Meta GAF |ON| Gaf on Gaf

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I need to stop changing my avatar. Someone stop me.

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Bitmap Frogs said:
at least it's contained and we only get spills in the meta thread - it serves a purpose imho
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The purpose was to deal with TDS screechers. People would flood Gaming and OT boards with political threads as well as drag threads into commentary about Trump and American politics in general. More than two years ago, the forum played with the idea of banning politics entirely, but the less-harsh option was chosen: create a separate board.

This was a bit of a hot topic for a few months especially in the ResetERA thread, because it showed a contrast between the two forums. GAF was willing to let gaming be gaming by separating politics, but ERA stuck by the old mantra that "everything is politics". Over time, conversation on politics flourished because people were allowed to share opinions without getting autobanned, but the Politics still served its purpose as a honeypot / containment board to put the still-ongoing flood of political / tds / sjw threads from Gaming and OT.

Then old GAF users began reeeeeturning and even some new users / alts began signing up specifically to "discuss" on the Politics boards and nowhere else, people like OnionSnake, though he was just the most recent in a loooooong chain of such people. This was also a hot topic for a few months because it was obvious that some people didn't like the wrongthink GAF allowed, so they were signing up and reeeeturning specifically because of the political talk on a gaming forum. This was regularly pointed out by folks here and became kind of a joke because they still kept coming.

That's also around the time when the "trashfire of freethinkers" nickname came to be, and NPC meme made its rounds, because GAF dared allow people to speak their mind. The response to these people flooding Politics was to implement a 50-post minimum before someone was allowed to post in politics, a rule that still exists, thankfully. That at least kept the lowest-effort trolls out, but persistent trolls would simply spend a few days/weeks getting 50 posts and then would head straight to Politics. These "letterposters" stuck out like a sore thumb and were also called out, many many many times, and they would persist on the boards for months until finally throwing an epic tantrum or passive-aggressively requesting a ban.

This all took place in 2018 and 2019, long before the US election season in 2020 and long before the most recent fallout.

Since you were gone during that time of the forum's history, I figured I'd fill you in on the details.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
You seem resentful about something =/
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As usual you're gonna resort to mind-reading... that was also a really common behavior among reeeturners during the time period I described above.

Weird tag for someone so hostile to fellow GAFers, especially those who lay out facts that have nothing to do with you personally, since like I said it all happened before you came back.
 
DunDunDunpachi said:
As usual you're gonna resort to mind-reading... that was also a really common behavior among reeeturners during the time period I described above.

Weird tag for someone so hostile to fellow GAFers, especially those who lay out facts that have nothing to do with you personally, since like I said it all happened before you came back.
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Yep, there's that "reeeturner" moniker again.

You need to let go of that pent up salt you got holed up inside man.
 
The guy never called anyone names or insulted people. He just posted political stuff and argued his perspective. Entirely civil and polite in every single post I saw from him.

I mostly just saw people insulting him, calling him names, and trying to repeatedly put him down while he ignored it and tried to take the high road. I've seen the exact same thing happen to multiple left leaning posters on here.

I genuinely like reading threads from conservatives on here, and it helps me stay informed about other perspectives. But there really are a chunk of people that genuinely seem to hate diversity of thought, and just prefer a circle jerk.

Sorry to see you go OnionSnake.

OmegaSupreme said:
Can't say I'm sorry to see the snake go. He was exactly that.
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I have no clue why you would think that.

Maybe I missed some awful post of his that earned him this reputation? Can you point me to some of his worst posts that make you hate him so much?
 
I've never felt there was a "clique" here. Obviously in any community some people will form friendships or jokes between each other. I've been a regular here for a long time but my posts are normally pretty low key. I'm not really the type that would fall into any "clique" myself. Despite that, any time I have interacted with any of the banned people they have been cool to talk to and not any different then talking to anyone else here. A lot of them were just the people that stuck around after the split to help build the community back. They created content and brought some personality to the forum.

