The coming Kinja-pocalypse

Oh great. I did everything you're supposed to do, and I have no avatar anymore and my comment is "pending approval," so I guess I'm "in the grays" like they said we wouldn't be?

hey msbrocius! Glad to see you here. Boardwalk had a great comment section - a nice mix of smart, literary types and just plain silliness. I am quite flattered that you'd single out my contributions.

But then, I've been thinking about this all day: it's hard for me to explain just what it meant to join the Commentariat and to start talking to these people everyday. Like...it was a really nice part of my routine to watch BE or Mad Men on a Sunday night, see if the review was up on AVC and browse comments before bed, and then spend the middle part of the following workday, from 10ish to 2ish, dissecting the show with the funnest people on the internet. And then when I'd get home, I'd bask in the upvotes and do my replies over dinner. It's been such a pleasure getting to know (in an admittedly abstract sense, since I haven't met them all yet) people like mrslangdonalger, jean luc lemur, judkins major, ayatollahcolmmeaney, etc. who have brought so much amusement and insight, as you say, to my day. I feel like I have to express that as part of my mourning process. I mean, I don't think I'm that sentimental, but I sort of am about this. I felt sad today because AVC doesn't feel the same, but at the same time, I feel grateful to have connected with all these great people through the Commentariat. 

Our ranks here have already swelled by about 100 members in the last few weeks, so here's hoping we can keep a good thing going. 

It's been hard for me to articulate why the demise of the AVClub has bothered me so much, especially since I only started commenting about 1.5 years ago and that was always sporadic.

But for me, I found the website when I was in a new grad school program. I didn't have any real friends because I am really introverted and it's hard for me to become close friends with someone in person. (It takes years and shared misery, I have discovered.) I was missing the funny, insightful friends I had in college who I used to compare notes with concerning pop culture, and when I found the AVClub, it was like getting that back. And it had such a lovely sense of community, which is so hard to find on the internet. 

I actually met back up with some of my college friends over the summer, and they were complaining to me that it was so hard to find people to talk about pop culture with online or in person. I was so grateful to have the AVClub, even if I wasn't very active on the comment boards. Of course, the Kinja announcement was made right about that time. . . .

I'm relieved that this place and the AVOCADO exist! 

I ported over. My handle on Kinja is now bizarro ganews. Yes I ripped this off from Sacrelicious. But we both love Sealab 2021.

(We are up to 970 registrants here on the TI. Registrant 1000 wins a free nested commenting system!)

Meanwhile I somehow have two accounts, both called Powerthirteen.

same here :/ I mostly just blindly clicked on stuff and likely got dumped into newswire more often than not due to my own laziness and confusion re: site layout.

Has there ever been an update to a site layout that seemed particularly thought out in advance, as evidenced by the improved aesthetics and functionality from the get-go?

I have an AVC legacy account, and a Chromebook, a combination that seems to have broken Kinja's mind. I used Firefox on my phone to create a Kinja account--Lack of Name is mine!--but still can't login on Chrome. The comments I posted from my phone are stuck in the greys. I said I'd give Kinja a chance, but if it only works on mobile, I'm not bothering.

We've done major redesigns of most Vox Media sites, as well as our background CMS, over the past two years, and we've received very, very little blowback, because we test these things extensively in house before they go out to the public. There are occasional, "Where did THIS go?!" questions, but they're few enough and far enough between that they can be quickly rectified.

Aw. I miss notifications. They were fun. Especially with how playful they could be with them. 

We don't have comments, unfortunately! But we do run articles about who won the solar eclipse. (The answer is science.)

At least it's easier to italicise and embolden things now. That's a big, big positive, isn't it? Guys?

So made a kinja. Did not merge yet. (does that do anything besides making my old AVC comments visible on my kinja profile? do I even want that?)

Made two comments, both typical lame jokes you know of me, nothing controversial.
One was a comment aswering to a dikachu post the other was, well, just a comment on the article. You have three guesses which one was approved within minutes and which one is still pending.
I'm not to smitten with kinja at this time.

Hello, fellow refugees.

Wow, you can read paragraphs and actually see my icon. Good first impression.