What's The Backstory Of Hipforums?

I found this site linked from another site, within a thread about psilocybin. I think. Very liberal here, as far as allowing people to speak their mind, which is a much needed escape given how PC the majority of the forums I'm a member of have become. The only other place I've found like HF is eBaums.

 

so does dude111.

 

That's really cool the heritage of this place is nearly 20 years old. Back in 1996, the attitudes toward the internet were not the same as they are today; not many people seemed all that interested in being online and searching for quality websites and information was a real chore.

I bet Hippy.com would be a valuable domain name if offered for sale nowadays.

Yes it is true that the popularity of online message boards has hit its peak, and user numbers have fallen from most boards due to the rise of the social media giants. But one thing I like about forums like HF is that they offer a little bit more anonymity than Facebook or Twitter.

I came on to HF about 6 years ago after the other forums I used to visit were shut down, or the moderators became power hungry and unfair (overgrow.com). I didn't expect to be a long-term member of this place at first. I actually was looking up nude beach etticuite and their locations in my area. I had never been to one and I wanted to learn more about it. I registered, and after a while I became more involved in general discussion. I decided it set up camp here after seeing that there's lots of diverse opinions shared and exchanged here. Rather than being vilified, cyberbullied, and censored for having an alternative viewpoint from the majority.

 

the experience has been immensely entertaining and educational.

 

Oh yes, I went to various towns in Western NC for weekend trips all the time with my parents growing up, and spent a lot of time in Asheville in my late teens and early twenties. Plus countless camping trips in various spots. Did you grow up in Western NC? I remember you mentioning hanging out along the blue ridge parkway as a teen.

I think I joined the forums in 2010 but I actually have been popping in as a lurker since 2004.

 

I didn't move there until college, but we always lived close enough to do day trips, into the southern Virginia mountains also, and I stayed in the NC mountains for several years after college. I still go up there regularly. I can be on the Parkway in less than 90 minutes.

1996... that was early in the gentrification of San Francisco, but some large groups were already moving out of there because of the rising cost of living, and one of the largest transplant groups landed in Asheville. They were big enough in numbers to cause ground zero for the hippie / nonconformist / New Age / stoner / environmentalist movement in the mountains of the Southeast to shift from Boone to Asheville, and it's still there.

No surprise that we used to have a lot of Asheville HF members, but they're all gone now, unfortunately.

 

WOW! This history certainly puts things in a clearer better perspective of this site now. I did not know any of this....and now, I have a deeper understanding of things.

I found HF in 2014 after searching for a forum with the word metaphysics on the web, and then I stumbled upon here, as i saw there were many, many things being discussed....just about anything anyone ever wanted to discuss is here.....I liked that.....and here I still am....

 

I came here doing some research about LSD and was appalled at the vast amount of bad information around.
It was refreshing to find some folks who knew what they were talking about and I could share my experiences/knowledge about psychedelics and hopefully help others.
I very, very, very much appreciated and still do that the overriding philosophy here concerning drugs is safety and harm reduction.


Overall I have learned a lot about myself by looking into the mirrors provided by interacting with all of you.
and for an old fart, the technology to be able to converse and interact with people from around the world is still a little mind boggling and definitely awesome.
it's sites like this that help to make the world a smaller place.

 

It was 1999. During my lunch period of my senior year, I would stop by the room where they taught AUTOCAD and use one of the computers to surf the internet. I don't know how I came across this site, but I almost guarantee I was high. I was a total stoner/underachiever/slacker in high school, so not much different from today, but now with less pot.

Sadly, these forums are nowhere near as good as they were back in the day. I actually had some pretty good internet times on these forums back in the early 2000s, especially in the Music forum, where I literally shaped several people's music tastes with my recommendations and passionate threads about my favorite music. Needless to say, they are annoying millennial hipsters to this day because of that.

Who remembers Sydburnz/Madcrappie? Because I did not have a scanner back in 2003, I mailed him my picture to Kansas to scan and post, making it the first Pressed_Rat picture on the Hipforums. The picture was downright scary and met with many lulz. I wish I still had the picture.

 

A few years ago we could access archived threads and posts pre-2004. WTF happened to those archives?

 

It will be a sad day if the internet ever reaches a point where people who know and care a lot about such things no longer have a place where they can talk openly.

For sure. That's the internet at its best.

 

Well My hip Journey Started a Lot like You Folks , I traveled on the wagon train From St Helens Lancs , Well actually it was a little place Called Fingerpost St helens Lancs To Runcorn In Cheshire .
Lost a few Good Friends and One wife on that Twelve mile Voyage! well When I say Voyage I mean we had to Cross a Bridge .
Well We all Arrived safely In Runcorn and Started To Dig a Shelter and make Friends with the Local Tribes and pub Landlords Not Easy When everyone calls you a "St Hellens Wollyback **** " But we Made Inroads .
Two Generations of peace Passed and the Living was Good Again, New Wife Popped out a couple of Sprogs and They in Turn Had Little Mally's and Mary's ,Now there were More "Woolyback Cunts" to Feed
After a While i got to wondering What Happened to The old Town ( St Hellens ) after I left So I looked on This New Fangled Internet Thing and found "Porn "
A couple of Years Later I found What I was Looking for A "St Helens Forum " and Joined ! Happy Days Until a Few People on this new Forum Decided we Should all Meet up For a Drink and a Chat , Thats Where I first Met the Lovely Babs (Morrow on Here )
During our Long Chat Together We learned A lot About Where We Both Came From and That we had The Hippy Thing in Common
She sent Me a Link and Here I ended Up
Babs Left the other Forum But I Still visit the old town now and again ( and me Mam lives There )
And Thats How I ended Up Mallyboppa on Hip

The Absolute End X

 

Hey Pressed Rat, maybe this might be of use https://web.archive.org/web/*/hipforums.com

 

I was a freshman or sophomore in high school and had just discovered classic rock, 60s counterculture, and wanted to learn more about that and start experimenting with mind altering substances. I'd patiently wait for my AOL dialup to get me on the internet and found this place.

Since there were no people I knew personally into the "hippie" scene, this place was a godsend. My first username was RiderOnTheStorm and I kept that for years until I forgot my login information and had to resign myself to registering a new name. All in all, I've been on the site for 15-16 years and counting. I've had relationships with 2 other forum members, and have met 6-7 people from here irl. Those whom I haven't met (yet) in person have been my friends for over a decade: one person has even evolved to be someone I talked to on here in chat 8 years ago to someone I have spent almost every single day with on Skype for the last 5 years. I have so made so many lifelong friends here, I even respond to and list "Rider" in real life and on other sites.

I think the real heyday for the site was roughly 6-8 years ago, when the Forums and Gallery were really active and the Chat was like a daily gathering of a solid number of people who legitimately got along and had a great vibe. Even when I took breaks from this place, I always come back. I think everyone has their "home" site - that one site where they were first able to transcend the feeling of just being online to kill time and actually started to make genuine connections. That's what HF is to me. It's my internet home.

My only real regret is not being more diligent about getting more contact info from the old crowd, as now that they're not on here much anymore (or at all), I have no way to reach them. People like Ash, SunAngel, Moe420, HisEden, DMT, Sámson, BreathIn, SaraRose, etc are all people I haven't spoken to in years, despite spending literally every for a number of years on here talking to them.

 

Indeed! I forgot about that. Thanks!

I was just looking at a few of the threads I made back in 2001.