Shortly before the 21st century began a forum dedicated to a certain console was born.
This forum came into being before Wikis and decent machine translations and looking back it was truly epic.
Some users had translated information from Japanese that had never reached the West, which finally allowed people to understand things from a new point of view.
This new perspective made the knowledge accumulated in Latin characters up to that point seem like just the tip of a distorted pyramid, which had been buried in the desert for too long, but there were also in-depth analyses, curiosities, and impressions based on the personal experiences of hardcore gamers, so, what happened in the end?
The majority of the user base that kept the discussions alive wasn't really interested in the games they bought or who created them. Their sole interest was based on the economic ostentation of showing off and owning expensive limited-edition copies.
It's a bit like someone who buys a watch to exhibit their economic status, but once you talk to them you discover they can't actually read or write the numbers on the dial.
The founder of this portal thanks to his private work was part of this crowd.
Therefore as early as the mid-2000s, when the console's parent company ceased production of new titles, it triggered the first mass exodus.
For these people there were no more new toys to collect and show off, so almost all of them abandoned ship back then, however, the administrator decided to keep the scene alive, because the shop was connected to the forum had become the go-to place in the West for this console.
However, the forum was now set on a path towards an unstoppable sunset.
If the initial interest was focused solely on the economic ostentation of owning an expensive and limited object, then there was no way for that to be converted when the company decided to become more accessible and publish on new, widely available systems and even for the users who tried to focus solely on recovering a past they deemed more glorious, they eventually found themselves in a second-hand market where copies kept dwindling and prices kept rising, so, in the end that bubble burst too.
Another peculiar feature of this forum was the average age of its user base; in fact, there were almost no children, women, rules and the moderation was practically absent, telling its users to 'grow a thicker skin', but they would get triggered like sheep on fire whenever a troll decided to lash out at them and only then would they say that 'certain users were unacceptable people' and that they would 'definitely take action'.
When the forum's immune system was actually working, there was no real need to dictate strict rules, because it ran on self-management, but after the exodus the forum became immunosuppressed like an AIDS patient.
In the end the faction of users who had never been interested in the console, its company, or video games in general, grew in number and caused the place to degenerate into oblivion.
They did this through gratuitous verbal violence, written only to cause harm, knowing they would face no consequences from the pre-existing group; by making the same tired jokes older than their dead relatives; by derailing even the most promising discussions and by using manipulation based on childish, conformist projection.
In conclusion, they drove away even the most sincere and stubborn content creators, who had survived until then and who had given so much to the world.
When I checked last year the place still existed, but now it's just an ugly stereotyped parody, which isn't even truly funny to them anymore and it has no hope for the future (despite having updated its graphic theme).
Today all that remains are the memories of a time that ceased to exist many years ago and I have already saved a good part of them for myself, but it would become almost a second unpaid job if I were to push myself to consult the entire 25-year-old archive, just to see if there's anything interesting left to save.