No day like March 30, 2006 will ever be forgotten by me. I remember it incredibly well, watching a site explode with activity that afternoon as the CT ship arrived. For those who were the earliest, you'll remember CT started as one of those "child boards" with the tiny print and it was attached to another forum here. But within the first hour or so, it broke out into its own forum. Of course, the biggest challenge we had was just getting CT folks to step foot out of their own forum and explore the rest of the site! CT was a California freeway compared to the backroads on the rest of the site!
I also remember very well the extreme concern that the trolls would follow CT folks over here, but after a joint effort by all the great people on this site, we stomped any attempts literally minutes after they arrived. And I'll never forget the pleasure I had in tracking down one troll right down to his dorm room, and filed a complaint with the college in Binghamton. That sent a message.
I was a CT member on IMDb, but not the most prolific poster because I was trying to build BetterMost at the time. But I'll never forget the CT refuge from the wild rapids that was the IMDb Brokeback Mountain Forum. It was almost impossible to keep up with anything in there.
One bittersweet thing I am now noticing is some nostalgia for the older days (yeah, a year ago is the older days) when everything was all-Brokeback, all the time. A lot of the passion from the obsession has now become acceptance and me wondering if it's okay that I am not as obsessed with the film as I was last year at this time. It's amazing how the passion seems to be coming and going in waves right now.
Year two will be, for me, an exploration of new things that have radiated out from Brokeback which I didn't have time to contemplate too much last year, but now can use this year to keep the passion alive. I find I want to know more and more about the mountain west, what life is like there, seeing it, breathing it, touching it, interacting with people living it. I know what Jack and Ennis did, but now I have this hunger to fill in the blanks about the things the film and story never covered.
Another year, another journey!
