The following history has been put together informally with little research, the main sources being
Vyvyan Blackthorne and
The Goth Bible by
Nancy Kilpatrick. I will not be offended if anyone posts corrections and constructive criticisms, and more importantly expanded details if they have intimate knowledge of events and people pertaining to our beloved Gothic.net, or
Gnet as it has come to be called by perennial members. This is a living thread, and I hope it is continued by others who have seen the actual history posted or through face to face conversations, phone calls, police records and whatnot.
In the Beginning there was Darkness:
In 1998,
Darren Mckeeman together with other internet professionals were enjoying a bizarre weekend in Niagara Falls with mass quantities of alcohol when during this self medicating social activity, he came upon an epiphany that would effect the entire world wide population of horror writers, goths, and everyone else who enjoyed "clanky chains and ghosts in castles" as Darren described it. Thus, the domain Gothic.net was conceived.
Membership rose, some from around the world, stories were posted and enjoyed by thousands, the servers were upgraded from resurrected trash heap survivors to faster and newer hardware, more disk space was added, and advertising revenue began to grow to an amount that could sustain Gnet. After a while, it had such a large membership that forum moderators were needed to police thread activity, allowing a sane and civilized forum for the above average literary community.
Sold out! (This portion is dramatically incorrect - Gothic.net)
But after five years of success,
(Gothic.net languished, getting less and less of Darren/Weaselboy's attention, and finally going offline altogether, as he worked on other ventures, most notably his now defunct gothic porn site.) and having gained world wide notoriety, Darren sold Gnet to a woman who is known only as Amelie
(Incorrect). She temporarily shut down Gnet and fired the mods
(Not really accurate). A "reorg" took place, with Darren now hired as an Admin, and a new mod, WeaselBoy
(Wholly not accurate) (Join date Oct. 2003, his profile may be seen at
https://www.gothic.net/boards/member.php?u=3 ) was placed in control. Surprisingly, he only made 44 posts, his last being June of last year.
(Darren is WeaselBoy, always was. Amelia G had been providing hosting for Gothic.net many years; it had gone dark on Darren/Weaselboy's watch for a long period a number of years back and Amelia G was responsible for bringing it back and putting Darren/Weaselboy back in the editorial role. Darren/Weaselboy complained about the various financial burdens maintaining the site had caused him and he sold it to the individual who had already been providing free hosting. However, he was kept on as editor of the site. Eventually some of the older scripts became vulnerable and were in drastic need for upgrade. Darren/Weaselboy was in charge of the upgrades but never brought them to fruition. These old Gothic.net scripts were responsible for allowing a fairly major server hack job and the site was taken off line while replacement scripts were put together by the host/owner. After failing on this front, Darren/Weaselboy went his separate way and was no longer acting Gothic.net editor.
Some long time members were briefly interviewed for moderator rolls, but ultimately, these moderators didn't work out. Some were very helpful and we appreciate their efforts, but the site moderation strategy was shifted to people less invested in the day to day interpersonal drama. This strategy seems to have been more successful. ~Gothic.net )
The Mutiny and Purge!
Before June of 2003, a power struggle began between the core members and the Admins and Mods. There were member complaints about specific individuals accused of being trolls, or were just not liked, complaints about post deletions, and other debatable issues that divided the community. The Moderator WeaselBoy decided to quit and left Gnet in anger at the members who were accusing him of not moderating as they thought he should
(That was still Darren using his WeaselBoy handle to mod.). One of the most vocal members was Xng, now known as DarkHeartedDemoness. She was banned after complaining about a member who was making improper posts towards a member who was of minor age
(Incorrect, or at least not why she was banned anyway). Just before she was banned she began to threaten legal action against Gnet because of Gnet Admin's failure to ban the one she accused of the improper posts after which she was banned. (If this is incorrect I apologize, and humbly request the actual sequence if anyone disagrees, including you DHD. I do not wish to libel or slander anyone.) By this time she had become the most prolific member on Gnet, having written over 9,000 posts!
Following her banning, some of her friends who loudly protested the admin action were also banned. This further agitated the remaining core members some of who were banned and others who left in a mass exodus in protest. They went and formed their own website, which shall not be named to avoid this author from being banned himself. The members who voluntarily left occasionally return from time to time. But some returned in disguise: In the Summer of 2006, a mass
(fake) invasion of trolls took place, which it was later suspected by the Admins as being launched by the disaffected banned and self exiled members
(Based on IP's as well as proof provided by other members). More bannings took place, but this time of bogus troll accounts formed merely to cause trouble for the Admins and Mods on Gnet.
Healing...
Only a few members were left, one of who just happened to be one of the youngest,
Godslayer Jillian, and also a new member joined who was (until recently) the youngest member yet:
disorder. These new members were the seeds that would later form a new generation of members like an internet Adam and Eve, a new generation that did not know of the past mutiny, and so were not "poisoned" against the site admin and mods. As more and more new members joined (myself included,
HumanePain), the community took on a new look and feel, one less antagonistic and more friendly, and this new culture began to draw even more members, which now exceed 10,000.
Today, the site more or less functions as it should, with members posting poetry and stories, commentary and reviews about music and books, and most popular of all, the Picture Thread.
In summary, the site is an enjoyable place, with most members being between
the ages of 15 and 20, with extremes of between 12 and 51.
If anyone has any corrections or can expand on any details, please feel free to do so. Thanks for reading, and may you enjoy our hallowed and darkened halls as much as I!
(Obviously, we've always appreciated Gothic.net. I remember when Darren showed it to me moments after he completed the very first design. It had a very nice sort of Grey's anatomy based navigation and turned out very well. We were sad to see it fall on hard times and we've been supportive of it in every way we could since day one. It has always been our goal as care takers of the site to have a pleasant enjoyable fairly open place for the culture to congregate. It's had its ups and downs, its false starts and bad ideas, as well as some great conversations and cool contributors. Occasionally, minor events are a bit opaque to the average user, but know that many of these things have been handled with the best interest of Gothic.net in mind.)
(Could someone please let us know any portions of this Nancy Kilpatrick, through any of her writings or otherwise, was responsible for? Vyvyan?)