To focus on a different community than ResetEra for once, here is my take on another site - Fark.com
The site was very popular with those on the libertarian right not too many years ago. Neil Boortz was a big fan back when he still had his Radio show, Drew Curtis the owner of the site even ran to be the governor of Kentucky a few years back as an independent. From what I understand, many talk radio shows used it as a quick way to find content to talk about in the days before reddit and digg, etc. Drew even penned a now, rather prophetic book on fake news in 2007, called "
It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News". Its a fairly interesting read actually.
The site used to be a bunch of people banting over news articles, some god awful political discussion, pictures of boobies (the site even had a spin off "foobies.com" for pictures of hot women for a couple of years), stupid/funny news, and copious amounts of alcohol fueled shitposting. It was fun, never too serious and had a pretty good culture and friendships were made. It was never all that toxic though.
Fast forward a few years, and things started to change during the later Obama years and more drastically around the 2016 election run up. The politics tab was becoming more radical left. More far left shit posting and more heated debate and toxicity, and now recently some threads are nearly as bad as ResetERA lunacy.
Why I bring this up, is that the moderation there too has become rather focused on protecting certain trolls. Usually left leaning trolls. I used to post on there quite a bit. Last night though something weird happened. There was a topic on Asia Argento, and I was involved in the discussion. It was a greenlit article on the main entertainment page.
The Headline was this "
Ok ok, take 2. I did have sex with that minor, but HE assaulted ME. That's why I had my dead boyfriend pay him 350k. Or something? But it would be great if you kept feeling bad for me"
You can't read it now, right? The thread is now only available to those who subscribe for 5 dollars a month. A mod pulled it back, marking it as an inaccurate headline.
The comment thread about it had well over 250 replies, and some good discussion about the how it could have related to the death of Bourdain, and the impact to the #metoo movement. Until the troll showed up. I got called out about a joke I cracked a few years go. This is the same troll who has stalked me through threads over there linking back to comments I made years prior regarding my hatred of Hillary, my support of Sanders. I threw back some shade, called him a troll, some meta commentary about moderation came up by some other posters, then my posts aimed at the troll were wiped, and the meta commentary and the comment section was closed to everyone but subscribers. It's creepy, and feels targeted, like it is a way to force me off the site without banning me. The troll isn't a mod, but very well could be an alt account with an agenda. Fark has some pretty hilarious instances of people getting caught as alts. I don't really reference my video game/NeoGAF posting over there, but something strange happened in his attack on me. I was called a "GamerGater". There was a bigtime pro-Hillary mod there too.
This all brings me back to that post I made earlier with that scary Soros linked
David Brock memo. I used to be a very anti Hillary, posting both here and there about it. I eventually voted for her, but for awhile I was all about sending a fuck you message to her camp because of how Sanders was treated. I use the same username in both places. Makes you wonder.
