The Mess Tent

[Dis]

xenobanana? never heard of it. Now bananas on the other hand... They are a legend of Apolyton yore.

[GeneralTacticus]

I have no idea where the term "banana" came, from originally, but when we were setting up the first ACDG, people started adding "xeno" onto pretty every word within reach (e.g. xenobrew, xenodonut... etc), so, of course, the "banana" option was repalced by "xenobanana".

[Zeiter]

Yes, where did the whole banana thing come from. How did it become "Apolyton legend." Who was the first to put a banana option in a poll here?

[Kassiopeia]

The issue is contested by Apolyton historians. It's mostly agreed that it was a joke option added to a poll from the very beginning and just caught on from there. Who started it is what's the contested part: the only suggested culprit I can remember was Stefu, but I don't think it was him. Stefu did coin "the DL dance" though.

Edit:

DarkCloud's account in The Apolyton 100 v. 2.0:

Interesting events on the forums; in July or August 2001, someone started a survey thread poll for psychological reasons. The choices were completely random. One of the choices was "banana". Several posters picked "banana" before the thread was closed. However, the phrase "banana" became immortalized as a phrase describing a useless poll... Also; a large amount of posters started spam threads allowing people to choose various poll options; all of which included Banana. Many posters were banned one day.

I could swear the banana was old stuff back when I registered in July '01, though. I remember 'an incident' with rampant poll-posting but the banana had nothing to do with it.

[Zeiter]

Wow, fascinating. Also, when I signed up to Apolyton, I always did wonder why there was a banana smilie. Is that just a coincidence, or did the forum moderators include it after the banana phenomenon came into being? Because I've never seen any other forum with a banana smilie.

[Skanky Burns]

A crossover forum from CFC (mainly) and Poly has more banana smilies than here. Might just be a Civ thing.

[Kassiopeia]

I've sighted the banana smiley and its variations on non-Civ forums as well, that one's a more universal phenomenon. And the Poly banana smiley can't have been here for too long before December 2003 - actually, I'd think it hasn't been here for more than a few months.

[Jamski]

The banana smilie was introduced as a response to the 911 plane crashes pre-eminence of the banana as a poll option.

-Jam

[Zeiter]

Ah, cool. Now I'm fully schooled in the illustrious history of Apolyton.

[Kassiopeia]

Hardly, actually. There are myriads of things I'm not that familiar with, like the age when the two sites were separate, or the times of Black Saturday and Area 27 (I think it was 27).

[Dis]

25 I think. I never knew about it. No one ever tells me secrets

I can't remember exactly when the banana option first appeared. 2001 may be it, but it may have been before then. But I think they starting becoming common place in 2001. I think it's also a phallic thing as well. But I'm not sure if the original use had it in that context.

[Zeiter]

Black Saturday? Area 27? Sounds interesting. I'm curious, is there anyone who still visits Apolyton regularly who was here from almost the beginning? And when was the beginning? I thought I heard somewhere that it was in 1999.

[Dis]

98 actually. the indiviual sites (ultimate civilization II site and first greek civilization site) are older than that I believe. A lot of people first started posting for the ideas for SMAC.

I first came here in May of 1999 shortly after SMAC came out. I first started out at Alpha.owo forums because they were the "official" forums. I think the manual or the read.me file had the web address listed. And that was my first foray into a bulletin board/forum. I've been hooked since . My profile shows 2000 because this is a different screen name than the one I registered with. Krushala is my original login.

Black Saturday is a day in which many people got banned I believe. I was not one of them. I can't remember the exact details. But it was in off-topic of course (the place most hijincks occur). I think there was a thread Ming said not to post in, but many, many people did. Or something like that.

Area 25 was a forum that was not listed in the forum summary page, and wasn't a private forum that could be linked to. It was discovered by accident somehow. You could only get to it by typing in the correct web address in the address bar of the broswer. The good thing about it was you could increase your post count there, while you couldn't in off-topic. and there was no moderator, so you could spam to your heart's content.

I was not part of that either. no one told me the place even existed.

[Jamski]

Area 24 - it was a secret forum on 'poly used for ramping up postcount. I think it finally fell due to black treachery and whistle blowing...

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

It was insinuated that AH left a link deliberately for Ming to find, and with Ming being himself he let the rumor continue.

Apparently they used to post pictures in area 24 as well...