Greetings, faithful visitors of AB (if there still are any). This is Felixa checking in once again doing the amazing–updating. It is unknown if there will be any more updates after this, if this is just a temporary revival of the site, but, nevertheless, I feel the need to humor those who still visit and thirst for our opinions.

It has been more than one year already. During this time, I suppose I have been more or less floating around in my own corner of the world, not quite involved in anything web-related, but I have sometimes re-visited the design community to check up on it, see how it’s been doing. I haven’t really missed the people here for various reasons, but I have missed the controversy we stirred up. Yes, I still am who I am; I haven’t changed much.

But it seems the design community has? I’m not too sure of the whole picture, but apparently some people think the design community is “torn”? And, strangely, that we, at AB, were the cause of it? Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but AB went on an unannounced hiatus more than a year ago. Sure, we bought up many controversies and fueled many fiery discussions, but it has been more than one year. Many of our participating commentators were young, immature brats then, but isn’t one year enough for people to mature? In fact, the people claiming that the community is torn believe that they themselves have grown up even though grown-ups usually learn to move on and children usually don’t. They’ve even gone on to call our time of rule the AB War–what seems to be the equivalent to WWI (Web War I?) in their eyes. If anything they are just using what we did so long ago to lift themselves up, calling them the saviors of the internet. Allow me to reproduce the linked post taken from this blog, written by a girl named Angel, an insignificant being whom I don’t quite remember:

I sometimes feel bad that I don’t often write posts that are actually about web design, but more of the underlying attitudes and emotions of the designers….mainly me.

But the effect that Faedubh has had on its readers is quite surprising to me. I think about what FD has done for me- through this blog, I have realized that I am not usually the only one who feels the way I do about this community, and I also realize how human the rest of the designers I know are.

This blog reveals that design is not, and never will be, a perfect system. There’s a lot of things that hang around us like a big elephant that we find too risky or too much to talk about on our own updates, all of which are addressed on this site.

Like they always say, the first step to solving a problem is to admit that there is one. This site says what is on everyone’s mind, but not what is coming out of everyone’s mouth. We’re taking one step closer to changing this internet that we spend so much time on, and one by one, are taking stands to make a difference.

It might not be the same as advocating a cure for cancer, or a fund for homeless children, but it is ultimately making designers more open, honest, and less afraid of admitting the issues that keep us from becoming better.

I am glad that FD has brought so many different opinions- and people- into one place to discuss the one thing we all have in common. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered.

*Bolded are some errors that had to be changed before I posted this onto AB or I would have felt ashamed and utterly foolish.

Truly, I’m at a lost for words whenever I read this post. The fact that it is so ridiculously bogus and full of crap just confuses me. Let me try, in my best words, to completely explain what I think.

First of all, the title: “Faedubh is the Obama of the web.” In what way is this blog the “Obama” of the web? I think Obama would be quite disappointed to know his name has been slandered outside of politics in a world where immature idiots only think highly of themselves. If this Angel gal believes that trying to reform “this internet that we spend so much time on” makes herself, her blog, and her opinions the same thing as “Obama”, hell, she is one fucked up bitch. What kind of self-centered elitist retard would believe such a thing? (Obviously, she spent too many hours in front of the computer on the internet since her mind is so screwed up that she thinks all designers spend “so much time” on the internet. Unless she’s become like Gollum, spending too much time by herself on the internet that she developed two personalities and calls herself “we” all the time.) Claiming that your blog has reached deep beyond the walls of your tiny internet Lego block into the Internet that billions of people over the globe constitute of is absolutely ridiculous. You and your community exists in the smallest of all cubes on the internet yet you dare say you can change the Internet–the world itself?

