmaster would start a thread or reply on a thread.

The red tags were fun too-“tubgurl fangurl;” “scat and other childish bullshit;” etc.

I printed out one of my featured W&Ws. I couldn’t show it to anyone.

Felt like I should grasp it to my bosom and wander the streets City on Fire. I pitied Glenn.

I loved when WW's were on the front "page." I was proud of mine.

"Price Leatherbarrow... I read he is no longer with us"

Do you mean.....?

It was around 2002 or 2003

R111. Sure you were...

I am not an OG, but a second generation for sure. I somehow find this site in 2004 because of the Marcia Cross lesbian gossip that was all the rage for two seconds.

I remember this not because I cared at all about Marcia Cross (I didn't then or now), but because I was actually 24 at the time DL had an ongoing joke handle that was "24 and 2 Hot 2 Be Believed".

And I 24! And I was insanely hot!

It was like a siren song calling me home...to my inevitable DL death.

R105, remember your first thread! It was clever, and clever DLers kept it going for a while.

R113 sorry, neither Ellen nor Iowa

I've been here since 2000 - 2001 and still have old posts from that period saved to my own personal DL archive. The site back then had a distinctive red and purple color scheme. (I seem to recall that users could customize this.) The most striking thing about vintage DataLounge was the incredible pace. There was nothing like it-- not even Usenet moved that fast! It was the sharpest, funniest, most outrageous online community I have ever seen. I've spent countless hours here laughing my ass off. DL today is very slow and a more than a little tame in comparison to its glorious peak, but I guess we're all getting on a bit now.

I recall the color themes you could choose

arrived here looking for real names of gay porn "stars"

R102 Don’t play yourself now. You still repeating that same lie and you bout 70.

I discovered a couple of those

I wasn’t authenticated at the time, but I was the one who started the infamous “Cash Bars at Weddings” thread. I had just returned from a wedding reception the night before where there was an open bar and many of the guests had imbibed themselves into a messy stupor. All I did was was make an innocent observation that while having a cash bar at a wedding should be considered tacky, they have some utility if it can mitigate the possibility of the reception turning into a drunken frat party.

I introduced the gaggle of queens/Diana Scream video. Muriel made the original thread go into the ether but while I was searching for it I found this thread where DL’s collective memory pulled together a bunch of threads from the past.

The cash bars thread is classic! Thank you for starting it, R150.

Man on land! Man on land! Why are straight me stupid?

[quote]Man on land!

My final year of med school was a year after Michfest went to the Menstrual Hut in the sky. I spent July and August working at hospitals around Michigan.

You have no idea how much I wished it had been a year earlier so I could have attempted to be a MAN ON THE LAND.

Didn't we do threads on Potato bars at some point, when they were a thing? And OMG the guy with the suitcase at the Port Authority! I died when I saw that. Thanks for making me remember him. Umpty was a mess. Didn't he and his cat live with some old lady at one point?

Baked potato bars at weddings. There was a whole sub-genre of DL threads centered around weddings. What was the thread about the lesbian wedding in a backyard in Florida about? The OP admitted years later it was all fabricated but it was very popular for a while.

It wasn’t a baked potato bar at wedding. It was a guy (allegedly) wanting to throw a party and thinking a baked potato bar with a bunch of fun toppings seemed like a blast.

I don’t remember if it was the cash bar thread or not, but we had one that was about trashy weddings, and we had a wedding photographer who had some doozies.

I’ve been mostly lurking - and only occasionally posting - on DL since 1997/1998. I’m turning 50 soon. I particularly enjoyed the wit, wisdom, and bitchery of tennis, US politics, Old Hollywood, and award season threads. Some practical advice threads about a range of topics were also quite useful. The empathy shown in threads about ill DLers (e.g. OPB/Brian) was quite moving. I hope DL continues for a good while.

Who was the poster that said Tim Walz presents himself as a secret weekend leather queen. It lives in my head rent free. It was so funny how it was stated.

R151 I love you!

Both for the original video and then for the slo-mo one, which never fails to make me laugh.

[quote] Didn't he and his cat live with some old lady at one point?

Was Tammy his roommate's name or his cat's name? I can't remember.

Tammy was the cat.

R139 - yes he's dead. I believe cancer. Someone who knew him wrote about it on the Reddit DL thread.

IIRC, he was relatively young - I think he was early mid-40s by now.

Social media really did a number on most internet message boards - but DL is still limping along, albeit a lesser version of it's former self during its prime.

R163, it’s not like we can revive interest with a foreign baby catalogue.

No, you’ll have to use science and make us something like a bitcoin and we’ll sell it to stupid people who want a coin with a big DL penis. I’ve heard these coins do math so I’m going to trust you to figure the details out on your own. You seem smart.

R164 - A nude calendar of Datalounge posters hosted on ibb?

A 'is he 30 or 60' website with our pics?

Golden Girls unabridged dictionary and anthology?

[quote] DL is still limping along, albeit a lesser version of it's former self during its prime.

Its!

OK, an American ElderGay Adoption Catalogue.

It will have everything - with adoptees streaming witty banter with their Japanese families, taking communal baths with stout old people, trying on Tabbi boots with bunions.

I get to dress as geisha; I want those wood sandals and a bustle in the back.

Whatever became of: BlueAgave, WhiteBeltMan, TequilaMockingbird, SusieLee (who claimed to be a Hollywood insider, with arcane gossip), and the Galloping Gourmet?

[QUOTE]There was a whole sub-genre of DL threads centered around weddings. What was the thread about the lesbian wedding in a backyard in Florida about? The OP admitted years later it was all fabricated but it was very popular for a while.

In addition to the "I'm in Love With my Father-in-Law," the "Lesbian Potluck Wedding" in the backyard thread had everybody going for a while. Of course, DL would believe it's incredibly tacky and collectively said NO! to asking guests to bring a dish. The cheap lesbian trope was too much to resist. I remember some of the advice (no rice, throw bird seed; no to a balloon release because the event would take place in coastal Florida and could hurt marine life). I thought the OP of that one admitted it was an EST in a couple of weeks.

I started that never-ending multiple thread of nuttiness called "Footballers in Love".

I remember a brief period when a daily spate of ESTs would start showing up around 10am eastern time. Turned out it was a group of coworkers competing with each other for the most number of serious responses. The winner's lunch was paid for by the others.

Around 2007, we also the "Help!"I have an Opossum family living in my bathroom drawer" thread that everyone assumed was an EST until the OP posted a photo of the squatters. IIRC, the advice was to keep them comfortable, they'll just move along.

I didn't follow him/thread all that much, but was it determined that Brandon, who provided photos of himself was bi, amd real? He was a goodlooking guy, brunette, with a nice penis.

Was Brandon the Canadian murderer, or am I mixing up two different posters?

Brandon lived in Texas.

You're thinking of the iconic Luka Magnotta. And yes, I'm still convinced he was posting here.

Tell us more about Magnotta please, Voice.

As I recall, he was apprehended shortly afterward.

Some of this is lost to mists of time, but there were a series of posts about both the murder as well as the thing with the kittens even before he'd really hit the news. I just remember that there were an increasing series of posts about someone who either claimed to be him, or was at least hinting very strongly that he was. This kind of built up overnight (EST) one night, and then the following day, he was arrested in Germany, and the posting stopped. This was before the absolute ubiquity of smartphones, so Magnotta was arrested in an internet cafe looking at things about himself. The postings here would have been in the morning in Germany, and they stopped basically as soon as he was arrested. The thread was locked and then deleted shortly thereafter.

I remember there being some speculation that it was either a troll or someone in law enforcement trying to bate him, but honestly, it was too specific.

If you're not familiar with it, google "dead internet theory." It posits that sometime almost 10 years ago (though estimates vary), the number of bots replying to internet forums and on social media reached a tipping point, and since then the majority, or at least an overwhelming number, of internet replies are from bots and not actual people typing out replies on their phones and tablets.

