200,000 posts!!!!!!!!
Dec 20, 2018 7:03:24 GMT -5
Post by ✞~Spottedleaf ~✞ on Dec 20, 2018 7:03:24 GMT -5
At long last, the time has come for me to post this thread! I’ve been anticipating this for quite some time this year, and now it’s finally time. The time has come for me to post my 200,000th post on this forum! That’s right, this is not my 200th, 2,000th, or even my 20,000th post. It’s my 20,000th with another zero added onto it. This is my 200,000th post! I’ve finally made it.
Even though I’m the one reaching this milestone, I know that 200,000 is a lot of posts. Admittedly, it’s a ridiculous number. It’s ridiculous, but it’s incredible all at the same time. Never would I have thought that I would achieve something like this anywhere on the Internet.
How did I get here, you may ask? I ask myself that sometimes, believe it or not, but in the end it all comes down to a lot of time and extreme dedication. It’s a long story to tell, but I wouldn’t be mentioning that if I wasn’t willing to tell it. It’s quite a long story, so we’d better get started. Let’s just start from the beginning.
Sparing you of a long side story, I joined the forum just over seven years ago, on October 28th, 2011. I joined without any real plans on staying. I originally planned to get the codes for the secret pelts and never return. Obviously, that plan didn’t last.
The day after I created my account, October 29th, I made my first post. There wasn’t much to it. All it had was a link to my YouTube channel. That was it. It was just a link with no explanations or words. So, basically, I used my first to advertise for something without leaving any context. I don’t think it got any replies either.
The next couple of months following that are a little fuzzy, as far as forum activity goes. I remember posting threads about my cat Elvis being sick or injured, even though he wasn’t sick or injured at all. I was just being that typical, awkward 14-year-old who just wanted attention. I’m not sure how I didn’t get caught with this, or maybe I did and just don’t remember. I honestly don’t even remember if I even read the rules immediately after joining, since the threads I was posting might have been considered spam, especially now that I’m admitting that most were made just for attention.
I remember actually getting in trouble for a thread I made. It was in January 2012 when I decided that I wanted some extra reputation points, or karma as it was known back then. So, I made a thread called Karma for Karma. Basically, the idea of that was that if a user exalted me, then I would exalt them in return. Almost immediately after the thread was posted, it was attacked by three moderators and taken down by Falcon. Consequently, a rule was added to the rules thread that prohibited a thread like that from being made ever again.
To summarize the last few paragraphs, in the beginning, I really wasn’t posting too much. I was posting, but hardly any of the posts were all that intelligent or what I would consider worth posting nowadays. I wouldn’t be surprised if people disliked me back then, and honestly, it wouldn’t even offend me.
I don’t think I reached a thousand posts until around February of 2012, at least four months after my join date. That’s pretty sad considering that I can make a thousand posts in under a week currently. I just didn’t care all that much for posting back then. I posted just to post, without having any goals to achieve in mind.
Then, summer of 2012 arrived. I began inching my way up through the ranks. On June 30th, 2012, I created the All Nighter thread, and that soon became the main thread that I posted on with a few other members who aren’t around anymore. By July that year, I was a Wise Elder and had 2500 posts. I was scheduled to go on a summer vacation about a week before school started. School started around the 4th of August, and my family planned to go on the vacation around the 28th of July. It was about a week prior to the departure date when I decided that I wanted to try to join StarClan before I left. This was the first posting goal that I remember setting for myself.
Even though I was about a thousand posts away at the time, I was determined to reach my goal. I spent countless hours posting and pulled at least four all nighters in a row to pull this off. I sacrificed many hours of sleep because I really wanted to make it to 4000 posts by the end of the week. With all my efforts, I made it, and I was happy about it. In fact, for about a week after that, my avatar was a picture of a tombstone that said something like this:
Reaching my first post goal caused a chain reaction. I continued setting goals after that. At the time, the highest existing rank was StarClan Elder, which requires 10,000 posts to accomplish. I decided that I wanted to attain the highest rank by Christmas. I continued to do what I did to achieve the first goal, though perhaps not in such an extreme way. By doing that, I reached my goal early. Instead of getting there on December 25th, I arrived around December 12th.