You, Angel-gal, who believes that your community blog will actually bring peace and justice to Gotham City and that it is already doing so when your hundreds of commenters rally at your castle doors to fight is, I repeat, one fucked up idiot. As far as I can see, one of the main pillars that hold your blog up is the pillar that was built by this blog, Acerbic Bitches, itself. You argue that the community is broken by none other than us as you stated in this post and that the members of the community should fix the cracks and fill the holes. Well, without what we’ve done, your blog would have been nothing and your opinion wouldn’t be what it is now. You try to distance yourself from us? Well, you’ve only brought yourself closer.

In the post that I copied-and-pasted above, you obviously do believe your blog has changed the world more than any of the other blogs, including us. Looking at your blog and the comments that constitute of it, I see that those who comment are limited to a few–mostly the people that run your damn thing. That is no where near the “so many different opinions and people” and “everyone” you claim (or, at least, your words imply) that your blog reaches out to. Compared to us, who, within just a couple of months, became one of the most well-known and influential sites in this community and received more comments on one post than you ever have, your blog is nothing. If any blog is the most radical, most influential, most ambitious blog of any (what you call “the Obama” which I refuse to use) it is us, Acerbic Bitches. Then, now, and perhaps forever (unless someone decides to do what we did–aka copy us). Your blog truly lives up to its name–just add one K, remove the H, and add a space–Fake Dub. You are a fake dub of us. You try to do what we achieved–to become something as ridiculously influential and a leader in the community as we became more than one year ago–only with flowery words and pretty goals, and you fail at it.

Throughout this post, you also seem to believe that you know what everyone’s opinion is. How dare you disregard everyone else’s opinions and lob your thoughts onto all of us. What do you know about “what is on everyone’s mind”? What do you know about what is not “coming out of everyone’s mouth”? Maybe you mean what was on your mind and what did not come out of your mouth before when we “caused a lot of pain for some of my friends” and you “didn’t like seeing the community being split apart, bashed, made fun of, and ridiculed in a fashion that made people look like hyprocrites.” Perhaps you’re thinking about your own past self. Obviously, then, all these are your own opinions and not “everyone’s”. As you so stated in the first line of your post, “I sometimes […] don’t often write posts that are actually about web design, but more of the underlying attitudes and emotions of the designers….mainly me.” You clearly state that you “mainly” write only your own opinion when you make a post. How dare you generalize the entire community’s beliefs and thoughts and state that what you write holds complete truth for everybody? How dare you? Your blog and you yourself hold no such power, so write for your own damn self and do not put words into other people’s mouths.

As I stated before, you claim we broke the community starting two years and some months ago with our rampage. Perhaps you did not think that you took a part in breaking it and keeping it broken now? Stating that our community is broken and claiming you have the ideas to fix it does not do anything. You want to fix it? Then fix it. The only way to ever do that is to learn to trust your designer friends again and to learn to reach out to younger designers and encourage them, not with some shit head Mentoring program, Skye, but to genuinely want to help and befriend them and to do it out of your own free will. Continuing to discuss whatever divides there are in the community only leaves it divided longer. One person states this, “I miss the camaraderie of being able to talk to loads of people in the community - they’re all people who have talent, but that’s not all there is to them,” while also saying, “I hate that it’s partly my fault for my ties with others disintegrating. I left in the midst of all the bickering by shutting down my site, Winter Skies and refraining from MSN chats with the other designers online - leaving only YM.net as a trace of myself.” (Italicized is a spelling error I fixed.) Don’t you find those two statements slightly conflicting? She misses being able to chat with anyone while also leaving ties to disintegrate. Perhaps, then, it is each person’s fault that whatever splits happened in the community happened. And, if you look closely, even those at Fake Dub think so, too. The below quote is from their Mentoring post.

About a year or two ago that started to change. I’m not sure if I’d fully want to blame the fighting that happened a while ago that “split” the community, but I believe it did play a part. Especially since soon after many began to distance themselves to keep themselves out of the fighting, both in terms of closing their site or just becoming more business-like. I’m probably one of the latter as well.

Everyone so very much wants to fix this community. Did you ever think that, perhaps, you should fix yourself first?

