Boondock Saint's blog: "Inside The Mind Of Boon"

It's been a little over 3 years since my last address so I will admit I've been slacking on something that traditionally should be done once a year. But considering the problems I addressed 3 years ago had been problems for years prior and have still yet to be corrected I guess I'm not the only one slacking now am I Fu? This place is still a money pit that caters primarily to that upper echelon of bling pack purchasers. And at this point, let's face it, that isn't going to change. But considering you can't have a top end of a population without having a bottom end y'all may want to consider doing something to address the growing number of deleted and inactive accounts before that upper echelon has nobody's back to stand on while they reach for that crown you just keep moving when too many get too close. To give you an idea of how things are actually looking in the grand scheme of things 2 years ago I made another ranting blog post on this situation that at the time of my writing there were 45,584 people online at the time. Today as I am writing this there are currently 38,083 people online. Ok, so what if there are 7,501 less people online? People have lives. It doesn't matter. Right? This is true until you take two things into account. One, we're currently going through a pandemic that has most of the population staying home rather than going out which you would think would increase the numbers of people online but it hasn't. Two, according to Fu search there are 14,790,591 accounts on this site. That's with no filters on the search so that is the closest to a total number I can achieve being outside of direct server access. Of those 14,790,591 accounts only 5,491,192 have a primary photo. Granted some of those could be recently flagged NSFW pics being removed by Fu. But we've all seen the accounts with statuses saying "leaving fubar, yada yada" where the account holder has deleted all of their pics because not every time when you deactivate your account does your account actually go away. Just your access to it. So less than half can be assumed to be active accounts because for every recently flagged NSFW primary pic there is an account with a primary that hasn't logged on in months or years. I say this because, of my 21 family members alone, only 9 of them have been online in the past 90 days. That means while the shit show that is this social networking site/dating site/game was once a power house in terms of popularity it is quickly losing its appeal to those of us outside of that upper echelon I mentioned earlier. And no, the droves of sex workers/cam girls/wannabe pornstars (whatever you want to call them) with their Only Fans and Instagram accounts aren't going to save it. 

Now, I'm not knocking the women who are trying to supplement their income by putting a price tag on their tits. You do you boo, you do you. But if I may make a suggestion that might help you make enough to cover your rent as opposed to barely paying your water bill? This is technically a social networking site. Rather than uploading 10 pics from 3 years ago and "changing" your status to a link to your Only Fans page every other day perhaps you would be better off if you actually socialized here and when that socializing leads to the inevitable "can I see your titties" link that thirsty mofo to your page. Because the only thing I'm thinking when I see your profile now is "dude has an ex gf that pissed him off and now he's selling her nudes". And before you chime in with the "But I have a salute" I give you "dude got into his ex gf's fu account and locked her out and he's selling her nudes" But if you're hanging out in a lounge and occassionally pop up on cam and basically socialize here often enough that people know its still you, somebody is more likely to want to pay the whatever it is you're charging to see your content. Not me, because google and pornhub, but somebody...

Now back to the main problem. The lack of socializing in general and the fact that Fu doesn't care about anyone outside of that upper echelon. How many of you remember when leveling got you more than just a higher number in the top right corner of your tool tip? You know, when leveling meant you had more abilities than the level below you. Not to say that doesn't still exist. But at a certain point it stops because while Fu has added 50 levels since I joined back in 2008 they stopped adding any sort of reward to those levels past level 40 which was the top level back in 2010. That's 10 years of simply moving the crown to keep you reaching for it. For those that don't know levels used to have distinct names and abilities that came with them that looked like this

