Daaaa Shaddup Duschbag!! If it weren't for the women folk in your clan passing out free BJ's here we'd have to kick your ass..
I can tell you exactly what happened to ET and similar message boards. One word: blogosphere. You can pretty easily track the demise of this site, the loss of quality posters and hijacked threads to the emergence of a very real and serious effort by bloggers to provide quality content. Whereas those same posters had a limited number of outlets to post content back in 02-04, it changed dramatically over the past 3-4 years. Also, many member flocked to the comments sections of those blogs and post there instead. Heck, just check out any random thread on Zero Hedge and the comments section pretty much says it all. Once upon a time, this site had that level and quality of discussion, but it's been years now.