Would explain the massive uptick in trolling on DL in the past decade while the actual number of users declined.

Just a theory!

R178 is a bot!

I'm sorry, I had to.

[quote]law enforcement trying to bate him

Oh, DEAR!

That's an unpleasant autocorrect.

I think getting bated by a law enforcement officer sounds pretty pleasant myself, VOTN!

Another one who disappeared was Peg, the GW Bush Republican troll.

I was here for that Magnotta thing. It was the creepiest thing I've ever experienced on DL. I totally believe it was him. It was even creepier than the Justin versus EDB plotline, war/obsession/DL meet-up plotline, which ran for years on here.

Anyone else remember Left is Right?

Straight woman (but a cool one) who I want to say lived in Austin?

R168, Blue Agave died, there was a thread about him when he passed. I think Susie Lee died, too

[quote] I didn't figure out how to pay my $1.99 or actually post until 2024!

When did it paying to post become a requirement? After many years of posting, I only started paying a few years ago.

What was the name of the woman who, as I recall, was determined to be the daughter of Kurt Kasznar & provided a lot of insider gossip? And any idea when she reigned here?

That was Susie Lee, r187.

[QUOTE]When did it paying to post become a requirement?

When Primetime became permanent.

Thanks, R188, but what were the effects of Primetime becoming permanent?

I miss Magdalena, she had great gossip on the Wachowskis and Christian Bale.

We have far fewer right-wing troll attacks, but it's driven traffic down substantially, r189.

I just read the Datalounge article on Wikipedia and it says it started in May of 1995, so I must have joined that summer. I have strong memories of reading it when I was in the first apartment in which I had my own room, and that would have been summer of 95. Wow, how time flies. I in college, super young and had only been out for a year. I probably came across it via Out.com, which in those days was connected to DL somehow.

I'll be 51 next month.

I miss the Skincare woman - and the dominatrix.

Also haven't seen ShinjukuBaby in a long time.

AYB left a long time ago - he's actually had some success with his painting and art work.

Susie Lee was real and yes Blue Agave died a while ago.

[quote] what were the effects of Primetime becoming permanent?

Cheapskates like myself held out waiting to see if primetime would lift, like it usually did. During primetimes DL would slow down to a crawl with very few relies, judging by how slowly threads moved on the front page and new threads were added. Eventually, a good number of the cheapskates (including me) apparently accepted defeat and started paying to post. I suppose some people never joined on principle, not wanting to pay for what was previously free.

[quote] I just read the Datalounge article on Wikipedia and it says it started in May of 1995, so I must have joined that summer.

I was on AOL and its gay chat rooms in 1995. Did DL have images or was it just text at the beginning? Modems were pretty slow

[quote] AYB left a long time ago

Are you sure about that?

R197 - I was actually friends with him for a few years - he came to stay with me once. But we fell out of touch. I don't see anyone posting here who sounds like him. God - that was over 15 years ago??

But, R195 the 'pay to post' edict only came down a few years ago. Long after Susie Lee left us.

indeed, even after sara lee

Didn't AYB go hard right a few years ago? Pro-Brexit and pro-Trump, very "anti-woke." Am I misremembering that?

I don't think I'm a OG, but I found DL by accident through 2 guys named Tom and Lorenzo. About 2007. Lol, I love coming here and I know you all won't like it, but I do love coming here.

I can't imagine a time I wasn't spending all my spare time on Datalounge.

R201 - more anti-establishment of any kind. Never far right. He hated Tories, Thatcherism, etc.

I've been here since 2000, since I was in my early 20s. I've always appreciated the snark and biting wit, but of course there was more of it in the early days. No other place has ever been like DL. Of course, online forums were huge back in the 2000s before social media took over and we don't have nearly as much traffic here. I was here for the original 9/11 thread, and posted on it that night after I got home from walking almost 50 blocks back to my apartment. The phone lines were down and that thread was a way to be "connected," so to speak. I'll never forget it.

On a lighter note the original Helen Lawson thread, "What Was Your Favorite Helen Lawson Show?" was one of the funniest goddamn things I have ever read in my life. I wish it were archived.

I posted some of my reminisces of David Eherenstein on the recent thread about his death. He was THE bitter, misanthropic eldergay of all time.

So true R 203. I listen to 70s music and I'm holding my Son in Laws moms dog, because her husband is in the hospital. She's a rescue dog and needs a lot of attention. So, I'm sitting here drinking and rocking her, while I'm on DL.

Squirrels

Death

Some of my favorite threads - Dude who adopted the Darfur Orphan by mail and his letters to the DO were sooo good. Also Lordes and Rocco as kids talking about their upbringing

Who’s old and crusty enough to remember “Star and Al’s Wedding: The Marriage of Bigaro”?

Omg R209

I envy some of you for your memory on dates and places. Definitely here before 9/11, cause I remember those threads. So maybe 2000? But anyway, still love it. As we all know, it was SOOOO MUCH BETTER before, but really, it kind of was livelier and more dynamic. Still love it though.

[quote]Who’s old and crusty enough to remember “Star and Al’s Wedding: The Marriage of Bigaro”?

Me.

That may just be the finest title we've ever come up with.

[quote] On a lighter note the original Helen Lawson thread, "What Was Your Favorite Helen Lawson Show?"

I still remember a thread about Helen's Sesame Street appearance (and subsequent ban) that was pure gold.

Whenever I see 'Al' I read it as AI - artificial intelligence. Sign of the times I guess.

I literally read the Datelounge on a web tv at first

So many old threads I wish I’d saved. My favorite was one titled “(something, I forget) For The Ehrenstein-Obsessed” which the OP intended as a continuing salvo in some kind of ongoing pie fight with Our David.

And I still don’t understand how it happened but someone replied early on, in character, as Nellie Oleson from Walnut Grove (Little House) and I chimed in as Harriet, her harridan of a mother — and instantly there were 6 or 7 of us rapid-fire role playing that show for all we could squeeze out of it.

David Ehrenstein and his attacker of an OP were left in the dust. We, the good people of Walnut Grove, had hijacked the thread 100% and we never gave it back. It went on like this for six or seven pages.

The overly instructional “Let’s Pretend…” threads have been cute, in the years since, but the sudden spontaneity of that Little House thread-hijacking and how detailed and hilarious it became, just felt like magic to me at the time.

I LURVED the baked potato bar thread.

Also Leanne devette’s response paroday to it

R196, it was just text for sure. The pics were much later, as I recall.

I just remember reading a ton of 90's gay gossip on here (in the 90s, obviously). I was living in LA then, knew people in the film industry. Lots of chatter about Bryan Singer, Kevin Spacey, and dreams of Ryan Phillippe's cock, which of course we've all now seen.

Let's Pretend We Are An Episode Of Forensic Files was too funny.

I more recent, but i miss Miss Warwick.

Could always count on her to put things into perspective.

R218, now we’re really dating ourselves but I remember in ‘99 how newcomers would ask over and over for any gossip on “Matt and Ben” and you could just wait a few minutes for a good zinger of a reply from somebody who’d been around here for a few years.

I remember it r209

(gathering around the campfire, lighting my pipe)

Back in the day when newspaper comments were new on the internet, some soppy UK tabloid did a story about the missing child Madeleine McCann, which had all of the United Kingdom riveted. It was inundated with Britfraus and Scotfraus saying things like "Praying for the wee bairn and her family!" and "I hope to God the little mite is alive!"

Well, DL organized a "field trip" on the weekend and began laying the blame squarely at Maddy's toddler feet, with comments like "She was asking for it, with her saucy airs!"

No one was working on the web side of the tabloid because it was the weekend! So we had two glorious days suggesting that she had somehow provoked her own disappearance, and the frauen were going absolutely nuts.

MAJOR early DL hilarity.

Lesbian Thanksgiving is still my fave. I busted a tear duct in my eye.

R224, nice, I wasn’t here for that one but now I’m recalling the Thanksgiving saga thread about Janice The Vegan.

