So Long, and Thanks for All the (Swedish) Fish

A few weeks ago I sold Democratic Underground. The new owner is EarlG (also known as Dave Allsopp), a long-time DU Administrator and co-founder who has been a part of this community since the very beginning. He knows DU as well as I do -- probably better. He is a decent, loyal, trustworthy human being, and he is a great friend to me. If you take away one thing from this announcement, it is this:

Democratic Underground will be fine.

But I hope you understand that for EarlG, purchasing this website was not without risk. He had to take on a fairly significant amount of debt while we are in the middle of a global pandemic *and* an economic downturn. In my final act as a DU administrator, I have been working to organize a summer DU fund drive to smooth the transition to new ownership and help ease some of the financial burden. When the fund drive begins next week, I hope you will become a DU Star Member and GIVE GENEROUSLY.

I’ve been agonizing over what else to say to all of you about this. Moving on from DU is kind of a huge deal in my life -- after all, I’ve spent nearly two decades running this website -- and I feel like I am supposed to be passing along some nugget of wisdom to all of you that lives up to the enormity of this moment for me. There are so many things I could say, but after much consideration I’m just going to say this:

Thank you.

I am so grateful to everyone who has been a part of this community over the last 19 and a half years. What a wonderful, happy, friendly, stimulating, sometimes aggravating, and most of all rewarding journey this has been. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that I created a virtual space where thousands of truly decent human beings would choose to spend so much of their time. It seems unreal. This is first and foremost a community of people, and the truth is that Democratic Underground would be nothing without all of you.

During the darkest days of the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, when many DUers were viciously tearing each other apart, the three DU admins were deeply frustrated with the state of this community. So we put our heads together to figure out a positive vision of what we wanted DU to be. During that process we drew a Venn diagram on the whiteboard in our office, and it remained on the whiteboard for the last four years to remind us what we wanted this community to be. Here is a picture:



Looking back over the last 19+ years of running this website, I think I am most proud of the fact that this is what DU has become: A community of friendly, progressive Democrats.

Thank you especially to Dave and Brian (whom you know as EarlG and Elad) my fellow DU Administrators. I could not have done this job without your friendship, expertise, support, and hard work. Dave, I am particularly grateful for your wise counsel over all these years. You have provided indispensable guidance and support that made me a better admin and made DU a better community. Brian, I am in awe of your technical knowledge and skill, as well as your patience and dedication. We came up with a million crazy ideas that required countless hours of programming, and you always knew how to make those ideas a reality.

To the rest of you, I want to keep in touch. Here’s how:

I’m not going to be here on DU nearly as much now that I don’t work here, but I am dipping my toe into various social media sites and I want to keep in touch with all of you. To keep things easy I grabbed a single username that I could use across many different sites: @DavidAllenNow. *Everyone* is welcome to connect with me, whether you are a long-term DU members, a new DU member, a lurker who never signed up for DU, a former DU member, a former Discussionist member, or even a banned or flagged DUer.

If you connect with me I promise I’ll follow you back...

Twitter: DavidAllenNow

Instagram: DavidAllenNow

Facebook: DavidAllenNow

LinkedIn: DavidAllenNow

TikTok: DavidAllenNow

YouTube: UCXWXuF-V07yxQRY7v7XFZoQ

And you can also contact me by email: davidallennow (at) gmail.com

Once again, thank you for everything. I am forever grateful.



David Allen
AKA Skinner
Semi-former DU Administrator

ON EDIT: EarlG has posted a follow-up thread you should read.