To quote the wise words of someone who I’ve always respected,

The title is a little pretentious. (a) the AMC is the only “community” that we can claim to know enough about to comment on–and really, we don’t don’t even know how big this circle is; the “many” people that you refer to doesn’t even begin to sample the population (b) we collectively call ourselves web designers and we talk about the web design community, but I was under the impression that we understood that all of this refers to AMC. When you start talking about the Web or the industry, we’re astronomically insignificant, and (c) bringing in real life politics is completely inappropriate.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sense of self-importance is exactly what gets us into all this drama and hurt feelings.

“This blog reveals that design is not, and never will be, a perfect system.”

That’s what AB did, but everyone jumped their throat. Truth be told, AB raised a lot more awareness than FaeDubh; discussions that they sparked are still going on right here whereas FaeDubh’s first few articles were beating a dead horse. Just because FaeDubh doesn’t link to examples (even though some posts are motivated by certain sites) doesn’t make it a leader in a “movement” to bettering this community, or even a better blog.

I’m not trying to undermine the merit of FaeDubh. Indeed, it’s making an admirable effort trying to revive a dead community. However, I have a problem with you coyly bashing one site (AB starting a war) to praise another (FaeDubh picking up the pieces).

(Personally I don’t agree that Fake Dub has any merit or is making any admirable effort at all, but I do agree with everything else. Thank you, Veve.)

This is Felixa, signing out.

*Side note: Batman, Gotham City, Gollum, and all other fantasy references belong to their rightful owners.

*Another side note: The pronoun you refers to an abundance of people in this post. Most refer to Angel gal aka Angelgal or whatever I call her. Others may refer to the entire blog Fake Dub’s community. Other times it may refer to anyone else I quoted in the post. And all other times, I refer to you as just a general term for all the other idiots who think we are big fat losers and think they can save the world. You think you’re Superman? Make sure your cape doesn’t get sucked into something and pull you along with it.

It seems that spring is the season for new layouts and revamps. It also appears to me that the more revamping certain people do, the less appealing and functional their web sites become. Maybe it’s the pollen.

Trend number one: the increase in the sizes of these layouts. Which either forces us to switch our resolutions to something bigger or maximize our windows. Whatever happened to the running trend of having layouts work on all computers? The increase in sites that specialize in a specific browser is funny as well.

Take the new layout for Elysium Designs, for example. It’s large and clunky. It’s aligned to the right side of the page, which completely sets the entire thing off balance. It takes forever to load, and I have a relatively fast internet connection too. Selphies World is another large layout with a lot of wasted space, but the award of biggest-piece-of-junk goes to Esaudrae. At least I’ve got my trusty scrollbar for Elysium and Selphies.

Esaudrae, at least, has improved somewhat from her old flash-infused site that didn’t like running on the computer I use in the public library. Which brings me to the second trend of the season: making your web site as garish as you possibly can without any regard for the viewer.

Starwind Cafe, it seems, likes to put as much sparkle onto their site as possible. That is to say, as long as your computer isn’t crashing, then it’s all good. As amusing as the hovers are, they slow down the loading of the site and aren’t always functional. Then again, it’s just further evidence to their air-headed personalities, so at least we get a preview of who they are as people. But at least they have descriptions of what you’ll get if you hover over something; ExistiQue designs doesn’t. Was I supposed to be able to read your mind and know that those random bars on the right-hand side of your layout were links to your affiliates?

But Arcadia goes to prove that even when your layout isn’t way-too-big and ugly or weighed down with too many special effects, you can still suck.

Whatever happened to functional layouts?

How old are you, dear? I wonder. I won’t mention it just in case you decide to kill me, so it’s up to you to tell the world. Well, how much have you changed since the forever I’ve known you? Well, you’ve become more like a hag and crazier, too. Hah. But whatever you’ve become, I want to wish you a happy birthday.

Yes, that hag comment was revenge for when you stole my pencil in high school.