I think, at some point, a lot of people were just too flooded by the website. When I left for a while last summer, I left over 150 questions, despite answering 10 or so on a daily basis. While spammers such as yourself asked good questions, I really noticed spammed questions were the norm, and 'just for you' became exceptions. When I returned, I noticed some people weren't posting anymore, disabled their accounts or were pretty inactive. I think Formspring kind of collapsed on its own success, I remember some spammers getting 500+ replies, but 400 of them were 'idk'. I guess the people who had nothing to say annoyed the long-answers kind of people, while the 'idk' crowd left after a while as well.

I really miss Formspring the way it was a year or so ago, but since a lot of the people I followed on here left, and @Wellseeyalater also never really got back full swing, I also just kind of moped around. Being 2 months behind on questions never really helped either..

I honestly question how they've managed to keep Formspring up, and how they're going to make it sustainable, and get the public back from ask.fm and tumblr.

You are not alone. I think it's very convenient to do it on this date, but if it's a ruse, the joke is on Formspring, because I think their traffic has dropped significantly again, in favor of other sites and people disabling their accounts.

I'll keep an eye on the update page, but to be honest I wasn't sure how much I was going to use YouReply and ask.fm, now I'll remain in limbo for a while, probably. I would very much prefer to keep things central here on Formspring.

Well, Formspring, it has been fun. After this final question, I'm done. I'll look into following the people I follow here on ask.fm and youreply, and request my export. A reminder of my profiles on there: youreply.net/user/metalnick ask.fm/metalnick

As for this question, man, have I thought about this when I was really into Metallica! I was really into Metallica in my early teens, but Death Magnetic was already too late for me to still be a massive fan. I was one of those guys who would end up defending them on YouTube, but too reasonable for chatroom standards.

Here's what I think; they never made music they didn't want to, for money. They did, however, adapt ideas to give themselves more commercial appeal, both inside and outside of their music. In 'A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica' documentary, they even admit the shorter songs were an idea to increase their appeal. You see them trying out a lot of different things, but I think they're not really selling out in the traditional sense, but simply got more commercial as they went along.

I mean, Metallica Christmas ornaments, calendars, all that stuff, along with looks like this: http://harmonia.meccahosting.com/~a0002223/metallica_rolling_stone_1996.jpg or the entire 'Papa Het' thing are hard to defend as genuine artistic expression OVER making money as a band. But that's it, they're capitalizing on their fame, more so than giving in to their fans or the mainstream. If anything, they've failed to sell out, since they've been playing 1 song from Load/ReLoad, none from St.Anger and 2 from Death Magnetic recent tours.

I'd also bet they've lost mainstream popularity the past 10 years as well. St.Anger was big news, Death Magnetic only got some airplay with The One Day.. No, The Day That Never Unforgiven.. No, erm, The Day That Never Comes. They haven't played in the Netherlands in 4 years because our main concert organizer doesn't want to book them. Sonisphere here could hold 120,000 and 40,000 showed up, less than Metallica alone 2 years before..

Metallica, I love you, and Imma let you finish, but a lot of bands have released better albums than you, all of the time!

I'm going to have to go with Megatron in general. In the different timelines and series, he is typically bat-shit crazy, but he keeps them together and has made some fairly good strategic calls, for a villain in an 80s cartoon!

With some of the more recent G1-based comics my friend reads, there's a lot more duality between Megatron and Shockwave as well, and Shockwave really rules the Decepticons when Megatron is on earth or presumed missing. He'd my second.

Ideally, yes. In some cases, this can already be done (but along with a physical CD of an OS, for example), but I think software companies are too afraid of piracy and sharing of licenses to make it work. Selling your license to use a certain piece of software is not really all that different from selling your physical container in the past, which was also legal and done frequently.

I think it would also increase the amount of legal users, since you can use legal for a much reduced cost, and I tend to notice people do prefer to legally use software.

That's pretty hefty! I've added the album to the 2013 list I keep, I'm going to check it out at least!

Is it me, or is Southern Lord a pretty cool label? I don't come across them often, but when I do, it's usually a pretty awesome band they've signed or is about to release an album.

Denim everything. See: http://www.ivstatic.com/files/et/imagecache/636/files/slides/Britney-Spears-Justin-Timberlake-Red-Carpet.jpg

Apart from my jeans, I think the only denim thing I ever had was a jacket once, but I never really wore it, because I ended up looking like Timberlake in that picture.

I must admit, I hadn't heard of the majority of those bands! But typically, bands who are smaller, but perhaps more interesting musically tend to disappear easier as well. There's a death metal-turned-experimental band called Carbonized who released 2 albums which were too weird for death metal fans, and too death metal for fans of experimental music, so they faded away. Sometimes bands don't cut it because they're nothing special, but from what I can tell, the bands you mentioned all had something special about them, which makes them interesting, but could also damage their 'mainstream' appeal.

I really like it! As a music fan, I've listened to metal almost exclusively for years, with occasional strolls into jazz, blues and classical, but I disliked listening to music over YouTube and never felt like buying anything in the iTunes store, since I have a history of failing hard drives.. I also no longer am able to buy multiple CDs per month, and I don't really like the business of buying CDs either.

Buying them at a store or at a concert (or a label-run distro) is fine to me, but I also bought a lot of CDs used or through independent distros, which is nice because I get to own the CD, but it doesn't really help the band, since they've already been paid. And while I am a collector, I just never play CDs and only ever take out the cases of albums with well written liner notes or extras, like Nile albums for example.

Spotify allows me to listen to a lot of music I want to check out, without going through the legal and practical hassle of downloading albums. It's also been getting more and more difficult, with websites hosting music downloads becoming more and more shady, with odd 'premium' options and all. For the bands, it's a good thing, but the hassle was the main reason it took me until November 2012 to catch up on new 2012 albums.

I am able to broaden my musical horizons by finally listening to artists in genres like Country, Funk, Pop, the list goes on, because it's all on there! Right now, I'm listening to a playlist I made consisting of multiple GTA soundtracks, odd 80s songs I've seen on a nostalgia channel on TV, songs like Dust in the Wind, but also Country classics and what have you!

Sure, I'd be even happier if artists made more money from Spotify. I think the people of Spotify should consider offering different kinds of subscriptions, for people who listen to an hour a week, but also for guys like me and my friends, who listen to a lot of music, all day (and night sometimes). I'd be happy to pay more than 10 euros a month, actually. Just looking at the 5 or 6 2013 albums I've listened to, look at the money I saved! 4 months of Spotify cost me 40 euros, buying 6 albums would have cost me at least 90, perhaps even 120. I'm not even mentioning all the other new bands I've checked out, classic albums, hit singles..

A lot of my favorite bands have recently released albums after a long while! I'll see what I can think of though.

Akercocke is formally split-up, but as far as I'm concerned, it's because their frontman is done with music for a while. I hope they get back together some day, but two of their members are currently in a band called Voices, who are releasing an album soon.

Alice Cooper released an album not too long ago, but honestly, I wish he'd get back together as much of the original members, when the band was called Alice Cooper and do one final album in the vein of his first couple of albums and trip out!

Aphex Twin (or any of his other projects) could do with some new material as well. Even though I've mostly been listening to his ambient work as AFX, I'd like some new material. Richard D. James has said he has something like 7 albums worth of material, but is awaiting his divorce to finalize..

Danzig is doing a covers album right now, but his last two albums were great and I'd love some more. Glenn Danzig also discussed a dark blues album with Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains multiple times, which I'd love to hear!

Cressida is a prog rock band from London, which released 2 albums in the late 60s. They've recently reunited for some shows, including opening for Cathedral when I saw them late 2011. They're a great band and I'd be very interested what a prog band from the 60s could do with the technology of today!

Allan Holdsworth hasn't released anything new in ages as well, his jazz fusion is some of my favorite guitar playing, so I'd like to see what he has come up with in recent years.

What ever happened to Mortician? I didn't really like their last album, but I'm sure they haven't run out of horror movies to make 30 second songs of, especially with the internet at hand!

Macabre released an album not too long ago, but it didn't get too great reviews and felt very formulaic. Perhaps they need to watch some Criminal Minds and decide they can do better..

Mithras is a band inspired by Morbid Angel, especially the more technical bits by Trey Azagthoth. They released an EP in 2011, but I want a full album! They typically have very technical guitar work, so it might be hard to keep the songwriting fresh.

There's also a bunch of odd Death Metal bands who released one or two albums in the 90s who I'd like to see do some new material, but I can't remember their names!

When I first read about it at MetalSucks, I figured it was one of those mock-genres, like Breakdowncore and what have you. Boy, was I wrong, people take it really seriously and I've seen gear being praised for 'djent-compatible sounds'...

