In Loving memory of Lannan and Ajab

I'll at least speak to Ajab.

Many of you may not have known this, but he dealt with some pretty debilitating chronic pain. It was bad enough that he often had to put a lot of his life on hold because he could barely get out of bed. I have people close to me with some pretty bad issues with chronic pain, but Ajab felt so isolated by his experience with it, and it was impossible not to feel for him.

But every several months or so, he'd give me a call and we'd talk about everything. And I do mean everything - life, family, philosophy, religion, etc., and nothing was out of bounds. I don't get the impression that we agreed on everything, but we could relate to each others' positions. Nothing was combative. It may seem strange for an American Jew talking to a Pakistani Muslim to find so much common ground, but I looked forward to every conversation we had, to every distraction I could give him, and every bit of solace I could provide. Only wish I could've done more.

Thank you for sharing the memory of Lannan and Ajab.

Members can be proud of these strong ties to the past.

Thanks for sharing about Ajab Whiteflame, yeah he was pretty active and involved in the community. I feel like I remember him joining a few google hangout sessions as well. He was nice to people regardless of political disbeliefs.

They were both cool guys and generally pleasant people to be around; Ajab in particular had a good sense of humor and was surprisingly open to cracking gay jokes about himself given he was a Pakistani Muslim guy. I only remember one semi-negative experience with Ajab, which is where I brought up conditions in Pakistan (most likely the human rights situation for religious minorities like Christians) in some conversation and he said "you just insulted my country". Then again I don't remember exactly what it was I said, nor how I said it.

Anyways, yeah. I think it's hard to overstate how far what's left of that community has fallen from those days. It was a bustling and predominantly young site outside of the Religion forum, to the point where sometimes the dynamic resembled a high school with all the drama that came with that (not that the drama wasn't fun to watch, albeit somewhat less fun to participate in yourself). And it was an overabundance of extroverted personalities like Ajab, Esocial, Matt, Mikal, Romani, Oneharder, Imabench, etc. who made that scene what it was.

I was never there for the Mafia games, which IIRC was most of Lannan's posting activity by the time I joined, so I think I didn't have as many interactions with him as I did other old guard users. He did open up about his life problems to me once but I had nowhere remotely close to the maturity level to say anything that was genuinely helpful in that regard. Still, though, I think we mostly got along since we were both Republicans.

Did he ever join the army like he planned?

Hmmm...Don't remember these folk from DDO at all...Perhaps it was before I signed up.

So how old were you guys back then, how old were they and what happened to them?

I personally would've been in the range of 17-22 years old when I was part of the site before spam forced a mass (well, fractional) migration to debateart. I believe Lannan was maybe 1-3 years older than me (I remember mistaking him for an old friend of mine who moved away to the same state as Lannan and was born in early 1995, as from his profile pic there was some degree of resemblance), though I'm not sure. Ditto for Ajab but he was probably in his early 20s at the oldest. I think for a lot of the younger userbase online debating was something that their high school/college debate club got them interested in. Ajab was relatively late to join IIRC so he wouldn't have really had a chance to age out of that demographic while a part of the site.

Ajab died from health issues of some sort, and I won't comment on Lannan.

RIP and all that but I find there is quite a double standard at times. I am sure if I died unless I somehow made international news, I'd simply be forgotten or assumed as a quitter and remembered as that.

I think I was the one who brought these 2 up on the prior website. It is nice to remember them and perhaps they are resting in peace, one can hope but don't think these are your family. Most of this website are scum that would betray you when you need them. The remainder will only assist if you're the in-crowd popular and even then it's not because of this website, but due to being your buddy way beyond it.

Feeling fond of scum on sites like this only results in pain as they block you, ditch you, laugh at you and turn a blind eye as others abuse you as the years go by. Focus entirely on real life, the internet as a whole is a major life-sucking force. Use the Internet primarily to assist your real life progress. It's very easy to get lost here and think you found people who care.

Noone here cares about you. Not one person actually cares unless they're friends with you far beyond here so then this site is irrelevant to it. This site is full of emotional vampires, backstabbers and more. Don't even trust it with some of the opinions you hold that you'd be tempted to debate about. It's all a trap. Learn to keep views to yourself, learn that debating is a drug. Play life strategic.

Awww man, I remember them, especially Alab, as I recall he and I had a couple formal debates.

RIP guys.

I was there for quite a while but don't remember them at all.

Not that I remember you...Were you always Sidewalker.

He cannot help you with your poor memory.

SergeantLynch wrote:

I was there for quite a while but don't remember them at all.

Not that I remember you...Were you always Sidewalker.

Yes, Sidewalker is the only screen name I've ever used.

I go way back the first time, probably before you were there , it was maybe 20-30 years ago when I was there with Ajab and Lannan, then I left for 20 or so years and when I got sick, couldn't work and was bored out of my mind, I went online to see if it was still around and found you guys, It sure has changed, but I guess everything changes in a couple decades.

I recognized a few people still around, don't remember you either (did you have another screen name?), only one person has mentioned that they remember me from back then. It was a good distraction when I was getting radiation therapy every day and chemotherapy every week, that's over and I've been OK for around four years, so now I have no excuse why I'm still here, it is an inexplicable mystery,

OK. I've probably been doing this for10 years or so...I didn't know that DDO hade been around for 30 years.

SergeantLynch wrote:

OK. I've probably been doing this for10 years or so...I didn't know that DDO hade been around for 30 years.

Having transcended time and space, I'm terrible at estimating timeframes, but I think it was that long ago.

Plus, I may be confusing it with the first site I ever logged into, that was a forum on the History Channel, when that closed i joined Debate.org. In any event, I remember Ajab,, I recall he and I tussled a lot and had a couple formal debates.

Hey Whiteflame, did you used to be Blackflame?

"May our differences unite to form a greater whole"

Or fall apart to form a puddle.

Sidewalker wrote:

Hey Whiteflame, did you used to be Blackflame?

"May our differences unite to form a greater whole"

Cant say I have, but I’ve met others with that screen name. Always fun to do the yin and yang.

Why are you using an Asian dragon in your avatar?

Debby wrote:

Why are you using an Asian dragon in your avatar?

It's a velociraptor.

A velociraptor is a bird.

Debby wrote:

A velociraptor is a bird.

Yes, that's why they have feathers.

But you avatar is a dragon.