Since we're going into read-only soon, and this has seemingly become the collection of farewell missives, I felt the need to add my own selfish thanks and thoughts to the pile.

This community and website have been an incredibly important influence on my brain and spirit, and a huge part of who "I am" today. In my 20 years of following along I've had my submitted links published and commented on by some of my favorite creators, had pages-long arguments with some of the coolest and weirdest mutants I could hope for, and found some of the most joyous (and occasionally infuriating) content the world has to offer. But by far the most important part has been this community. Every time I see something that interests me in the RSS, I immediately head to the BBS to see what my people are feeling and thinking (sometime needing to search for the thread title when the link has been updated and doesn't work right :roll_eyes:). Whenever I've struggled with the chaos and uncontrollable events of the macrocosm, this is where I've gained clarity and camaraderie.

The internet, and world in general, have *felt* like an increasingly adversarial place for my favorite flavor of weirdo in recent years. But this BBS was always a place that felt relatively safe, even at its most challenging. Lurking has become my norm due to the fear, but reading through everyone's joys and anxieties, righteous anger and exultation, gives me a good centering. Pre-lurk, I know that the pushback and debate that I encountered with some of my comments has helped steer me towards a more healthy, accepting mindset - or at least tempered me with a wider view of the world. I know for a fact that some of the callouts I've had on here helped me to avoid all too common pipelines of throught, and shaped me into someone I'm proud to be, and so this community will always be with me in that way.

Knowing that many of these joyful mutants will not be making the leap to Substack feels like the heart going away - which is crushing. I'll likely still be reading BoingBoing in the future, but this is surely my end of community involvement as well. With that, I wanted to shout out some of my internet Aunties, Uncles, and genderqueer Entles - some of whom aren't here any longer to hear my thanks - who have irreversibly made my world the beautiful shape and shade that it is: @gracchus, @anon61221983, @Grey_Devil, @LDoBe, @Papasan, @Brainspore,  and so many more that my brain is failing to provide immediately (and also I'm limited to 10 people lol). And also never-ending thanks for the mods and volunteers who give their time and energy - and risk safety and sanity - to keep this garden beautiful:  @Mjolnir, @Sekhmet, and @Community_Mod_1, and of course @orenwolf. (and again, many more people over the years that I can't "at" since I have a limit both technically and with my memory)

Love you all, you have my eternal thanks, and I'll miss the heck out of you (even the tr0lls). Stay weird. :heavy_heart_exclamation: