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Do You Remember

How busy you were on EP?

It was like Grand Central Station with people coming and going on your profile all night. You had to juggle so many incomings, PMs, whiteboard messages, live chats, gifts, responding to comments on your own post and others. You had to ignore everyone if you wanted to write a story, or turn your green light off to get a few minutes to compose one. Then your live chat boxes would grow, and that would throw me for six. I just couldn’t talk to that many people at once. My phone and laptop was pinging all the time, and the last day of EP was no different...ping, ping, ping, every few seconds. From the moment I logged on to logging off, which was hours, it was all go, and it was fantastic. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my online life.

What an incredible experience, and I met so many great people from all over the world, which led me to making about 100 friends on FB on a different continent, and they’d never even been on EP. Even fell in love for five delicious, and agonizing years. Whew!

I sometimes wish it could be like that again...here...but the world has changed, and I’ve changed, so it wouldn’t be the same. Still, it’s nice to reminisce that amazing time. It saved my life.

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swirlie · 31-35, F

[c=#008099]
I was on EP extensively for the last 5 years of it's existence but had joined during the tail-end of it's first 5 years of a 10 year tenure. Joining right in the middle, I had experienced a little bit of the original site owner's intent and a lot of the subsequent owner's intent. Although operating under the same name of EP after it had been sold, the integrity of the website turned 180 degrees south at that transition point.

EP was a steady, meaningful social distraction for many of us for about 10 years running in total. It started out as an excellent idea by the original owner, which was a website dedicated to disabled people or shut-ins, who simply couldn't get out in the world to discover what is commonplace for most of us.

Those who joined in that first 5 year period of EP's existence were asked to share their life experiences to those who could not get out of the house but could read and visualize on a computer what it must be like to... ride a horse, ride a motorcycle, climb a mountain, etc.

The website really was an 'experience' project the way the original site owner had intended it to be and thus chose to run it. This is because disabled people or the elderly could then 'experience' life vicariously through those with all those experiences with life whom were not disabled.

But then for some reason the creator of 'Experience Project' sold EP to the subsequent owner who then took the site from it's all-time high in popularity, to a 5 year period of it entering a very slow spiral dive... until it crash-landed in a landfill site of it's own making.

Gross ineptitude of the new site owner combined with an overall lack of understanding of what the website was truly all about is what caused EP to change direction half-way through it's 10 year tenure.

EP's eventual implosion near the end was caused by other matters that were allowed to occur and which were directly related to the manner in which EP had been mis-managed overall for it's final 5 years.

What is advertised in Google Search if you type in 'similar worlds', is that SW is actually billed as the official replacement for EP, which when you compare EP to what it once was at first, makes it pitifully obvious how SW is absolutely no replacement for what you described EP to once be! [/c]

Carissimi · F

@swirlie Although I know the origin of EP, thank you for explaining it here. I was there for the last 5-years, and it was fantastic, in my opinion, when I joined, but the last 2-3 years saw many changes that gradually saw EP’s demise. It was changing for the sake of change, and not for the betterment of the site, or its members. All complaints (and there were many) about the changes were basically ignored, and so here we are.
At the same time, SW has done well, and I’m thankful it’s here.

swirlie · 31-35, F

@Carissimi
[c=#008099]
Happy for you![/c]