Feel free to skip reading now if you'd like to avoid a nostalgic blog post. Cheerio!
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Flash back almost a decade and a half - I was an avid young airsofter who'd saved up enough from Christmas and birthdays for a few guns and gear. My Dad would drive me out to games, waiting patiently in the car for hours with his coffee while I shot it out on fields and through woodland. I was an active poster in this community, and I think I still have the most viewed (maybe even the most posted?)
thread on the site (posted March 5th, 2008)! I was only 16, but was eagerly awaiting my 18th birthday so that I could get age-verified and start attending age-verified events. However, it wasn't to be.
Long story short, Bloodsport banned me permanently for spamming three comments in a row. Yeah, believe it or not I'm pretty sure it was as silly as that (it was 14 years ago, after all, my memory isn't so great, but you can check my account's post history to see:
https://airsoftcanada.com/search.php?searchid=51540380). Back in those days the only way to find events was through this forum and by being banned I was essentially cut off from playing. I created a new account to post in game threads, but predictably, this account was banned for evasion. And so, eventually, I dropped the hobby. I graduated high school. Fell in love. Broke up. Fell in love again. Broke up again. Helped my Dad through cancer. Moved to Italy. Almost got kicked out of university. Graduated. Travelled the world. Came back home to watch my grandfather die. Mourned. Moved to Tel Aviv, of all places. Made a new life. Fell in love again. Didn't break up. Turned 30. And never played another game of airsoft.
Funny how life turns out! At the time I was playing I was pretty gung-ho on joining the army (I made this post here about
joining in two years). I remember constant fights in the household with my parents, who were as pacifist as they come. I loved talking to the many vets in the community, and I viewed airsoft as a form of training. I had my short-term pretty well mapped out - no university, straight into the army. But after the ban, after I'd been disconnected from the community, my interests slowly changed. My parents managed to convince me to get a degree before joining the army. In University I made new friends, experienced more of life, and changed more. I grew further from the person I was.
Who knows - maybe if I'd never been banned I would've joined the army in the end. Maybe I would have served in Afghanistan. Maybe I would've stayed in Canada. Maybe it would have caused an irreparable rift between me and my parents. Maybe I would've... I'll never know, but it's funny to imagine that a simple ban changed my life.
I remember being absolutely furious at Bloodsport for years. A lifetime ban meant that I could never be age-verified - who was he, this asshole from Alberta, to ban me permanently from a sport I'd been obsessed with? I even messaged him a few times (this must've been 8 or so years after my ban) in an attempt to get unbanned (how much did we all change from 16 to 24?) but he was firm and, once again, banned the account I'd messaged him with.
So I gave up. Moved on. Forgot about these forums. But every so often - every few years - something would remind me of that old sport I played and I'd wander back to check up on things. Was that thread I'd started 14 years ago still on the first page of Off-Topic? Are the forums still active? Did they ban airsoft guns in Canada yet? Is Bloodsport still an admin? I'd go back through my old comments with the feeling of looking into a time-capsule - "Oh right, I was into scale models back then!", or "Man, I was polite - what happened?", and, "I think I've actually gotten dumber... shit".
Bloodsport's last post was over a year ago, June 21, 2022. His profile says that he's 46. He could easily have kids as old as I'd been back when he'd banned me. I wonder how much his life has changed in the intervening 14 years. Then again, who cares? For someone who perhaps had a profound effect on my life, I never knew the guy more than an admin's name on a ban statement, or a curt message received before another permanent ban for evasion. Wherever his life took him, I hope he's doing well.
On my end, I couldn't imagine things going differently now. I've lived such a good life, seen so much of the world, and met so many amazing people. I'm a far happier person than I was all those years ago. I have a great relationship with my parents now that I didn't have before. And, funnily enough, living in Israel helped me realize that I wouldn't have been a good fit for the army that I dreamed of joining 14 years ago.
So thank you Bloodsport, and so long! I'll probably wander back in a few years to see how things are going, but it felt like a good time to write my own little goodbye. It'll be a sad day when the forums close, the domain expires, and all these many posts and memories disappear. Until then, to the few who remain, happy airsofting!
- Zombiefruit