Farewell to the Horror Drive-In Forums

Effective immediately: The Horror Drive-In Forums are permanently closed.

The reasons for this are numerous. One, the boards are nearly dead anyway. Most of my friends are long gone. I don’t blame them. Times have changed. People move on, motivations change, and now we have social media.

Two: I am tired of it. Yes, I could leave the boards up, but the temptation would be there.

Three: I am sick of dealing with assholes. You can not imagine the crap I’ve dealt with. I’ve been doing this stuff almost exactly twenty years. That’s a long time by any standard. I am tired.

Four: I have to delete at least a hundred fake attempts to join the forums a day. I could just ignore it all, but I worry that there may be a legitimate one in there.

Was there a single catalyst that brought on this decision? Why yes, there was. I’m glad you asked.

I recently did a post to promote a fund to help a member of the community who needs medical assistance. No, I am not talking about Brian Keene. Someone took it as an opportunity to grind an old ax, from an online argument that had to have taken place over a decade ago. It was deplorable.

Sure, I should have handed this person his ass on the board, but frankly I am tired of it all. You cannot reason with people like him. Hell hath no fury as the offended.

I’m tired of dealing with that sort of thing. Here I was trying to do something decent, and someone jumped in to try to throw a wrench into it. At the very least he could have thought, “Ah, fuck him”, and moved on. But no. That isn’t melodramatic enough.

I’m sick of it. Sick to my soul. And I damned sure don’t need it. I was thrust into a supervisory position at work that I did not want, and the stress is often overwhelming. Add to that an excruciating commute, and I don’t need to engage in something that brings me more unhappiness.

Horror Drive-In isn’t going away. I want to focus more on the reviews and commentary end of it.

It partially does make me sad. I look back to a lot of great times. At one point I was at the helm of the most popular discussion forum in all of horror fiction. It still astonishes me. I met so many great people. Time fades the bad memories away. Well, it does for some of us.

I’ve announced the closure of the forums before, but I allowed myself to be talked out of it. Not this time. I’m pulling the plug. It's already done.

Thanks, a million, a trillion, to everyone who was along for the ride. The ride that rolled through Horror.net, Gorezone, Shocklines, and Horror Drive-In. For a while there we all had a really good thing. Human nature got in the way, I guess. People simply cannot stop fighting. I wish it were not so.

Shall I say it one more time? I am sick and tired.

I’ll be around. I comment on Facebook here and there. Mostly about books or music. I do the “bookstagram” thing at Instagram. I will review more. And I hope to be writing for Cemetery Dance for some time to come.

And now I bid a sad adieu to the world of online forums.
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