Albino Fox

Joined Wikipedia on November 7, 2004.

He remains very anonymous, so he does not give his own name, but is commonly called Al.

Contacts

On popular places such as Yahoo! and AOL (where "Albino Fox" tends to be already given out), he is thealbinofox. You are free to use the Yahoo address to contact him (the AOL address is really only used for rare AIM sessions).

In most places he has visited, such as Furtopia, Halfbakery, TreeTopForum.tk and The Tails Archive Message Board, he is known as Albino Fox. Sometimes he may appear online as a variation on this name, such as "Al" the Fox, or just Al Fox. He once existed in the G4tv Forums as Fan_atic.

History of Internet Activity

RuneScape

Back in the summer of 1999, Al joined a medieval MMORPG called RuneScape, because it appeared to be the best free MMORPG available online. This was back in the years of RuneScape Classic, when only the land and permanent structures were polygonal, while everything else was rendered as sprites.

He spent his first months sharing an account with one brother of his, then created another account, Pyro GL, which he shared with another brother. The name Pyro GL came from a spaceship in the 3-D shooting game Descent III. Eventually Al became the sole owner of this account.

He started out spending his time on a great deal of miscellaneous activities, not making a great deal of GP (gold coins, the RuneScape currency) aside from pursuing the occasional quest. He was often seen simply wearing a full leather suit while holding a bronze hatchet and shield. Additionally, he decided to start practicing the most unprofitable skill, Firemaking, simply because it would get him into the Firemaking high scores quickly and easily. Many hours were spent either chopping and burning down forests (which quickly regrew) or setting flame to the logs from regenerating piles. He did manage to practice other skills however, which gradually became profitable to some extent.

When RuneScape's full 3-D update finally arrived, it caused him to, at least temporarily, regain the interest in frequent playing that he had been losing over the years. He also discovered that all the Woodcutting skill he had built up could now be put to use; non-paying players were finally given access to valuable trees to chop. He began chopping willow trees and selling them for a useful amount of GP. Soon he worked his way up to level 60, allowing him to chop the very valuable yew tree. This resulted in a tremendous jump in profit, sending him from a position of low-income wanderer to semi-wealthy log salesman. His current most prized possession, as far as he is concerned, is his runite hatchet, which he purchased by giving a skilled smith all the necessary ores, and generously adding a supply of many blank runes, several strength potions, and some gold.

G4techTV

Al first heard about G4TV from a CNN.com news article in 2002 announcing it's upcoming arrival. Taking a great liking to the idea of a TV channel dedicated to video games, he had a look around the website. Eventually, he became a frequent visitor of the forums, but did not log on as a real member because he did not have an e-mail address that he could give away. Browsing around, he found it difficult to locate any members that shared his support of Sonic Team, except for a member called Burr (who, as he figured out much later, turned out to be a G4 chat room moderator). Meanwhile, he had access to the G4TV channel thanks to a 2-month free trial of Comcast Digital Cable.

Later, as school was beginning and the Digital Cable trial had expired, Al's interest in joining the forums only increased. He soon gave in and registered using a fake e-mail address, com@com.com. He came up with the username Fan_atic, as an attempt to depict himself as somewhat fan, and somewhat fanatic. (He later found out that "fan" is in fact an apocopation of fanatic, but he insists that the shorter word is not as strong in meaning.) What exactly he was a fanatic of would be depicted in his avatar, which was an image of Miles "Tails" Prower.

Long after his registration, G4 policies were changed so that all members were required to have a valid e-mail address. However, Fan_atic managed to temporarily borrow someone else's netscape e-mail address to solve this. It was long after this that he created his own Yahoo! email address, thealbinofox, and changed his G4 info to reflect this.

Fan_atic made his first post on September 15 2002 in a thread celebrating the 1st birthday of the Sega Dreamcast. He proceeded to make 20 or so posts in the same day, as there were a lot of threads in which he had been waiting to reply. Soon he met and befriended a fellow "Tails" fan known as Ice Fox. This member depicted himself as an imaginary cousin of "Tails" who was fused with a chao. It was influences from this friend that inspired Fan_atic to create his own character, which after a long period of deliberation, became an albino fox. When not talking about Sonic Team, Ice and Al were creating various things for each other, including pictures, comics, and other files (which can be seen at Al's site and Ice's site).

