OT: What is the history of RealGM?

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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#141 » by First Step » Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:04 pm

tsherkin is a legend. I can't believe people don't like him. TrueLAFan was another really good poster who I don't see very often, either.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#142 » by His Dudeness » Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:07 pm

Message boards are great at preserving the history of ideas/opinions/beliefs/etc from the associated time. Here's hoping RealGM will continue to thrive and allow people years from now the ability to look back at some outlandish takes.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#143 » by KembaWalker » Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:20 pm

First Step wrote:tsherkin is a legend. I can't believe people don't like him. TrueLAFan was another really good poster who I don't see very often, either.


tsherkins most upvoted post of all time was a 1000 word essay about how Kemba Walker was statistically proven to never have a chance of being a good player back in 2015
of course Kemba went on to immediately rack up 4 straight all star seasons after this

he'd post that crap all the time about all kinds of players and try to inflame fanbases then ban people and lock threads about stuff that he was wrong about
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#144 » by J_T » Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:28 pm

amcoolio wrote:Early 2000s, there was no social media, just forums. ESPN had their own which was the most popular. Fans from different teams were fighting eachother all the time, it was glorious. Then they shut them down for what I presume to be costs because they had quite literally millions of posts. Realgm filled that void quickly and has still remained popular, which is hard to do in the age of Twitter and Reddit.

Ah, I remember that. That was a shocker when they closed it down, nobody could understand it. I was member of another team forum around that time and I remember I was banned for a week because I dared to suggest that Lance Armstrong was not clean and that evidence against him is not irrelevant. One of the mods was huge Lance Armstrong fan. I said **** off and didn't come back after the ban.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#145 » by Edrees » Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:28 pm

amcoolio wrote:Early 2000s, there was no social media, just forums. ESPN had their own which was the most popular. Fans from different teams were fighting eachother all the time, it was glorious. Then they shut them down for what I presume to be costs because they had quite literally millions of posts. Realgm filled that void quickly and has still remained popular, which is hard to do in the age of Twitter and Reddit.


Maybe it shows my age but I can't stand discussing hobbies on social media. You can't post more than a paragraph and you can't track long-ongoing discussions. It's terrible. The worst thing that happened to the internet was social media killing a bunch of message-board fan sites and moving discussion to twitter and facebook where everything has to be essentially a 1 line phrase. I'll stick to these types of message forums for the rest of my life.

You know how people go back and bump bad takes? Like "Clippers look like a 74 win team and dynasty" and crap? You can bump it and have a laugh and hold people accountable. No such luck on social media. Sure you can bump one old tweet, but here, you can see what *everyone* said on the matter. So glad RealGM is going strong.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#146 » by Sofia » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:42 pm

The best threads were the ones where you had to draw a wiretap headline in MS Paint
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#147 » by JDR720 » Wed Nov 24, 2021 11:38 pm

It's almost impossible to discuss anything on "real" social media sites. 99% of the posters are either completely clueless or trolling. On sites like this, you can debate with other people who are at least somewhat informed, sometimes even very knowledgeable.

I do think RealGM needs to do a better job promoting the forums though. A lot of the team boards are fairly inactive, and most boards for non-NBA related stuff are dead. Even fairly active boards like Charlotte's have saw a noticeable posting decline, we used to get 500+ post GT's on a regular basis, now it'll peak at 100 or so.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#148 » by cpower » Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:00 am

realgm proves that I have ever existed on this planet.. please keep running for another thousands years realgm!!
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#149 » by Howard Mass » Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:56 am

I need to chime in here.

I'll do so later this week.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#150 » by Young Stapler » Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:56 am

Howard Mass wrote:I need to chime in here.

I'll do so later this week.

It begins! :o :o
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#151 » by Sofia » Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:20 am

JDR720 wrote:It's almost impossible to discuss anything on "real" social media sites. 99% of the posters are either completely clueless or trolling. On sites like this, you can debate with other people who are at least somewhat informed, sometimes even very knowledgeable.

I do think RealGM needs to do a better job promoting the forums though. A lot of the team boards are fairly inactive, and most boards for non-NBA related stuff are dead. Even fairly active boards like Charlotte's have saw a noticeable posting decline, we used to get 500+ post GT's on a regular basis, now it'll peak at 100 or so.


Realgm should probably just consider the 90/10 rule. Put 90% of effort into improving it’s top 10% of popular functions.

Relatively speaking, no one uses the MLB NHL or even NFL forums. Scrap that, scrap their wiretaps, scrap their live scores, and focus on bringing the basketball product up to speed. The basketball wiretaps are useful, but usually have hilariously poor grammar, and the trade checker should be on Antique Roadshow.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#152 » by NRSV » Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:48 am

JDR720 wrote:I do think RealGM needs to do a better job promoting the forums though. A lot of the team boards are fairly inactive, and most boards for non-NBA related stuff are dead. Even fairly active boards like Charlotte's have saw a noticeable posting decline, we used to get 500+ post GT's on a regular basis, now it'll peak at 100 or so.

