amen. i wonder how much of that is due to us aging, and how much is due to the marked decline on the board from 2005 onward (aka the post-Livinlarav era). it seems more the latter, but maybe i have overly rosy memories.
what's strange about ebmid2 is that he's not the classic gamefaqs idiot. he can be fairly articulate at times, he's made some very good topics (e.g. refining and narrowing down when/how exactly the characters' levels are reaveraged), and he's made constructive input (e.g. whenever i update my Lores guide, it'll include solid advice from him -- albeit this was in fall 2006 before his Tempest fetish and subsequent idiocy manifested).
what i think the FF3us board is showing is the vacuum that occurs when very little new discoveries are being made on the game. it gives a chance for idiocy to take over, when in the past, idiocy would have been drowned out (if not eliminated) by thriving, productive topics. paradoxically, while it requires abandonment of the game, it still can't happen without an active userbase; less-trafficked SNES boards don't see this sort of bullshit.