I also don't think politics is the issue. Politics does lean a bit right, but a lot of people who signed up are the type that are more for free speech and tired of woke garbage. We have some decent left wing people here. Then we have people that post 50 times and then sit in politics all day to troll like OnionSnake did. The dude was posting there 1000+ times a month. Realistically the politics forum should have had the bar to post set much higher then 50 posts. It should have been a place to stop by and talk the news of the day with fellow gamers, not people who register on a gaming forum to talk politics. But as stated before, I don't think that has anything to do with the current forum issues.

It seems like there was a push recently to push the forum culture abruptly in a certain direction. A lot of threads were closed down and we now know a lot of accounts were banned for no reason other then being a part of some mysterious "clique". We were orginally told that the bans were due to some rule change about conspiracy theories, but a lot of those posters were not poltical or posting conspiracy theories. Now we see their accounts weren't actually closed for those reasons. It was nice seeing staff work with individual posters in the early days after the split to make amends for all the shadow bans that happened 2016 and prior. It is disappointing to see staff revert back to these old tactics after spending the last few years building trust within the community and creating a unique place on the internet.
 
Punished Miku said:
The guy never called anyone names or insulted people. He just posted political stuff and argued his perspective. Entirely civil and polite in every single post I saw from him.

I mostly just saw people insulting him, calling him names, and trying to repeatedly put him down while he ignored it and tried to take the high road. I've seen the exact same thing happen to multiple left leaning posters on here.

I genuinely like reading threads from conservatives on here, and it helps me stay informed about other perspectives. But there really are a chunk of people that genuinely seem to hate diversity of thought, and just prefer a circle jerk.

Sorry to see you go OnionSnake.


I have no clue why you would think that.

Maybe I missed some awful post of his that earned him this reputation? Can you point me to some of his worst posts that make you hate him so much?
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No. I wont help you there. It was obvious. Ask the mods for clarity if you'd like. They banned him. Not anyone else.
 
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JORMBO said:
I've never felt there was a "clique" here. Obviously in any community some people will form friendships or jokes between each other. I've been a regular here for a long time but my posts are normally pretty low key. I'm not really the type that would fall into any "clique" myself. Despite that, any time I have interacted with any of the banned people they have been cool to talk to and not any different then talking to anyone else here. A lot of them were just the people that stuck around after the split to help build the community back. They created content and brought some personality to the forum.

I also don't think politics is the issue. Politics does lean a bit right, but a lot of people who signed up are the type that are more for free speech and tired of woke garbage. We have some decent left wing people here. Then we have people that post 50 times and then sit in politics all day to troll like OnionSnake did. The dude was posting there 1000+ times a month. Realistically the politics forum should have had the bar to post set much higher then 50 posts. It should have been a place to stop by and talk the news of the day with fellow gamers, not people who register on a gaming forum to talk politics. But as stated before, I don't think that has anything to do with the current forum issues.

It seems like there was a push recently to push the forum culture abruptly in a certain direction. A lot of threads were closed down and we now know a lot of accounts were banned for no reason other then being a part of some mysterious "clique". We were orginally told that the bans were due to some rule change about conspiracy theories, but a lot of those posters were not poltical or posting conspiracy theories. Now we see their accounts weren't actually closed for those reasons. It was nice seeing staff work with individual posters in the early days after the split to make amends for all the shadow bans that happened 2016 and prior. It is disappointing to see staff revert back to these old tactics after spending the last few years building trust within the community and creating a unique place on the internet.
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You're misinformed. The clique isn't welcome here because it's organizing disruptive activity against the site, not for arbitrary reasons.
 
ManaByte said:
The Politics board was becoming nothing but ShareBlue talking points and he was the one starting all of the threads.
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So you guys hated him for starting a lot of left-leaning political threads?

All I read on the politics board was right-leaning political threads for literally years, and I'd say 90% of them were created by like 3 people.

I don't understand the name calling and all that. I never really saw him attack anyone. I saw people calling him names repeatedly and he never attacked back as far as I saw.
 