Djent doesn't really do it for me, as I already dislike bands like Meshuggah and Textures for having a musician circlejerk that makes Behold... The Arctopus sound like a 70s Funk band. If I want to listen capable musicians seeking the limits of scales, time signatures and tempos, I'll listen to classical. The start-stop nature of their riffs, the overly complex drum patterns and what have you are impressive, but closer to math than to rock.

Djent manages to take these bands, take any trace of songwriting or musical skill and makes music that basically consists of several things in metal that do not appeal to me at all.

"I think in countries like the UK, Canada and the United States, and from a metaphorical standpoint we often look at problems and try to solve the symptoms rather than the disease itself, and when we rewind things all the way back,"

It's this way in a lot of current social issues. There's also the constant knee-jerk at the single case ('promising football career', 'he already was on the sex offender list', 'she was walking around drunk and naked', 'he had a t-shirt from a band called Anal Cunt') and over-reactions from feminists and other parties alike.

You've also neatly placed rape and other forms of abuse in context of our seemingly growing idea of a 'winner takes all' society. At the same time, prison is not scaring off people from crime, but creating repeat offenders and marked men. While we want to celebrate winners, we also want to completely destroy the 'losers', especially since we can all change, unless you commit a crime.

Probably, yes. I also think a lot of people on Formspring either had no experience with the law, how it works and why every case is judged separately. Whenever a question of punishment or 'should there be a law on this' popped up, I noticed a lot of replies were very aggressive in EITHER direction.

Not just here on Formspring either.

As far as spammed questions are concerned, I don't very often mind their phrasing and I've unfollowed the spammers who did deal in absolutes in every situation. It's a manner of asking questions, it's much harder to get a lot of response on a website like this with completely open questions. I have to admit, sometimes, one of those absolutes really helps me formulate my opinion (as a guide, or opposite).

I think we've come to a point where a lot of the vocal parts of the internet let their opinions be formulated for them, their creativity expressed for them and a general sense of 'why bother writing my opinion down, when I can share, like or comment on this picture, or say yes?'.

There's a couple of different systems and social securities one can get in the Netherlands. Next to the WAO, which is basically a government granted pension based on a percentage of your pay before you turned 65, there's also the WW, the unemployment benefit. The WW isn't an automatic benefit, unlike the WAO. You have to show you've worked for over a year, and it takes a few weeks before it's granted. I believe it's typically 70% of your average monthly wage.

There's also multiple securities for long time disabilities and sickness, which all vary in amount of money, time and your duty to look for work. Under the WW for instance, you are tasked with sending out job applications at least once every week and have written proof.

For a better put read, I'd suggest http://www.expatica.com/nl/essentials_moving_to/essentials/dutch-social-security-system-explained-1704.html they get it down pretty well.

You can be a welfare leech in the Netherlands as well, but the past 3 or 4 coalitions in the government have all worked to make it harder to get more than you deserve and to get people back to work, over giving them money. I'd personally like to see more effort towards re-education people over 'giving them a job they're fit for' in cases of older, but uneducated people. My mother is bad of hearing and suffers from Fibromyalgia, with bouts of depression as well. She is considered fully unfit to work now, but at some point, they kept suggesting jobs like receptionist or warehouse employee to her...

You make a very good point, especially in averting the initial knee-jerk reaction a lot of people would have to abolishing welfare. Instead of 'giving poor people money', it becomes helping poor people. There's a lot that can be done and a lot of typical 'poor things' (such as fast food, which you indirectly mentioned) and their results (obesity and the diseases it holds) that can be prevented, if one thinks outside of the box.

I've listened to the entire album, and while I like me some thrash, I think Blood Tsunami lack a certain something. I can't entirely put my finger on it, but while I like how aggressive and riff-oriented they are, the vocals are a little typical and the mix is very 'busy'. They seem like one of those bands who are GREAT live, but never really manage to get their energy captured in the studio.

I had seen their name float around on Dutch metal websites, but a lot of those include forums full of self-promotion (band members and friends talking about the band), so to be honest, I kind of looked them over for a while. I saw them popping up in 2012 top 10 lists, so I had to check it out!

As of now, I'm clearing my final questions on formspring, then I'm heading over to youreply and ask.fm. I'm not sure which I'll end up using more. Here's my youreply! youreply.net/user/metalnick and my ask.fm http://ask.fm/metalnick

I'd like to thank @Debatess and @TheNerdySpammer for a lot of awesome questions, but I was so far behind I never quite caught up, so I've decided to start over at the new sites after answering some questions from other people I follow.