OMG I remember that r223! People from here were posting there under the names “Brenda Dickson” and “Patsy Ramsey, formerly of Boulder, CO.” The fraus went nuts when “Brenda” suggested the little tramp was asking for it.

Remember to toast Cackle Cackle's star the next time you visit the DL Memorial Stroll.

I didn’t get a cell phone until 2012.

Celebration CAK

A recent classic is also one of my all time faves -- The Abortion Hut.

What a litter of puppy amateurs you are! I have been here 119 (dog) years!

I win!!!

Some of my favorite DataLounge moments involve rather earnest humorless OPs who start out with a chip on their shoulder, fight everyone in the replies, and continue to melt down for the rest of the thread, never realizing that they stand no chance whatsoever against your average DLer. The guy who owned only two towels and angrily insisted that he wasn't running a bed and breakfast when an overnight guest wanted a shower comes to mind.

The late David Ehrenstein is another example of a poster with zero chill and a quick fuse. At least DE could be funny, and he knew a lot about movies.

R232 - Mr. Turkey Meatballs?

The very same, R233! You have a good memory.

That was a hilarious thread, R209

[Quote] [R105], remember your first thread! It was clever, and clever DLers kept it going for a while.

Thank you so much r143!

WHET:

BILL TAYLOR

Anonymous In Kansas City

PMBT

R237 shhhhh! don't summon the last two on that list

One of my faves was "crying as I type." That came about during the Scott/Laci Peterson saga. According to the rules of DL justice, Scott was hot and therefore not guilty or guilty for understandable reasons, and thus it was an understandable crime. This, of course, didn't sit well with some, and hilarity ensued.

NSYNC

*giggle*

- Latinagirl

Been here forever. Was a teenager when I first joined. 41-years-old now.

It's just a big picture of Tommy's face

RACI$T LE$BIAN TROLL ALERT

[quote] How soon after DL started did we see posters who would point out to an OP the folly of his or her inappropriate apostrophes?

What does OG possess?

I can remember the exact date that Muriel asked us for money for the first time: Thursday, September 11, 2003. (Eat your heart out, Marilu Henner.) I had seen Margaret Cho perform earlier that night, and I came home to find the DL covered in plaintive pleas for contributions. For $12 we received a code that provided access to the board during the newly-implemented prime time for a year. For $36 we got the code along with a t-shirt with "troll alert" on the front and the old brick-and-gold DL logo on the back. The t-shirt was quite comfortable and I wore it around the house for at least 10 years before it went into the rag bin.

I had to go to the Wayback Machine to find that old logo I linked above. Since it was right in front of me, figured I may as well share a sample of the old forum style for those who haven't seen it.

In the midst of all this reminiscing about vintage DL I have been trying to remember what the last page of the old site was, the dreaded number at which a post fell off. R245, your link answers that question. Thank you!

After I stumbled across this site, around 2008 or so, there were two or three format changes accompanied by much grumbling. My favorite memory is when someone would post in bold but forget to close it so every succeeding post would be bold and then there would be angry posts in bold demanding the original commenter come back to fix it.

r245 Interesting to see all that Gene Robinson coverage in the news section, looking back 22 years later. It caused a huge split and arguably the liberals lost in the end.

And the frank rich columns would be quoted here. Gosh. . .

DL has kept Vivian Vance, Dionne Warwick, and Liza with a scheeee relevant for years. Be proud!

When I first arrived there was a troll that kept posting some message about 'MISOGYNY KILLS' in every thread.

I remember that troll R251. In every thread almost - particularly if the word cunt was used. Obviously, it was used constantly and in every thread.

This thread is useless without photos.

“I think I just spit up in my mouth” was a common retort

[quote] When I first arrived there was a troll that kept posting some message about 'MISOGYNY KILLS' in every thread.

And it’s GOT to STOP!

RACI$T LE$BIAN TROLL ALERT

As annoying as some Umpy threads were, I was fascinated at how his mind worked.

I remember one thread asking if Queen Elizabeth had maids to wipe her ass.

*kisses doll*

[Quote] My favorite memory is when someone would post in bold but forget to close it so every succeeding post would be bold and then there would be angry posts in bold demanding the original commenter come back to fix it.

Oh my god, you could format a whole thread? What fun!!! I’m sorry they fixed it.

Yes, everyone was bitching instead of just closing the damn tag. Fun times.

Ah, the trolls of Datalounge. We've had some real mental cases here over the years. Grumpy, Judy Pills, SS Terri and of course our dear departed Queen of Cunts David E.

One of our more recent batshit trolls, Poisoned Dragon, seems to have thankfully disappeared several months back when he finally got grey-lined. He was a whole other level of insanity.

What did the EW article say? Does anyone have a link to it?

I wonder if ELEOP is still around. He was the final form of a troll that would constantly tell us about how Obama’s policies were about to cause “Weimar-era hyperinflation” and that we all needed to buy gold RFN.

So, basically an InfoWars refugee, or a standard-issue republican in 2025.

That crazy Brazilian lesbian troll from last year felt very old-school DL. The writing style reminded me of Judy Pills Garland.

Judy was one of the most talented singers ever. She also had a lot of pain and struggle throughout her life. Despite that, she had a good heart, which is hard to encounter in Hollywood. At a time when gay people were oppressed beyond belief, they identified with her struggles and she theirs.

I actually think many of our rightwing trolls over the years have been the same person just creating new screen names, and evolving as American crypto-fascism has itself evolved.

I don't believe that some of the trolls listed are actually gone, they just dropped their authenticated names.

What happened to our beloved ILT?

[quote] We've had some real mental cases here over the years

Ha! Ha! Ha! I'll say.

WHET RWOAC?

[quote] What happened to our beloved ILT?

That’s the one. In additional to ELEOP, I think he also posted as “Uncle Aurum.”

He had as much insight as the average libertarian, eg none.

DIE IN A GREASE FIRE!

TAKE THE GAS PIPE!

Editor!

Pardon me miss, but with all due respect, I have problems of my own.

Bunnika. Not that long ago, either.

And even more recently, the pissmop who wants us all to be nice to Kevin. On the DL, mind you.

Oooh remember the guy with great Hollywood intel? He was a costume designer. Then we had a fellow with the name something like Kiliam, Kilah...

Kevin or Keven, R276?

SHILLY MCFRAUCUNT!

Kevin

Keram Malicki-Sanchez KNOWS

No mentions of the writer with the initial K, or this thread will disappear in 3.....2......

Lulu

Fa

Tequila Mockingbird

Susie Lee had some great gossip but some DL detectives looked up the Kazmar guy and he had no children. She claimed she was his daughter.

Too bad DL detectives didn't spell his name correctly.

r285 I was just too lazy to look it up. I figured I didn't spell it right, but whatever.

YES r281!!! Thank you!

I always took Susie Lee for a fraud.

I don’t recall Susie Lee ever claiming to be Kurt Kaszner’s daughter, R288.

I think I’ve been here aincw circa 2000. Heard about DL at a party. Back when we were sure M posted here…the internet was younger then. No Reddit etc.

I found this place sometime during the first year. For me, it was a replacement for other Gay forums. (GLCF on AOL and HSX-100/400 on Compuserve), though once DL switched to a single message board, the culture is quite different.

It’s a trap!

Julianne Moore, seriously.

I first heard about DL from something on Queerty or maybe Towleroad. Some political gossip, DC crap. I figured it was just smug gays trading Beltway rumors and arguing over who was secretly gay in Congress.

Tried checking it during the day, most of the threads were locked unless you were a member. Commenting? Not a chance. It felt like a cranky little clubhouse for bitter queens.

One night around 2AM, after wasting time in some AOL gay chat room, being that it was *off hours* I gave DL another try. This time I got in, it was sharp, mean, strangely smart. I was hooked.

