No that a few days have passed and the dust has settled on this week's tragic thread (you all know the one to which I am referring), I wanted say a few things to the BBI Community.
Threads like the one that happened this week are not a laughing matter. I see folks making jokes about it. The internet community as a whole has a problem of mob bullying. Singling out a poster for ridicule. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the individual poster in question behaved well, but for sure the BBI community piled on, ridiculed and didn't let it go. We are all bonded by a common love for our football team. I would hope that we can take the high road in these situations. To some extent, I know how the target poster felt, I have been the target poster on some threads for posts I would to this day defend if I cared to. I don't think I said anything wrong. Part of the problem with the internet is that we can't see body language, intonation and various other subtle forms of communication. It leaves our posts open to interpretation at times.
I for one will not engage in a mob pile-up on a poster. Its a tragic situation. How would some of you feel if you later found out that the poster truly had psychological issues and committed suicide shortly after a tragic thread. Nothing good comes out of those threads. Now this does not mean I won't fire back at somebody that trolls me, or call bullshit on another post. But if the mob kicks in, I'm out.
I have seen numerous posts this week calling that thread an all time classic. Its not an all time classic. Its an all time embarrassment. I would like to think we are better than that.
I hope that the vast majority of posters here are mature enough to help avoid adding fuel to the fire on these tragic threads. Anybody else willing to make the same statement as I have about not ganging up and bullying posters, even when they have said something stupid. Just let it go and walk away.
I hope he doesn’t have problems, and if he does I hope he works them out. But he didn’t do himself any favors.
A tragedy is a little kid dying of cancer or a natural disaster wiping out a community.
Someone getting embarrassed on the internet might be wrong and probably bullying but it's not a tragedy.
If you think that was "tragic," you need to get out in the real world a little more.
There are far more tragic things going on than a football fan forum pile on against some fake insider who was slinging insults and demanding apologies from people who didn't owe him one whilst simultaneously cursing out the site owner.
I personally did try to take the high road several times - I even apologized to him when I had nothing to apologize for. I needled him on the your/you're thing - big fucking deal.
If you're going to stick a flag on this hill and die on it, I hope you're ready to spend the rest of your life fighting for this cause - because you'll find similar activity on.... pretty much any message board in existence.
I get the sentiment and don't even totally disagree with it completely, but - I feel this is a bit dramatic.
Let's save the word tragic for things that actually are.
It's mind boggling, especially when it's a group pile on.
There are threads that obviously seek controversy, one need not click, there are crazy ideas (my 5-0-6 rants)...the bullying doesn't come from a place of dignity.
I hope he doesn’t have problems, and if he does I hope he works them out. But he didn’t do himself any favors.
This post misses the point. I am not excusing the target poster. But I am not excusing everybody who egged it on, and piled on either.
We are responsible to ourselves. But we are also responsible to our community. This board is our community. What kind of community do we want to have?
One that regularly gangs up on a posters for perhaps not saying the wisest things. Even when sometimes those thing are misinterpreted.
Or do we want to have a community with a little more maturity.
Guys like bw, and Terps revel in engaging as contrarians, that's a different dynamic. I'm not referring to those threads.
There is no benefit to fueling the meltdown. Call it what you want, substitute any word that works for you.
Here is one to start.
https://theorganicagency.com/blog/life-death-consequences-cyber-bullying/
What do you honestly think is going to get accomplished here?
Whenever someone acts the way that poster did on a message board, they're opening themselves up to exactly what happened. He had the option to step away from it at any point. No one forced him to keep posting, no one made him do anything - he acted on his own accord.
Maybe there was something going on there, maybe there wasn't. I have no idea. None of us do. Maybe the guy was just on a bender and was hammered. Who the heck knows. He's been around here for years. He imploded and made an ass of himself, now he's gone.
I don't think this soapbox thread is going to fundamentally change anything about BBI going forward. But, that's just like... my opinion, man.
There is no benefit to fueling the meltdown. Call it what you want, substitute any word that works for you.
You used the word five separate times in your OP.
People who were badly abused as kids.
Lets say the chances that he was one of those people unable to self correct deep hard wiring is 1%.
