I would guess that many of us on this board are here secretly. In other words, no one else in our families know we are members. Hell, they might not even know our fetish exists, let alone that we enjoy it.

So..... the depressing thought that occurs to me is that if one of us.... well..... dies, the rest of us will never know. Our posts will obviously stop, the "last time we logged on" date will get older, but people will wonder and most of the time never know what happened.

So unless there are people that know about our involvement here, we will just "disappear".

Sorry for the downer, I was just doing some deep thinking. lol

I suspect this has happened to a 'closet splosher' friend of mine who hasn't been on since 2012 but I have no way of knowing, since I only knew the username. Sucks.

Of all the things I hope to get in order before I croak, my WAM chat board legacy ranks somewhere between telling phone spammers they can't reach me anymore and letting Cowturd fans know they'll never again hear me scream "sucks!" every time I hear the word "Dallas"

Yeah, people die; oftentimes in sudden and unsurprisingly simple ways. Too many times have I had to attend a funeral wishing I could have said good bye or seen the person one last time. Why would here be any different. Bill died, Lenny died, we heard only because of ties they had to others. But in that time I'm sure others have as well, I know I almost did.

It's a depressing thought, but a sobering one.

I actually have it written in my will that Jayce must eat nacho fries while sitting in a white chair after I die while telling really bad jokes.

You can thank me um...........later.

Counterpoint: If someone you only know through their online profile disappears completely from this board for a different reason, and lives to be 102 years old... but you still have no way to reach them, and you know nothing about them.... Is it any different (to you) from their absence occurring due to their demise?

I'm not trying to be flippant. Just saying it's the nature of the beast. I mentioned on another post that a great visual artist who did a lot of superhero & slapstick concepts (CO2 for those who remember) passed away a few years ago. But I only know this because someone posted it publicly on his profile. We used to message back and forth, then he disappeared in 2012. Stopped logging into his accounts about the same time too. Until that person posted (and it was many years later), I had no idea whether he was deceased or simply moved on in his life. Either way, the end result (for me) was the same. Knowing of his death brought a finality to our previous interactions, but nothing else would've changed without that knowledge.

It's honestly much more depressing for me (and possibly other producers) when I completely lose touch with a former model, because this is someone I actually interacted with in real life, not only via a computer screen. At the same time, a LOT of models (especially recently) will get married, have kids, or change career paths, and completely disappear. They're still out there in the real world.... but if you have no mutual friends and don't run in the same social circles, then once their online presence gets deleted and they don't respond to texts or calls (or a text comes back saying "Sorry wrong number"), they are completely gone from your life.

Long before they actually pass away in the real world.

I for one expect to live forever.

brb telling mum I'm a wammer

But who's going to know you died to tell her?

If MPV ever dries up without a word from either me or Dave then you will know lightning probably got both of us while shooting. Or something like that. We've had this discussion when a longtime member at QSF suddenly goes quiet. Often we'll have just a few clues of their personal life to begin searching obituaries and such. It's happened for sure.

We've done relatively well in keeping up with former talent that we liked but are always searching for certain ones. Fortunately many of them seem to have done well in life. There are some that don't want to be found and some that aren't with us any more. That part sucks because there are a couple we'd really like to thank for certain things. On a less depressing note we did recently re-discover Skylar Nicholas if that means anything to some of you. Now in her mid-40's and scarcely changed from the lady we knew 20 years ago. Yoga does a body good.

It's sad but maybe you are right I prefer to see it as our secret sactuary, a place where we can be ourselves, we can imagine getting messy and dream about mud, but, not all of our beloved ones understand it, so here we are, enjoying our sanctuary

Instigated by the death of Lenny (whose estate is STILL in probate) and the confusion surrounding his legacy, I created an "Estate Directives" feature at Vidown where producers can check one of several boxes to let us know how to proceed in the event of their death. Some are open about everything and people in their lives already know about their business, so it's not a real problem. Their copyrights will change hands and their business will continue.

Because some are basically living a secret life, one of the options is essentially "burn it all down and keep your mouth shut if anyone asks" Thankfully, I don't think anyone has chosen that option

If Regis falls in the forrest and nobody is around to see it, can he still post?

No because he's perma-banned

Learn to use Twitter and you can see him post right now!

Gee and he's not difficult to find. He's also pretty much the same unreformed reprobate that he was here.

Well how about that, turns out he bought one of your videos after all.

Yes, I've been in email contact with him before, during, and after his fallout with MM and the perma-ban that resulted.

I wish things had been handled differently on both ends but not my place to decide.

