NPF sucks!

[Solid Snake]

Okay, lemme go into "Serious Mode" for a moment, all joshin' aside.

I...really don't see leaving from (or returning to) NPF as such a big deal?

I've been away from the forums for countless several month long intervals and I've experienced weeks and even months when I've genuinely believed I had left NPF for good and would "never come back." I think it's only natural in the course of one's experiences in a community -- any community of friends, in real life or on the interwebs -- to experience moments when you're just "out of sync" with the group, and to, alternatively, experience moments where you're totally in the zone.

...Like, I've had stretches on NPF where I've been incredibly active to the point where everyone seemed to expect Snake's participation and where Snake was on everyone's tongues, but I've also totally had long droughts where I've lurked or never even showed up here for months on end. Sometimes those droughts were due to just sheer busyness. Sometimes I was just irrationally angry about something someone on NPF did and my boycott was a manifestation of that anger. Most recently, for a personal example that combines both elements, you can point to my short-lived Mafia inspired boycott, which was elongated further by a natural disappearing act in December due to fall semester exams.

...But, I guess my point is: I'm not really sure why people just naturally deciding to leave NPF merits a referendum on the community itself? I mean, it seems like RPG and RMB and Ryong are more or less just having a natural "out of sync" period, so they're going to show up less and lurk more or whatever else that means, and that's fine.

But it seems irrational to expect a community, which matures and undergoes gradual metamorphosis just as individuals do, to adhere to one's personal standards, which also evolve and change over time. In other words: NPF changes, and you change too: Your interests may eventually diverge from NPF's. Or, you may find a new group of friends, IRL or on another website (this happened to me to some extent in 2005-07) who totally supplant NPF as your go-to hangout crew. Or, you may find yourself maturing into someone who desires to converse or interact in a different way than the community at NPF seems to gravitate towards or appreciate.

...But that's not a fault of NPF; it's not a reason to point fingers at NPF and insinuate that it's the problem. (I was dead wrong when I pulled a similar stunt in Mafia, by the way.) That's silly thinking. Leave or stay if you'd like, to the best of my knowledge NPF isn't a closed-doors kind of place and everyone's totally invited to hang, as my own continued existence seems to suggest, but if your problem is everything I've just described, the solution is generally to just walk away from NPF for a few weeks / months / whatever and see if you eventually find yourself yearning to stop by again, and show up if you do.

* This message is just the feelings of Solid Snake and in no way represent how the "NPF Community" as a whole feels about such matters because Snake doesn't represent jack shit.

** Also, if your problem is less with the NPF community at large and more with a single user, like fuck that Snake and his hammy melodramatic bullshit or fuck (insert your least favorite user here), I'd recommend contacting the Mods and/or the asshole user in question before embarking on an exodus. I can't speak for anyone else, but personally my paranoia-induced, self-obsessed fear is often that I'm the culprit for the ill feelings, and if that's actually the case, the solution is not for multiple users to leave on my own sorry-ass account, but rather for me to leave and everyone else to stay. (If your problem is not with me but with another person, replace my name with his and it's still a similar message.)

EDIT: Shit, Fenris Mod-ninja'd me there. Still leaving this up because I wasted too much time typing it to want to delete it.
(Yes, this took me over twelve minutes to write.)