Happy 20th Birthday, OCnet!

[Anastasios]

So, 20 years ago Robert and I were sitting in a car and he told me, "I was talking to @Mor Ephrem and we thought it would be cool to make a forum for Orthodox discussion." I was like, "yeah let's do it!" and that's how we started the first incarnation of this site, byzantines.org. Originally, a lot of us posted on Byzantine Catholic sites to discuss Catholic-Orthodox issues, hence the original name of the site.

A few months later, the site database got hosed up and we came back rebranded as OrthodoxChristianity.net, the site you've loved for 20 years

Thanks, everyone!

Anastasios

 

[RaphaCam]

The teenage years are gone, you're a big boy now!

 

[Mor Ephrem]

Twenty years ago, wow! Those were wonderful and exciting times.

 

[LizaSymonenko]

That was well before all the social media stuff.... There were no Facebook Groups. No Instagram. Even cellphones were not common.

I remember coming here and being amazed at being able to find out more about the Faith.

I used to actually print things off so I could share them, or read them at leisure.

How times have changed.... sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.

May the Lord bless the Forum, and the Forum members, with wisdom, longevity, and means to spread the Faith to the world.

Mnohaya Lita!

 

[Ainnir]

I wish I’d found it back then.
Many years, OC.net!!

 

[Arachne]

Here's to surviving social media!

 

[RaphaCam]

Here's to surviving social media!

English-language Facebook only caught up with the forum on housing discussions on Orthodoxy some time between 2016 and 2018. It killed off every independent platform but OCnet, and outside here only r/OrthodoxChristianity and The Ancient Way were left. We even got reformed!

 

[Luke]

 

[Isaiah53IsMessiah]

Happy birthday OC.net! I'm still technically a newbie on here though, going on my 8th year on this website. Time flies!

 

[Vladimir Al-Masih]

I'm glad I just talked to a priest in real life before I found out about the forum. That seems to be recurring advice here, which is good.

 

[Passepartout]

Hope it was a great birthday. With lots of presents and cake. God bless you. Turned twenty in 1994. Shows you all I am old LOL!

 

[Dominika]

So I'm registered in half of the OC.net's life, but I had been lurking into before (I don't remember exactly from when, I suppose around 2009).
So one year more and OC.net is allowed to celebrate its birtdahy and every feast by monastery wine even in US

 

[Fr. George]

English-language Facebook only caught up with the forum on housing discussions on Orthodoxy some time between 2016 and 2018. It killed off every independent platform but OCnet, and outside here only r/OrthodoxChristianity and The Ancient Way were left. We even got reformed!

I'm both surprised and not surprised that TAW has also survived.

 

[RaphaCam]

I'm both surprised and not surprised that TAW has also survived.

Why not surprised?

 

[Fr. George]

Why not surprised?

I was never a regular participant there (really, all my eggs were in the OC.net basket pre-FB), but I'd go over and look in occasionally as a curiosity, and ISTM (and maybe this was because I wasn't deeply engaged in the forum) that the sense of community was strong. While I believe we had every right to feel that our setup was better here, our forum became too big (especially after the CAF exodus) to have the same tight-knit community feel.

 

[Asteriktos]

Happy belated birthday!