An attempt was made by Pokelugia to create a Sonic Fan Club thread for Burr, Fan_atic, Ice Fox, and all other Sonic fans, which was somewhat successful, but eventually died. In time, it was replaced by a very successful thread by Psyphon D. Fan_atic became a regular participant on this thread, and used it as his main source of news on events relating to Sonic Team. After some time, Fan_atic was hired as one of the managers.

Another thread of great interest to him was Furries of the Forums, which was started by AlexanderWolfe but largely lead by Katsucon61 and Darkflame. Here he discovered what a Furry is, and how evident it was that he was one of them. He confirmed here that "Al" the Albino Fox was indeed his fursona, and felt compelled to develop upon the character. He started a comic series with an actual storyline, which he called "Tale of the Albino: A Split Personality", making 8 strips of it during the summer of 2003.

During the same summer, a G4 show called Cinematech asked forumgoers to request their own choice of games to be aired on the show. Fan_atic's choice, Sonic Adventure, was among those aired on Viewer's Choice #4.

As Al went back to school that autumn, he found himself having less and less time for posting on the G4 Forums. He made his 1500th post a few weeks into school, and chose "The Albino Fox" for the custom title that appeared below his username (though he strongly considered "of the Fox & Hedgehog"). He started to participate in little other than the Sonic Fanclub thread, finding it a waste of valuable time to browse around for other interesting topics. Ice Fox, meanwhile, had already been slowing down in his posts, and stopped all posting by the end of the year. The two have not spoken with each other since that New Year's Eve.

In early 2004, an interesting bit of news came to him; G4 was planning a merger with his favorite channel on basic cable, TechTV. This meant that he would once again be able to watch the shows G4techTV aired. Somewhat ironically, it was less than half a year after this that Al regained access to Digital Cable.

In 2005, with the degrading quality of the G4 Forums, he finally decided to stop participating entirely. His suspicions about the direction G4 was developing, and thus his decision, were confirmed the day he found that the forums' language filter was fully deactivated.

"Tails" Fansites

The main site which he once viewed regularly, other than the Sonic Fanclub, was the Tails Archive Message Board. Run by a true Tails fanatic called XFox, this website is organized to carry threads on all aspects of the fandom from watching the shows to coding your own games and websites.

Once he frequented Tree Top Flyer forums, referred to more simply as the Tree Top Forum(s). Tree Top Flyer was formed by Matt Lohkamp, an average Tails fan who was into web design and had found the Web's supply of Tails fan pages to be lacking. His forums contained a relatively small collection of "Tails" fans, some who had contributed to the main page's fanart and/or fanfiction. Matt also moderated the forum, enforcing few rules other than showing full respect toward others. However, attending college took up too much of Matt's time, and he eventually had to close down the site. The forum still exists, but stopped getting any traffic soon after the discontinuation of the main site.

Other Websites

There have been a few other notable websites which Al has been involved in, for various purposes.

Most obviously, he participates lightly (unfortunately, very lightly) in the Wikimedia community, occasionally discussing what's on his mind, adding information he happens to find missing, or fixing any significant flaws he comes across. He sees Wikipedia as the epitome of what the World Wide Web is meant to be.

Nowadays, the Furtopia forums are one of the most likely places for him to be communicating. He was referred to the website in 2005 by ShadyWolf, a fellow Tails fan who was just entering the furry community. Al enjoys the forums, but doesn't consider himself a significant participant.

Al is also a somewhat more frequent participant in the ADD Forums, a place to discuss issues with this psychological trait.

Once in a while Al passes through the Halfbakery, to see what amusing or possibly intelligent ideas have been posted. He has made several comments and votes, but everything posted before October of 2004 was deleted in a disk crash occurring that month. His first post (no longer existent) was in the popular topic "Tails For All", which was a classic example of an idea almost unanimously supported by furries.

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Images associated with this user are listed at his Wikimedia Commons user page.

Quotes expressing the nature of his characters are listed at his Wikiquote page.

He is also briefly 'defined' on Wiktionary.