Eventually they dropped the lockdown hours thing. I kept lurking but couldn’t comment without paying, so I finally joined. That was the late ’90s, or very early 2000s. I’m 60 now. I’ve been here longer than most of these trolls have had pubes.

Datalounge is a hot mess. Cranky, chaotic, but damn, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love it, and I’m on here practically every damn day.

Those first days were shocking.

Flames & Freaks lit up when Webby was off on weekends - we’d get the kiddy porn troll, the “I want to be an abused 13 year-old” troll and the “that’s disgusting” troll rolling through. This was when I could keep twelve threads open in different tabs and reload all at once.

It was a clusterfuck, but there was always a fire to be put out somewhere on the board.

Grumpy was a Maury Povich show of “Why does my willfully ignorant racism not make me a good netizen, Brown Person?” After Flames and Freaks was terminated.

Rosie talked about DL on her blog.

Gossip columnist/author Jeannette Walls used to post here, until she was run off for taking dirt from her and not attributing it to DL.

Marc Shaiman used to post here under his name.

R295, indeed. It’s all much tamer and Johnny/one note now

Susie Lee was Susan Kohner. She was the dark haired daughter in Imitation of Life (1959). She’d be 89 now, apparently still alive.

What was the deal with Grumpy/Umpy? Wasn't he some kind of shut-in who lived in the South? From what I remember he was quite young.

{quote] Marc Shaiman used to post here under his name.

As did the recently departed "Dick" Chamberlain.

Sandra Lee and her Kwanza cak.

This board has made many bizarre holiday traditions in my hovel.

I loved the annual Michfest thread, laugh out loud funny stuff. Rules, regulations, passive aggressiveness and of course nutloaf.

When I first stumbled onto DL, I found it very odd. The lingo, the weird obituary fascinations, the deep-cut references, pron, WHET. It was clearly something, but I didn’t know what. I kept coming back, but mostly just squinted at my screen thinking… what *is* this?

It took a few weeks of lurking to even start decoding the DL patois, and a solid two years before I finally posted. My first few -oh dears- felt like a public dunce cap, delivered by DL’s mean girl contingent. It stung. But the grammartarans weren’t wrong.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped flinching and started writing cleaner, thinking quicker. Not that anyone cares, but DL kind of sneak-taught me how to argue without embarrassing myself. Mostly.

[quote] I loved the annual Michfest thread, laugh out loud funny stuff. Rules, regulations, passive aggressiveness and of course nutloaf.

R303 has clearly stated her boundaries.

[quote] grammartarans

Just to pat myself on the back….

It was after VISTA was unleashed upon users and I had some wonderfully polite person asking how to restore a perriferal. I remembered from 9 years back what to do.

A few posts later he thanked me for advice that restored everything. Then, he asked me how to change a setting. I’d invested multiple minutes typing out a reasonably easy-to-follow list for restoring the PC. At the time, I had been MacOS for five years. Pulling this hint from years of work didn’t take too long, but I was bored of the conversation; I cut him off and sent him to any other resource because I lost interest. He proclaimed me a bad buy on Datalounge. You finally knew I was a petty twerp and I live with it.

We know John Wesley Shipp visited here when a Google Alert brought up his name.....then he got a taste of the nastier side of DL and ran, never to return.

R306 *grammartarans* - fuck, -oh dear- deserved. Thank you for your restraint.

R305 is Telling Us Now so she does NOT have to Tell Us Then!

DL is one of the very few remaining old school internet forums, which is a major part of its charm. Before everything went to hell people used to be able to have a proper conversation online. Yes, there's Reddit, but too many subreddits are dominated by upvote-obsessed nitwits, and the overall site culture can be pretty off-putting to anyone over the age of 30. There's no point in trying to connect with people on the site formerly known as Twitter as users there are overwhelmingly interested in hearing themselves talk or trolling/engagement farming. Social media in general doesn't seem to encourage in-depth discussion.

[quote] Rules, regulations, passive aggressiveness and of course nutloaf.

Sounds like a great slogan for the revived Michfest, if that ever happens, which it should.

The pictures DLers posted of the food tents at Michfest were enough to make you puke. You could catch shigella just from looking at them.

Lulu, I haven’t heard that name in a long time.

Was she the S&M escort who once had Christian Bale as a client, and said that he was into being ordered to scrub toilets and other household cleaning?

Lulu was a funny older queen from San Francisco.

Magdalene was the dominatrix.

And I am glad to see you’re still here, r314. Always loved the name.

She was great, i met her in person once. And her gorgeous boyfriend

The Magdalene.

I remember an unfortunate looking couple who were getting married, and someone linked their webpage with their gift registry (I believe they were asking for tires, among other items).

Everyone here were being their usual cunty selves, just tearing them apart-until the bride to be posted, and she was lovely. It stopped everyone here dead in their tracks. I believe some of the posters bought her wedding gifts.

I recall the million moms infiltrated by Dlers

R318, Canadian Joy. Yes, she shamed us all. What a good sport and lovely woman she was.

No, r318, not everyone derided the bride; far from everyone.

Excessive pointless bitchery: the silent killer.

Wasn't there also (sometime in the last 10ish years) another couple getting married where we somehow landed on their guest book?

I just remember a post where someone from the wedding party said something like....'WHEN WILL THE TEARS STOP??!?!?!??" That was a frequent post for months after that.

Then there was Kellie? the gal who pretened that she was Nick Carter's (or somebody like that) girlfriend, who would send herself flowers and write posts (from him) It was fun until someone doxxed her.

And we had that crazy black gal who claimed to have been Seth McFarlane's girlfriend. She claimed to have written several books, had a very sketchy imdb page, and severely filtered photos of herself.

And wasn't there a Libby claiming to be Russell Crowe's girlfriend? I can't remember if that was the name, or I'm mixing her up with someone else. But anyway she really committed to the act. I think we all went on a journey with her pregnancy and then giving birth to his love child. Bitch was crazy but it was kind of fun.

Have we gotten this far without a “My pussy stinks!”

Yes Libby r324. SS Terri;) referred to Libby's baby as Little Figment.

In 2025, Cheryl's pussy STILL stinks.

My God! I remember Libby! That woman was nuts!

Hey hey sup DL? I just turned 18, got all signed up to vote.. and a restraining order against my toxic narc mom!

Remember the grudge poster who kept at it and at it over here about the IHSG board (Is He/She Gay) for a long long LONG time after it went bust? I'd never even seen IHSG but I must have seen 100 various posts here in the very early 00s, all snarling that "DarkSpawn and Bonisoli stole IHSG from RumourBoy" and that those two were all sorts of foul epithets.

OP I think you need to start a thread about the stories you have from when you "worked in the business." I am dying for some decent insider gossip.

Anyone know what Mark is cooking up for dinner? Was there ever a DL Cookbook made available

Remember Qwip? Lol.

it's still there

No mention yet of Mrs Patrick Campbell, AKA Erna? I always thought she was funny but god did she piss off a lot of posters.

Erna was a disgusting homophobe, misogynist and racist with a scat fixation.

R335, omg that creature. She'd glide into this place and put up a tedious thread in character, like "Today we went to the health club. We worked our arms, shoulders, and breasts. There were too many fish using the thigh machines." And like moths to a flame, posters would pounce.

Erna was/is vile.

But she did leave us "Verificatia of sizemeat."

And Miss Boozette

R331 Yes, the insurance business is facscinating.

Did you always have to pay for a membership here?

MPC also left us with "Stinkfish so foul!"

No, R341?

A poster here slept with Jani Lane and then Jani died.

R342 was that where "Lesbianism most foul" came from?

Sizemologist

[quote]No mention yet of Mrs Patrick Campbell, AKA Erna? I always thought she was funny but god did she piss off a lot of posters.

Didn't that foul creature also use "Catherine of Sienna" from time to time?

I remember being darkly amused when, the morning we were all up watching William and Kate get married (I had a final that day, so I was using it to take my mind off organic chemistry), the Archbishop mentioned that it was Catherine of Sienna's feast day and we all got a chuckle out of it.

