General Chat

If anyone is interested, FR & GR were the subject of the Radio 4 programme "Sliced Bread Presents" just now (13:30 29 April 2023). You can listen to it via BBC Sounds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001l9c6

Thank you for the link Kense.Just listened to the programme. Really interesting

Interesting!

"Big ideas which* promised consumers so much but ended up... toast. " Heh.

[* THAT, not WHICH. My bleeding ears. And that's "bleeding" in the literal sense, not the euphemistic. "Which" is not a fancy substitute for "that".]

I'm working while No.1 watches the 3.5 hour "director's cut" of Woodstock, which I'm listening in on a bit, now that the appalling first number by Richie Havens is over. (FREEEDUMMM, FREEDUMMM. Yeah, we get it Richie.) But I'll give Toast a listen tomorrow.

I'd never heard of FR before stumbling across GR, of course.

Do people here have "success stories" from that site?

Ah. The Who are singing Tommy at Woodstock now.

JoonieCloonie, yes I did. I re-established contact with a cousin that I had not seen for many years

That was good luck, Allan.

Me, I haven't got a cousin I'd care about seeing again ever, pretty much, of the 12 or more on each side. Mind you, one I hadn't seen since not long after I was flower girl at her wedding (and that's a looong time ago), the only child of my dad's eldest sister whom everyone in the family couldn't stand (the sister, not the cousin), got in touch with my mum not long before my mum died. I contacted her last summer and she was eager to get together -- we're both still maintaining careful covid precautions so I suggested a coffee in the park back last September, since I now live in the next town from her. She has strange notions about being spied on on the internet and never gave me her phone number (or called me) or info about where her son was living; he was dying of a sudden cancer and she was away at his home in another place. I wanted to hear more about my grandparents from her (she's 10 years older and grew up with them), and she wanted to give me our grandmother's wedding rings, since she had apparently always said I was to have them. Well, months went by. I tried again to contact her by email and she told me her son had died and her computer was broken and she'd get in touch some time. So here's me, no cousin and no wedding rings.

More distant cousins, descended from grandparents' siblings, I did meet some nice ones when my mum & I and one of her cousins & son organized a reunion back in 1999. Sporadic contact with a few since then. Never heard a word from the big art critic for the big newspaper, about the reunion or my mum's death or anything else. Some cousins are just jerks. :-P

There are no first cousins remaining on my Mother's side as she was the youngest of nine and all the cousins on that side have now died, although I did have contact with them until they died. I still sporadically here from one of the 2nd cousins on that side who is into genealogy and I am still in touch with another cousin on that side via the internet although he is not in UK. On my Father's side I am the eldest of the cousins and am still (mostly at Christmas) in touch with three cousins. We don't meet up but I 'speak' regularly with one who is on face book.

with Friends re-united I did have contact with some ex school friends and we met up at a reunion a couple of times. Being all in our 80s now I don't hear from most of them so guess they may no longer be with us. I am still in contact with three of my best school friends fairly regularly.
Friends reunited was good because it sort of morphed into Genes and I am still here having made (and sadly lost) many good friends on here who have been such a comfort to me since my lovely husband died in 2021.

Friends reunited was the first site I joined up with and through it I found my best friend from school that I hadn’t heard from for over ,40 plus years .we are still in touch

Seem to remember along the line somewhere they announced they would be creating a new sister site that was called genes connected that later changed its name to genes reunited . Or something like that as it’s been a long time so my memory is ?

But have been a member since day one almost :-D

I had ten first cousins, of whom four have now died, and I'm in touch with three of the remaining six.
On each side of the family, when we were young , there were aunts who kept everyone informed of what everyone else was doing, and unfortunately, when these aunts died, most of us didn't bother to keep up the contact ourselves.
It's so easy to lose touch with people.

Re FriendsReunited -
In my early years at secondary school, one of my best friends was a girl whom I'll call Annie.
My family moved to a different part of the country when she and I were 14, and although we wrote to each other for a while, that gradually fizzled out.
About 20 years ago, through FR, I made contact with her, and we arranged a meeting over lunch.
Although it was interesting to find out what she'd been doing in the intervening 40-something years, sadly we found we no longer had much in common, and we haven't had any contact since then.

All so true, ArgyllGran.

I have recently been thinking how in our lives in the new ages of mobility and then the internet, we have met and got to know so many more people than even our parents could even have thought of --and it just isn't possible to maintain as many relationships, even if we did continue to have enough in common to do that.

I managed to reunite with a few school friends via Friends reunited, and then even more through Facebook over Covid. We've all moved around the world so it's been fun touching base.

I've traced (stalked) my grandad's best mates grandson through Facebook.
I did it because i have a couple of letters his grandad (Stan) wrote to my grandad, and i thought he may like them.

I haven't actually contacted him yet, as I've had other things to do, and I need to pluck up courage.

What is really weird, is that there's a link between Stan's grandson and my ex!
Stan's grandson lives in Canada and worked for an airline.
He was born in Southampton, and moved to Canada in the 1980's.
One of his Facebook friends (I'll call him Fred) was born and brought up in Yorkshire, and moved down South to work. - in the early 1980's.
Fred worked with my ex - at an agricultural college - in the 1980's - not an airline.

How did Stans grandson and my ex's old workmate meet?
It's definitely the same person - he has an unusual name, and I recognise him from his Facebook profile.

This would never have come about - my being able to contact Stan's grandson, and when I pluck up courage - to admit I've stalked him - or the weird link - before the internet! :-S

I joined GR first but never posted on General Chat, then found FR very soon after. Thought it might be fun to make connections with people I knew from school.