After attaining all fifteen ranks, I wanted to do something harder. I wanted to surpass Dawnleaf on her post count. Mind you, back then I was around 30,000 posts behind her. I was sitting at 10,000, while she was near 40,000. A lot of people said it seemed impossible, but honestly, that only gave me more determination to do it. I was going to become the top poster no matter what it cost me. On top of that, I wanted to accomplish it by my sixteenth birthday (October 1st, 2013).
In order to achieve the goal in time, I had to make a lot more posts much more frequently. I started roleplaying during that time, and I was posting just about anywhere I could put a post in. I was answering questions about the game, saying hello to newcomers, roleplaying, and posting in game threads and the All Nighter thread left and right. I posted threads about reaching a new number of posts for every thousand posts. I did that from 11,000 up to at least 30,000 posts. Judging by how little time had passed until a new thread like that was made, I was averaging anywhere between 300 – 500 posts every day. I flew through thousands and thousands of posts like there was no tomorrow.
By February 2013, I was in second place. It only took me two months from when I decided on the goal to get right behind the leader. Also around that time, I made it to 36,000 posts. I made a thread about being Beyond StarClan. I made that because, in theory, I had made nine times the amount of posts it takes to get into StarClan. So, I made the thread to basically say that I was beyond StarClan because I had ‘died’ nine times, or I lost nine lives. With that, ranks 16 and 17 were born: Beyond StarClan (25,000 posts) and Ancient Ancestor (50,000 posts).
With the birth of the new rank that I hadn’t achieved yet, and since I wasn’t ahead of Dawnleaf yet, I pressed on. I wanted the new rank, and more than ever, I wanted first place on the top posters list. Dawnleaf reached 50,000 posts before I did, but I was right behind her. I remember promising her that I would get there as soon as possible so she wouldn’t be the only one with that rank.
In June 2013, I was about to go on another family vacation for summer break. I was sitting at 39,000 posts the day before we headed to our vacation spot. Since I knew that traveling and the vacation itself were going to take a big chunk of time that I’d normally spend posting away, I decided to attempt to make 1,000 posts in 24 hours. I wanted to have 40,000 posts before I went on vacation.
Determined as always, I spent at least four hours in the middle of the night posting back and forth with my sister. We made about 300 posts before we were both exhausted and wanted sleep. I slept for a few short hours, and then I got right back to posting. I hardly left the computer to do anything. All meals were eaten by the computer. I did everything I could to just sit at the computer and post all day. Unfortunately, the allotted time ended too soon. I fell short of my goal by 25 posts. I managed 975 posts, which is still very impressive, if I say so for myself. I was able to make the remaining posts before my family hit the road for vacation, though, so I still managed to get to 40,000 before I left. Just like I wanted.
Fast forward about two months with me. On August 31st, 2013, I passed Dawnleaf. My post count was finally higher than hers. In just eight months, I’d achieved a posting goal that’s still one of the biggest ones that I’ve ever achieved. Since then, I have been in first place for top posters. The view is pretty sweet up here
.
By the time I passed Dawnleaf, I was sitting at around 60,000 posts. Was I done posting yet? Of course not! I had to run away from Dawnleaf so I could keep my lead. I knew I wouldn’t stay ahead for long if I didn’t keep going, I was going to be back in second place in a hurry.
I spent the rest of 2013 posting in order to stay ahead. By the end of it, I was a comfortable amount of posts away. Still, I didn’t quit posting. I kept going, as usual. I don’t remember having a goal in particular at this point other than to stay ahead.
Then, May of 2014 rolled around. On May 3rd, 2014, Falcon added the current highest rank: Beyond Ancient Ancestor, requiring 100,000 posts. I had roughly 75,000 posts by then. With that in mind, I set my new goal. I planned to reach 100,000 posts by my 17th birthday (October 1st, 2014).
