Please be seated in the car ... your safety bar will automatically secure itself over your lap ...
It's the year 2115. Senior Forums has evolved over the past 100-plus years into the technological wonder you will see in this exhibit over the next 10 minutes.
The early days of Senior Forums was marked with great strife and numerous deadly accidents, chiefly from the steam-powered engines used to power the site. These accidents often resulted in the site blowing apart, and the few remaining members would assist the founding owner and Administrator, an enigmatic individual known only as "Matrix", in rebuilding the site. Labor and health-and-safety laws enacted in the early years of the 21st century mandated newer, coal-powered engines and led to the then-tempestuous debate over "global warming".
By 2015 members were beginning to use the holographic projection option on the site, which allowed them to seem to appear in a fellow member's home. Unfortunately the Great Naked Booty Episode in May of that year forced Matrix to eliminate that option.
Touch-screen technology and 3-D printing was also coming online at that time. Members complained that the posts were becoming harder and harder to read, until it was pointed out that the gradual accumulation of Bosco and Geritol on their home screens was the cause of their problems. 3-D printing also had its ups and downs: while many members benefited from organo-plastic replacement organs, several complained that they had received life-like sculptures of various bodily parts not intended for replacement purposes. Once again, sadly enough this feature had to be removed.
Video postings began in 2020. Members would either digitally record or live-stream their comments, jokes and recipes. After an initial acceptance period of a year, once again a small handful of members abused this privilege and the video submissions were removed.
By 2050 Matrix had sold the forum and moved on to a career in the manual trades. The new owners, T'ai-Ping Industries, renamed the board "Shanghai Forums". Meant to encourage a more global audience, this renaming was abruptly reversed in 2051 after the bloody "Old People's Revolt", said to have resulted in more fatalities than the Great Leap Forward. A truce was finally arranged in 2055 and the board was renamed "Honorable Aged Talk Place". Half-page advertisements for Ramen Noodles and Chinese mail-order brides aged 70+ made their appearance by 2070 and led to a $4.7 million profit for that year.
In 2084 the "Youth Protest" hit the Honorable Aged Talk Place with a vengeance. Large groups of anonymous 20- and 30-somethings flooded the forum with posts on topics such as child-bearing, how to get your first credit card and whether or not you REALLY needed life and medical insurance. They remained largely in control of the board until the infamous "10-Day War" led by the grandchildren of former Senior Forums members. It is said that the piles of tattooed, pierced and tanned bodies lay five deep in certain sections of the forums. It took until 2086 to clean the place out, and that nasty dairy smell remained for years afterward.
2091 dawned cold and clear (except for the members in Australia, for whom it dawned hot and clear). Emperor Matrix IV, divinely appointed, heard the supplications of his people and was beneficent to them. His human half must have recognized the need for something new on the forum, so he decreed that weekly telepathic tugs-of-war and virtual food fights be held. Some members enjoyed this but others attempted to flee the "Golden Temple" (as the board was now known). They were caught and sent to online re-education camps.
By the turn of the 22nd century The Golden Temple had over one billion members, three-quarters of whom were said to be virtual entities based upon the Cenegenics Robot Android Protocol (C.R.A.P.). Keyboards, mice and other input devices having long since fallen out of favor in lieu of CranioDSL connections, most of the remaining human members had only to sit in their ReclinoPods and think of what they wanted to say, and it would be instantly transmitted to all Golden Temple members.
Here we are back in 2115. Aren't you glad you didn't live in those horrible days of the early 21st century? It has been said that dinosaurs roamed the Internet back then ...
They might be right.
Be careful as you leave the car, and thank you for visiting us here at the Golden Temple.
