An OS Thanks in the Christmas Afterglow

Here’s to hoping your Christmas was full of football, family, hoops, good food, and just minor squabbles. And if you don’t celebrate, well, you maybe came out ahead depending on who you talk to around the holidays anyway.

Here today on an early Friday morning, I don’t have any real plan or agenda as I sit here with my far-too-hot tea. Instead, I more thought I would give a thanks to all of you for continuing to check in with me each week.

For those who want to read any premium newsletters, you can do so with the free trial, no matter whether you have done the 30-day free trial in the past or not.

If you want to hang with your fellow OSers, here’s your weekly reminder to also join the OS Discord if you want to chat with me or others from the community. If you sign-up for the premium newsletter, send a direct message to either Rob S (thekernelpop) or ChaseB (chucklesbiscotti) on Discord, and either one of us will add you to the extra Supporters area on Discord, and we have a snazzy role and badge to give you on there, too.

We also have an official OS app! You can download it now on Google Play and iOS. We have put out multiple updates the past couple weeks. We also have a survey up now if you want to give feedback on the app.

We are giving back in our own small way with a giveaway that will run into January. We’re putting up a 12-month subscription to PlayStation Plus. You can enter at any time up until January 24 and then we’ll pick a winner at random.

I know it’s been a bumpy year on the OS forums and we’ve gone through a slew of changes that did not always go smoothly, but I think we’re mostly getting things back on track and we’re stoked about stuff we’re working on for 2026.

PS, if you’re not aware, we now have a new template for the forums. Scroll down to the bottom of a page on the forums and you should be able to select the OS 4.1 Responsive theme:

I also wanted to talk more specifically about the forums and bring up some classic threads that I’ve had on my mind as of late. For whatever reason, the holidays are when I end up looking back through the treasure trove of history on the forums, and so I want to point out some stuff from the past and present.

Our 2025 Gaming Plans are wrapping up, and I like that this mostly ends up being a New Year’s Gaming Resolutions thread more than anything. It’s like a way to keep yourself accountable or just look back and see if you ended up playing the new games you wanted or attacked your backlog in a major way.

I think for the 2026 version, I’ll be pushing folks to make some bingo boards with their games on it for a little twist. You can make one here if you want to get a head start or start thinking about it before sharing it with the OS peeps.

We also have the 20K posts thread, and I don’t remember if Scott made a big deal out of it, but I’m almost positive he joined the club within the last couple months, so big ups to the long-time mod and member of OS.

Mike still had his annual Christmas thread, and it’s good to see the Old Guy still believing in tradition.

I’ve been thinking about getting into sports cards again (I go through this crisis on an annual basis), so I was digging through the OS Sports Card thread a bit this past week. It’s more that I’m not sure if I want to focus on one sport or dabble and so instead I’m doing neither at this point — choice paralysis baby!

The Wayback Machine

I’ve also been rooting around in the classic threads, so allow me to really go back now:

It’s Christmas, so for me you can only start one place: My wife’s fat sister and other holiday disasters. It’s a Thanksgiving story, but it’s around Christmas that I go back through that thread every year.

Remember when DeuceDouglas put up what’s probably still the most in-depth and thoughtful Madden post of all-time. He now works on the Madden team, and ya know, it kind of makes sense.

There was a dude named tonyj5 who would post LPGA news and scores. The thing is he would not interact with anyone. Today, you would just assume he was an AI bot, but back then we knew he was a real dude who was singularly focused on his craft.

He would essentially never reply to anyone when they’d poke at him or ask him what his deal was, but he does have at least one reply on his record, which of course was responding to an on-topic question from someone:

His blog is not active anymore but I hope he hasn’t lost that fire.

A staple of a lot of classic threads is that they are littered with banned members — a lot of the time the banned person is who starts a classic thread that goes off the rails. One such topic was back in 2020 about NFL 2K speculation where this guy AUTHENTICNFLNBA was so positive 2K was getting the license.

He wrapped it up by coining a term us OSers hoped would catch on, which was “step foot in my frequency.” Honestly, it still bangs, and I think it’s still got a chance to make it into the lexicon.

The thing about the OS forums being around for so many years is that while we’ve gone through lots of database changes and such over the years that make things a little hard to find at times, most of the history is still there.

This means they’re time capsules for classic sports stuff as well. There’s an incredibly long thread that leads up to and goes through Super Bowl XLIX (Seattle vs. New England). And boy does it start going places around post #1185 or so.

But the real ones know OS Neighborhood is where the truly unhinged stuff generally goes down. 12 may be banned, but we’ll always have the neighbor story.

The real questions get asked in OS Neighborhood as well, like “how many five year olds could you fight at once?” A very fair and normal question!

One of the best true or false, conspiracy or not threads of all-time involves Candyman and the Case of the Hacked Xbox 360. Candy never did admit to any wrongdoing with his Gamerscore, but you can be the judge of that.

Some members don’t even get banned who make timeless threads, but they still usually stop coming around after a certain point due to growing up or being too embarrassed of prior behavior.

No one personifies this better than GOD OF LIFE. He only made a little over 200 posts, but there are so many bangers in there. Whether it’s asking how to get a “hot date” or asking people how they wear their hat, or simply being baffled why he got cut in RttS.

Not all forum legends wear capes.

But my favorite stuff is probably the time capsule awful sports takes stuff. One dude had a meltdown over many pages trying to explain why Jake Delhomme deserved way better ratings in Madden and was actually a top tier QB.

We’ve had stuff like a guy trying to list off a bunch of MLB players who were potentially going to hit 74 home runs and break the single-season record…The list included people like Joe Mauer and Lorenzo Cain.

And of course my favorite sort of sports take is one that also goes after Steve because hell yeah I enjoy when Steve catches strays. I am absolutely that friend that loves when my other friends get put into awkward moments for no reason.

I’m with Brett, totally classless and unprofessional from Steve.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading, happy holidays!

-Chase