User blog:Alemas2005/It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for

(Turn sound on, there's music) Well, it's been twelve years. Twelve years since I joined LEGO.com. November 25, 2005. I remember quite clearly having a LEGO account before that, but for the sake of simplicity I always used that date for the "age" of my account.

Twelve years, the same amount of time I spent in England before moving to Germany, funnily enough.

But the Message Boards, the only place I could celebrate such an "achievement", are now dead, buried, and deleted. "Celebrating" such an occasion here wouldn't make much sense. So why am I mentioning it?

Well, here's the thing. The Wiki's basically dead. Not buried, or deleted, but quite dead, that's certain. Only a few users come in here every day. And for most of the time, they don't say much. The hive of activity, arguments, votes, drama, is now long gone.

Simply put, there's no real need for me anymore. And I've been involved with the MBs longer than most, it accompanied my life longer than most, and it probably affected my life longer than most as well. It's now time to move on.

Yes, you heard it, on the 12th anniversary of the creation of my LEGO.com account, I'm officially announcing my retirement from the Wiki. The moment you thought would never come, has come. The moment some you hoped would come, has come. The moment most of you hoped would never come, has come.

...hope that made sense.

I'm 20 years old and studying at uni. To still have "responsibilities" as 'crat and therefore having to bother with the Wiki of a deleted forum of a children's building block toy... doesn't make a lot of sense. The subject matter of the place is gone, there's nothing we can add, most of the community's gone. Now is the best time to unshackle myself from the Wiki.

Now this is the part where one would thank their friends and recall fond memories with them, at least on the MBs. But this is the thing, on the MBs I had way more of a feeling of "friendship" towards users than here. If you look at a couple of the retirements I had in my Wiki article, you'll see lists of friends. Don't know if it was simply my younger age, my different behaviour here, the fact that my old MB friends are now gone, or something else. In any case, this means that I don't reeeeeaaaaaallllllllyyyyyy have a long list of friends to thank. And I do feel ashamed.

So let's just thank a few special people, some friends, some acquaintances, who accompanied me along the way. In no particular order: Drew (for teaching me how to admin), Jude (for being a dope admin), Guac (for being the only guy with whom I regularly ever PM'ed with and managed to tolerate me), Bubbles (for being a girl with whom I could talk to), OpenEye/Fire (for being someone to talk to in the morning), Roddy (for being a spiffing nice chap), Pythor (for being a wonderful admin), MC (for being a wrecking ball, good or bad as it was), Animals (for being a perfectly reasonable if quite boring guy)...

Those are all the names I could think of. Pretty sure I forgot someone, as usual, but that's the risk you take for doing these lists. If you're not on the list, please don't be offended... please.

This would now be the point at which I say goodbye, thanks for everything, and all that. But no, first, here's a little something that'll help heal the pain a bit.

A selfie.



No, I don't have asymmetric ears, it's just the angle of the photo. Took it with the rear camera 'cause the front one gives a horrible distortion effect that makes me look even uglier.

Anyways, I'll stick around here for today and tomorrow for the "tearful" goodbyes, after that I'll vanish into real life. I may pop in every few months or so just because, but don't bet on it.

I could have written something on my history here and on the MBs, but this is so ridiculously long already and I'm pretty sure the music's running out, so.

Thanks for everything, guys. Hope you all do well in life, and don't let your memes be dreams.

A=l=e=m=a=s
>

P.S. In case you're still wondering about the "Wish You Were Here" blog post, it's because I wished for more people to be here to witness me finally leaving! Oh, and "The Show Must Go On" means that even if I'm leaving, you should still go on here and continue using the Wiki.