Longo_2_guns said:
He was the huge pedophile, right? Because all I remember about him was a photoshopped picture of a baby in a claw machine with "Brand X goes for the win" or something like that underneath it.
He was an Op, I believe, in Gr's IRC chat.
So he was like mid to late 20s - I want to say 27, but he may have been in his early 30s - and basically chatted up some chick who was 14-16 years of age in irc chat. They exchanged nudes (or at least she did) and, if I remember correctly, he started calling her his girlfriend openly.
So par for the course as far as the IRC channel is concerned.
But the legend grew through the "community", which had been split a few different ways about the issue. Some people thought it wasn't a big deal (they were in the minority), some forums users saw it as their chance to start a flame war with the other IRC users or made fun of Brand X's situation (the majority), but a lot of us were quiet about the matter entirely (not me). The irc folks sided with the Op except for, like, One (that's a user named One just to clarify.. i know you know, Longo, but it seems I'm rambling on.. just want to be as clear as possible).
The forums basically saw this as the line being drawn in the sand. Now we had a reason to hate IRC (even further). You were either with IRC or you were with the Forums - there could be no mixing of the two. Well, except for those 1% sad-sacks who'd continue to do both.
But the GR IRC never fully recovered, still to this day. Blame ^Brand X^ because he's the reason the forums never fully embraced it.
I think this also led to Icepick's raid of GR's irc under the guise of preteens girls, immediately followed by his private conversation chat logs with ^Brand X^. Other copycats would follow suit. Though maybe Icepick had already been banned on irc because of his comments towards dUKE's girlfriend?
Indeed, it was an interesting time... You have to understand that
we all were at each other's throats for a period that lasted for what had to be a full year (on the forums). Everyone seemed to have their own cliques.
It's like everyone, including the mods, were going through the same growing pains of *being on* - not just using but existing on - the internet at around the same time, and with responsibility and self-censorship creeping onto the agenda at a snail's pace, the GR powers that be saw fit to create a few new boards and about tripled the number of mods in the process. Up until then, Kaanchtoofan and Sounds had been running the entire show by themselves it seemed. But hummingbird porn made for the best bribe and a lot of our forum warriors turned into tame ass-kissing, mod-me-too sellouts at just the sniff of a Young Masters promotion.
But no one judged because the damage had already been done. Everyone had made out like bandits. Soo very stupid, but tons of fun.
Eventually '^Brand X^' would disappear, and the user now known as 'Shaft' was born.
I'm sure The Cookster played an important role in posting chat logs as well. Someone who was there in IRC could probably give you a better telling.
