A few months after I founded AMEA in 1996, a Message Board was added, based on a CGI program written by Matt Wright. Pornography was a booming business in these early years of the Internet, so soon there were many ‘webmasters’ promoting their sites on this board. It was simply too much pornographic SPAM for a site specialized in erotic art. So the old board was soon replaced by forum software, giving me more options to moderate posts. I named this new forum the Hidden Archives, and it became a success.
Unfortunately, I was a moderator from hell. I insulted a lot of visitors, and that was fun in the beginning. Most people are masochists at heart, and those who were not loved to see others get humiliated. But the discussions became more and more political, and that is a bad thing for a site promoting erotic art.
My rants on the war in Iraq, Americans in general (who then still proudly thought of themselves as representatives of the land of the free and felt comfortable with the word ‘patriot’) grew longer and became more emotional. More and more visitors joined the site, but it simply wasn’t fun any more and I closed the forum some years ago.
With every heated debate, there was one member in particular who stayed neutral. His nick was EAKINS, and he had found another way of reminding me of what I was doing by creating TUATs. (Totally Unauthorized Avatar Tweaks)
