The classics are gone, the replacements will be transient at best. Nobody will remember any of you trendy fuckers in a year. You probably don't even recognize the majority of these names, you've never even heard of them. Tanner, the initial rule creator, is a completely foreign name to your ears, and you would thus assume that he was not important. What's even worse is the people that didn't make the list. Everything is so repetitive and mind numbing that the brain reverts to primitive and flawed methods of classification that cause lapses in memory. The most important historical figures turn to smoke and are blown away by the winds of time, never to be seen or remembered ever again.
But who is to blame for this? The mods, or the users? Certainly the mods don't seem to have much of a presence here anymore. The occasional locking of a topic or banning of a user seems symbolic at best. The illusion that there are still people high up that care about the forum and are watching over it like a mother over her newborn child. Perhaps they do care, but not with any sort of consistency. A fraction of a percent will be destroyed, but the majority marches on without any real opposition. Only the most blatantly offensive spam and direct infringements upon the rules will be dealt with, but the rest will remain. It hard to consider the role of BBS moderator important, or even necessary at all when it does nothing to improve the overall level of quality.
But it's not fair to blame the moderators for everything wrong with General. I've had my go at it, and ran into the wall of futility. No matter how many people you ban, or how many topics you lock, a carbon copy of that same user will crawl out of the hole you just created in his previous location, and the same topic will come again. A never ending inundation of twelve year olds discussing the same subjects and splitting in two every time you shoot one of them. After swinging your sword wildly while running through a crowd of small children, your arms start to get tired after a while no matter how satisfying it is to kill them. The only thing that brings me joy anymore is occasionally stabbing one and watching it yell at me for doing so.
The infestation also prevents any potential good users from joining the site. One glance at the front page is all that's required to decide that there must be somewhere better, and instead opt to migrate to SomethingAwful instead. Somewhere that has no tolerance for anyone that's going to drag down the level of fun. Somewhere inviting, with actual conversations and a sense that it's possible to have a discussion. As a result, everything turns out great for that person and they up being part of the best forum you can find online. An undeniable demonstration that if the mods are intolerant enough, we can all have our own perfect community on Newgrounds. After being here so long, a change becomes necessary, though not necissarily inevitable. It has become a place so flawed and self-destructive that it demands by its very nature to be destroyed.
So perhaps the only way to bring about an acceptable standard of quality is to have our own personal genocide. The Holocaust, Rwanda and Armenians all rolled into one. Forget the mod mannerism of being casual and selective, we need blatant hatred and intolerance. Someone that has no objection to destroying 99% of the content in the general forums, but smart enough to know what to leave. A snarling, three-headed Cerberus of a mod that spews fire from every orifice and constantly emanates waves of pure hatred. Get rid of that video game topic, that Naruto topic, that "I'm funny" topic, but leave the good ones. Ban people on the spot that have names that resemble ~xXxLilBlondeQTGokuSSJ69xXx~ for 30 days and have no second thoughts about doing so. Turn this place into a flaming mess of red tanks and month long bans, with every mod's inbox filled with thousands of angry private messages.
Basically, I just want most of you to leave, but this isn't a "If you don't like it, leave" situation. I don't want you fucks to have any say in the matter. I want you all dragged out kicking and screaming like the whiny, infantile morons you all are. I want to sit here watching the carnage and laughing like a hyena. Stalin and Hitler in positions of power once more and swinging the ban stick for my entertainment. The people immune from this will become more active again once the clutter is gone and there's room to move, like the bars were suddenly removed from their cage. A restoration will have been completed, and all that will remain is necessary upkeep. A shining new diamond of a BBS devoid of stupidity. My dream that will never be accomplished.