Found a 2007 thread where someone roasted my old forum signature

I had this long quote from a movie in my signature on a car forum... someone posted 'nobody reads those, it just makes your posts look messy'. I took it out that day and my posts looked cleaner instantly. Anyone else get called out on old forum habits?

3 comments

3 Comments

anthonygarcia2mo ago

That "makes your posts look messy" line hits home. I once had a blinking text signature and someone politely suggested it was like a car alarm for the eyes. Took me years to realize they were being kind about how awful it was.

brian_murray1mo ago

1998 was the year I learned this lesson the hard way on GeoCities. I had a guestbook entry with a full on rainbow marquee and sparkly cursor effect, and someone named "WebWizard42" actually emailed me a code snippet for a "clean layout" with zero animation. Felt like a personal attack at the time, but @anthonygarcia you're right, those people were doing us a favor by speaking up. The thing nobody talks about is how those design choices actually distracted from your own substance. I had some decent takes on early PC hardware, but nobody could make it past my seizure inducing background to read them. Once I killed the blinking text and the tiled star field wallpaper, people actually started replying to what I was saying instead of complaining about the visuals.

faith_perez2mo ago

Oh man, "car alarm for the eyes" is the perfect way to put it. I had a signature with like three different animated gifs (spinning logos, a bouncing car) and someone just said it was hard to focus on my actual post. Getting that outside look was a huge help, I stripped it all back to just plain text and never went back.