What's the history behind the Zigga Zoomba Lounge?
- Thread starter Rock
- Start date
- Replies: 314
- Views: 5K
- Off-Topic
- Messages
- 8,637
Before all that, there was ACCBords.com. Each ACC school had a board and there was an off-topic board. I spent a good amount of time on the UNC board (obviously) but also the NC State and off-topic boards. I recall doing a primer explaining the Enron scandal at one point, LOL.
Eventually, fans got frustrated by the hostile interactions with other ACC fans and school-specific sites began to pop up; my first board diaspora was the shut-down of the old ACC Boards, though I am still on FB with some of our group from back then.
Eventually, fans got frustrated by the hostile interactions with other ACC fans and school-specific sites began to pop up; my first board diaspora was the shut-down of the old ACC Boards, though I am still on FB with some of our group from back then.
Ddseddse
Esteemed Member
- Messages
- 662
I’m waiting for a Coney sighting (a traffic cone which for reasons that escape me now, got photoshopped, Forrest Gump like, into either photobombing or staring in most any topical photo of the day).
- Messages
- 224
coney was the offshoot of bin (trash bin) in the hotmess thread that HBG posted
- Messages
- 1,241
As I recall, it started with a poster taking a photo of someone out smoking in the parking lot of the business park where they worked. The smoker happened to be standing by a traffic cone and somehow the cone became the subject, was named “Coney” and took on a life of its own.
- Messages
- 224
- Messages
- 224
that's right, it was coney first then Bin and yes it was the smoker (Ms. Hotmess) by HBG
- Messages
- 609
Back in the mid-90s, I first discovered message boards, and that also must have been around the time they first came into existence. After that discovery, I sought out message boards that discussed one of my greatest passions: UNC basketball. Dave Chen’s site was one of the first.
Some time around the late-90s, I stumbled upon Ben Sherman’s UNCBasketball.com. At the time, Ben was an aspiring journalist attending the University of Richmond. UNCBasketball.com didn’t have its own message boards, but instead linked to a site called ACCBoards.com for discussions.
ACCBoards.com was a message board site for all the ACC schools at the time. Each school had its own board and fans from different schools would hop on to other schools’ boards to talk trash. I don’t recall if it was there from the beginning, but there was also a general topics board for everyone. As the 2000 election approached, some people made political posts, which were initially prohibited. But as they continued to pop up, Ben, who was one of the moderators, took a vote to see if the majority of posters preferred to have political discussions on the board or if they were against it. The majority voted in favor of allowing them.
Interestingly, the majority of the posters there were conservative. I was part of the minority. While there could be heated discussion and plenty of ribbing, it was mostly pretty civil. Of course that was pre-MAGA and we were generally arguing over the same set of facts, and arguments were over policy positions.
The in 2001, UNCBasketball.com became part of IC. The Tar Heel posters on ACCBoards.com migrated over to IC. Throughout the ‘00s the early ‘10s, the ZZL was a vibrant place. I’d say the mid- to late-00s was its heyday. So many great posters and great discussions. It had general topics and political discussions, and many of the general topic discussions were interesting.
The evolution of the message boards has been interesting. When I started, it was mostly young folks (mostly under 40 with a lot of folks in their 20s), but there was also a mix of ages. Now it seems that vast majority of posters are over 40, with perhaps more than half over 50. I don’t think the kids today think message boards are cool.
I’ve been part of some version of this community for over 25 years and it’s been a big source of enjoyment for me.
Some time around the late-90s, I stumbled upon Ben Sherman’s UNCBasketball.com. At the time, Ben was an aspiring journalist attending the University of Richmond. UNCBasketball.com didn’t have its own message boards, but instead linked to a site called ACCBoards.com for discussions.
ACCBoards.com was a message board site for all the ACC schools at the time. Each school had its own board and fans from different schools would hop on to other schools’ boards to talk trash. I don’t recall if it was there from the beginning, but there was also a general topics board for everyone. As the 2000 election approached, some people made political posts, which were initially prohibited. But as they continued to pop up, Ben, who was one of the moderators, took a vote to see if the majority of posters preferred to have political discussions on the board or if they were against it. The majority voted in favor of allowing them.
Interestingly, the majority of the posters there were conservative. I was part of the minority. While there could be heated discussion and plenty of ribbing, it was mostly pretty civil. Of course that was pre-MAGA and we were generally arguing over the same set of facts, and arguments were over policy positions.
The in 2001, UNCBasketball.com became part of IC. The Tar Heel posters on ACCBoards.com migrated over to IC. Throughout the ‘00s the early ‘10s, the ZZL was a vibrant place. I’d say the mid- to late-00s was its heyday. So many great posters and great discussions. It had general topics and political discussions, and many of the general topic discussions were interesting.
The evolution of the message boards has been interesting. When I started, it was mostly young folks (mostly under 40 with a lot of folks in their 20s), but there was also a mix of ages. Now it seems that vast majority of posters are over 40, with perhaps more than half over 50. I don’t think the kids today think message boards are cool.
I’ve been part of some version of this community for over 25 years and it’s been a big source of enjoyment for me.
- Messages
- 1,385
Wasn't she suppossed to be a"hotty " . A potential office romance .That is how it began??
