It takes dedication to maintain an online presence in a forum for as long as some of our hardcore posters have hung around. I myself came here as a WMC (still looking to get that Hitachi 19" CRT too !!) and spent almost all of my time in the Hot Deals forum.
It wasn't until well over a year after I joined that I even found the OT forum, and it was quite a boisterous, raucous, daily drama of a forum in its day. Problem with that many outgoing personalities was an eventual clash of beliefs, whether it be political, personal, religious .. whatever. We'd lose a couple here and there, others moved on to greener pastures once OT started to dry up wit hits originality. I now frequent Reddit much more than ATOT, but I still lurk enough to see what the old gang is up to.
Some have no intention of coming back, afraid to tarnish the memories that they carried with them from back then. Others come back for a visit, but life has changed them enough to know that what we discuss will no longer change their opinion in any way, shape or form. Also, social media has drawn enough of the younger crowd, more interested in 'likes' and 'retweets' and 'followers' and its instant gratification than an older styled forum that demands a lot of 'F5's to see some discussion. We are turning into dinosaurs around here - angry malcontents more interested in hollering at kids stepping on our virtual lawn and posting about how it was 'back in my day'.
Nothing lasts forever. We had some good times and some bad times, we ROFL'd, we told some to 'STFU', we even went and 'DIAF'd a few, but at the end of the day we came right back here for more OT. A toast, my friends ..... a toast to honor what we were, what we've become, and what we will eventually do once we find out if in fact a plane can take off from a treadmill runway.