When I first came to Newgrounds in 2005, it was a much different place. Viewing Flash movies in the old pop-up format sometimes crashed my browser upon closing the window and listening to audio submissions required you to wait for up to 15 seconds, in my experience, to listen to a song and featured no way to skip to certain points in the song. But above all, the community seemed harsher back then. Maybe it was because I was younger, or maybe it's because I am so used to the ins and out of Newgrounds that I now know how to not piss off other users. Whatever the case may be, now many people seem genuinely friendly at times.

My header image, as you can see from my previous news post, was crafted with love by SuparEFG a few days ago, and my signature picture was created hours ago by Spartan204 of the Newgrounds Sig Makers, after I posted my request again a few days later because it had been missed. Soon, the artist apologized for having forgotten about it and gave me my wonderful new sig!

The forums, as I remember them, were less "civilized", with flame wars being much more common and they had a generally unfriendly vibe to them. But now, the forum seem to be teeming with people who wish to kindly and helpfully respond to your threads and dedicated mods, effectively weeding out the unsavory users.

Newgrounds, bottom line, is an art community, minus the pretentiousness of deviantART and that's what it's always felt like to me.

YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace are all quite faceless, but not Newgrounds. It's always been Tom Fulp's baby, realized by the dedicated staff. The history of Newgrounds is there for all to see. Can you say the same thing about MySpace? No. And who exactly is MySpace's enigmatic Tom? His messages state that his name is Tom Anderson. What the hell kind of generic name is that? That's Neo's real name in The Matrix! Newgrounds also features the kind of quality control that YouTube so sorely needs. Two second videos, stolen videos, racist and derogatory comments roam YouTube like a plague.

To conclude my polite rant, Newgrounds has been my home for four years, and will be my home for many more.