Punished Miku said:
So you guys hated him for starting a lot of left-leaning political threads?

All I read on the politics board was right-leaning political threads for literally years, and I'd say 90% of them were created by like 3 people.

I don't understand the name calling and all that. I never really saw him attack anyone. I saw people calling him names repeatedly and he never attacked back as far as I saw.
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Fine. I'll give you a specific one. He called me a shitty parent for not being able to monitor what media my kid consumes at all times. He was against making it tougher for children to access porn. Good enough?

Again though. I never reported him. Never thought about it. All that said I wont miss him. Nor will hardly anyone else.
 
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OmegaSupreme said:
Fine. I'll give you a specific one. He called me a shitty parent for not being able to monitor what media my kid consumes at all times. He was against making it tougher for children to access porn. Good enough?
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Not really a great answer, but thanks for answering. It's your opinion, and you're welcome to have it.

I remember that thread. Sounds a little rude, but still ultimately on topic. The whole topic of debate was about should the government mandate that phone manufacturers include these options, or should it be the personal responsibility of the parents. He's basically just arguing the other side in a binary debate. I've seen lots of significantly more heated political debates than that. You're twisting what the thread was about to make it seem like he's some pedophile apologist or something.

I see lots more people that were nasty to him. I think he was mostly singled out for his politics, not some slightly rude comments. Lots of people in politics are rude.
 
Punished Miku said:
Not really a great answer, but thanks for answering. It's your opinion, and you're welcome to have it.

I remember that thread. Sounds a little rude, but still ultimately on topic. The whole topic of debate was about should the government mandate that phone manufacturers include these options, or should it be the personal responsibility of the parents. He's basically just arguing the other side in a binary debate. I've seen lots of significantly more heated political debates than that. You're twisting what the thread was about to make it seem like he's some pedophile apologist or something.

I see lots more people that were nasty to him. I think he was mostly singled out for his politics, not some slightly rude comments. Lots of people in politics are rude.
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That's one off the top of my head. He could never take criticism either. Despite how factual it was. He's gone. I don't care. Moving on.
 
Punished Miku said:
I have no clue why you would think that.

Maybe I missed some awful post of his that earned him this reputation? Can you point me to some of his worst posts that make you hate him so much?
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You should just message a mod and ask what behavior he was repeatedly warned about, that culminated in him lashing out and asking for an account closure.
 
EviLore said:
Planning coordinated attacks, like what happened in 2017.
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This is really vague again. Of the small amount of banned people that I do know I know they were not involved in anything like that. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the banned posters were the ones who stuck around through the split and helped build things up again. It just strikes me as unusual that all these people wanted to see GAF burn (or whatever) suddenly. I did see the post that OmegaSupreme OmegaSupreme referenced since I lurk that site that makes fun of ERA sometimes. That attack came after all these account closures and not before. The (rhetorical) question for me then is would something like that have been posted back in December?

Anyways, I'm off work today and it is 65 outside so I will leave it at that. Those are just some thoughts I've had over the past few months.
 
Punished Miku said:
So you guys hated him for starting a lot of left-leaning political threads?

All I read on the politics board was right-leaning political threads for literally years, and I'd say 90% of them were created by like 3 people.

I don't understand the name calling and all that. I never really saw him attack anyone. I saw people calling him names repeatedly and he never attacked back as far as I saw.
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There's a difference between left-leaning, right-leaning, and a propagandist. He was a propagandist. Cryptoadam was too, in the other direction.
 
MudoSkills said:
People sure do take forums very seriously.
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It's heartwarming to know how much you and others posting similar sentiments do not give a fuck about this place or anyone posting here. Going to lead to some great community building.
 
My issue with Onion wasn't that he was a far lefty, it was that at least for myself, I detected absolutely no convictions on what he posted whatsoever. To me he just seemed to post whatever article that he came across from the mass media to the point where it seemed he was only ingesting and divesting their talking points. And when challenged on certain things, he'd only respond with :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
Punished Miku said:
The guy never called anyone names or insulted people. He just posted political stuff and argued his perspective. Entirely civil and polite in every single post I saw from him.