It would be nice for us hoi polloi to have some sense of what went down that resulted in this lifetime ban, but I guess it will remain shrouded in mystery. Those of us who were generally paying attention on the forums had a sense of the rising tensions, and know the reason Regis left the forum of his own free will not terribly long before the ban. But the climax of all this seems to have happened behind closed doors, and I guess can't be discussed in broad daylight?!? Seems like a shame; perhaps there are some lessons the rest of us could learn from this sad series of events?

Good to know he's not dead. Ask him about Robby's question, would ya?

I agree. I'd be interested to know why he left as well.

Having dealt with his grief while moderating another board where he wasn't loved I'll offer that it was probably a regular pattern of behavior more than any one thing. Anyone who has to be constantly looked after like a difficult child and is a constant buzzkill in an otherwise happy place is going to reach the limits of a moderators tolerance. Mods are only human and if they are spending the majority of their time dealing with one person then that person isn't a friend and isn't helping the cause. They become a one man show for their own entertainment and you are not there to be the stage manager. Boom! Bye! Get thee hence and let me spend my time productively with all of these otherwise civil folks.

I do not think that is an issue for most WAM Producers, because even if one dies and that person's family knows nothing about their WAM hobbies and wants nothing to do with the subject (as was the case with Rob Blaine and Bill Shipton) most Producers have already cultivated many friends and business partners that they can leave their legacy to. As Soundguy mentions, he has already set up legacy estate directives for all the Wam producers who use his Vidown system, so those matters are already taken care of.

The really depressing issue is "what have you achieved during your life" and what will your epitaph say on your gravestone. If you are a WAM Producer I guess you could say that you entertained a couple thousand wam fans for a few years, but that is not the same as winning a nobel prize for literature or science or being a doctor who discovered a cure for a major disease or being a rock star musician or an artist.

If you are a wam producer you should try to achieve something in the mainstream world and if you are a wam fan you should not spend all your time on the internet or playng computer games, so make sure when your time comes that you have achieved something in your life that has nothing to do with Wam, because Wam is a self indulgent activity like gambling.

Rob Blaine of Messy Fun was also a pilot who taught flying at a flight school, and he was also a software engineer working for Cray Industries supercomputers.

For me the saddest thing is disappearing longtime customers. We know about the Producers who have passed on because the word gets out, but when you have longtime customers and email contacts who stop communicating, you never know what happened to them, so you can only presume they have passed on.

If you are an atheist like me, then it will be "lights out" on judgement day. But imagine if you are an atheist and then you end up at the pearly gates with a couple of pies in your hand and St Peter tells you there are no pies allowed in heaven, then you will probably think that heaven is like hell, and would rather go to the other place....ha ha

MK

I already have died. I'm just here haunting the place

I don't know what all went down personally between Regis and MM, but here's the short version of the kind of stuff that got him banned. Needless to say, none of it is really "mysterious".

Don't accost new members by telling them you're going to be sending them dick pics or similar things. They don't know if you're joking or not, sarcasm doesn't translate well in type.

Also, consider the numerous people that lurk here with stuff like this being one of the major reasons they don't create a user, let alone feel like they can open up.

I like Rege and his schtick, but then again I'm not a mod, LOL. What always puzzled me though is how a guy who got his jollies making borderline offensive remarks could get so easily offended when called out on them. Anyway, good to see he isn't banned from the internet... yet :lol:

Let's not continue to misquote the guy when he's not here to defend himself. The EXACT response (which is snarky, but also a little funnier and WAY more honest/accurate than most of us would admit) was, "Welcome to the UMD. Enjoy your complimentary packet of dick pics in your InBox!"

I mean, this was Regis' thing. Would said comment scare off potential new (female) members? Maybe. But the ACTUAL dick pics sent to female users by ACTUAL members of this board probably scare off a whole lot more. And maybe those guys are getting banned too, but we're not hearing about it. I don't know.

And for the record, this was the ACTUAL new member he "accosted" with that remark.

I did have one person reach out to me saying "Bob" (not his real name) had passed on. It was the guy's brother, and he said "Bob" really liked my work. (He also supported Anglefan and a few others.) So that was both sad and really nice. But that rarely happens.

Unfortunately, I think the reasons most longtime customers disappear are more mundane.... a change in relationship, a change in buying habits, or just angry I don't use shaving cream much anymore.

I remember Noise saying years ago that if a male user leaves UMD it's because he's just started a relationship, while if a female user does it's because she's just ended one.

I've always thought there's probably some truth in that.

Def the last one for me.