This makes me sad.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#153 » by MrBigShot » Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:56 am

KembaWalker wrote:it was really bad, then tsherkin finally left
now its okay


Quoted for truth!!! That clown gave me strike as being off topic for, I kid you not, discussing wilt chamberlain in a thread about wilt chamberlain. Thought his opinion was the gospel and abused his power, good riddance. I get some people found him insightful, but as a mod he was downright awful.

Edit: Thread I got warned in is still up by the way if anyone is curious as to why so many people have a problem with him. My original post was something along the lines of stating wilt's 100 point games overrated. Somehow that was off topic while the posts (that are still up) were discussing wilt's claim about sleeping with a lot of women were somehow left alone: viewtopic.php?f=6&p=43473699#p43473699

He also perma banned a poster on the pistons board for a very innocuous post, which was later overturned.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#154 » by Cafu » Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:27 am

I learned a tons reading the Comparisons Board back in the days and this was my favs basketball forum aside from a Lakers Forum until this day.

Still remember the times when I had to refresh GM board every seconds to see if there were any news at the trade deadline.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#155 » by Senor Chang » Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:47 am

JDR720 wrote:Shams got his start reporting for RealGM.
Correction. He got his start trolling on ESPN boards :)

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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#156 » by KingFox » Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:51 am

JDR720 wrote:Shams got his start reporting for RealGM.

He's soooo hot
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#157 » by Optimus_Steel » Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:04 pm

His Dudeness wrote:Message boards are great at preserving the history of ideas/opinions/beliefs/etc from the associated time. Here's hoping RealGM will continue to thrive and allow people years from now the ability to look back at some outlandish takes.
Humans 100 years from now: I have stumbled on this ancient script for Spaceballs, then known as basketball and this Magic Randolph character was the greatest of his time. Also there was speculation of a centaur named Boykins Shaq terrorizing the community. Animals were allowed to play with humans and sometimes even outside. A unknown named Maytricks prophecized the eventual coming of a dinosaur championship in a urinal.

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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#158 » by Optimus_Steel » Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:21 pm

KrAzY3 wrote:
Optimus_Steel wrote:
KrAzY3 wrote:Yeah I used to use the ESPN forums.

In this era it is really hard to fathom how and why ESPN decided to give up all that traffic though. If it still existed now, you'd think it would have been expanded and try to launch a broader social media platform. I wonder how much they spend for ads on other people's platforms now...



Except for a handful of posters the place was a cesspool and there was a lot of bullying, racism, sexism, etc, along with just insane points made that made no sense and extreme hyperbolic points. I think ESPN thought it was too much of a hassle to have moderators moderate so they just closed shop.

So you're saying it was basically like Twitter which is worth over ten billion.


Hmmm yessss and the Metaverse :lol: :lol:
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#159 » by SSUBluesman » Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:01 pm

Prerak...now there's a name I haven't heard for awhile.

While perusing through I don't think that I saw Magnumt mentioned, who was an iconic poster and mod that passed away sadly.

I lurked for awhile before joining, and I'm almost positive I joined to post on the political board where I was most active early on. The Iraq war (and its aftermath) were the dominant discussion points. There was quite a bit of back and forth laying out arguments, providing links, etc. It's commonly pointed out how destructive social media has been on political discourse, but it's even more so when you've had multiple back and forth interactions with someone that you disagree with but don't personally dislike.

The OT board had lots of ****posting and memes before they were a thing. I didn't post there too much early on as I didn't quite get much of it and didn't lurk enough to figure it out. The whole "treadmilled" was always good for a laugh.

I don't have a link to it off hand but the "I'm a genius with an iq of 165" thread was hilarious, even more so if you interacted with or were aware of the poster behind it.

Some Wolves board history:

The disastrous 2004/2005 season and the continuous arguments over what was to blame.
The Mayo/Love trade was very divisive for awhile. Luckily I was posting much less by the time I was decisively wrong lol.
Years of "Rubio wants to play for the Knicks" there and elsewhere thanks to East Coast media blowing smoke up Knicks fans ***es.

Something that stands out about RealGM is how different team boards are in regards to activity and culture. It's always interesting lurking boards like the Bucks, especially when Jennings went from steal of the draft future MVP to "Baddy Chuck". The Colangelo era Raptors board was another one.
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Re: OT: What is the history of RealGM? 

Post#160 » by Aliasego » Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:36 pm

No clue about the proper origins of the site, but in the early 2000’s a lot of smaller forums were starting to die off and dwindle in popularity. That left users searching for alternatives for sports chat in general. That meant ESPN for most people, or RealGM for original content that was just being regurgitated.

(I was a heavy user on Delphiforums…which sadly still exists…that had a very popular Orlando Magic forum, and one much smaller Raptors forum. I know the majority of the heavy users there would lurk or post here as well)

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