I made contact with several, one who I thought had been a good friend in my last 2 years at school came back with "who are you?""

Very off-putting!!!

I did have some contact with a few, but discovered that really we had nothing in common now.

I then looked at my university crowd, re-made contact with a girl that had been my room-mate for 2 years in residence, chatted a couple of times by email but never went much further.

But I was rally chuffed when an ex-student from my teaching days found my name, and sent a message to say that I was the best teacher she'd ever had. That was something that I never expected to hear!

I didn't try to find family on there, but did connect with a couple of second cousins on here, and through one of them, found a first cousin that I hadn't seen since he was a small boy back in the '40s. He seemingly was delighted when his daughter told him I had messaged her, and said "YES, that's our Sylvia!". Unfortunately he died only about 2 years later, of COPD at a young age.

What I did find on FR was the community on the other boards on there, and I made some very good internet friends that I am still in contact with. I have even met several of them in real life, as in 2008 when OH and I attended an FR Reunion in York. The meeting was timed beautifully with an already planned trip to the UK! We also had a meeting in Sydney Australia in 2006 with about 3 or 4 FR members that was arranged for the end of our trip down there. That was fun!

Then it all went downhill when ITV took it over, and decided that people posting on the general conversation thread(s) could ONLY use false names. We'd already had a problem with trolls using aliases earlier, so that was not encouraging. However, I hung in there, with the friends I had made until the very end.

I was using GR at the same time, but on the Genealogy Boards, I gradually started posting on this Board, after a terrible start when I was accused of being a nasty someone also called Sylvia who had been banned (or so I gathered), and seeing how nasty some posters were. It literally took me several years to venture back, and find this current community.

But there was also the time JoonieC and I were accused of being the same person using 2 names so we could argue or agree with what one had said :-S

It seemed the only reason was that a) we are both in Canada, and b) we tended to be on here at the same time! :-D

I've made some good friends on here, most of whom no longer post or are members but we are still in regular contact via email or on other sites, and I have met up with a couple.

Overall, I found FR not really good from the point of view of finding people, but some of the other Boards were fantastic. There was even a Genealogy Board!

I got on there in 2003, and found the site as I describe it, but understood that it had been very different in its early years, until 9/11.

There was seemingly a place where one could leave messages for other members, but it was not a Chat place, until that day.

I met several people who said they spent all day and all night messaging on that place, some had relations who had been expected to be flying from here to there, none on any of the downed planes luckily, but with all air spaces closed and planes grounded, people didn't know where their loved ones were. So this little place provided somewhere they could chat during all those hours of worry.

It was after that that the founders set up first of all a Chat Board, then gradually added all the others.

I thought FR was great fun, I didn't join expecting to be re-born friends with anyone but it was great to reminisce about school days - and slate the teachers LOL I don't know if there were community boards but didn't join any, just emailed those I knew,
I don't recall only being allowed to use false names? That would defeat the object of the site wouldn't it? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

I'd been a member of GR for two years before I found the community boards and OMG :-0 I didn't linger long! Were they drunk or just didn't care how they 'spoke' to others? There has certainly been some monsters here. Things are too far opposite now I think with little interest, has GR had its day?

I did make contact in 2006 with a couple of people from one school, but more 'friends of friends' .

I also caught up, via their school page, with a friend from work, who had married ( I went to the wedding) and later emigrated. Good to know that it worked out for him as he really deserved the best, even though he was 'the one that got away" as they say.

Island .... you obviously had the same introduction to the Chat section of GR that I did..

It was horrible!

People attacking others for no apparent reason, as far as I could tell.

I don't know whether GR has had its day, certainly there are many other places online now, and this site is still "dangerous" for posting identifying or delicate information as it is not private so everything can be picked up by search engines, and there goes any privacy for ever and a day.

I am on FB, but only on about 6 sites, most of which are private. One is for my old school, and I've met more of my classmates on there in the last 2 or 3 years than I ever did on FR!

I met more of my old classmates on FB last year than I ever did in real life! People who remember me, for various reasons ... and I remember their names maybe but that's about it. I joined to try to find info about the French teacher I have tried to find for many years. Someone actually said she'd been in touch with her but then didn't seem to think she needed to reply to my request to help me get in touch.

Sylvia, I remember the tale of the two Sylvias, I think that was about the time of my own introduction to the place. I just couldn't believe that anybody could be as genuinely stupid as someone would need to be, to mistake identities like that, let alone as nasty as they would need to be to be horrible to a stranger based on their own stupidity. Meanwhile, anybody remember the pair whose names I don't really remember, except that one claimed to be in the US and called herself various fairies, and threatened to sic Sheriff Joe Arpaio on me if I showed up in Arizona. :-D :-S :-P

I'm enjoying reading people's stories here but I have a 5:00 deadline ... which is in an hour and 12 minutes ... and I'm not going to make it. The 2023 Budget and income tax. Not my idea of a fun afternoon........

JoonieCloonie, I remember both of those beauties, ( and the other Sylvia ) "Mystic Viz" quit the booze ( allegedly) in Cornwall , as for "Dame" I suppose she is out there somewhere in the US.

as a PS to that, Sheriff Joe is apparently now 90 and retired in 2016 so you may be safe to visit ;-) ( edit to say, well not so much "retired" . I am just reading an article in the Guardian from 2021, I must have missed it at the time whilst trying to avoid, for the good of my health, anything remotely connected to the former president)
:-0