New Addiction

I have a new vice: the Nintendo NSider Forums. Nintendo completely revamped their website, and enhanced the forums section of their site. Now, if you go and sign up for an account, you can read and post messages to fellow gamers. The site is focused on Nintendo products, but that is fine with me, as I spend most of my time on the GameCube lately. There are also some incentives to keep posting and reading messages. There is a ranking system that gives you an improved rank based on the number of messages you post, the time you spend online, the number of messages you read, and the number of message boards you read. I'm currently a Tektite, which is one of the critters you find early in the original Legend of Zelda game. I go by the username JadeMason, so if you get over there, do a search on that to find my messages. I have already progressed through the ranks of Goomba, Cappy, and Pirahna Plant. Next I'll be an Oktorok. Woohoo! I am such a dork. There are also some additional incentives to be active. As you increase in rank, Nintendo will send you different offers in the mail. In addition, if you get a certain amount of notariety on the boards as a good user, the staff at Nintendo may select you for Sage status. It is essentially an honor they give to people who post consistently, and post useful or pertinent information. It is a little shady on the details, but I think Sages get discounts on some games, and are encouraged to write reviews for Nintendo that may be quoted on boxes, or in print.
Lately, I've been spending more and more time on the boards. I would say that the majority of the folks there are young kids. Many of the messages are relatively brainless, and have very little substance. As an example, I must see the thread "Which Smash Brothers Character is the Best?" at least twice a day. It is a totally subjective question, and about 80% of the responses are "I like character X because he's da bomb!" Fortunately, there are enough intelligent people on the board that I can usually find an intelligent conversation pretty quickly. Not only that, but these folks are all video game addicts like myself. My current stats show that I have been on the message boards for 2102 minutes since 12/29/2003, and I have posted 187 messages. So I'm spending a little over 3 hours each day logged into the boards, and I post a new message about once every 11 minutes that I am online. Yep, it is like my very own personal form of crack. :-P