0 Freshmeat 0 Up to 50 photos
1 Newfu 250 Being known as Meat =)
2 Fu-ling 500 Set your own online status
3 Grasshopper 1,000 Vote on a MUMM
4 Chill Fu 2,000 Post HTML comments
5 Fu-Fighter 4,000 Create your own MUMMs
6 Twisted Fu 6,500 Rip a photo
7 Wasted Fu 9,000 Up to 70 photos
8 Psycho 14,000 Up to 750 profile ratings
9 Freak 25,000 Up to 6000 friends
10 Friend of fubar 35,000 Create your own lounge
11 Barfly 50,000 Up to 110 photos
12 Regular 75,000 Up to 10,000 friends
13 Bad Fu 100,000 Up to 140 photos
14 Minion 135,000 Up to 25 family members
15 Idol 170,000 Up to 5 MUMMs a day
16 Fu-gee 210,000 Up to 175 photos
17 Pimp 250,000 Up to 1000 photo ratings
18 Assassin 300,000 Up to 1000 profile ratings
19 Ninja 350,000 Up to 225 photos
20 Rock Star 425,000 Bolded nickname
21 Fubarlord 750,000 Up to 1500 profile ratings
22 Henchman 1,500,000 Up to 500 bulletins
23 Insider 2,250,000 Up to 280 photos
24 Fu-king 3,000,000 Up to 290 photos
25 Godfather 6,000,000 Up to 25 Top Friends.
26 Disciple 12,000,000 Up to 310 photos.
27 Prophet 24,000,000 Up to 35 Family members.
28 Oracle 48,000,000 Special abilities!
29 ??? ??? ??? We couldn't think of anything I didn't make that up that's literally the Fu Bible definition from way back when
30 Lost Soul, Angel, Demon 96,000,000 More Special Abilities

Angel/Demon
31 Virtual Virgin/Demon Seed 105,000,000 New special abilities: cloak, and altruize
32 Bionic Missionary/Hell Spawn 120,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
33 Drunken Monk/Purveyor of Crunk 140,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
34 Horn Splitter/Hell Goat 165,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
35 Guardian Angel/Incubus/Succubus 195,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
36 Divine Guide/Hound of Hades 230,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
37 Demon Slayer/Soul Slayer 270,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
38 Saint Levelus/Doppelganger 315,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
39 Demigod/Lord of War 365,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!
40 Cyborg Jesus/Hellraiser 420,000,000 New special abilities and/or ability points!

Now I forget when exactly the top jumped from 30 to 40 but I do know that with that came the special abilities such as the shitface, pimp out, and buzzkill. Most of the other abilities came later as they attempted to add to the abilities as more people started making the trek from 30 to 40. And for those of you saying level 40 can be reached in a week. Keep in mind this was also before the original Auto-11 came out that was later followed by the other PowerUp bling. This meant the only way to get points was to rate profiles and pics while uploading your own pics for others to do the same. Did I mention this was also before Fu tried to be Facebook and add the Like option? And strangely enough, way back in 2008 you got 110 points if you were shitfaced per rate and 220 if it was during a happy hour. The exact same value as today in 2020. Except back then there were no rounds to mass send drinks outside of lounges and the special ability wasn't around long before the PowerUp blings that made regular rates almost obsolete which meant you literally sent everyone you wanted to shitface enough drinks to make them so and had to socialize by way of sending drinks back and forth to maintain that level just to play this game effectively. Now its as easy as clicking a button and depending on how much real money you want to spend you can keep a person shitfaced from 4 hours to all day. All to play a game that has no real difference in levels past 40 despite there being 80 of them now. That's not playing a game. That's beating a game (reaching level 40) and continuing to play it just to complete those side quests (achievements) you didn't get to before the main story ran out. If Fu is a game why are there no real new levels in 11 years? This place has become the GTA Online of social networking sites. Severly broken and all the creators do is throw more and more shiney stuff at us to distract us from the fact the main game is broken. 

Now there are a few things Fu could do to fix this shit show and maybe even put them back on an upward slope as far as active members. But I'm not holding my breath that any of these things will be attempted because the upper echelon doesn't have a problem with the current state of things and without their money driven influence, Fu simply doesn't care. But I will put them here just so on the off chance I live long enough to see Fu go the way of MySpace I can legitimately say "I told you so". First, and I don't know how hard this may or may not be to implement because I'm not a professional coder but they claim to be, points per rate/like could be different per level. I say this because, while it only takes a couple days of rating the right profiles considering bonuses to jump from a level 1 to a level 40, once you start getting to the point that it takes hundreds of billions of points per level 220 points per rate or like is the equivalent of spitting on a forest fire to put it out. And yes I know, "the bonuses and powerups", but what about those of us that don't have 12 hours a day to rate and like or the ability ( I say ability and not money because not all of the ones that do use their money) to run several powerups a day? Should we just walk away from the game? Because that's currently what a lot of us are doing.