- Messages
- 224
also, pretty sure @NYCBlueBlood is on divorce 2367 now
- Messages
- 224
no he is (and was also then married) but she was a new intern or something or maybe a new employee. I don't quite remember. I have his number. I'll text him and ask what was the circumstances behind that thread
- Messages
- 1,025
I wasn't in on the initial decision making of the board split as I had stepped down as a ZZL mod before then, but in general things were deteriorating when I finally couldn't take it anymore. For years people really pushed me to put in anti-trolling rules and I was hesitant to do so because I knew no one would accept whatever definition of trolling we used. I even created a group of posters from across the spectrum to advise me on ZZL decisions, define the rules etc. Eventually they really wanted the anti-trolling rule so I wrote it as best I could:
"While some provocation is to be expected on a message board that covers contentious topics, deliberate and/or repeated posts that lead to the destabilization of threads and the overall harmony of the board will not be tolerated and posters responsible for them shall be removed from the community. This rule is not designed to punish every snide comment that a poster may make, as that behavior falls under Rule #5."
Unfortunately what I feared would happen, because people felt we were not punishing supposed trolls equally and, shockingly, that seemed to go along political lines. Amazingly, someone on one side always felt that the trolls on the other were going unpunished. My inbox was filled daily with political partisans bitching that the other side was not being punished properly. I was essentially miserable and that kind of peaked when I was on a flight with my family (including infant daughter) and there was some bad turbulence and I had two depressing thoughts: If the plane goes down, at least we are all together, and two - I won't have to deal with the ZZL BS any more. The straw that broke my moderator back was when someone on that advisory board absolutely melted down on me in public about how I had done nothing about the trolls despite my re-writing the rules, increase in temp bans, increased conversations over the rules (every time you make a new one, there is a new debate on how someone is/ is or not violating the word and/or spirit of the rule.) I basically told Ben after that, I was out - the amount of sleep I was losing over trying to keep a board open that was only trouble for the site owners wasn't worth it. I would say 95% of what I was doing was trying to keep problems from escalating above me, for the sake of the community. I just ran out of fucks to give I guess. I didn't want the board to shut down, but I also couldn't do it anymore.
I think the decision to split it was to keep that political fighting from spreading on to non-political threads, which was happening a lot, but what it did was suck the air out of the regular ZZL. People were there FOR the fighting. I had the advantage of being on the old software, where we could do zzl-only bans. We lost that ability on 247, which corresponded to about the same time as the board split. They had the political board where people could get nastier with each other, but there were limits. I think a lot of posters did not care for those limits and aside from asking them to stay off the board or risk a site ban, there was not much the ZZL moderators could do - especially with paying customers of a site whose owners felt that the off-topic stuff was bonus. When you could just remove the bonus, that was one thing. When it became all or nothing, a lot more of those issues I kept at my level were getting taken directly to the Ben and Buck level etc because the all or nothing hammer was the only tool besides asking trolls to be police themselves. Also political fights have been spilling over to the basketball and football boards in the last year, with each side blaming the sports' moderators for being too heavy handed/ not heavy handed enough. Each incident was more straw on the camel's back.
I believe things have been getting uglier as of lately too, especially since the debate (just look at the troll grave dancing going right now over the closure of the forum,) and I am guessing UNC1012 has probably hit his limit of being miserable trying to protect a community from itself. He is the one who has to sort things out with Ben when a subscriber is demanding money back after a ban etc. It's not fun.
If we had the better ignore functions of this site, and if people would use it, I suspect the board would be still alive.
Anyway just my not directly involved point of view.
Last edited:
- Messages
- 8,637
OMG, did I get my order of operation out of whack? Time scrambles things for sure! I definitely was active in Dave’s Board, for some reason I was thinking it came after ACCB, but I think you are right. Wow.
The earliest sports board I ever posted on was at NANDOnet — News & Observer had boards for the ACC Tournament in the ‘90s and in NYC we were starved for info in the lead-up to the tournament. I was delighted to find local fans in NC could share details from the ACCT … had been in some protoboards on dial-up in 1994 at some point but the topics and participants were all over the map, and the slow download and upload times made them pretty limited.
Waaay early on (like 1994) my husband got in an argument with some guy about whether fascism was a liberal political ideology and got so mad he swore he would never join an online board again, and he has been pretty true to his word, save for a FB group for AP Chemistry teachers decades later.
- Messages
- 224
I'm guessing floheel was the one who melted down in public to you
- Messages
- 8,637
For a stretch, I had a diaspora board for ACCBoard fans to keep in touch, which I moderated as Mama Smurf with Don Bosco and his wonderful pre-game biorhythms threads — he still posts those in FB, maybe we can get him over here for that.
DB eventually took over running that board, which finally ran its course during the NCAA investigation of UNC sports/academics.
DB eventually took over running that board, which finally ran its course during the NCAA investigation of UNC sports/academics.
Mulberry Heel
Honored Member
- Messages
- 958
I remember reading ACCBoards way back in the day - I think it was the first sports message board site I read on the net. Didn't they have some poster named/called Don Bosco who posted there a lot? Was that the board that had the epic "Ed Cota & The Return of Honor" thread that went on forever, or was that on early IC? Good times.
ETA: Just noticed that you mentioned Bosco. He was a good poster.
Last edited:
- Messages
- 1,241
Wasn’t floheel the guy who was upset when a group of black people (who were rowdier than he thought was acceptable) sat next to his family in an Applebee’s and was concerned because he had left his gun in his vehicle?
- Messages
- 224
lol...I honestly don't remember either! 25 years has really gone by fast!
also I found the boards for the same reason! I was in Michigan for law school and was desperate to find other Tar Heels to talk to. It was a lifeline!
I remember those early board debates. Some were NASTY but for me those usually happened in some shitty AOL or Yahoo chat rooms not on message boards
- Messages
- 8,637
I’ve reached out to Padre to see if he might stop by here. He keeps touch with some other ACC Board old-timers (myself included) as well, so maybe we can get some cool Clemson and other ACC fans to drop by over here.