Comment by valeg

8 years ago

>A big part of it will involve making us the customer, not the product

Bowen: When you get a collection of young, nerdy, socially awkward people together and they're emotionally invested into a website you're going to have those types of problems.

Kyanka: So I said to myself, "OK, what's a way we can get rid of idiots like this? Because I don't want to sit here babysitting the forums nonstop." So I said, "If you want an account, PayPal me ten bucks and I'll register you an account." And he immediately went away and those issues immediately went away.

Bowen: When [Rich] started charging for forums accounts registrations, he wasn't doing that to make money. He was doing that because he was sick of banning people from the forums and then having them just come back immediately with a new account.

Hendren: When Rich put the paywall in effect, it kept idiots out to an enormous degree. It was probably the smartest decision he ever made in regards to the website. You have to put in a little investment if you want to participate and if you're a real shithead you're going to end up paying Rich like $150 because you keep buying accounts, which is good for the site and it's also kind of funny to watch really, really bad people shell out a lot of money.