Second, and this seems like it would in fact be more complicated than the first but could also be a source of revenue for Fu so possibly worth the extra effort. That being the fact that lounges are a main staple of the socilizing on this site. Any successful lounge you go to has two key things, those being a radio station and cams. The not so successful ones that lack one or both of these could possibly be helped by Fu offering a basic cam and or radio station with the lounge. Even if Fu made these features sold separately they could make money off of them as well as offer a reliable alternative to the hundreds of off site options that don't always work inside of the unique coding mess that is Fu lounges. Lounges are an intrical part of the socializing here on Fu unless you just expect random people to show up in your shout box. Do we still call it that or has the name changed? Eh, I digress. Fu offering some type of support for these lounges that currently are 100% the responsibility of members who then in turn have to rely on the relative handful of members proficient enough in CSS to code a skin and MOTD for them if they aren't one of that relative handful themselves. They also have to maintain a separate radio station server at their own cost in money as well as time which can be quite extensive depending on the number of listeners and how many "DJs" they have. Add on top of that the constant changing of cam sites due to either the site limiting outside viewing capabilities or Fu changing code so that the site no longer works inside of a lounge and you end up with a full time job as a lounge owner that pays $0 in profits. At the very least if Fu took their old cam roulette style broadcasting ability and put it into lounges that would take some of the burden off of the lounge owners who could than promote their lounges and focus on drawing more active people into them. That could also lead us back to the days where lounges had a set number of cams that were often reserved for staff because each cam had to be logged into and coded into the lounge separately. But that's still better than having a site that you can be on cam in a lounge without even being in the lounge itself doesn't it?

Now my third suggestion is going to ruffle the feathers of those top echelon people but if you want to increase the number of people outside of that top group that actually come to this site and stay you have to do something about the obvious gap between the top group and every one else's ability to be successful here. That means doing away with the ridiculous percentages on the daily bonuses across the board. Because let's face it, double the points earned on a powerup bling would still have people that can afford them running them just as often. And doing away with the "For bling" bonus that you run daily altogether. People will still buy bling but without that bonus they won't be making billions of points per coin. Therefore they will have to step down from on high and actually interact with the rest of Fu to make those large chunks that keep their names in the red, green, yellow, and whatever other color you use to distinguish them as the highest spenders on Fu right now. It will also make it so that people who don't buy hundreds of dollars a week in bling packs or sell their pics to those people can actually put in a little more social effort and keep up with the top tier in how often they advance to the next level. Not to mention it would probably also slow down the meteoric rise to the top level giving you time to actually go back to making new levels actually mean something like back when there were only 40 of them.

My last suggestion may or may not have any impact on people being more social. But with the rise of new accounts that shoot straight to the top and all the "fake" accounts people use to either boost their "real" account numbers or operate with anonymity while harrassing other members resulting in a lot of members closing their pages off to the non-saluted. Why wouldn't it be better for the community at large to bring back the old level requirement of having a salute? I've been around long enough to have seen it be a requirement to advance past level 10 as well as level 20. I get why level 10 might be too low considering how quickly one gets to that point in a matter of hours since the rise of powerups and bonuses. And even level 20 can be reached in a matter of days with very little effort. But somewhere between 20 and 40 when nothing but points stand in your way of advancing isn't too much to ask. Especially with the rise of phones with cameras on them making it obtainable by everyone not just those who have a webcam. Granted it may make it harder for the average douchebag to sell or trade his ex girlfriend's nudes for coins or NSFW access but is that really a bad thing? Wasn't that the point of the salute to begin with? Prove that the you on your page is you.

Like I said, I'm not holding my breath that any of these suggestions will even be attempted. But maybe, just maybe, if Fu continues far enough on this downward spiral, the powers that be will start to at least consider doing something. And if not, maybe somebody that has the means to create an alternative will find these suggestions useful. Either way, my conscience is clear whether I'm here til the wheels fall off this bus or I hop on the next ride that comes along.