And the person who said that Galactus was the only person who had a penis big enough for MPC.

yes, indeed

I miss the days when you could kill a thread if you posted at exactly the right time of day. I think it had something to do with DL synching with its servers. Worked like a charm. We killed a lot of JABBA threads that way.

Here's an insanely long list of the Datalounge OGs I can recall... everyone from the most odious of trolls to the sweetest of sweethearts.

David Ehrenstein, SS Terri, Susie Lee, Mr. Hollywood (seriously good gossip), blue agave (even better gossip offered as a blind-items guessing game), Charlie (still here!), VoiceoftheNight (just posted, hi!), WehoBoi, CrazyMint, Joan's Grandkid (the actual grandson of Joan Bennett), ShinjukuBaby, Butchy, Michael K, Kipper, Brandon (the exhausting one), Lulu, Pope Buck I, RWOAC (Rebel Without A Clue), Josh (author & minor gay celeb Josh Kilmer Purcell), Magdalene, Master LCz, Jonbodhi, Krackbaybie, Dustin DeWind (now Dustin, still here!), Wundy/Wundy Girl (sweetest camp character in here ever), Mrs Patrick Campbell/Catherine of Siena/Erna, Lynn, OutInTexas, Ellen, skinwoman, Kirker, AngryYoungBrit, Princess Latifah, Dead and Blatant, Helena Handbasket, White Belt Man, Pornchick, Della (still here!), lez couple Dallas and Ft Worth, Mizez Slocombe, Fa (one of the cuntiest trolls ever), The Prophetess Juanita “Jazz Hands” Bynum, SHOBE, LatinaGirl, AIKC, KC Guy, JohnEric also from KC, PhillySnoop, Price Leatherbarrow (RIP), Cackle Cackle (RIP), Butterbean, Chung Ho, Tequila Mockingbird, Lady Prudence Fairfax, Dame Celestia Crackhead, Cheekster, Robert Murrae, Judy "Pills" Garland (possibly RIP), pussylips ("I SCREAM WITH ANGRY POWER!"), Nan Michiganwomyn, Peg (something of a troll), SWF On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, tinabina, Bengali In Platforms, swiss chick, Arroz Con Pollo, Lee Anne Devette, Grumpy/Rumpy/Umpy, the original Cheryl (a DL collective persona).... and best for last: Bonnie Mace.

Kirker. I forgot about him, he was a trust fund brat who lived off his wealthy father and just kind of flitted around NYC trying to be fabulous.

Did you miss the vintage furniture store in Austin, and it's going out of business sale, R351?

I remember that now r352. IIRC, he moved back to Austin and opened an overpriced furniture store (with Daddy's money, of course) in the middle of a recession. It went out of business in no time at all. He was such a pretentious twat.

Kirker popped up last year, he’s still here. He felt compelled to respond to every bitchy remark made about him, and it made the cunthive here just dig in deeper with the attacks. Someone posted that he had to leave a party in Austin after clogging a toilet, and that stuck with him for years.

The webmaster eventually showed up on a thread and told Kirker to stop replying to this bullshit because he was giving it life.

I loved Lee Ann Devette- now THAT was a cunt.

Someone posted a story about Kirker stinking up the bathroom or clogging a toilet at a party. As usual, Kirker took the bait and was all, "what party? Where? Who are you? Do I know you?" The thread was quickly shut down but the legend lived on.

Another one I remember was David Ehrenstein posting to SS Terri, something like "to Terri, you are a lying sack of shit. And I say this with love" That one had me curious. They'd been alternating between sparring to tag-teaming other trolls, and it was intimated they had met up. Alas, it too was shut down before there were any answers.

Damn Torta, that's like the DL Hall of Fame!

I remember almost everyone on Torta's list, at least vaguely, but not Joan Bennett's grandkid. Wish he was still here. I've been watching Dark Shadows episodes and wondering why most of them can't seem to get through a line without a stumble or two. Were they all drinking steadily? The kids seem to do better, so I assume the liquor cart was closed to them, which is encouraging.

SS Terri and the "Spacey Cadets"

They insisted that Kevin Spacey was straight!

And then there were the Wentworth Miller fangirls who insisted that he was just a shy virgin

Ginny from Accounting.

Billing!

Was Kirker the lipstick and Prada queen or was that someone else?

The Marcia Cross lesbian rumors got me here.

Wasn't that a case of her reps DENYING she was gay?

Dumbest move. Once there was an official denial, then it became fair game for everyone to speculate as to whether it was true or not.

The lipstick/Prada queen was from Dallas-I think that was first posted in the “I am in love with my father in law” thread. Kirker was from Austin.

The OG Cheryl was in the same category as R358. She was a send-up of that type, she'd post gushingly about how Tom Cruise was a red-blooded heterosexual Real Masculine Man Who Loves Women and that we were all a delusional pack of mentally ill homosexuals who know nothing.

Then the "My pussy stinks!" trolling of Cheryl erupted and took over completely.

It was Iola/Eola who seemed to follow Cheryl from thread to thread, posting "Cheryl is a cunt" regardless of what she had said.

I was once admonished by Cheryl for suggesting Lance Bass was gay and repeating gossip - this was before he officially came out.

"You better watch your step or I'll tell the editor!"

Torta r350, LOTS of memories there

I forgot about Iola/Eola, you tell it accurately R365. Ha ha. Fond memories.

You’d run the board, Torta, if ever a Jeopardy contestant & there was a Datalounge category. Your knowledge of DL history is most impressive.

damn, now all the old memories are popping back in. I miss "Thanks for the history lesson, Isis, but don't you have a bear to catch!" What the hell was that?

And Now From 2006: Sumerian Farmwives

[bold]Lets pretend we're Sumerian farmwives growing chickpeas in 3500 BC!!![/bold]

by: Anonymous 130 posts 03/11/06 @16:01

[italic]Oh, fuck! One of those troublesome tribes of the Israelites just killed all our children and cut open our pregnant women because their nasty god told them to!

Husband, this is getting ridiculous. We've gotta move.[/italic]

by: Tequila Mockingbird reply 1 03/11/06 @16:10

[italic]Honey, please go raid the next village. I need to sacrifice a newborn to Baal next full moon.[/italic]

by: Anonymous reply 2 03/11/06 @16:13

[italic]Unca, that burlap wrap you've swathed yourself in is just tres, tres divine. I'd sacrifice one of my children to Dagon to have it, especially for the next harvest![/italic]

by: Noonka reply 3 03/11/06 @16:19

[italic]Those chickpeas sure are growing![/italic]

by: Anonymous reply 4 03/11/06 @16:22

[italic]Goomgam, are things okay between you and the hubby? I notice your left hand is hacked off.[/italic]

Oh My Gosh! I remember those comments!!

And 2006? It can’t be that long ago

Torta's list reminds me of Miss Helen Bedd (who, as another thread just mentioned, is attempting a comeback in the legitimate theater.)

And Joan's Grandkid also reminded me of a character only seen on certain soap threads: Beverly Penberthy's Gay Nephew. (Who apparently was exactly what the label described.)

I was here for the original Sows At the Trough thread.

Sorry, here's the Sows At the Trough thread from 2006

Nice, R375! Sows was an exemplary OP. Few people can write one that succinct yet descriptive.

[quote]The Prophetess Juanita “Jazz Hands” Bynum

That was a minor persona of Mrs. Betty Bowers. Sort of how Wayland Flowers had other puppets, but the only one anyone knew was Madame.

There used to be nothing better than live posting during awards shows and national events here. It still happens, but it's not the same. As someone said above, social media replaced it.

Some of my favorite threads are ones where an OP posts some outrage he thinks will get co-signed and supported by the entire DL community, but DL turns on him, usually by post three, and then starts the pile-on.

