My Take: An ode to the OG Boards

If an EKG-like device existed to measure productivity, mine would’ve had the peaks and valleys in the last couple of weeks.

It’s had nothing to do with the start of football season and everything to do with the wild wild west of Wake Forest message boards.

In the interest of full transparency, this piece was started when the OG Boards were down. They were restored in a matter of days – much too quickly for me to finish this – so this winds up looking more like an appreciation of them than a longing for them to return.

Look, the OG Boards aren’t for everybody. There’s trolling and inside jokes and parody accounts that drag down some conversations. The mute button can be your friend for only so long before you find yourself wanting to see what dumb thing somebody said that’s resulting in them being virtually shouted down – and then it takes all of 15 seconds to return them to the mute list.

If you’ve ventured there and thought it wasn’t for you, or have been discouraged by some of the comments, no judgement here.

But it’s also a place that serves a purpose and anybody who failed to see that in its temporary shutdown is admitting to turning a blind eye toward the benefits of the OG Boards.

You want to see the cliché of “you’re never as good as it seems when you win; never as bad as it seems when you lose” to the test? Pop open a game thread on the day after a game.

You want a quick gauge of how Wake Forest fans are feeling about a major injury, like this week’s Coby Davis news? There’s going to be a thread for that.

You want to see an outpouring of support for a longtime poster who unexpectedly passed away this week? RIP Brasky.

Sometimes it seems Twitter can simultaneously be the best and worst extremes of the internet; I see the OG Boards in the same light.

I’ve had enough unfriendly exchanges there to give pause to returning, but never find myself able to go more than a few days without breaking that mission.

Some parts you can do without. The Carter Whitt bashing crossed the line a few times. I think Wake Forest could make improvements to Joel Coliseum but one poster’s obsession with the building is getting hysterical.

Bluntly, it sucked that the boards were down as the signs were pointing toward Sam Hartman’s return. And then also when the news broke, there was a window when the boards were up, and then back down again.

This is where you insert the Stringer Bell meme.

Which is a good thing.

Maybe it’s poor business for somebody managing a Wake Forest message board to post support of another one. But I’m not a businessman or a business, man.

I’m just here to be fair and objective; so fairly and objectively, it’s good that the OG Boards weren’t down for too long.