Originally Posted by 16 tins of Spam
Stage 1, Trial By Fire: Logs in, posts a few times using their actual personality, creates controversy due to lack of knowledge of unwritten but heavily policed arbitrary rules of conduct, is shouted down by established members, retreats to corner to lick wounds.
Stage 2, The Climb To Credibility: Tentative re-emergence, encouraged by sporadic positive comments from established members but mostly unregarded, watches post count cross three figures, feels like a veteran, secretly takes pleasure in n00bs transitioning Stage 1 while publicly defending them, starts to understand PC shorthand and learns some real life names.
Stage 3, The Flourishing: Now fluent in PC-isms, every second word is "dire", every second abbreviation is "tbh", writes long and rambling posts, dissects competing posts point-by-point, gets sucked into flame wars, learns lesson, generally increased level of assertiveness, other members remember who they are, has a good handle on other personalities, post count crosses 1000, feels like a guru, enthusiastically participates in battles.
Stage 4, Acceptance: Pretends Stage 1 never happened to them but digs up old threads to read their own early posts, takes up chiding n00bs with gusto, gets upset about frivolous thread starters and post count boosters and excessive use of emoticons, starts getting sick of battles, post count reaches multiples of 1000, feels like Yoda, confident in opinions as has formed unofficial alliances with certain members.
Stage 5, Tenure: Post count crosses 10,000, regrets time wasted, spends pretty much all day with an eye on PC yet posts only ever seem to consist of "hahaha", "....", or "dire", as they've said everything they ever thought about anything and it's all written down in the archived threads for posterity, but habit keeps them coming back over and over and over...
