Flossie's dead.
...
It's weird. I'm not exactly saddened by it (he was damn weird, with his alien abductions and fake dead girlfriends and all, and all the damage he did to the community we used to have here), but it's sort of the end of an era I guess.
When I started here, everyone was real. Everyone was truthful, it was assumed. Then Dennis killed his girlfriend and we all mourned. Only she wasn't real and it was all bullshit.
We all ate crow and realized that people on the internet can lie.
You younger kids don't realize how powerful and painful that was. The internet back then was the domain of geeks and goofballs. Normal people didn't waste their time with it and looked sideways those of us who did. It was our place, and it was different. We typed our thoughts and people typed their responses and it was all real and true and things were good.
We trusted people. It sounds misguided, in this day and age, but we did. We took posters at face value. We belived the words they wrote. There were trolls, but they were easy to spot and easy to ignore. We made friends. ATOT was a place where we could be ourselves and interact with people like us. It was good.
Then the internet got bigger. More people were online, and more people joined the forums. Dennis was one of them. He was Dennis Fillion, at first, and switched to Dennilfloss when the boards moved to Fusetalk. He was a prolific poster. He wasn't real, though.
He made up a girlfriend and based her name on a well-known troll of the time. He killed her off and made everyone mourn her passing once she got too popular. His lie was the first lie online that most of us encountered. You younger kids are used to people being full of shit on the internet, but back then it was unheard of.
Dennis taught us that people on the internet can lie. He taught us that people will manipulate our feelings for attention. He taught us that the things we read online might be bullshit.
He was the first to kill the fantasy that we'd all created. He was the first troll to bring us real pain.
...
He was the one who brought the ugly side of reality to us all. He kinda sorta acknowledged his role in all of it after several years ( after being called on it) but he always avoided taking responsibility and he never apoligized to the many people he wronged. Now he's dead, and I'm not quite sure how I should feel.
...
I guess I'm supposed to say 'Rest in Peace' even though I don't really mean it?