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The Ooze was a Christian message board created by Spencer Burke that existed about 20 years ago when the Internet was quite different from how it is today. It was a gathering place for all sorts of people who were trying to come up with better ways to live out their faith. I met some incredible people there, including my spouse!
Even though I was a Christian back then, I generally avoided the theological discussions that took place there. I was much more interested in finding practical ways to quietly live out my beliefs as someone who had virtually no extra money to spare but who still wanted to help others in whatever ways I could.
While I am very far removed from that world now, I’d love to have a reunion with many of the genuine folks I met there. They were good people.
See also: message boards in general. I wish they would become popular again as I miss the depth of conversation that could be found in them about all sorts of niche topics. It was almost like taking a college course on those subjects.
Message boards were a different kind of community back then!
For sure! Mastodon reminds me a little of them, though.
Reddit has basically plowed old web forums under, although there are a few I visit — TrekBBS and CFC. Haven’t been to CFC in a while because they forced 2FA on me as a moderator, and the system wouldn’t send a text to me before it timed out. Shame, too, I’ve been a member there since 2003.
I had a similar forum to yours, Lydia, called “Godplace”. It was a forum for Pentecostals/Apostolics of varying stripes. I even went there after I was an angry ex-Pentecostal out of force of habit.
I’d never heard of Godplace before. I’m sorry it shut down.
And, yeah, Reddit has almost completely replaced all of the old forums.
The first book group I belonged to was one of these. It was called bookgrouplist, and the level of the discussions was…wow!
That sounds amazing!
Oh, I had never heard of that one. I bet I would have enjoyed it as well. Lydia. Message boards really suffered after Facebook and other sites took hold. Not the same thing, and I also miss them.
It was a really special site! And, yeah, Facebook and social media played a big role in destroying message boards unfortunately.
TheOOZE is synonymous with the internet, in my memories of approximately 2000-2008. 💜
💜
Interesting! I never heard of this website, but I miss message boards, too! I think I was on some homeschooling ones, and also probably parenting ones, but I can’t really remember the topics now. I do remember waiting to see if anyone would reply to my message or reply to my reply!
That was always such a fun feeling!
I miss message boards, too. Though I’ve gotten some of the same feeling of them from the Discord servers I’m in.
Oh, cool! I’ve dabbled with Discord but don’t currently use it.