Absolutely, R378. Back in the 00s used to be the place for Oscar night, if you wanted copious dishing and repartee. It was so much livelier than sitting on a sofa watching it with friends. The "Crash steals it from Brokeback" moment was the biggest collective DL-wide meltdown I'd ever witnessed.

[quote] There used to be nothing better than live posting during awards shows and national events here.

I was thinking the same thing. The replies came so fast and furious it would go to another page and it was a challenge to keep up.

It was such a routine, wasn’t it… sitting on the sofa watching the ceremony, laptop on lap open to DL, and glass of wine on the end table barely sipped because DL was so torrential and irresistible.

I still do that

[quote]The "Crash steals it from Brokeback" moment was the biggest collective DL-wide meltdown I'd ever witnessed.

Thank God livestreaming wasn't a thing back then.

It would have been the Diana scream times 1000.

Indeed, i can hear the howls now

I have never seen threads on here fill up as quickly as they did during the Crash/Brokeback Oscar meltdown. There were THOUSANDS of replies , you couldn’t keep up with reading them because post after post came online.

I came here I think in late 1998 or so and started posting (as "Tommy") the following year.

My gosh Torta / R350 - you mentioned some names I've completely forgotten about, but here are a few that you missed:

MikeyX (from the Philly area), Char Treuse (who could be pretty funny - and who could also cut a bitch), Matt H (who I think was a theater buff), and PSB. There was also a funny straight guy - Billy Shears something or other - who had a gay brother who died a few years earlier. And there was also some guy who initially started posting as randyafid and then later changed it to something else, although I've forgotten what - but either way, he seemed like a sweet guy.

And of the ones you mentioned, "ellen" (one of my favorites) was always lower case "e" and "cheekster" (who once asked me to send her a tape of an Anne Murray song - back in the days when we optionally used email addresses) always posted as "the cheekster." And OutInTexas should be singled out for being the King of Cheesecake since he prided himself on making so many varieties of cheesecake.

My alll-time favorite poster was Idle Mind, who I believed was also from KC and may have known JohnEric.

My favorite of the earlier threads included the one about the weird neighbors down the street, the one where we made up our own plots to ABC Movies of the Week, Let's Roll Cinnamon Roll, Celebrity Scents, and the one about creating a storyline for Brokeback Mountain if it were directed by another filmmaker - and last but not least, the bitch fight that erupted on the thread about Spielberg's A.I. in which the staunch defenders of the film battled those who despised it. It was like the Hatfields & the McCoys.

Great additions, Tommy/TomServo R386! I remember all of them especially Idle Mind and Char Treuse.

[quote]the one where we made up our own plots to ABC Movies of the Week

Christ, I'd love to read that.

Have we forgotten the classic Helen Lawson thread? Ah, how we laughed. Ah, how we cried.

It was really funny during its initial run, but there are a few oldtimers who just won't let the joke die.

r389 I mentioned the original Helen Lawson thread earlier. It was one of the funniest things I've ever read. Brilliant. I wish I'd saved it.

R261, PoisonedDragon is gone? When did that happen? I know it wasn't that long ago. I enjoyed sparring with him, but I thought he was an adult care-giver, so I always held back. He infuriated me by suggesting that the late Pierre wasn't actually dead.

That’s bonkers. I made a donation in his memory and got a lovely thank you card from his sister. He’s very much deceased and had a lovely obituary.

R392, ElderLez, Thanks, I also made a donation in his memory, but PD was still smarting over an exchange he had with 'Xavier' (one of Pierre's alter-egos). PoisonedDragon is a very smart poster, but obsessive. I'm surprised I missed it if he ran into Muriel's wall.

One day the "brokened cheeseburger" girl's mother must have Googled her daughter's name and arrived at DL, no doubt expecting warm frau glurge over the incident.

She FLIPPED OUT.

I like Poisoned Dragon, and hope he isn't gone for good. I don't know who Pierre is, or was, but I will admit that PD could get obsessive and even a little crazy about people he believed were being sock puppets. Was that what this was?

Anyway, I still like him overall and hope he's not gone.

R395, Pierre was the Christmas Moose, the Evening Punctuationist and Monday Morning Moos poster anmong others.

[quote]PoisonedDragon is a very smart poster

He seemed to me like a Leopold and Loeb type. It wouldn't be surprising to learn that he had committed a thrill kill in real life. HIs writings indicated the total absence of a moral foundation.

R396, Pierre was all those personalities, and more. He was so sweet to me when I posted about a drunken hospitalization, and i never forgot his kindness. I planted a tree in Iceland (or Greenland) in his honor. PoisonedDragon has a brother on the Autism Spectrum (IIRC), and he's a caregiver, so there's that. His recipes are quite good. I hope he's okay.

CrazyMint actually turned me on

My god, Torta/r350 -- How did you spontaneously come up with all those names?! I recognize or remember most of them, but no way I could have relied on my memory to come up with a list like that!

This thread makes me sad as I see how much better other people's memories are. I know people my age are not as forgetful and missing memories as much as I am. I need to take one of those pre-dementia tests.

I was just going to suggest that, r401.

What did Pierre die from?

R401, if it’s any consolation, I remembered all those posters but why did I just walk into the kitchen? And where are those reading glasses I had ten minutes ago?

It really is a shame all those old DL threads are simply gone. I would have saved so many. Helen Lawson, African Baby Catalogue, crabwalk lesbian, Freaks At The Gym… so many!

R403, I don't think we know for sure, but the evidence would suggest COVID. It took several days to confirm he was dead (from his Facebook page, which his sister updated).

Freaks You Work With was another gem of a thread.

Is he okay? Is he alright?

I've made 2 friends on DL, one whose piece of art I have, Brian Nash, and one who lived 2 blocks away from me, Kieran Turner. They both died from cancer (Brian in 21, Kieran last December) and were really good, kind, witty, and talented people. I made friends with Kieran because of Brian. So this place isn't as toxic as Redditors would lead you to believe.

My WW finger is getting sore!

Whenever we go down memory lane, I always post this-Daniel Bexton’s blog showing the timeline of Justin’s stalking of Bexton. Justin is given the pseudonym Bill.

This is exactly why Muriel will never allow people to publicly publish their email addresses here.

What is the reason a certain female’s name, noted above, cannot be mentioned?

R410, yikes, glad my instincts at the time steered me away from those individuals… and from getting involved in any offsite back-chatter in general.

I met one of them, they seemed harmless at the time. . .

Shinjuku Baby was hot-he posted his picture once.

Arroz Con Pollo was obnoxious, someone here called him a “strident moron” here, and that term is very useful these days.

I remember when Slocombe created the Wikipedia page and he got attacked on here and on Wikipedia for it. Someone went into the editing section of the Wikipedia page, and under all of Slocombe’s benign edits, replied with “Eat shit and die you nasty cunt.” He went anonymous shortly thereafter.

r414 that is hilarious!

I found a link on the internet around 2008 called

“Judy at Carnegie Hall - Let’s Discuss its Greatness” Clicked on it and I found DL.

Was hooked after “Let’s Be Beth Jarrett”

[quote] Was hooked after “Let’s Be Beth Jarrett”

Buck would never….

Holy fucking fuck, the EDB stuff at R410 is mindblowing.

(A few years before I arrived, so it's all new to me.)

R394 your post reminded me of two instances where we were discussing certain people and relatives or friends of theirs started posting.

The first was Cristy from Intervention. Her sister started posting and the only thing she cared about was that nobody but she makes money off of Cristy (reply 18) at the link. She also introduced two new words to the DL lexicon: gesters and blashply. The thread is still live.

[quote] Buck would never….

Buck would have never gotten the quote wrong!

R394 the other one I recall was when that methed up waste of oxygen pornie named Bo fucking Dean got shot and paralyzed and died. The "girlfriend" found the thread and screamed her righteous indignation about how we were maligning her sainted brothers memory . . . until his GoFundMe started filling up with cash. That thread's also live.

I remember Bee and Bear.