Unfortunately, I was pretty sick in the last half of that year. I was coughing so much that it hurt and made it difficult to breathe, and I even got sick to my stomach a few times because I was coughing so hard. I also kept running fevers up to 103 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a break from the sickness for a couple of months, but then it came back. I was put on at least two different medicines during each spell. It got to the point that I nearly had to get my chest x-rayed because the cough wasn’t going away.
Being so sick made it to where I had to stay home a lot. If most of it wasn’t during summer break, I would have missed so much more school than I did. The only good thing that came out of this was that I had almost nothing better to do than post. Still, since I was coughing long coughing fits pretty much every two minutes, I was posting slower than I would have if I wasn’t sick and stuck at home.
Mostly due to sickness, I missed the deadline that I’d set to get to 100,000 posts. However, I didn’t miss it by much. On October 10th, 2014, I made my 100,000th post. Missing the deadline by nine days isn’t too bad for being so sick months before.
Four years ago, this would have pretty much been the end of my story. Now, that has just become the halfway mark. I’ve explained 100,000 posts, and I still have 100,000 more to go. Crazy to think that 100,000 is just half of what I have now.
As for the other half, really, it’s just more of the same stuff. Roleplaying, posting in game threads, etc. I post as often as I can. My post count increased the most between 2012 and the end of 2014, since I’d gone from less than 1,000 to over 100,000 posts in that time. My yearly average is still roughly 25,000 posts. I may not be able to post 300 times a day anymore like I used to, since the forum just isn’t nearly as active as it used to be, but I can still manage at least 100.
Out of this, I think the main things that got me here were always setting posting goals and posting at least something every day. I’ve pretty much never gone a full 24 hours without logging on at least once to post. Even if I didn’t even manage 50 in a day, I still posted at least something.
The game threads are really great for increasing post count quickly. Roleplays are also great for gaining posts, though you won’t do it as quickly as with the games. Basically, any thread that you can add to your daily posting routine will help raise your post count.
As for posting goals, aim high but start small. It’s hard to estimate how long it will take you to make 10,000 posts, but it isn’t quite so hard to estimate how long it will take you to make 100 posts, or maybe even 1,000. The way I do it is that I’ll pick a general time that I want to have the biggest number, and then I’ll work towards small goals in between. For example, while I was climbing through the 190,000's to get to 200,000, I knew I wanted to get to 200,000 by the start of 2019. That was my big goal. The smaller goals were for when I would reach the thousands of posts in between. So, I would always be working towards a certain amount by a certain time.
I have finished telling the story of how I got to where I am now in post count. However, I cannot bring myself to draw this post to a close yet. I certainly did not get here alone, so I must pay tribute to everyone who has played a part in getting me to 200,000 posts.
Thank you smoryninjeh and ✯~Rippleshadow~✯ for helping me get into StarClan way back then. Thank you ✻Dawnleaf✻ for giving me the inspiration I needed to get first place, and for being so supportive of that even though it was you I was trying to get ahead of. Thank you Snowlight , Salix , Citrine , ✯~Rippleshadow~✯ , Feather~ , and Birchstar for making passing Dawnleaf happen. Thank you Citrine , Lily~Myth , beech , ✻Dawnleaf✻ , Snowlight , 💫Fallenstar💫 , 🌼 Sprucetail 🌼 , Wolfheart , ~~Honeyflower~~ , ❄🐾Luna🐾❄ , Wintergreen , вloѕѕoм♥ , @gold and maxils for roleplaying with me so much over the years. Some of you put up with my once terrible roleplaying skills, and you still join my roleplays to this day. Thank you Wolf and ☆ Navnav ☆ for being my posting buddies through my last years of high school. You two are probably the main reasons I got to 100,000 posts when I did. Thank you ScarletteBlake for posting with me so much while I finished high school and since I’ve been in college. Thank you Citrine , Catsquid , ScarletteBlake , and maxils for helping me make the final stretch to 200,000 posts. Finally, thank you Falcon Development for making the forum, and for making the new ranks that gave me the extra encouragement to keep setting goals.
Thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to post or interact with me for all these years. Without any of you, none of this would have ever been possible!
Thanks for everything!
~ Spottedleaf ~
Even though I’m the one reaching this milestone, I know that 200,000 is a lot of posts. Admittedly, it’s a ridiculous number. It’s ridiculous, but it’s incredible all at the same time. Never would I have thought that I would achieve something like this anywhere on the Internet.
How did I get here, you may ask? I ask myself that sometimes, believe it or not, but in the end it all comes down to a lot of time and extreme dedication. It’s a long story to tell, but I wouldn’t be mentioning that if I wasn’t willing to tell it. It’s quite a long story, so we’d better get started. Let’s just start from the beginning.
Sparing you of a long side story, I joined the forum just over seven years ago, on October 28th, 2011. I joined without any real plans on staying. I originally planned to get the codes for the secret pelts and never return. Obviously, that plan didn’t last.
The day after I created my account, October 29th, I made my first post. There wasn’t much to it. All it had was a link to my YouTube channel. That was it. It was just a link with no explanations or words. So, basically, I used my first to advertise for something without leaving any context. I don’t think it got any replies either.
The next couple of months following that are a little fuzzy, as far as forum activity goes. I remember posting threads about my cat Elvis being sick or injured, even though he wasn’t sick or injured at all. I was just being that typical, awkward 14-year-old who just wanted attention. I’m not sure how I didn’t get caught with this, or maybe I did and just don’t remember. I honestly don’t even remember if I even read the rules immediately after joining, since the threads I was posting might have been considered spam, especially now that I’m admitting that most were made just for attention.
I remember actually getting in trouble for a thread I made. It was in January 2012 when I decided that I wanted some extra reputation points, or karma as it was known back then. So, I made a thread called Karma for Karma. Basically, the idea of that was that if a user exalted me, then I would exalt them in return. Almost immediately after the thread was posted, it was attacked by three moderators and taken down by Falcon. Consequently, a rule was added to the rules thread that prohibited a thread like that from being made ever again.
To summarize the last few paragraphs, in the beginning, I really wasn’t posting too much. I was posting, but hardly any of the posts were all that intelligent or what I would consider worth posting nowadays. I wouldn’t be surprised if people disliked me back then, and honestly, it wouldn’t even offend me.
I don’t think I reached a thousand posts until around February of 2012, at least four months after my join date. That’s pretty sad considering that I can make a thousand posts in under a week currently. I just didn’t care all that much for posting back then. I posted just to post, without having any goals to achieve in mind.
Then, summer of 2012 arrived. I began inching my way up through the ranks. On June 30th, 2012, I created the All Nighter thread, and that soon became the main thread that I posted on with a few other members who aren’t around anymore. By July that year, I was a Wise Elder and had 2500 posts. I was scheduled to go on a summer vacation about a week before school started. School started around the 4th of August, and my family planned to go on the vacation around the 28th of July. It was about a week prior to the departure date when I decided that I wanted to try to join StarClan before I left. This was the first posting goal that I remember setting for myself.
Even though I was about a thousand posts away at the time, I was determined to reach my goal. I spent countless hours posting and pulled at least four all nighters in a row to pull this off. I sacrificed many hours of sleep because I really wanted to make it to 4000 posts by the end of the week. With all my efforts, I made it, and I was happy about it. In fact, for about a week after that, my avatar was a picture of a tombstone that said something like this:
Reaching my first post goal caused a chain reaction. I continued setting goals after that. At the time, the highest existing rank was StarClan Elder, which requires 10,000 posts to accomplish. I decided that I wanted to attain the highest rank by Christmas. I continued to do what I did to achieve the first goal, though perhaps not in such an extreme way. By doing that, I reached my goal early. Instead of getting there on December 25th, I arrived around December 12th.
