We promised that we'd put up a proper introduction post but we failed. Can't remember anything. Still waiting for our buddy to show up and clear it up since he's got a few years time on the post writer here and my trusty sidekick. It did turn out that we recalled that there's still a debt to be paid to one of the investors. That's about it.

Here's the short of it that we do know.

Guilty Parties was founded back in 2002 when a few websites, mostly dedicated to message boards and the illicit procurement of rare content of various types got booted from yet another hosting provider due to resource overconsumption. A total of three or four message boards merged.

At the last moment, potentially under the influence, the founders decided that the wisest move was to purchase a server.

The server they found was a complete piece of shit. When it was being registered, suddenly it dawned on everyone involved that an unused domain name was needed to set up the nameservers for the sites that were coming and to act as the main account. No one knew what domain to get. No ideas and beer was running low. At 3am finally the Whois search came back as negative for a nifty phrase that described the bunch pretty well: guiltyparties.com

We found the first screenshot of the site. As you can see, appealing to women wasn't considered.

Some time later it was cleaned up a bit.

The site became a hub for a select roster of garage bands and random content aimed at average guys. In the back was a massive message board community and a web hosting platform. Below is a screenshot of a portion of it.

At it's peak, the site hosted a major competition where the winner would get time on a college radio program. In Ohio if we recall correctly. It was called Guiltstock.

The above is the printed flier which polluted numerous university campuses. Below is one of the digital ads.

Remember a little known band called Metric? They entered and won. Their agent was shipping off swag on behalf of the band to GP members.

In 2005 a short-lived podcast radio show was launched (powered by Shoutcast), run by a guy who dedicated his time since to recording every meal he ever ate on Twitter.

Site was going strong, pushing the garage bands but expanding into other content.

The core of the site was always focused on free speech and zero censorship.

There's nothing out right now that doesn't censor in some way. Sites these days are out for profit, PC as fuck. Whatever you wanted to say, you could say it. Anonymity was encouraged. Bans were intended for dumbasses.

At the same time, the site and community was patriotic. A lot of members, particularly amongst the owners, were in the military. For a time, to reach a certain rank you had to have service. 4th of July, Canada Day, 9/11, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day and Victory Day were always remembered.

The problem with military men is that training and deployments happened and when tech staff had to go, shit went down. The server, which was under constant attack due to the popularity of the site and message board, had intermittent downtime. Eventually, the hosting platform was disassembled.

Ending it on a sad note this way. Don't cry now, it was a shit hosting service to begin with.