TTCoBS: Saving Sliders

Date: 08/23/2001
From: Brand_S

The True Confessions of Brand_S

Saving Sliders

For those who don't remember, in July of 1999 we had the privilege of learning that after "The Seer," "Sliders" would not be coming back. It was revealed in a certain chat with Robert Floyd and Tembi Locke.

Then the hysteria started.

No matter how much you hated the show, at that time, if you weren't dedicated to saving it, you weren't anybody. Nothing had you blacklisted faster than spewing anti-"Sliders" propaganda in that show's hour of need. The only one who could get away with saying he wasn't interested in saving "Sliders": SpaceTime. It really makes sense if you think about it. He ran EarthPrime.com, so there was already a respect factor; every time he visited the message board, it was to flame someone for a mild transgression; he was friends with TemporalFlux, and as I've made emphatically clear on the way here, kissing his ass was always par for the course. In short, everyone was afraid of SpaceTime to a degree. Especially me. More on that in the next part.

So anyhow, writing letters to save "Sliders" was all the rage. And e-mail wasn't enough, mostly because e-mails are never taken as seriously as snail mail, and unlike every other fucking show on the Sci-Fi Channel, "Sliders" had no e-mail address. So everyone spent all this time talking about all the effort they put into saving "Sliders." QBall79 made the "Save Sliders Network"; the "SSN" banner's ubiquity made surfing the "Sliders" web repetitive to the point of nausea. If you hadn't snail mailed a letter, weren't convincing others to do the same, talking about your fanatical obsession with the show, and bragging about all these accomplishments, you were nobody. Personally, all of this made me nervous. It got to the point where the majority decided that you could only visit that message board if you intended to save "Sliders." All I went there to do was make online friends. Was that so wrong? I just wanted to discuss a good TV show, but as usual, the place was steeped in obligations and stupid little requirements.

At any rate, my main goal in writing this is to confess, hence the title. Here's a big confession.

I never wrote a letter to "save our show."

And let's be honest here. Neither did a good half of you. Most everyone there was there for the same reason I was. They just leapt on the bandwagon because, like me, they didn't want to be blacklisted for not doing their level best to "save our show."

In a lot of ways, I'm glad all our efforts turned out to be for naught. Can you imagine how much worse this place would be with even more morons who kept on deriding the show? Besides, it is only a show on television; one can't grow too attached. Besides, we were lucky to get "Sliders" as long as we had it. Now it's a memory and not just an obscure reference.

I just got annoyed because the "save our show" speeches (as well as the "save our board" speeches for all the times we were overrun by morons) grew more melodramatic with time. I remember Chaser9's words, "The line must be drawn here." If you need to tap soundbytes from a movie just to motivate people... I shouldn't even have to finish that sentence.

The point is, when "The Seer" finally aired in January, people were actually surprised to hear the show had been cancelled. Thank you, morons. I logged onto a chat room that day that turned out to be filled with some of the stupidest people I have ever seen. All they did was talk about two things. Same people talking. Same time.

1) "Sliders" without Jerry O'Connell sucks.
2) You can't cancel "Sliders." You just can't. (Never mind that it "suxxxx0rz.")

The worst part was the message board in this time. It was flooded. More on this later.

Ouch...

Date: 08/23/2001
From: Blinker

> I just got annoyed because the "save our show"
> speeches (as well as the "save our board"
> speeches for all the times we were overrun
> by morons) grew more melodramatic with time.
> I remember Chaser9's words, "The line must
> be drawn here." If you need to tap soundbytes
> from a movie just to motivate people... I
> shouldn't even have to finish that sentence.

I don't know about Chaser, but I've certainly used that phrase in an emotional, melodramatic, motivational speech at least once. Hey, no one complained at the time. And I'm not apologizing for it, either.

http://www.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/2326/10905

- Blinker 7:-I
http://slidersweb.net/blinker

Original URL http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/545/26586
Nominated by Joey_Starr