Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

13: The SquarePants Socialization

SOME PEOPLE JOIN Facebook. Some people were on MySpace--as was I for about two weeks. Or perhaps MyYearbook, a social networking site where you could create kitchsy, 2000s-esque profiles with cursors, backgrounds, and favorite songs and take "Spin the Bottle" quizzes where you'd end up with a random emo guy in a certain scenario. Others act cool for not having any social media to begin with. 

My first social media experience? A cartoon forum. 

It wasn't until I hit middle school that my family began to get into Spongebob. I'm not sure how it happened, because I never liked cartoons other than Arthur. But soon we all loved the antics of the little yellow sponge. 

We had our favorite episodes (my mom loved the one where Squidward is obsessed with a claw machine and the Camping Episode with the sea bear) and even some inside jokes to go along with them. There is an episode where Spongebob is supposed to say hi to a whale named Pearl, but misunderstands and greets a pole instead, saying "Hello, pole." That phrase became a staple of ours. If the car door hit the pole in the garage? "Hello, pole." If our dog wrapped her leash around a street sign? "Hello, pole." You get the drift. 

Perhaps the best character was Fred. He was a background character, known for the running gag of shouting "My leg!" whenever there was a crash, explosion, or something else that caused damage. One of our favorite scenes of his was when he tried a Krabby Patty with jellyfish jelly and was singing around the restaurant, telling everyone how great it was. We laughed so hard we cried the first few times.

Eventually I carved out my own little path of Spongebob love. But why would you join something that looked like a sterile discussion board? Here's why.

1. Graphics

When it's a soggy spring day and there's nothing to do, nothing will brighten your world like some flashy emoticons, and profile backgrounds. I'd already seen some of this through MyYearbook, but I was about to get a new crash course too.

Forums were ever-present in all the fansites I'd visited throughout my life. (A forum, for those of you too young to remember, is like Reddit on a much smaller, community-minded scale. There were designated sections you could visit where you'd post a "thread," or discussion topic.) There were plenty out there---once, in a fit of extreme fangirling, I bookmarked every Harry Potter website I could find. Mario was a good source for fansites, too. Kelly and I loved to play Mario games on our Game Boys, and flash games were fun too.

 But what I never got about these sites were the accompanying forums. They were bland, sterile-looking places to discuss many topics relating to the subject of the website. The text boxes were huge, the colors stark, the text often small, and they often hurt my eyes to look at.

Where I wasn't expecting one was a Spongebob website. I didn't do too many activities online relating to the yellow sponge, but BikiniBottom.com was different. It had some fun songs and trivia that I caught up on sometimes.

I was so excited at the prospect of online friends to discuss episodes with (I was just starting to get into Webkinz, but it wasn't the same when it came to online discussion) and made a beeline to sign up. I chose the username pop_princess, as I still liked to sing at the time, and often listened to the Hannah Montana soundtrack on the bus home from school. And when I saw the cool profile features, text, and avatars that were available to me, I was thrilled.

#2: Discipline

Let's face it: reading the rules to a forum after you sign up, as a middle schooler, is like reading the Terms and Conditions anywhere else. You bypass them, eager to get started. So you run around the site for a while acting like a maniac.