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← darkroom
Calling out to old Hummingbird/Kitsu Users
I don't know if this is allowed on here, but I figure a quick story time while calling into the past in hopes of a response/discussion is better than the millionth forum game or recommendation thread.
I've been around for a few years in the anime community, but as time has passed and I've gone from a 14 year old with too much free time to a 23 year old with not enough free time (and different hobbies), I've kind of fallen out of touch with not only the anime community, but the people I used to talk to every day. This is usually fine, since I have other friend groups now, but every now and then I go back to my old Kitsu account and get hit by a wave of melancholy. That site seems so dead, so lifeless, and the most recent post from anyone that I used to talk to is over a year or 2 old. These are people I grew up talking, some that really shaped who I am today, that have now just disappeared entirely, with links to deleted instagram accounts or barely updated twitter accounts as the only lead to them. I do follow some on twitter, but I don't interact often with them, and the 3 discords I am in that were Kitsu related are now dead apart from the occasional Birthday post or a user reminiscing. The only other time recently I was in a Kitsu discord didn't go down too well.
So I thought I'd make a post here since I know a lot of people who left Kitsu migrated to Anilist. Who knows, maybe we'll see some people who were gone for over 5 years (for those who know; lets hope for Tavor)
To get discussion going, why don't we discuss some of our favorite memories/people from Kitsu? I'm not going to directly name people because it feels weird to.
I knew one person from Denmark who had an older sister angle to her, despite being only a year older than me iirc. I just remember her begging me to come to Denmark to smoke weed with her. I had another that was at the time who I thought of as an idealized version of me. He even was born on the same day as me. He designed my profile banner and even made his own (discontinued) fashion line. If anyone knows who I'm talking about (let me know if you're not entirely sure) and bought clothes from him, I'd love to see it. I was so sad I never bought anything from the man.
The forums had chat threads running basically 24/7 back in the day, one of the first times I pulled an all nighter I spent it in that thread listening to the first Cardcaptor Sakura opening. Good times
Anyway, that's enough from me. I hope to hear from some familiar faces. Good night!
mods, if this is not allowed, feel free to delete.
I left Kitsu when they decided to kill reviews and apart from groups (that were also a mess), I don't miss anything.
I can't say I miss the site specifically, it was and still is a dumpster fire. There were so many points that just lessened the user experience. Removal of forums in favor of a twitter-esque news feed, the multiple redesigns that instead of streamlining the experience instead served to confuse the user and make it harder for them to do basic tasks like set a show to rewatch, the merger of Kitsu and Aozora leading to a massive influx of new users that didn't understand how Kitsu worked that lead to mass alienation of older users, it was just a complete mess.
But as I said in the OP, I miss the community. Maybe I'm old and just not looking/refusing to look in the right places, but I've never found a site that had a community like Hummingbird/Early Kitsu did. Even AniList just kinda feels dead. The most I see from the forum is a billion forum games and the occasional news thread.
Oh well.
Aozora
Whats that?
It was a phone app that Kitsu acquired a while ago. I think it was a tracker, but it might have also had links to illegal streaming sites for basically every show since once the acquisition happened all the new users kept asking "how do I watch this show? where's the link to watch it" and stuff like that. As I said, all the new users alienated the old ones.
The biggest issue was that because Josh (the owner of kitsu) wanted Kitsu to be a social media site for anime fans that functioned like Twitter, we had no choice but to start using global feed to communicate with large groups, but then once the merge happened, we couldn't do that on global any more because it was filled with people asking for links to watch shows (which was against the site rules)
Sounds like an unnecessary acquisition.
But that would explain why he tried to replace the forum and reviews with global feed and reactions.
Use to love going on there and connecting with people back when I was younger!
I missed the Aozora version, the memoriiieees. I use to have an account on there but deleted it for personal reasons. Regret it now as I’ve grown older cries Lost out being able to look back at what once was or at least be able to find old pals on there.
Still hope to find them again, for old times sake.
Here’s to hoping we’ll find our old pals again!