What emotional payoff do I get from ridiculing ( and I do get off stomping on stupid at times...we all do) versus the risk of shortening his life or chances? Im far from holier than thou when it comes to the temptation to cut a poster suffering from stupid or the lack of self awareness. I just keep trying to remember to do better when I see train wrecks and loneliness. All we can do
People who were badly abused as kids.
Lets say the chances that he was one of those people unable to self correct deep hard wiring is 1%.
What emotional payoff do I get from ridiculing ( and I do get off stomping on stupid at times...we all do) versus the risk of shortening his life or chances? Im far from holier than thou when it comes to the temptation to cut a poster suffering from stupid or the lack of self awareness. I just keep trying to remember to do better when I see train wrecks and loneliness. All we can do
Thanks Bill... I agree.
I just find the use of the word bullying in this incident incorrect. Usually the bully picks on an innocent vulnerable person who has not invited the incident. I think calling him not “well behaved” is a bit of an understatement. It was people reacting to what I would call a crazed response to some debate and criticism. I think that also got backwards in this case on “who didn’t let it go”.He could have simply left at any time and the thread would have died.
I think we just saw an example of the simple human characteristic of slowing down to see a trainwreck which long precedes the internet.
And if the original thread was still up, people could plainly read that he had been given a lot of leeway before finally having had enough. Plenty tried to calmly advise him to step away and cool off. Perhaps not get so personally invested in whatever info he was trying to pass on. At the end of the day, he brought that upon himself.
Posters repeatedly offered him advice. They also recommended he delete the thread. At one point, it was so over-the-top that it appeared he was begging to be banned in order to become a martyr. (I wasn't going to give him that honor)
The mob didn't kick in until the 7 or 8 hour mark of a 12-hour meltdown. Should we have pulled the plug on that thread sooner? Probably yes.
But that performance was beyond the pale. It was not an indictment of BBI posters. If anything, I felt that many people tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him. He refused.
He's not the victim.
He told me personally to "drop dead" more than once.
He routinely criticized Eric as a person, a business owner, and everything in between. He called people names, he cursed at people, and he basically just handled himself terribly.
When it came up that he had a gambling issue earlier, I stayed away from that - I told him specifically that I thought it would be in poor taste to mock him for that and that I didn't agree with anyone who had. I thought that was too below the belt.
But - he continually insisted that people WERE mocking him for it when they were not. Specifically Eric. Eric did not mock him or mention that a single time; yet he continued to demand an apology for it - all whilst continuing to call him Tiny Tim, a douchebag, and a "bad guy" with bad business acumen.
It really could have been a lot worse than it was. I think most of the criticisms he was getting were pretty measured and were attacking his questionable timeline in his OP or his absolute refusal to note the difference between your/you're.
Maybe a poster here or there took it too far - but it really wasn't that bad given the amount of vitriol he was sending back the other way.
He said far worse things to me than I said to him - I never even asked for an apology or cared to receive one.
It's a message board.
He’s talking about the continual abuse once it became apparent the individual might be a bit distressed.
I followed the thread. I laughed early on. The dog piling afterwards was the issue the OP raises. It became cringeworthy when it became clear there might be some warning signs showing in the poster-in-question. I don’t necessarily agree with the word tragic and it’s exceptionally hard to see that line in the moment, but I do agree with the spirit of his message.
Worth a moment of reflection at the very least and kudos for the thread.
But most of the time I just didn't think about the other guy and how he could take it or I overreacted or misread. Sometimes badly
Its not a medium that enhances communication.
This time I saw a guy who at first provoked, got stupid and then unraveled. I have no idea why. But I saw a guy whose behavior, self interest and hysteria kept rising over two days.
I was not in it and he was not calling on me so as Pete just put it so well...its was a hard thread to fathom and a hard guy to fathom.
For me, when I can be aware in time, I am going to try to ease off when I don't get it rather than double down when the target gets easier and larger. I will fail often for I seem to see stupid in large print but that is what I am going to try. No judgement on how others read it or will read into the other end of an exchange
Remember the old game "Battleship"? when you have a barrier and guess what holes in a pegboard the other guy has the ships in spaces that are important to him and a lot of spaces he does not care about? That's the internet. I never have any idea where the other guy has stuff that's important to him.
Look what its gotten us?
Again, could I have taken even higher road? Probably. But the guy was a douchebag.