After attaining all fifteen ranks, I wanted to do something harder. I wanted to surpass Dawnleaf on her post count. Mind you, back then I was around 30,000 posts behind her. I was sitting at 10,000, while she was near 40,000. A lot of people said it seemed impossible, but honestly, that only gave me more determination to do it. I was going to become the top poster no matter what it cost me. On top of that, I wanted to accomplish it by my sixteenth birthday (October 1st, 2013).
In order to achieve the goal in time, I had to make a lot more posts much more frequently. I started roleplaying during that time, and I was posting just about anywhere I could put a post in. I was answering questions about the game, saying hello to newcomers, roleplaying, and posting in game threads and the All Nighter thread left and right. I posted threads about reaching a new number of posts for every thousand posts. I did that from 11,000 up to at least 30,000 posts. Judging by how little time had passed until a new thread like that was made, I was averaging anywhere between 300 – 500 posts every day. I flew through thousands and thousands of posts like there was no tomorrow.
By February 2013, I was in second place. It only took me two months from when I decided on the goal to get right behind the leader. Also around that time, I made it to 36,000 posts. I made a thread about being Beyond StarClan. I made that because, in theory, I had made nine times the amount of posts it takes to get into StarClan. So, I made the thread to basically say that I was beyond StarClan because I had ‘died’ nine times, or I lost nine lives. With that, ranks 16 and 17 were born: Beyond StarClan (25,000 posts) and Ancient Ancestor (50,000 posts).
With the birth of the new rank that I hadn’t achieved yet, and since I wasn’t ahead of Dawnleaf yet, I pressed on. I wanted the new rank, and more than ever, I wanted first place on the top posters list. Dawnleaf reached 50,000 posts before I did, but I was right behind her. I remember promising her that I would get there as soon as possible so she wouldn’t be the only one with that rank.
In June 2013, I was about to go on another family vacation for summer break. I was sitting at 39,000 posts the day before we headed to our vacation spot. Since I knew that traveling and the vacation itself were going to take a big chunk of time that I’d normally spend posting away, I decided to attempt to make 1,000 posts in 24 hours. I wanted to have 40,000 posts before I went on vacation.
Determined as always, I spent at least four hours in the middle of the night posting back and forth with my sister. We made about 300 posts before we were both exhausted and wanted sleep. I slept for a few short hours, and then I got right back to posting. I hardly left the computer to do anything. All meals were eaten by the computer. I did everything I could to just sit at the computer and post all day. Unfortunately, the allotted time ended too soon. I fell short of my goal by 25 posts. I managed 975 posts, which is still very impressive, if I say so for myself. I was able to make the remaining posts before my family hit the road for vacation, though, so I still managed to get to 40,000 before I left. Just like I wanted.
Fast forward about two months with me. On August 31st, 2013, I passed Dawnleaf. My post count was finally higher than hers. In just eight months, I’d achieved a posting goal that’s still one of the biggest ones that I’ve ever achieved. Since then, I have been in first place for top posters. The view is pretty sweet up here
.By the time I passed Dawnleaf, I was sitting at around 60,000 posts. Was I done posting yet? Of course not! I had to run away from Dawnleaf so I could keep my lead. I knew I wouldn’t stay ahead for long if I didn’t keep going, I was going to be back in second place in a hurry.
I spent the rest of 2013 posting in order to stay ahead. By the end of it, I was a comfortable amount of posts away. Still, I didn’t quit posting. I kept going, as usual. I don’t remember having a goal in particular at this point other than to stay ahead.
Then, May of 2014 rolled around. On May 3rd, 2014, Falcon added the current highest rank: Beyond Ancient Ancestor, requiring 100,000 posts. I had roughly 75,000 posts by then. With that in mind, I set my new goal. I planned to reach 100,000 posts by my 17th birthday (October 1st, 2014).
Unfortunately, I was pretty sick in the last half of that year. I was coughing so much that it hurt and made it difficult to breathe, and I even got sick to my stomach a few times because I was coughing so hard. I also kept running fevers up to 103 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a break from the sickness for a couple of months, but then it came back. I was put on at least two different medicines during each spell. It got to the point that I nearly had to get my chest x-rayed because the cough wasn’t going away.
