I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. ha.
I'm on death's door, anyway. Tell me.
Errrr, WRONG. But thank you for playing.
It was an educated guess. So instead of being a wiseass why don't you enlighten everyone?
I guess we're all in humble servitude to MSHSEX until he gives us the right answer lol
I don't remember the actual time amounts but it goes something like:
Bold black for the first 24 hours
Red for 24 to 48 hours
Regular black for older then 48
... I believe (it may have been the GD board though), there is a long response written by one of the original moderators from when TER first started that goes into great detail why those times and colors were picked. It had something to do with being a moderator tool if I remember correctly.
This incarnation of TER has no such moderator tool. At least I can confirm that. lol 
It was a few months ago when the guy responded and I didn't care enough to try to remember the whole story. I seem to recall he had to ask admin himself when the site was first started. The information wasn't given out to even the first moderators unless they asked, and over the years any new ones would probably have no clue then. The same with admin since most, if not all of them, have changed too.
The actual timestamps on the posts are useless. Anyone can change their timezone in preferences repeatedly. Just look at this thread. My first post reads 5/6 at 8PM and my second is 5/7 at 10:31AM. However, I posted them probably 5 minutes apart at most. I think the time periods are based off server time or actual time posted on the board. Also, like I said, I'm not sure it is less then 24, 24 - 48, and greater then 48 to begin with.
Is it true? IDK.
http://www.theeroticreview.com/discussion_boards/viewmsg.asp?MessageID=98402&boardID=33&page=#98402
DC has been a moderator forever, and was during my tenure. Hopefully he is still involved behind the curtain today. The founder would have confided in DC, but whether this version mirrors that version is the question, as the founder has been gone for a good while now. If DC says it does....then I defer to him. Good job on getting that info cantseeddp
DC knows his stuff
If you have any experience with writing code, then you know how easy it is to inadvertently change how a program was supposed to work intially when adding new features and such. It's very possible the colors on the date/timestamp info no longer work as intended.
If you wanted to do a search this has been discussed on a few boards quite a few times.
And the consensus is no one really knows.
But MSHSEX must have the inside "poop" and I gotta believe he isn't giving up the real answer.
Maybe because he doesn't know?
It seems quite pointless to even worry about.
...send a PM to one of the last moderators on TER, like BeatPoet or Dirty Daego or Fugly. I know that Funtimes asked several times and we were told it was just a glitch in the newer style format.
In other words....just a random occurance.
I was wondering too but there doesn't appear to be a discernible pattern. Like Soj said, black vs red seems to be random, just some minor difference in the board software.
I was told that a software upgrade had a general glitch. When a date patch was applied, the database software then reflected some dates red. They thought it had to do with time stamps of where the servers resided and the timezone of the actual user. Never really got a clear answer, other than the admins didn't know why either.