Yeah I agree there are issues with the circlejerk in this forum. I started posting here and there not too long ago, and very soon someone sent me a vistor message, one essentially condescending in tone, and I believe its reasonable to say it was something along the lines of 'be nice to all the established users and suck our dicks and one day you can be in the circlejerk too'.
Almost all forums have egoists and personality cults. This forum is pretty typical in this respect. In others its hard for the new users to get acquianted and they have to suck dick for ages before they are 'accepted'.
SP is around the same age as me and I think he, like me, has gotten to the point where he sees all this as childish and boring. Personally what I like in a forum is lively discussion on a subject I like, where there are lots of experts on the subject who are eager to share their knowledge, lots of creativity, and where talks about other users and circlejerk and such as kept to a minimum. Two examples of forums like this which I regularly post on are tohno-chan.com and whirlpool.net.au. I lurked cavestory forums for a few years before i registered and i do remember it was a fair bit more helpful back then, and I remember there were a ton of active modding projects. I was inspired and pumped to see so many guys who knew how to program and draw butting heads with each other and sharing techniques. Over time though these guys with useful skills found doing jobs in real life a better use for their intelligence, leaving behind the only other group with a significant investment in these forums (the 'elders').