thanks to sleet for making this, and being one of the closest things I had to a kindred spirit on the site!
to be honest I should probably never have gotten as addicted to retrospring as I did. it was as bad for me as any other social media addiction. as I drift away from RS, I've been more active on the fediverse again (https://woem.space/f00fc7c8), the network that introduced me to RS, and in some ways it's better, but I was hoping to cut off the cycle of internet addiction altogether.
but I'm still glad for the friends I made on the site, and for the different ways I was able to interact with folks from fedi as well. doki, mana, inhahe, lian sirenia, vanitas (wikipedia), lucidiot, mumei, rena/sephiroth... I will all have good memories of.
as for the bad memories, and all the drama... I blame it on the prevalence of highly online teens on the site. I get it, I was on the Internet way earlier than I should have been allowed to. I hope you all grow up to be better, more conscientious people. and I know you all have it in you to do that.
I'm also glad for all the anons who introduced me to all sorts of music I would never have heard just by browsing rateyourmusic and bandcamp as I usually do.
and I'm hoping that RS's open-source code (which I made a small contribution to myself), goes toward something cool that can carry on the site's legacy. I've already seen one person self-hosting RS, perhaps others could too!