Being so sick made it to where I had to stay home a lot. If most of it wasn’t during summer break, I would have missed so much more school than I did. The only good thing that came out of this was that I had almost nothing better to do than post. Still, since I was coughing long coughing fits pretty much every two minutes, I was posting slower than I would have if I wasn’t sick and stuck at home.
Mostly due to sickness, I missed the deadline that I’d set to get to 100,000 posts. However, I didn’t miss it by much. On October 10th, 2014, I made my 100,000th post. Missing the deadline by nine days isn’t too bad for being so sick months before.
Four years ago, this would have pretty much been the end of my story. Now, that has just become the halfway mark. I’ve explained 100,000 posts, and I still have 100,000 more to go. Crazy to think that 100,000 is just half of what I have now.
As for the other half, really, it’s just more of the same stuff. Roleplaying, posting in game threads, etc. I post as often as I can. My post count increased the most between 2012 and the end of 2014, since I’d gone from less than 1,000 to over 100,000 posts in that time. My yearly average is still roughly 25,000 posts. I may not be able to post 300 times a day anymore like I used to, since the forum just isn’t nearly as active as it used to be, but I can still manage at least 100.
Out of this, I think the main things that got me here were always setting posting goals and posting at least something every day. I’ve pretty much never gone a full 24 hours without logging on at least once to post. Even if I didn’t even manage 50 in a day, I still posted at least something.
The game threads are really great for increasing post count quickly. Roleplays are also great for gaining posts, though you won’t do it as quickly as with the games. Basically, any thread that you can add to your daily posting routine will help raise your post count.
As for posting goals, aim high but start small. It’s hard to estimate how long it will take you to make 10,000 posts, but it isn’t quite so hard to estimate how long it will take you to make 100 posts, or maybe even 1,000. The way I do it is that I’ll pick a general time that I want to have the biggest number, and then I’ll work towards small goals in between. For example, while I was climbing through the 190,000's to get to 200,000, I knew I wanted to get to 200,000 by the start of 2019. That was my big goal. The smaller goals were for when I would reach the thousands of posts in between. So, I would always be working towards a certain amount by a certain time.
I have finished telling the story of how I got to where I am now in post count. However, I cannot bring myself to draw this post to a close yet. I certainly did not get here alone, so I must pay tribute to everyone who has played a part in getting me to 200,000 posts.
Thank you smoryninjeh and ✯~Rippleshadow~✯ for helping me get into StarClan way back then. Thank you ✻Dawnleaf✻ for giving me the inspiration I needed to get first place, and for being so supportive of that even though it was you I was trying to get ahead of. Thank you Snowlight , Salix , Citrine , ✯~Rippleshadow~✯ , Feather~ , and Birchstar for making passing Dawnleaf happen. Thank you Citrine , Lily~Myth , beech , ✻Dawnleaf✻ , Snowlight , 💫Fallenstar💫 , 🌼 Sprucetail 🌼 , Wolfheart , ~~Honeyflower~~ , ❄🐾Luna🐾❄ , Wintergreen , вloѕѕoм♥ , @gold and maxils for roleplaying with me so much over the years. Some of you put up with my once terrible roleplaying skills, and you still join my roleplays to this day. Thank you Wolf and ☆ Navnav ☆ for being my posting buddies through my last years of high school. You two are probably the main reasons I got to 100,000 posts when I did. Thank you ScarletteBlake for posting with me so much while I finished high school and since I’ve been in college. Thank you Citrine , Catsquid , ScarletteBlake , and maxils for helping me make the final stretch to 200,000 posts. Finally, thank you Falcon Development for making the forum, and for making the new ranks that gave me the extra encouragement to keep setting goals.
Thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to post or interact with me for all these years. Without any of you, none of this would have ever been possible!
Thanks for everything!
~ Spottedleaf ~
