1. Learn the basics, like the alphabet, ~100 words and simple grammar stuff.

2. Introduce yourself in German. Don't worry about checking for mistakes, just write a couple of paragraphs ("My name is Justanoldgamer. I live in Canada. I am 117 years old. I studied to be an astronaut, unfortunately, things didn't quite work out and now I work as a CEO for Imperial Oil. In my free time I like to play vidya, troll forums, and shard purplz. I have a wife and eight kids. I love my family. My wife's name is...") Look up any words you need in the dictionary and learn them.

3. Pick a children's book in German, preferably one you already know, and read it. (Recommended: get the English version, too, and cross-reference as you need. Make note of translation/adaptation differences as you catch them. Be proud of yourself.)

4. Pick another children's book in German, preferably one you haven't read, and read it. Don't use English backup this time around; if you're confused, try to figure out things on your own.

5. Pick a movie where people talk clearly, in normal human voices and complete sentences, get a decent multilanguage version (required: German subs, English voice track; recommended: German voice track, English subs), watch it.

6. Play a simple vidya which doesn't actually require real-time language skills (platformer, shooter, TBS).

Eventually:
Read German news.
Read a German forum.
Read a comic book.
Read an advanced book (e.g. Also sprach Zarathustra).
Play a words-heavy game in German (make sure you can pause it and have the text stay onscreen for as long as you need).
Watch a new movie with German voices and subs.
Watch a movie sub-free.
Post on a German forum.
Do all this a lot.
Fail to learn German anyway, because it's frigging hard, and die a failure.

If you want to learn german I highly recommend to not do that. Thanks to a spelling reform it's a mess, especially with younger kids around. Otherwise you gave some really good tips, maybe also for learning other languages then german ;-)

About the whole community split discussion because of new language subforums - really folks, relax. Right now the english forum is the biggest one and will be in the future. You will find the most interesting content and interesting discussions here. Old users will stay and new ones will very likely also take a look in it. See the new language forums as an easier entrance for new users or special discussions (like regional tv shows...).

Forgot one:

Song lyrics. Listen to some music and learn the lyrics to the songs you liked. Songs are immensely useful as a source of ready-made stock phrases.

(Only useful once you can tell if the song uses relatively normative grammar, and depends on you being able to find likable songs. No, it isn't an insult to German culture, I'm just really bad at discovering new music no matter the language. Pretty much everyone I know is better. Must be witchcraft.)

I saved your list locally, +1. (or +1 as they say in German.)

That's for historical reasons. In the past the only foreign movies we had were art films that were imported. The studios were running their own operations as well as the theaters so foreign movies wouldn't be screened there. Which left art houses as the main audience for foreign films.

But, it's probably a connection that ought to be severed at some point. I don't think that's been the case for a number of decades now. The art house flicks have been a minority of films made globally for quite some time now. Probably even of the films imported to the US.

And yes, that's the one I was thinking of, for some reason it was escaping my memory.
The bigger issue now is that they aren't filtering the reviews. If you thought that the previous reviews are worthless, just wait until you start seeing foreign language reviews that you can't even read being promoted to the front page.

Nothing against the French speaking users that are writing the reviews, but I don't know French so the reviews are worthless to me.

Hopefully they can introduce a selection box for the language so that we can avoid seeing the reviews we can't read.

True, the site needs a huge update. Many things are broken or need improvements. The forum is likely one of the smallest problems right now, as example the update notification isn't really reliable for a while. I don't read the reviews anymore, but I guess that section is another problematic one. I really hope the long announced site refresh will fix many things, but my fear is that with the introduction of galaxy the focus was more on the client then the main functionality of the webpage. But let's wait and see.

eigentlich sollte raab ständig geschagen werden, immer und überall!