This place was my home.
Between 2014 and now, Oppo was the homepage I came back to. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not even Reddit until a couple of years ago. It was this place and Jalopnik that I checked into and out of, day after day, without fail. You people didn’t mind me being around here, and soon you came to take me in as part of the crew.
After graduating from high school in ‘14, my aunt had a stroke. The expense was going to be too high to bear, so I told my parents and heroic breadwinner of a brother that I won’t enter college for a while to take care of her. Slowly, I weaned myself off FB and TW and just poked around in the greater Gawker Media Group with a smattering of other forums besides. By 2015 I never even touched my socials. Or chat. Almost all my online interactions in the four years that I was out of school were entirely set on the homepages or here or TAY. And so you guys were the people I knew best. The stories and opinions and drivel posted here were the ones I read about the most. The cars adorned my screens, the videos informed the algorithm. Most of all, the interests and experiences here were the ones I vicariously lived through, even if I’m probably the only active representative from the Philippines.
I can assign a good simile to this: Oppo was like a gigantic dorm building that housed eccentric car enthusiasts, complete with a race track, repair shops and cigar lounges. And there’s me, a bumbling kid with no ambition and gumption to either meet anyone else or study. Yet you let me in here, few questions asked, and the fact that some of you even reply at all (even if sometimes I miss the snark and shade thrown at me) and bump my posts, zany as they were, is enough to elate me. In return, I responded, no matter how early or late, to any sign of a conversation, because I know there will always be one.
So the thing that hurts more isn’t the loss of the forum so much as the comments on every post made here. Because those were the most tangible ones for me. The ones that felt the most “real”. I would have gone mad and regressed had I just slummed around on socials. Instead, you fueled my enthusiasm for cars and shown me truly brilliant writing. What other forum outside Gawker can have that effect?
Truth be told, Oppo’s demise doesn’t disappoint or hurt me as much as I thought it would. Part of it is because I knew this building was crumbling. Part of it is because DriveTribe exists and they pay me for my blogs. Part of that, too, is that I grew up. You guys saw that. During the Univision handover, I was the one who rallied the other sub-blogs to unite and show how important we are to Gizmodo Media and the viability of Kinja as a platform. That Wheelerguy will probably snap at me today for giving up, but he’d get the message immediately and help me scramble to back drafts up.
At some point, I’ll have to move on and aim higher: write for an actual publication, or a blockbuster film script, or anything that’d make for a bigger mark. But the one thing that I’ll treasure for as long as I live in this site. You shaped me, just as I helped shape this forum. You nurtured me as well as any parent can in an online environment. You were the best group of car fans I’ve ever met, and I hope that someday I can fly to a big EurOppo Meet or American gathering so I can see all of you in the flesh, greet you and ride along in these fascinating cars. I wouldn’t be the MJ Argoso I am today if it wasn’t for Jalopnik, LaLD and Oppositelock.
I’ll be 23 years old on December 1st. It’d be the first birthday I won’t celebrate on Kinja since 2015. It brings me sadness, but I reckon I’ve matured enough to know that nothing is permanent. That there ARE places better than this. All I can take (besides my content) will be the memories I’ve had here, hazy they may have become, and the lessons I learned while I was here.
The least I can do is be excellent to another person. And to thank you.
One day, once I get the hang of researching content on the web, I want to do a full eulogy and tribute to the Kinja site on a magazine (as a contributor) and make a thesis out of Oppo. Will make for a great read, I reckon.
Goodnight, Oppo.
Just get me on Discord, at least.