General

Fakirs News
Forum
The List

Fakirs

Latest Interview
A-Z of Fakirs
Hall of Fame

Faking

History of Faking
The Timeline
Dictionary
Tutorials

 THE LAUNDROMAT

Name: The Laundr-o-mat  AKA: The Mat, Black Devils, BD's  URL: CLOSED  Founder(s): Fastu (aka F@$2)  Nationality: International  TimeLine: 2000 - 2006

 The Black Devils Story

 The Black Devils founded the Laundr-o-mat (aka The Mat) in 2000 after mainly getting together on a toplist, before moving onto Scottss forum. The mat was founded by Fastu after Scottss free site was converted into a pay-site and the forum was made a part of that new pay to view site.

 When The Mat was founded it was the only major English speaking forum and attracted allot of fakirs from the newsgroups and yahoo groups. They can be credited with starting off the forum revolution that we see today.

 At the height of Black Devil dominance over the faking scene around 2001-2002 they had more fakirs than all the other English speaking fakirs forums put together. This however was brought to a dramatic halt after a bust up between Black Devils ended up with Doc Fakenhouser and Vincent leaving the forum to start The Strip fakirs forum.

 This resulted in a 2 year long arguement between the forums with the Black Devils using the more extreme tactics of abusing strip members and driving out any Black Devils that did not hate the Strip, among many other things. The Strip however decided to ignore the mat as much as possible in retaliation. This worked out to be the better option as the Strip grew to be the biggest Fakirs forum to date.

 The mat changed policy and it was no longer faking skill that got you moderator or admin power at the mat but in fact a willingness to abuse other members. Basically any fakirs that other forums did not want in their team were welcomed at the mat.

 As most Faking forums have a theme the mat was no different, and the mats theme was "ghetto". With this theme the mat could have focused on the art side of tags in the ghetto for example, but they did not. Instead the mat decided to focus on the negative points of the ghetto with abuse of admin/moderator powers being a favorite pass time as well as abuse of newbie members and fakirs a common occurrence.

 Other favorite pass times included telling members that black Devil members had died, only for the "dead" member to reappear weeks later. Lurker purges were also applied often, this meant any members who did not post often were banned, but not before they were abused first. Another favorite was a "drive-by", where members of the mat would attack another forum by spamming that forum with abuse. The most common pass time however would be quite simply abusing and bulling normal members and low level fakirs of the mat.

 I won't go into the fact of why the admin decided to make their forum like this or indeed why someone would want to become a part of this and themselves become a bully, in an on-line community. I am sure any educated reader can put two and two together and figure out why on their own.

 But at the end of the day it does not matter now why the mat decided to use a "Ghetto" attitude. The fact is this attitude has lead the mat from the biggest faking forum of the early 21st century to being a small time forum with a small group of hardcore members and fakirs being the only members.

 The Mat "closed" in 2006 after the owner was reportedly sued. However this was widely believed by other fakirs to be yet another "bullshit" story by the Black Devils. It was re-opened a few days later under a new owner, kennyhorse as a connection to his own site.

 Personnel changes in 2006 were as numerous as always at the mat. Fastu returned as admin, as did russell. Back as mod were Kirky (again) and whistler, also joined by new arrivals in Baal's Prophet, D@tch, Evileye and Raven. Some members also left the revolving door.

 Updated for 2007