My claim to fame is as the original poster of the Griselda Medina threads. She was an admin in my partner’s office. Those were the days when I would post all the time to see how many replies I could get. My partner never posted, but was equally invested in my DL “success”.

We were thrilled at how much traction the Griselda Medina threads generated and equally petrified someone would alert Griselda and we would be found out. She spun off in so many crazy directions (her “drawer of horror”) and even made it onto a visual Candyland-style map of the DL someone created. If anyone has that “placemat”, it would stimulate lots and lots of memories we may have forgotten.

This was pre-9/11. I think I’ve been on here since the late 90s for sure.

Dataloungeland!

I'm always mystified by how people meet other people on DL. How is that even done, when there are no DMs?

[quote] Dataloungeland!

Star Jones Food Fest

Kevin Spacey’s Heterosexual Backpacking Adventure

The Weird Little Girl Next Door’s Weird Little Playhouse

Stewart Swerdlow’s Conspiracy Chateau

That’s just off the top of my head.

I'm sure some OG's are still here.....

[quote] Star Jones Food Fest*

*Featuring the Olive Garden.

If memory serves.

Speaking of “Crash Steals It From Brokeback,” was DL responsible for placing the ad in Variety calling out the Academy’s homophobia? Did that start here or was it just linked here? I remember I donated. Still have the ad.

That, R425, & how the posting history of anonymous posters is tracked.

Years ago, there was a Datalounge MySpace page (and later, a Facebook page). People connected through there.

Also, DL knockoff QWHip had an option that allowed you to publicly share your email address.

I mean, don’t forget ManVoxx.

I remember a thread about Olive Garden that turned into a class war. Some posters were horrified that other posters would ever deign to eat there.

QWhip seems like a fever dream now. If I'm not mistaken, didn't it come about because of the 2007 primaries? They all thought DL was pro-Obama, and their Hillary love was being silenced and policed here.

Every time I’ve seen a mention of QWhip, it’s associated with doxxing and so many other instances of over-sharing repercussions on the net.

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” was great training for keeping personal information guarded when Facebook replaced Myspace and Friendster.

R434, I recall DL posts about QWhip getting frothy around 2005-2006. Maybe 2004. It sounded like a pit of hissing vipers over there.

It wasn't a pit of vipers, just a much smaller community. I posted for a time at both places. The EDB/Justin drama spilled over onto Qwhip and it was revealed how...unstable Justin was.

I used to lurk on DL a long time ago, because it was very funny, at times. Now it really isn't.

QWHip was created because the cult of authenticated posters had gotten out of hand-there was a lot of asskissing here with people like Josh.

But all of those authenticated posters could not resist people talking about them, so they all ended up on QWHip.

My favorite thing on QWHip was when Justin and Judy “Pills” Garland briefly entered into an alliance and started helping each other trash the objects of their respective affection (EDB and Kirker). That quickly ended and they began to fight.

Judy and Justin spoke on the phone. Justin left Judy a voicemail about DL and QWHip, and Judy posted it on QWHip so everyone could hear Justin’s queeny voice.

Justin, through DL’s My Space page, became email friends with a lot of posters on here, and apparently the emails were a lot of trash talking of each other.

Somehow (maybe it was the same person), EDB got Justin’s email password, and he was going to use the blog I posted at r410 to unveil these messages, using pseudonyms (Bill is Justin; Ricky Stratton is Kirker: Arnie Becker is Josh sycophant R11fromanotherthread).

After a day of this, Josh (who was promoting his book at the time) swooped in and offered to make a large donation in Daniel Bexton’s name if he would stop).

This was all so insane, like a soap opera on public access television.

r439's story is why I've always been anonymous on the internet. There are some real nutcases out there.

I just remembered a thread about (I think) hit shows from the 1800s. I specifically remember "Dancing with the Czars."

Also wasn't there a thread on Nancy Reagan's diary? I believe that was the one that had nutty posts about cat fights among First Ladies at Gerald Ford's funeral.

And I wish I had a dollar for each time the name Miyoshi Umeki was invoked. She was the "DL: The Early Years" version of Vivian Vance.

I remember on the Ronald Reagan funeral thread that someone wrote that Nancy threw her fur coat at Condi Rice and told her to hang it up. That always made me laugh.

r439, thanks, I totally forgot about that

I've always loved how Dataloungers can take any topic under the sun and find a way to insert Lucille Ball into the discussion.

R444, we have sufficient.

There are Datalounge subreddits but they're filled with the posters who've been banned from here, it's the new Zetaboards.

R446 I noticed that recently while perusing the DL sub.

R439, i recall some point long ago, JBG posting audio of himself waxing chaotic and randomly about garland herself and many other things. He sounded VERY VERY drunk

Are there others besides r/datalounge?

This ladies are bitter.

[quote]My favorite thing on QWHip was when Justin and Judy “Pills” Garland briefly entered into an alliance and started helping each other trash the objects of their respective affection (EDB and Kirker). That quickly ended and they began to fight.

It was like the Superfriends versus the Legend of Doom cartoon from the 70s.

VOTN - r/theDataLounge

Neither seems to get much traffic.

Judy Pills was always drunk r449. Remember the night Kirker told her she was cute, but not his type?

Kirker went to bed….Judy did not, and posted dozens of threads about his despair. It was something else. Kirker went on Datalounge in the morning, unaware that his comment had caused Judy to implode.

Kirker was the best. He was always involved in some new plotline, there was Ghetto Tara, the furniture store, Judy, all things UVA. I wonder what he's been up to since his DL days.

R451 Looks like that one was primarily the work of one person, who has since deleted their reddit user account.

NOBODY misses Miss Helen Bedd. Some of us figured out that he'd shut up if you posted his picture. Worked every time.

Miss Helen Bedd was a nasty cunt.

The Kerry McNally feet troll was unrelenting until someone posed as McNally's lawyer and threatened to sue DL into oblivion to find out who the troll was. I don't think we ever heard from him after that.

The Danielle Egnew/Elizabeth Mitchell stuff

The Elizabeth Edwards Tore Off Shirt, Collapsed Over Affair thread was a mystery because nobody could access it yet it grew and grew. I wasn't the only one who couldn't get in it for the longest time.

That queen was nuts r457. His obsession with that obscure Shop NBC host came from McNally lying on a mattress he was hawking, in his socks. He would not stop going on and on about this nondescript middle aged white guy.

r456, awful in fact

In 2013 we had posters using zombie threads to chat - weirdest conversations I’ve ever seen. They were young and discussing classmates.

One of my favorite threads was about the gal who would be willing to ferry you to Michfest, but you had to pay in ass, grass, or cash. Was she the one who also wrote, « Squirrels. Death »?

I have been on BiggerCity for almost thirty years. It’s a really well constructed site for chubs and chasers. They were the group that the overly religious blamed for Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans because their annual Convergence was scheduled there at that exact time. BiggerCity has an excellent Forums section and you can actually see who is posting what because you have access to their profiles. I met many of my current social media friends there. They are smart and funny. One of the forum questions years ago was who was posting on DataLounge. Seems as though quite a few were. So I started also. By the way, I know that some of you are chubby. Howdy do.

Posting since 2002. The Shobe threads were the best gossip

R464 I've been on that site before, it was always 20,000,000 bears/big guys and 3 chasers LOL

I stumbled on here when I googled a major league pitcher I was lusting after and to my surprise DL had a thread about a high school buddy he used to let blow him and was trying to blackmail him. It turned me even more on to him that he was such a hot tall strapping young buck that just wanted to get sucked. A jock just needs to cum sometimes. Since then I learned DL always finds the hots.

R466 I’m a chaser so I loved the site! And Convergences, too.

r467 your post reminded of me of thread from a couple of decades ago about the opening of MLB Spring training.

The OP wrote:

Just sayin' Hi

Spring training sucks.

r467 what was the name of the player?

I know that Muriel is going to nuke my VIP account and possibly the whole thread the second after I post it but we have an authenticated photo of a proto-datalounger.

