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It probably started off like any other person's experience with the internet. I had no experience with online communities and dial-up was pretty awful, so I spent most of my time looking up video game sites. I always frequented geocities and angelfire sites, most of which were just full of crap. But hey, I always wanted to play as Luigi in Super Mario 64, shoot a dead mario out of a cannon, catch mew and the "pokegods", or attempt to get misty to take her clothes off in pokemon yellow. Ah, I found that code on a website which promptly infected my mom's laptop with some virus. My dad and I were not very tech-savy at that time.
After some time passed, my friend, who you all know of as Elric, showed me this "neat" site called yoshiart.com. Around this time, I would say I was probably 9 or 10, (around 2005). I was a pretty big fan of yoshi at the time and was amazed that there was a site dedicated to the character and art about the character. Little did I truly know who ran the site and what the ride was going to be like.
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If you are interested in the nature of YAF, the Encyclopedia Dramatica article is actually very very accurate. The site is not safe for work, the specific page is surprisingly more SFW than other pages though.
Feldo also has a good portion of the forum archived too.
http://feld0.com/archives/yaf/
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I spent most of my time looking up the art gallery section of the site, never realizing that there was a forum. I idolized several users for their art, mainly Pyruvate at that time. Looking back on it, that may not have been the best thing, his art was okay, it was pretty risque as he anthropomorphized his yoshis to certain extent and drew some boderline porn, keep in mind there were no rules about users needing to be a specific age to join a forum, but there was a no porn rule. Because he was an artist, he could do anything and get away with it. Nowadays, he makes a few bucks off of drawing pony porn.
After about a year, I noticed that there was a forum and mustered all my courage to make an email and register an account. In 2006, I was known as Pyro Dragon Yoshi, because I wanted to pretend I was cool and obsessed with fire. My posting was what you could expect of a 10 year old, bragging about my art, posting it when I could, taking art requests, and constantly pestering the admin to give my my own gallery.
These two crummy drawings were the first drawings I ever uploaded and posted online:
http://i158.photobuc...8-18_edited.jpg
http://i158.photobuc...7070039PM-3.jpg
After being hit by the harsh truth that my art wasn't actually that great (where no one bothered to call me out on how stupid I was acting) I actually began to strive to be better. Not only at art, but as an actual forum user. I started to make friends with people and even tried out the roleplaying section, which was a rough start. That was also the place where I first heard the word furry. I wasn't a furry at that time, nor am I now, but a few twisted users on that site convinced me that furry meant any sort of anthropomorphic animal character, including Sonic. I was fortunate to continue ignorant of what a furry truly was (until I got into the popular Super Mario Bros Z series, the creator being a furry himself).
As time passed, I did meet quite a bit of awful people, not short of how you would describe on the ED and Something Awful sites. I wasn't around for early 2006, which the users called the golden year, but it was also considered one of the darker times as well.
Before feldo registered an account on that site, I had become a regular user. I definitely acted like a kid and was easily pissed off, but I was surprisingly more mature than many of the users on that site. My name shortened over time from Pyro Dragon Yoshi, to Pyro Yoshi, and finally just Pyro; I just didn't want to give up that stupid name (which is still my login name on this site). By the time feldo joined the site, he was just like any other user, obsessed with yoshi. He didn't seem that different from anyone else, so I honestly cannot remember how he really started off. He did make it clear, though, that he was supposedly really smart; he even acted that way too.
He made himself known for being some big time writer, and we were on good terms simply for that (I never read his extensive fan fiction series). I believe he was made into an official writer for his extensive fan fiction and for criticizing users' grammatical errors. He was a real snob for grammar mistakes, even his own.
We got to know each other a bit over time. He advertised the hell out of his site and always boasted about being a writer elsewhere. I believe that he and Elric were on pretty good terms, as Elric was a member of his sites before I was.
After a good amount of wacky and zaniness, several users started to notice the lack of quality on the forum and how inattentive the admin was. We brought it up a few times and how the main page wasn't updated. After a while, Soul, the admin, came with news of updates, new admins, new mods, and moving the forum to a new server. A new set of rules also came into place, requiring members to be 13 or older to register (but who follows those rules?).
That kept us quiet for quite some time, as old time members returned along with newer members. There was a slight disconnect, but it was strong at that time.
Because the forum was moved onto another server, the member count fell drastically, and new members weren't as abundant as they had been in the past. In this time, I had done my homework and found out about Soul himself.
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Soul tried to be a private guy. He took down his own yoshi artwork and hated whenever someone even talked about him. This should have been a sign to us all, but we never noticed until much much later.
Soul was originally a user on another yoshi fan forum called Yoshi's Corner (which was the biggest Yoshi fan site for its time). I believe he had some importance, as he was a mod or even an admin. Whatever his status, he had popularity behind him. During those times, which I only learned from older members, soul had issues with the admins on YC. If Soul wouldn't get his way, he throw tantrums and make a big deal out of things. He had some sort of craving for popularity and being the biggest yoshi around. After many fights, Soul finally broke down in his ultimate act of dickery and started his own war against YC.
Soul created his own site, Yoshiart.com, as a site to combat YC. Soul wanted a monopoly over the yoshi fandom and brought fans over through advertising, affiliations, spam, and other nonsense. He gained access to the Super Mario bros cartoons and anime, which he uploaded to his site. You can probably still see a YoshiArt logo in plenty of youtube poops.
Soul had his own fan army spam YC, and the nonsense continued for quite some time. It quieted down on YC, but Soul could never forgive them for criticizing him and not giving into his demands. Soul implemented a policy that would ban anyone who talked about YC and even filtered the websites name so that no one could mention the site. Soul kept his grudge for years, even until YAF's final years. There was literally no information on Yoshiart about the way he acted on YC or the internet war he tried to use. All conversations lead to bans. I pieced things together from information from old users, members of YC, and the posts that started it all on YC. I don't think any of it is currently archived on that site anymore.
Soul never changed. He couldn't stand people bringing up information about his past, his art, or his personal life. He couldn't stand criticism and would freak out whenever we complained that he was never around or would never update the site. Feldo told me several times about how much he hated Soul, and invited me to help him create his own super Yoshi site, which I can go into more details later.
What lead to Soul's shut down of YAF was specifically the introduction of one user, Davey-J-Yoshi, a guy who fetishizied yoshi and nintendo characters' legs beyond belief.
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