I wasn't around when that word was in use. It would probably be cool if it came back...

Yea... I think we should start a club for people who like to use blarghefur. That would be awesome.

You know how Oompa-Loompas scarred some people's lives when they were children?

Well, I'm pretty sure blarghefurs scarred my teenage years.

May they die and die and never rise again.

MWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I've been here since early 2005 and I've never see the word here.

I was around on one of my older accounts from 2007 when it was used and I never understood the meaning. A month ago someone told me in message how it was important and that no one uses it anymore. We can all try to bring it back. Now that i know what it means. I'm in.

Blarghefur - people's reaction to the latest in faux fur fashion.

Blarghefur was a term coined by the NarniaWeb member Eruname.

A long time ago, in a town far, far away ... I was still a Ditto Town Mod ...

It first showed up March 15, 2006 at 1637 hours in time zone -7T. (I have the link to the very post - not sure if I can share it) Eruname was hyper and feeling random. Outcast kept her going. It was like an avalanche after that post.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what BLARGHEFUR is, they have to see it for themselves...

I've not seen Eruname around in quite some time. If you are out there, feel free to add your input on this one.

This is back when we would burn 200 pages of Town Square in a matter of DAYS!

Is this a blast from the past or what?

I was around on one of my older accounts from 2007 when it was used and I never understood the meaning. A month ago someone told me in message how it was important and that no one uses it anymore. We can all try to bring it back. Now that i know what it means. I'm in.

Yay! Another Blarghefur supporter! Hahaha! We shall rule the world with BLARGHEFUR!!!!

All Hail Blarghefur!

^^I saw that emote and I just had to use it^^

Blarghefur. Blarghefur? Blarghefur!

I think I like it.

We should totally bring it back! Sorry lys!

Yay!

Blarghefur rules again!!!!!

sorry lysander! (no offense)

May they die and die and never rise again

Is it bad that earlier today, after reading their responses to you, that I thought of that part on the tower in the BBC PC where Cornelius told Caspian:
"Many of your race feel that way in secret..."?

I totally think you all have a right to your opinion, but just hear me out.

At the time of Blarghefur, I was one of the Ditto Town mods (and possibly still in school at the time, I forget). I would get easily frustrated, because back then, we could go through a Square (known as the Cup & Platter at that time) in a day or two. WAY too hard for me, who also had other responsibilites (and no time to spend hours just checking that one thread), to be closing one just about every day.

And if those threads were full of meaningful conversation, I wouldn't have minded so much. But there were pages, and pages of just one word posts, or one sentence posts like "hihowareyabye", and general substancelessness (which is against the rules). It gave me so many headaches, and turned me off so much,
that I was willing to leave the "town" I loved (which I'd been visiting since a few months after I joined Nweb, where I had found all my Nweb friends). And it really broke my heart... made me yearn for the "days of old", when I had first started, and we had conversations with JillPole, Cymru, levibarjonas, wyntrerose, and some of the rest. (some of whom never come anymore ) And I wasn't the only "old timer of DT" that was scared away during those days.

If that's what we're trying to bring back, I want no part in it. Sorry.

Points in favour of "the word":
I like randomness. I like the joy blarghefur brings others.

Points against it:
the negative memories. the rule breaking (substancelessness) that went on the last time. the fact that it is basically ditto's clone. (which is dumb, if you ask me. why have two words that mean the same exact thing?)

PLEASE do NOT bring it back! I've been on this site since 2005, and don't want to be scared away from it because of a silly word. This is my home-of-sorts. *sigh*

And pickle, the fact that you think of it as the "spirit of Nweb", and that we've "lost it" bothers me. It was only a small amount of Dittopians that used it, and only for a short time. And lots of us were part of the resistance. The spirit of Narniaweb, the true one, never left. It's the friendliness of the members, the loving patience of the mod team, the love of all things Lewis, the love of God. THAT is the spirit of Narniaweb.

All that said, I can't stop you from using the word and spirit of blarghefur, if you want to. But, keep it in your sigs or something. I don't mind if you do that, but I don't want it bleeding over into everything and becoming a problem again, ok? I truly only want what is best for you guys, and the whole forum. (as well as my own sanity, and that of the other mods) Does that work for you?