Sorry Muriel, but you've been terrible for 30 years.

R471 That’s one of my buddies from BiggerCity!

R470, Carl Pavono. And he's hot to death to this day.

Another picture of a Datalounger.

Wow he is hot! I would definitely be on my knees to service him whenever he wanted.

[463] That was Denise! "Squirrels, death" was part of a diatribe one of those Miches posted on the festival's bulletin board.

I know I have been coming to the DL since 2005. The W&W was in a lefthand sidebar (I made it exactly twice). Blythe Danner's alleged harbinger of regret, "I'm carrying this one to term" stayed on top of W&W a good long while (deservedly).

[quote] Blythe Danner's alleged harbinger of regret, "I'm carrying this one to term" stayed on top of W&W a good long while (deservedly).

OMG that was ME! I swear. The thread was titled something like "Your Biggest Regret" and I posted as "Blythe Danner in 1972." I'm glad I made you laugh r476.

R468 How YOU doin'? 😈

R477 I am not R476 but I love you too! I laughed about that until I was sore.

Thank you for the kind words r479. Nice to know that my comment as "Blythe" deciding not to abort Gwyneth could make you laugh too.

I've been here since about 2001, but possibly earlier.

I used to post as Lorna Hansen Forbes, but I rarely use my other registered name.

[quote] That was Denise! "Squirrels, death" was part of a diatribe one of those Miches posted on the festival's bulletin board

I’m telling you NOW so I don’t have to tell you THEN.

Denise was a pot-smoking lesbian from Cape Girardeau, MO who had a fantasy about a shuttle service picking up Fest attendees called the Rainbow Express. She eventually downsized to a minivan and picked up a solo passenger a younger wommon that she inexpertly tried to seduce between taking tokes from her bowl.

Rose was the squirrel-phobe, with a list of health problems that were excessive even by MichFest standards. I think she lived in Indiana, and had a daughter we all basically decided was a 21st century Rhoda Penmark.

MAY'AM? was the big thing when I first arrived.

Bonnie Franklin has been a DL Legend since I first got here 2 1/2 decades ago.

I discovered DL in 2006 and on that very same night posted my first thread: "Help! I accidentally sent a video of myself masturbating to everyone in my phonebook!" It was an instant blockbuster with hundreds of replies.

From then on, I became a prolific EST poster with such credits as "Denny (Danny) and his suitcase in NYC," "Once Around the Garden," "Azmodeus the Crabwalking Lesbian." Plus many, many others.

I admitted to my deceptions in 2010 or so and was viciously banned moments later!

Too scared to post elaborate scenarios after that, I mostly lurked around the board in subsequent years. I did start the majority of the Michfest threads through 2015, but for the most part those were just copying and pasting posts from the actual Michfest forum.

R484 “Dammit, Julie!”

[quote]I did start the majority of the Michfest threads through 2015

I have stated my boundaries! DO NOT MAKE ME STATE THEM AGAIN!!

Do not do it!

Do NOT do it!

I bow to you, R485.

R485, a bow from me as well — your best threads were legendary! I’d half forgotten that surreal moment when you fessed up and got zapped.

I don't suppose any of you fine ladies or gentlemen saved a folder of images from Denny Scott Photography.

That shit was so funny I would laugh until I hurt.

I’ve been lurking around here since I was in... high school.

Back in the “IHSG” era, when Datalounge was just a forum buried deep inside a much bigger board. Somehow, through all the snark and shade, many of you ended up raising my dumb, gay teenage self. Your bitchy advice? Weirdly helpful. Strangely accurate. Life-saving, even.

Datalounge’s been this bizarre, constant background presence in my life. You were there on the 9/11 threads when I was scared out of my mind. You pushed me toward entertainment and yes, I actually made it. You nudged me toward NYC and yep, did that too. You were here through my closeted drama and my chaotic, out-in-the-world gay dating years.

Now I'm old as hell, and I still like to check in. It's nice to see some of you still here from back in the day.

And then there was a Teacake.

I actually apologize about all those monikers I made last year. I was going through a lot and it seems like I always got out on timeout by Ff obsessed cunts right in the middle of heated debates usually on political threads but sometimes even Hollywood. I had a lot of free time on my hand which I don’t want to get into or remind of the details but that was so frustrating. To blocked out because of touchy feelings or people who don’t truly like freedom of speech. I never troll and I usually don’t disrespect people.

*eyeroll*

R485, i recall the masturbation thread like it was yesterday.

Aw R491. We raised a gayby in here!

[quote] Now I'm old as hell, and I still like to check in.

wait, you were in high school? And now you think you're old as hell?

Please fetch my caftan, earrings, and smelling salts. I feel one of my spells coming on.

Speaking of Julie, I now rarely ever hear from our former friend.

I always enjoyed the Friday Afternoon Drinky-poo Troll posts. He was gone too soon.

Was Greg one of the OGs under a new name. God knows that man gave us some great recipes.

Teacake = Gerg

r497, I miss the friday everything

R499. Totally.

I genuflect to r485. Your threads were really truly hilarious.

Was Bai Ling smoking on my roof real? I seem to recall that it evolved into a rather sweet thread about the birds on his roof, with videos on YT.

In addition to many threads already mentioned, I loved the one titled something like "My neighbor is a gargoyle" and the OP supplied a picture or two, I think, later on. Also loved the threads featuring Mike the persnickety micromanger of group vacations to Palm Springs or Puerto Vallarta. Fucking laughed my ass off at work and got told I shouldn't be using my work computer for personal internet enjoyment! The New York Social Diary threads were always a hoot. Too lazy to do searches to link those threads, and I'm also at work so, you know.

I adore all you bitches, even the ones I've had bitter disagreements with.

The New York Social Diary threads were hysterical. DLers posted pictures from the website with their own captions. So many of the people were total freakshows. Those threads always had me howling.

Muffie Potter Asshat was my favorite NYSD figure.

It was the Thanksgiving visitor who had to eat her vegetarian or vegan dinner out on the porch by herself who really moved me.

Damn r506, everything but the vegetarian hounds snapping at her ass and stealing her tofurkey.

R504, that’s where I learned about tractor cozies.

R508 = Iola Boylen

R504 WHET those?

Dominion Wackiness Troll, anyone?

Yes, VOTN, and there was the guy who was the Lisa Whelchel troll, he posted about her blog

I miss the Dominion wackiness troll.

[quote] the guy who was the Lisa Whelchel troll

You take the good

You take the bad

You taken both and douse them in Tabasco sauce.

I was so uncultured I didn't even know what an antimacassar was until I came here.

*kisses doll*

I miss the NYSD and Michfest threads.

Since 2020. Pandemic Baby.

LOL. Goddess bless Janice the Vegan.

Nan Michiganwomyn's endless rules, regulations and boundaries are missed.

Nan was at her best when waxing about the lesbionic pleasures of MichFest and the like.

I still recall a phrase from one of her posts: “.. and the moontime glistened on her furry yoni.”

Nan Michiganwomyn was top-tier collaborative fiction. DL at its best.

Peggys testimonial while flinging bags of grain for American Cancer Centers was the best commercial thread for me.

DdJ was that weird straight woman who had a crush on RWOAC and CrazyMint. I remember she was getting trolled on a thread by some bitch who kept posting “My name is DdJ and I’m here to WARSH YOUR VAGINA.”

I think he's still on here and posting anonymously, but Your Millennial Friend was a privileged NYer who would condescend to everybody.

We can bemoan the Days of Olde, but still someone will come along and coin a phrase like "titless ginger" and it's like a warm, familiar comforter around here.

R526 “Titless ginger.” Thought I wandered into the Hacks thread by mistake and you were referencing Ava.

R442 didn’t know Nancy Reagan suffered from dementia and couldn’t recognize the third most powerful person in her country. Did the poor old lady get into trouble with it?

I'm casket dancing as fast as I can!

Bitch