Bolt

Typical Bolt users

An actual Bolt profile

Bolt is an internets community that seems like it began last Thursday, but don't be fooled! It's really been around for at least 100 years. It came from meager beginnings back in 1998, but after Hotmail started including it on its "What would you like to be spammed with?" sign up options, it took off like a shot.

Soon, the retarded-user-friendly design, impressive amount of cool corporate sponsorship, and candy colors had attracted swarms of goths, punks, hippies, 16-year-old girls and 13-year-old boys. Soon, all the awesome usernames like Blood_Gulch42069 and SweetyDevil69420 were taken and people were left with the dregs like S3PH1R0TH_XX and DevilSweety666420.

OMG DO MY TAGS PLZ

For most, Bolt was a candy-colored dreamland of social activity. You could send messages to one another (though only one every 30 seconds), IM each other using the ZAP! feature (though this was frequently down due to the ghey), or even make a post on its wide array of bulletin boards (though these were moderated to the point of cyberfascism).

The most popular feature was the Tagbook. Here you could ask insane, pointless questions of the entire four million-strong community and hear their answers. "Tags" are thought to be a sort of evolved form of comments, as comment whores and tag whores share a similar narcissistic frenzy.

During its heyday, there would be upwards of 5000 users checking their horoscope at any given time.

Bolt Gets Old

Fortunately, Bolt jumped the shark around three years ago after making major changes to its design, dividing into two separate websites, and selling out entirely to some faceless Japanese corporation or something, making it slightly less retarded-user-friendly. There are only 1000 or so 16-year-old girls and 13-year-old boys now using the site at any given time.

One of the largest nails in Bolt's coffin was the first example of corporations trolling teh internets. In 2003, Fox Rupert Murdoch raided Bolt's bulletin boards by adding the official American Idol boards, crashing the servers, and creating much butthurt for many months afterwards. Many raids were declared on the American Idol boards from the other forums, but the Bolt overlords with pocketsfull of dirty money became liberal with the banhammer.

Bolt was what MySpace is. In fact, they are pretty much the same exact thing.

External Links

Bolt The new and improved Bolt site, especially useful for underage porn and finding pictures of your mom nude. WAS DEAD, NOW REVIVED, AND BARELY 10k STRONG.

Bolt2 Whoops, it's dead. RIP, retarded site.

Myspace - compare and contrast the REAL Bolt to this pathetic Bolt clone.

Bolt is part of a series on Sites Visit the Sites Portal for complete coverage.