gollumOG 2003

A self-described Long Island girl with a red PT Cruiser and zero patience for pretense, Nicole Rachel — who went by "RA" and preferred that to her full name — arrived on eZabel in January 2003 and immediately made her presence felt. Not through volume (her 90 comments barely cracked a year and a half of activity), but through sheer emotional intensity. She posted like someone who felt everything at double speed: fierce loyalty, quick indignation, genuine tenderness, and an absolutely unapologetic habit of saying the thing nobody else would say. Her very first substantive exchange involved defending herself against magnum's accusation that she didn't get out much — "look at my new picture do I LOOK like I don't get out much?" — and by the following week she was locked in a multi-day forum conflict with him that pulled in half the community. When magnum made a comment about a cat slamming into a wall that upset her younger sister, gollum went full protective older sibling: "Magnum was nasty saying that about my sister cause that made her cry... Is this NOT the country where we have free speech?" She knew she came on strong and said as much — "i'm not the most tactful person but I'm passionate in how I feel and thats why I come across kind of brusk" — which was both an apology and a refusal to change.

The heart of gollum's eZabel story was delliott101. Dave Elliott was her closest connection on the site, and she adored him with an earnestness that was both touching and completely unguarded. She called him "a sweet caring theocratic human bean with love for the brotherhood" and told him he had "a heart of GOLD." hunkpapap tried to play matchmaker, and skaorsk8 perked up when she revealed she was a Seinfeld fan from the area — "waaaaaaaiiit...a girl who likes seinfeld and lives in this part of the world..i must know more." Beyond Dave, she had a genuine affection for pop culture: she could rattle off the plot of the Seinfeld whale episode from memory ("stupid Kramer hitting golf balls into the ocean and one lands in the blowhole"), posted Linda Ronstadt lyrics in Spanish because she thought they sounded beautiful even though she didn't know what they meant, and bonded with Dave over the Beatles and classic rock. She was 20 years old, didn't have many people her age in her congregation, and had come to eZabel because someone recommended it — and for a few intense months in early 2003, the site became her social lifeline. She attended the eZabel Manhunt games, read over a hundred journals, and engaged with ok4now, forrestina, and rocksupastar with the same all-in energy she brought to everything. By 2004 her posts had thinned to a handful, her average comment length halving as the initial spark settled, and her last comment — "K, Daddy. I sowwy" — was the kind of playful sign-off that suggested she left on friendly terms, even if quietly.

eZabel Personality Type: ESFP — "The Firecracker." She burned bright and brief, arriving with the force of someone who had been waiting for a place to belong and pouring herself into it without reservation. Brash, warm, fiercely protective of the people she cared about, and honest to a fault about her own rough edges — gollum was the kind of person who would apologize for insulting you and then explain exactly why you deserved it.