And before I had time to react, 2009 had reached its end. I’ll borrow the old poets’ tone for a moment and sigh about how fast time goes.
For me, 2009 was a year of disappointment with forums. After years of spending time in them, this was the first year when I often felt disheartened and lost the drive I used to have.
January: sleeping at home. February: sleeping at home. March: wandering around away from home.
April—that was where the real trouble began. I was working at an internet café, with plenty of time on a computer. I ran a modest forum called Jidian—China Geek Alliance. Many people who hung around AD didn’t even know it existed, but it had managed to set up friend links with Siba, Huacai, Dingxiangyu, and other forums. Like many sites that later became known, it started on a free 5D6D forum because of various constraints. Its foundations were decent, but I wanted it to grow, so I decided to make it independent. While I was looking for hosting, something unexpected happened: the site was shut down by internet regulators after someone posted reactionary content.
After a few days of agonizing, I borrowed a friend’s server to avoid losing members and began the independent journey—or perhaps the journey toward death. Before using it, I tested the speed and other aspects, and they were fine. Several other sites were also on that server, so I felt reassured. Then, on April 26, only days after going independent, Jidian was hacked.
I once wrote about it on Siba; the original text can no longer be found on my blog. The hacker didn’t seem malicious. At the time I simply cleaned up the forum and didn’t worry about the server, because the friend happened to be away from the internet for a few days and had no cell phone. Then the nightmare came: a few days later, when I checked Jidian, I saw a private-server website. The original Jidian had been deleted.
I asked for a long time about the cause but never got an answer. The site I had worked on for so long was truly gone.
May: golden wheat fields. I felt awful toward the members who had been through Jidian with me, especially when someone in the group asked when it would reopen. I didn’t know what to say. I can still remember those people’s names clearly, but I treated them as if they didn’t exist and ignored them. I really didn’t know what to tell them. If apologies solved everything, the world wouldn’t need laws.
Then, sometime earlier, I saw that Xiaoxin had gone months without backing up data, and the forum data had reverted to a much earlier state. I felt a pang. So I wasn’t the only careless one. Maybe there had been others before me, but no one ever reminded me. Some people probably think backing up is a mandatory part of the job and therefore not worth mentioning—but who knew that reality and imagination are two different stories? I hope every administrator remembers this. Perhaps one day our site will have to close, but many years later it may reopen with the data still there. Everyone gathering again would be a strange and moving feeling.
June: still sinking. There was no hope of reviving the new site. I had lost confidence; how could I ask anyone else to have it? I focused on work and tried to settle down.
July: a flash of time.
August: Jianxia Qingyuan 3. The game entered closed beta, and the qinggong was fun. I got an account and played with the customers at the internet café. When I didn’t know where to do a quest, I looked it up online; when I didn’t know how to run a dungeon, I looked it up too. That was how I found a place called Duowan. My forum life connected with that world again. Duowan grass could be exchanged for game cards. I posted something and got 80 grass? So I sank into it. Once I was inside that atmosphere, I immediately thought of my old forum life, and before I knew it I was going back to the forums I had left. I paid more attention to the places I only visited occasionally, watching their every move.
September: JX3 went into open beta. I rushed to level 50 in one go and spent my free time riding around. Riding through the jianghu, galloping through forums. September was a happy stretch. During that time I picked up a lot of sites, including the small circle of Majiamen.
October: maybe influenced by the game, I no longer liked staying in one fixed place. I quit my job and went to Yunnan.
November: old haunts. I returned to the campus where I had studied and played games with old classmates.
December: unknown.