I used to be a Weirdlet. I was real into Weird>. It got me through my day (well, actually, my work sometimes took a backseat to whatever was happening there). I made a lot of good friends through posting in there. After a while of reading it consistently, you'd figure out who was who and eventually you'd come to a sense of the Weirdlet community. You could join it pretty easily if you posted with some sense of wit and didn't act like an idiot. I mean, there were tons of people who had been real into Weird> well before I was, but I never found the forum difficult to get along in.
Some of the running themes of posts:
1. Posts about "Baby Jesus"..."Baby Jesus doesn't like Weird>." "Malachite Awry makes Baby Jesus cry."
2. Friends lists, usually thematically organized. I maintained the candy list, and put all kinds of snarky comments into my candy names. For example, I was described as "Fun Dip...Lik it! Taste it! Wow!." There was also "Snickers...it really satisfies!," "Retro Lime Starburst," "Pnut M&Ms, I mean MMMMS!" and so on. Other friends lists were themed by biblical character (I was Lilith on this list), star quality (I was the Sigourney Weaver Weirdlet), by sex appeal (Transgendered Fnord Lovin), and more. I had started with a desk item list initially, but overhauled it in favor of candy names because nobody wants to be called a stapler or a push pin.
3. Posts thrown down in a hiphopesque playa hata slang, yo.
4. Lots and lots of sexually explicit and violent posts, which partially led to the deletion of the forum. People also used it regularly to anonymously flame other users. While these posts could often be amusing, they were supposedly forbidden.
5. Amusing responses to innocent questions. For example, a lot of people would correct speling with "YM spelling...HTH!" This would lead to the inevitable "What's YM and HTH mean?" And we'd all go bananas coming up with what YM and HTH stood for. "Your mother, harrowing thick hag!" "Yellow mutton, hack that hunk!" And so on.
6. Guidetag. My personal favorite guidetag question came early in my Weirdletdom, when somebody questioned me with "Why do Weirdlets suddenly appear every time you are near?" I naturally responded with "Just like me, they long to be close to you."
I suppose a lot of this humor looks fairly inane and seventh-gradish. Weird> is for the best of seventh-grade humor in a lot of ways. After a few months as a Weirdlet, I was far quicker on the uptake in my real life...I could come up with snappy comebacks far more rapidly after spending slow times at work posting the snarkiest stuff possible. Weird> honed my wit in a lot of ways, and I really miss it for that reason. Well, that and the community I enjoyed there.
Weird> was deleted because of the flaming and sexual/violent posts, and I understand that. I didn't really like those posts, unless they were really well written at least. Sometimes Adonis brings Weird> back for an hour or so; he did this today, and that's mostly why Weird> is on my brain right now.
Sniffle. Weird> is dead. Long live Weird>!