RIP J. Michael Crow

[Raptorpat]

You may have known him as "J. Michael," "Hateful,"  "Luuv," or simply as "Admin," and, as you may have heard, J. Michael Crow passed away on August 8, 2017, due to natural causes.

We are all here today because he decided he wanted to build this little online community, and so he did. His concept of "UnevenEdge" existed in his mind, on paper, and in practice with his friends on-and-off since the days of zines. He wanted to rope his decades of ideas and experiences into this one site: as a social community, a hub for artists, and a variety of other things. Unfortunately the demands of life prevented him from fully achieving the potential he saw in this site down the road, but we are still here. Those of us he trusted to help run the site are going to continue to do so as-is, and once the dust settles we will determine the future trajectory of the site.

If we have any updates on J. Michael, we will share them here. For those who have thoughts about J. Michael, click on the link to share them with us: https://unevenedge.com/topic/14057-j-michael-thoughts-condolences/

 

Finally, I will close this announcement with J. Michael's own unedited perspective on UnevenEdge:

Quote

My thought is that - this is my space at first. And as people come into it, it becomes "our space" more. And to react to that accordingly. While maintaining it as a place I personally enjoy hanging out in. And continuing to use it to do the stuff I personally want to do, I want to - like not shove that down anybody's throat such that - I'm willing to read the tealeaves and what people seem to like and not like to tweek things.

So I have a solid notion in my head of what I want. And then as people come in, I fully expect to try to moderate that stuff as required such that the place adapts to what people seem to want.

My thought too was - I almost opened a nerd club at one point. I was going to call it "the Secret Theatre" and it wouldn't be advertised anywhere. But we would hand out free tickets to people we liked, or fliers or whatever. And the staff would play roles. Like they would do jobs, but play characters as they did those jobs. It was a similar concept. Showing movies, selling comics, having game spaces. All the stuff I liked in one place.

And then when the ASMB first launched, Buddha spoke of it like a nightclub. And that's actually how all the initial ranks were named - after nightclub denizens, it's also why mods were initially labeled "swimbouncers".

But I like that notion of - this being like a 24/7 club almost. Like people can come here and hang out and - yeah, to a certain extent it's about anime and comics and movies and gaming and nerdy stuff and the RAFF stuff etc, but just as much, or perhaps even moreso, I feel like it should just be about - like hanging out with Pat. Or hanging out with J Butler. Or - you know, just beyond all the content, mostly a place to chill with people you want to hang out with.

that's kind of the goal I think.

Just - making a spot on the internet that's like a little nerd club where people can get useful information, entertainment, think if they want, not think if they don't want, get into an rp game, but mostly just be able to check in with people and see how they are and/or just hang out with people they wanna hang out with.

without all that external noise of a FB or Twitter or whatever else.