I don't know people took him and it so seriously. To me he was good for a laugh. If BBI didn't let him provoke them it would have been nothing. He became a troll in the end, and BBI fed the troll.
Better to ignore him or anyone who has a melt down like that.
FMiC alluded to it innocently and then let it go as soon as he realized it. Basically everyone else was leaving it alone. I think maybe one or two people passed by and threw a little gas on that fire, but that was really it.
He was a douchebag. The guy should be somewhat responsible for the diarrhea he posted here for 15 hours in a row rather than painted as some martyr or tragic figure here. Maybe something was wrong with him, maybe something wasn't - but the majority of the criticism was regarding the bad info he had passed along or his shitty grammar.
That's hardly the type of "bullying" that drives people to suicide.
I just think this thread is way too dramatic. I get the overall sentiment. And I think I even acted somewhat appropriately all things considered - I really wasn't that aggressive or combative. I was super measured and relaxed in most of my responses. I wasn't even vulgar towards him.
I told him to sleep on it and maybe reevaluate it all the next day and see if he's cooled down, etc.
Even gidie addressed him in a totally non-combative way initially and jt went right after him and started insulting him, too.
He put all this shit on himself. Absolutely not the other way around.
The vast majority of posters were trying to exercise self control.
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I think mcl and Bill2 are saying we as posters could have exercised better self control and just left the thread or choose to not participate. I think that is all they are trying to communicate.
The vast majority of posters were trying to exercise self control.
Perhaps, but even a better way would be to just let it die.
I have my sarcastic comments in the thread as well.
Posters repeatedly offered him advice. They also recommended he delete the thread. At one point, it was so over-the-top that it appeared he was begging to be banned in order to become a martyr. (I wasn't going to give him that honor)
The mob didn't kick in until the 7 or 8 hour mark of a 12-hour meltdown. Should we have pulled the plug on that thread sooner? Probably yes.
But that performance was beyond the pale. It was not an indictment of BBI posters. If anything, I felt that many people tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him. He refused.
I'm not disagreeing with you with regards to the individual poster. I don't know what happened with him. Never seen him act like that before. Maybe he lost his job, maybe he was on a bender and won't remember a thing, maybe he lost a lot of money, or a lost a family member and it sent him into a tailspin. I'm not sure it matters, something was wrong.
But as a community we fed that 12 hour meltdown, unnecessarily. I don't think anybody benefited from it. Quoting you: "He was outed as a fraud".
Nothing to see here, move along.
And I don't want to single out any single poster on that thread. These threads have happened enough that most of us are guilty of it at one time or another. I can admit in the early days of BBI (before we had logins), I remember participating in one, don't remember who it was now... But I decided afterwards it was wrong.
Eric, I understand your particular anger, he attacked you the most. Had it been just between the 2 of you, that's a different dynamic. It gets problematic when everybody piles on. Group dynamics is different than 1v1. From a psychological standpoint, the group thing makes it harder for certain people to back down. It becomes a downward spiral.
Even now on this thread, I am feeling reluctant to continue posting. However, since you are the site owner and the primary target of the melting down individual, I felt that you deserved the respect of this response.
Everybody is free to choose their own path. As a community, I thought it would be good for a bit of self reflection. I will leave the thread up, but I have said my piece. I'm out.
Look what its gotten us?
An Anti-Bullying reminder probably isn't a bad idea for a message board and it also sounds like someone played with fire. A nice refresher course on two lessons everyone should learn at a younger age.
Cheers!
Some people might be fine ignoring a crying child that's acting out. Let him tire himself out? Some people won't abide by that. I'm on their side
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Shortly after I joined I also agreed, applauded and participated in efforts to drive out the stupid.
Look what its gotten us?
i realize that in the end it is just to dream the impossible dream and to fight the unbeatable foe. But it brings short term satisfaction.
To right the unrightable wrong
His insults actually didn't bother me (other than the one where he accused me of lying... that pissed me off). As I said in that thread, I haven't laughed so much due to one thread since Bavaro's old garage party thread.
The whole thing seemed surreal. As I said the next day, when I woke up, I thought it was some weird dream.
Some people might be fine ignoring a crying child that's acting out. Let him tire himself out? Some people won't abide by that. I'm on their side
Continued behavior that he was exhibiting would get him banned. He wouldn't be roaming the MB insulting everyone when he wanted.