How to Win a Web Forum

I drew the cartoon above from a photograph that turned twenty years old last month. That’s Erika on the left, and next to Erika is Stephen’s bride Erin, and then I’m on the right, and next to me is Stephen himself, surprising me with a smooch the morning after his wedding. Stephen and I first met on a forum, five years before that photo was taken. It’s a forum that doesn’t exist anymore, but I won it, and I can tell you how. A brief and digression here, to be read in a voice of faint pain: I know that at its origin, the word “forum” is a noun of the second declension (neuter) with the nominative plural of “fora.” Nonetheless, in English usage, we must accept that the word for more than one web forum is “forums.” May my Latin teachers forgive me. Perhaps you are surprised to read that I was able to win a forum. Most people don’t view them as games, but I think that view is a useful one. Like other computer games, forums have rules which can be skirted; they host multiplayer contention…