Okay, a little history lesson.

The phenomenon known as "Blarghefur" was arguably a successor to a much earlier phenomenon. Once upon a time, NarniaWeb's four community forums were all located in one single super-forum. At that time, there was apparently a trend where people would randomly post "Ditto!" in threads. This quickly got out of hand enough that there had to be a thread specifically to contain this randomness, called the "Ditto Club". The Ditto Club doubled as a "chat" thread, and tripled as the location where the Ditto Story was written out.

Eventually, it became popular enough that, when the Community Forum was subdivided into the four sections we know it is today, the Ditto Club (eventually renamed to Ditto Town) got its own section, its own moderators, and its own threads for chatting. It became the place to do random, general chatting as well as role-playing and Ditto Story writing.

At a point when the general chat threads were dubbed "Cup & Platter", the Blarghefur phenomenon was started. At that point, the threads were already quite bursting with random activity of posting random things. Due to each thread only being able to house 200 pages of posts each, it was not unusual to have to start a new thread every week, sometimes even shorter. At any rate, Blarghefur caught on, and only contributed to the increasing speed at which these threads grew.

Unfortunately, this sort of randomness also ended up driving a lot of previous Ditto Town visitors away.

For these people, Ditto Town wasn't just a place to be blissfully random. It was also a place to socialize, to chat with their Dittotopian friends and catch up with their lives, and have conversations with them about various topics. Unfortunately, the near-constant flood of random posts (including, among other things, posts consisting entirely of "Blarghefur!") interrupted such conversation, and made it hard to find and catch up on others' conversations.

Not only that, but also, the loads of posts entered into these threads quickly became a burden on the NarniaWeb servers.

All these things caused a couple of changes. First, a real-time chatroom (the current "Cup&Platter") was created, allowing an outlet for random, high-speed, "Blarghefurry" posts without overloading the servers. As this chatroom could now handle such activity, the rules of the chat thread (re-renamed to its old name of "Town Square") were also changed to require posts to be substantial. As such, random "Blarghefurry" posts no longer had a place there, and the thread re-evolved into the conversational thread it is now.

That said, even in the chatroom Blarghefur has pretty much died out. This can probably be attributed to the original users drifting away from the forum for various reasons, as well as the fact that, in the end, the phenomenon just grew old, like many do.

Some key points to note:
- "Blarghefur" was not a NarniaWeb phenomenon. It was a phenomenon exclusively to Ditto Town, and even then exclusive to its chat thread. Those who never go there (and there are a rather lot on this forum) likely never had any idea any of this ever happened.
- The forum rules have always forbidden random, off-topic, short posting, particularly of one-word posts like "Ditto!" and "Blarghefur!", in its discussion threads. (Remember, those threads are for discussion!) The Town Square chat thread has also forbidden such posts, partially to keep them from clogging up the thread and the servers and partially because the Chatroom is there for that kind of stuff anyways.
- There are many who were, and are still now, opposed to "Blarghefur". This is not because they think it is "stupid", but rather because they remember when the phenomenon ruined a place that in the past was rather close to their hearts. In particular, saying to them that it, in any way, represented the "spirit" of NarniaWeb, can be a major affront, because they came to NarniaWeb for community and discussion, not for complete randomness.

Hopefully that will help y'all understand more the history of Blarghefur.

Great thoughts, PA, it's good to hear it from the perspective of a long-time member. And your post was most informative, stardf!

I'm pretty much in the middle on the whole "Blarghefur" issue Some thoughts:

No, Blarghefur is not the "spirit of NarniaWeb", but it certainly is one unique piece of NW's history, that no other website/forum has.

For those of you who want to bring Blarghefur back, the key is to not abuse it. Doing something like posting it in your signature, or signing your posts with it would be appropriate. People may have used it previously to post one-word posts, or inject it in the middle of a post as off-topicness, but that will not be tolerated now. Also, it's important to respect the other members who really aren't a fan of the word, and not to "shove it in their face" so to speak.

If you want to bring it back, this is your chance to "redeem" the word--help install it as a fun word, and banish the negative memories of it in the past.

For you non-Blarghefur fans: while the word has bad connotations for you, it doesn't have to mean the same thing this time around.