I mostly just saw people insulting him, calling him names, and trying to repeatedly put him down while he ignored it and tried to take the high road. I've seen the exact same thing happen to multiple left leaning posters on here.

I genuinely like reading threads from conservatives on here, and it helps me stay informed about other perspectives. But there really are a chunk of people that genuinely seem to hate diversity of thought, and just prefer a circle jerk.

Sorry to see you go OnionSnake.


I have no clue why you would think that.

Maybe I missed some awful post of his that earned him this reputation? Can you point me to some of his worst posts that make you hate him so much?
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Nah, he was antagonistic and an obvious troll. Anytime he couldn't argue his points (which was often) he'd resort to sarcastic reactions. People called him out repeatedly on his hypocrisy and that was all he had instead of debating people. On top of that, he seemed to have a pretty poor opinion of the board in general. Personal example was in the Trump CPAC thread where he said "oh so now you guys are against bigotry?" when he tried to post a shitty "gotcha" article equating cancel culture to not allowing a dude who posted anti-semetic shit to speak. Seriously, if you think people on this board are for bigotry, why even post here? Why would you deal with a group of people in general if you think they are hateful bigots? He clearly thought the majority of us were far right/white supremacists/Nazis because he had such a narrow view of politics, why even bother with us if that's your opinion of the community?

There's a lot of new posters who lean left that manage to debate their points in politics and elsewhere who can do so without acting like a child. I like reading their posts for a different perspective on things. Toiletsnake was just a dickhead who had a low opinion of us and his posts were misinformed most of the time, as someone would directly refute what he had to say with sourced articles and he'd respond with "news to me" then double down on his dumbassery.
 
EviLore said:
When is your account suicide planned for, Zefah?
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You know I wouldn't do that. Got no interest in shitting on this forum that I've been a part of for 14 years even if I don't always agree with things.
 
Maybe a notice that brap brap was not the only one planning to jump in here and embarass himself with an account suicide. There are at least 3 of the clique-roaches still sitting here idle on GAF. I don't need to mention names as they'll likely be popping into this thread any day now. I figure the click..err...clique has been active on their own utopian Discord out there somewhere and have been stepping in to check that ban board. They're like Southerners today who still believe in confederate values...nearly 200-years have past since they lost their own civil war and yet their inbred ancestors still want vengeance. Same goes for the clique and those who went off in 2017.
 
Zefah said:
It's heartwarming to know how much you and others posting similar sentiments do not give a fuck about this place or anyone posting here. Going to lead to some great community building.
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Again, not what I was saying.

Maybe I should have quoted but that was in reference to the coordinated disruption Evilore mentioned.
 
It's been a rough few months for everyone I think. One part of the forum that very openly supported Trump and some of whom supported the subsequent riot at the capitol as well took a loss in a very public way and immediately following it EviLore EviLore cracked down on the many ills that had been plaguing the section for months. I don't blame anyone for being upset for the sudden changes, but people are responsible for their own behavior and their own actions. Everyone here is an adult. It's possible to be upset with something/someone or to disagree with it/them without being an asshole or violating the rules in the process. People grandstanding for no reason over perceived slights, attacking the staff directly because they can no longer behave like shits towards other users, or because their friends got banned for behaving like shits have no place in the community as far as I am concerned.



One of the defining features of a community is that it changes over time. People change, the rules change, or even just the world changes around them. The sign of a good community member is that they are willing to adapt to the changing climate whether it be via rules or the world around them.



If someone is so unyielding and so stubborn that they cannot abide by very simple changes in the rules or the community then they were not real community members in my opinion. They were just sightseers on a vacation because they liked the view. They liked the climate as it was in that moment. They were never planning on being on actually living here long term. If they were they would have been able to adjust or at the very least been willing to try. Too many people just said "You dare change things!?!?!! Fuck this I'm out!" too quickly for me to believe that they were ever real allies of this community.
 
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