does anyone know...

[Derived Absurdity]

hello everyone

does anyone here happen to know what happened to some specific people

Eva Yojimbo
Cassius Clay/OriginalCastorTroy
BruceSmith
Anakin
the dork lord
aels
thesalmonofdoubt
faustus

(extremely major bonus points if you can talk about some ancient IMDB names like malkatrazz)

I am very curious if anyone here keeps in touch with them, because I do not

I haven't talked to them in like five years at least and I am feeling very nostalgic and melancholy

(not that I want to talk to them I'm just curious as to what they're up to)

[Gendo]

aels and thesalmonofdoubt are active on Facebook and I interact with them (and a lot of other former members) there. I think BruceSmith also but I'm only about 50% sure that the person I'm thinking of on Facebook is him. I'm actually FB friends with about 30 former Pitters, though not all are actually active on FB. But those are the only ones from your list that I know of. PopeBucky, Dragon, islandmur, Embsy, and Chuckles at least are all actually active on there. A few others whose old usernames I can no longer remember.

Last year while traveling I actually met up with Jude and i_am_robin both in person! Fun times.

A while back the dork lord mentioned being active on reddit, and many years ago I think I found his account there and sent a message; never heard back.

[Derived Absurdity]

Thanks for the info. Along with aels and the dork lord and thesalmonofdoubt I also miss Anakin and Troy and Eva and Bruce, I sometimes wonder what they're doing.

[Raxivace]

I stay in contact with Jimbo. Dunno how much I can say really, but he's been pretty busy taking care of his parents last few years whose health have taken some serious turns recently.

[Derived Absurdity]

Oh that sucks. Good for him though, hope they're doing okay.

[Anakin McFly]

I LIVE!!

I was just thinking about this place earlier this week and how I missed you all. I couldn't get back into my account because I'd forgotten my password (and the password to the email account to reset my password, and the password to the recovery account for that one, etc, until I hit a dead end because I forgot the fake birthday for an account I created when I was 12.) I'd been trying on and off for the past few years. Then I remembered I had Gendo's email address and managed to reach out, and he got me back in. Thanks Gendo!

I survived the pandemic (lost a good friend and one uncle), and barely survived 2 years of a dream job with an abusive boss and absolutely insane workload that demolished my mental and physical health. Friends and family were horrified and kept begging me to quit. They suspected that my boss was trying to drive me to quit, but I kept meeting the increasingly absurd demands until I eventually, physically, could not. I'm still not over it. I have a very high capacity for work - a previous boss once said that clients thought they had 10 people in the department but it was just me - and it was the first time in my life that capacity was exceeded. But I'm now at a new job with a really nice boss, great work-life balance and the best pay I've ever had. I'm also finally seeing a therapist.

This year I also stepped down from the local trans advocacy organisation I co-founded 8 years ago. I'll still help out as a volunteer, but it's time to pass the baton. I also don't want to be directly involved when Trump gets inaugurated and starts pushing out more bizarre anti-trans rhetoric and disinformation that's inevitably going to filter down here and shape local policies. The last few years have been exhausting enough.

Still single, but I found a really good group of friends just last year after we realised that many of us already knew each other individually. It's the first time I've had something like this. I'm very grateful for them. I've also since become an uncle. :')

[Gendo]

So glad you were able to contact me! Great to hear all the news of the past few years. This forum may be 90% abandoned; but a few are still here to discuss movies.

[Derived Absurdity]

ANAKIN! I'm so glad you're alive and doing well. I'm also glad to hear about your group of friends - maybe I should get something like that at some point, it might help. I'm also very glad to hear you escaped your abusive job. I'm very curious as to what that could even have been. I'm very happy I made this thread now.

I actually just looked at my profile and it says we all first joined this board ten years ago. Holy shit man... it's been a decade. That makes me feel very sad and I don't know why.

[Anakin McFly]

I planned to respond with a quick summary about my job but it turned into an entire essay. I posted it over in the VIP forum and then deleted it because there was far too much identifying information and made me very nervous given that I don't really know all 66 members of this forum.

In summary: I was very, very badly overworked. Some was actual work, some were pointless, time-consuming tasks my manager would give me just because. I would wake up, work, rush through mealtimes, and get back to work until around midnight when I'd go to bed. I'd wake up the next day and start over. This included weekends. Despite that, I was made to think I was inept and lazy. The gaslighting was intense. Sometimes the criticism was warranted, because I was so fatigued that I was making a lot of mistakes. It made me doubt myself a lot. At the worst point I was told that if I didn't improve I would be fired. The amount of work I would have to do to meet that criteria was physically impossible even if I managed not to sleep at all. So I quit. After I left, I found out that my teammates who had left had suffered the same, and it wasn't just me.

Yes, try and get a group of friends! It makes a lot of difference having even just 1-2 people who are there for you.

[Derived Absurdity]

Was it a white collar or blue collar job? Also yes I'm very happy to hear that you quit that nightmare. You're still in a nightmare but at least it's one that's collectively shared by all of us now, to varying degrees at least.

[Faustus5]

I'm still here. Got laid off late in 2023 and haven't been able to find a job since, unfortunately. Luckily I found that my Magic the Gathering collection was worth a ton of cash, so that's been paying the bills for a while. (Helps that I live a very modest, car-free lifestyle.)

[Anakin McFly]

It was a white collar job, but oftentimes felt physically demanding because I was so exhausted and sleep deprived. My health took a hit as well - gained a bunch of weight and my hair started falling out, though I've mostly gone back to what it was before. One reason I took so long to quit was that I did not have the time or energy or mental space to reflect on it. There's also how this job had been absolutely perfect when I first joined, prior to getting my new boss. It had been everything I'd ever wanted in a workplace: amazing colleagues I got along very well with, fun work I loved and was good at, short commute, good pay, dream industry. For the first time in my life I would actually be excited to wake up and get to work.

It took me a long time to accept that that was not coming back. I still have a lot of grief over that. Those early days were some of the best of my working life and I don't think I'll ever have anything like that again. My current job is great in many ways and I intend to stay for as long as I can, but it doesn't come close to that sheer euphoria I used to feel.

I've been pretty happy this year, actually. Ironically, part of it is seeing all the terrible things happening around the world and the impending sense of doom. Best way I can describe it is like watching a nuclear mushroom cloud go off in the distance and knowing that soon the shockwave will hit and we will all die, but until then, the air is calm, the birds are still singing, and everything is at peace. It makes me cherish what I have all the more, and gratitude is always a key driver of happiness.

[Derived Absurdity]

That's good to hear. That's similar to how I feel, I guess.