Erin Wert

Harry’s Forums was my primary online community from 7th grade through high school (2001-2006ish). I joined because a friend in my school gave me the link, but quickly got way more invested than she had. In the forum’s peak, we had a complex “family tree” that would rival a sorority’s, private locked boards for a core circle of committed members where we shared more private details, and even occasional group phone calls where we manipulated each person’s conference call plans to dial in 6 or 8 people at a time. The initial draw was to analyze theories about the upcoming books, sharing fanfic, etc. (this was in the lull betweens books 4 and 5 when the fandom was exploding with theories and fan content) but we had many subforums. The many one, which we called Hogsmeade, was where we would just talk about anything and everything. We also had a political/current events subforum (Ministry of Magic) where I got into some of my earliest political debates and started being exposed to different viewpoints I had to factor into my worldview. We also had multiple different forum-wide games- we had a quidditch house cup with trivia for the chasers to answer and a series of riddles for the seekers.

Throughout my time there I became first a moderator and then an administrator, and was actually the last active administrator when I started college, checking in every now and then to clear spam messages, etc. Eventually I stopped checking and at some point it faded into first a spam heaven, and finally nothingness. Though the forums no longer exist on the web, the friendships have remained. I’m facebook friends with many of the people I met, and we still keep in touch. That being said, there are also many that I’ve completely lost touch with, but I still remember our nicknames and random pivotal moments in my growing up – such as memorizing some of 50 cent’s rap lyrics at the insistence of some of the other members, hearing first hand about people’s sexual experiences, positive and negative, and of course drama, lies, and betrayal that led to a flood of angsty poems, because, hey, we were 13. Looking back, actually, a lot of us who had moderating and administrative responsibilities were very young. But we took it very seriously and felt strongly about trying to create and maintain a safe space. We banned people freely for breaking the rules!