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Banning thread: Epop

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15:01 / 10.04.07

You know who I miss? Gypsy Lantern.

15:05 / 10.04.07

Yeah, I think I might owe them an apology.

17:42 / 10.04.07

You know who I miss? Gypsy Lantern.

Don't we all.

17:53 / 10.04.07

I wonder what drove hir away?

20:42 / 10.04.07

Blimey. You do something else for the Easter holidays, you come back and find a ton of reading. I've just read this whole thread from beginning to end. It's taken me about three hours.

Is the resolution of this that Epop has scrambled his password?

20:47 / 10.04.07

I think that's the $64,000 question.

21:06 / 10.04.07

Well anyway here's another vote to ban.

Don't grandstand on topics like rape to prove your cleverness, it's not big and not clever.

02:29 / 11.04.07

It was created by Jay Babcock and then handed on to Tom Coates.

Really? That's ... odd.

06:16 / 11.04.07

Gypsy's still around, albeit less frequently.

09:14 / 11.04.07

This is bad of me, very bad, but whole earlier chunks of this thread is like Epop and Haus doing the fish dance front Monty Python with Epop dancing back and forth with dainty fish-slaps unti Haus brings out the *proper*, "grant morrison is not our fish-deity" fish and knocks him into the river.

It's particularly telling that he stopped posting after that revelation, isn't it? Having read a little bit through the banning threads and other suchlike policy things I had always wondered why everyone made such a fuss about the banning process... Until now...

09:30 / 11.04.07

I'm still rather staggered that Epop appeared not to realise that we're most definitely not a community of magyck23ians and Morrison worshippers.

So, so weird.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:42 / 11.04.07

He appeared not to realise that he's sharing a species with the "chicks" so it's not that fucking weird.

Tryphena Absent

10:14 / 11.04.07

I don't think it was that weird, I mean when someone applies their own fear of rape to an entire gender (that they don't belong to) rather than themself you know you've hit an odd space, the whole chick thing just seemed like an extension of that. It's a horribly dangerous thing to do though, to maintain that kind of separation, all in all this whole scenario has been very worrying.

10:44 / 11.04.07

I don't think it's that weird either, not reading the rest of the board, and checking one particular forum once every few months, is arguably easier than reading the rest of it.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:50 / 11.04.07

I think that's what's wrong with the Temple in a lot of ways, too many people who don't also visit the Headshop or at least the 101 threads in Convo.

10:56 / 11.04.07

The weirdness I was referring to was less the fact of his lack of knowledge and more the tension between his strange ignorant rant and the reality of board he was ranting at. It was eye-poppingly dissonant stuff.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:00 / 11.04.07

But again, no more dissonant than the gap between his perception of both women and the extent to which "political correctness" reigns supreme, to pick just two examples.

11:13 / 11.04.07

The weirdness I was referring to was less the fact of his lack of knowledge and more the tension between his strange ignorant rant and the reality of board he was ranting at. It was eye-poppingly dissonant stuff.

But that's the dangers of an "initiated" perspective. One sees everything in terms of cosmic drama rather than perceiving the reality of what's actually occurring. You impose your magical narrative on everything that's in front of you. I only made one post to the thread when it was all kicking off which was critiquing that pov.

11:13 / 11.04.07

No, no more dissonant than that.

Bizarre.

11:24 / 11.04.07

It seems to me that if his account of his life experience is true, then he may well put an unusual amount of stock in his pet theories as they've quite possibly helped him through some very difficult times. This would go some way to explaining all that The-Justified-I bollocks.

Of course, I'm far from committed to that theory.

jentacular dreams

11:27 / 11.04.07

Tis true. And that can also be a problem with a strong belief in evolutionary psych. If you are the person nature intended you to be then there's little call for self reflection or personal change but still plenty of opportunities to tell people that their viewpoints (and thus maybe by implication also their genes) are flawed or inferior.

I've just been trawling through this mess myself, and I have to say I am impressed at how after 8 pages he still failed to get it. I can't help but wonder if he left thinking that we would have agreed with him, if only we focused on GM as we ought. Either way, if he can't change his attitude and language maybe it's best that he's gone.

The banhammer may not smash reality tunnels, but it gets the job done.

jentacular dreams

11:28 / 11.04.07

Sorry x-post with the Legal and General-hater.

jentacular dreams

11:32 / 11.04.07

(the above meant as irony obviously)

Tryphena Absent

11:45 / 11.04.07

Oh I think his life story is probably true, people who are on the wind up rarely maintain that level of consistency for 8 pages. Additionally if anything could make anyone believe such a pile of crap about women then it would be the kind of fucked up experience that he described.

12:05 / 11.04.07

Oh, I don't really doubt he was telling the truth about his horrific experiences. I tend to accept those kinds of claims at face value - you kind of have to, really.

12:49 / 11.04.07

Yeah, Boboss. I suppose one has to accept people at face value on these matters. One would think it would make a person more sensitive to others who may have had that experience (which, I realize, comes back on me too). I think that is why I took issue with Epop claims. I think I threw that kind of insensitivity back at him, which I am not saying was right, but it was very difficult to accept someone using predatory language and then try to engender sympathy for their own survivor status.

I rather feel sorry for Epop now. There was so much self-loathing there, through all that pomposity. I wish I had handled myself better, maybe recognizing his pain...I feel like I failed him in a way. His claims in every other area were such outrageous self-justification, it was hard for me to believe anything Epop said. It is just not right, though, to question abuse survivor-status, whether I believed him or not. It is just too detrimental to creating a safe space, and I apologize to Barbelith as a whole for that. At least it was a chance to discuss it, and there is greater understanding about it.

13:03 / 11.04.07

Agree with immediately above.

I think the thing that I really couldn't understand was why he didn't seem to be able to grasp that there might be people on this board with experiences every bit as awful as what he went through with no desire to discuss it. Particularly with him, I might add. The whole "I sincerely doubt" thing was such an awful mess, he obviously couldn't see that hthre was nothing anyone could say to that except "Well, I've been raped TOO, so NER!" which would have been even more fucked up than his bizarre jockeying for position was in the first place.

I'm left only with the very simple and very unpleasant idea that he was really doing nothing more complex than using Barbelith as a punching bag to try and work through dominance and submission issues, whether conscious of it or not. It's nasty to have those things imposed on you by reality, but you can't get rid of them by using strangers as a lightning conductor.

I make no claims for the veracity of that last assumption. It's an impression, not an opinion, a distasteful one at that, and is intended to be descriptive, not analytical. So, Epop, if you ever read this, be assured that, should any discussion in any other context regarding the matter take place, I will continue to value your own views of your motivations over mine.

13:09 / 11.04.07

I tend to agree with Apophenia that there appears to be some filter that blocks incoming data which challenges the recipient's POV.

I suspect, and this is completely IMO, there is something about the way many of these traditions place such extreme emphasis on personal ego reliance that it promotes a rigidity in beliefs. On one hand it gives the holder a wellspring of confidence and self reliance but on the other it paints everything external as treacherous and illusionary. There's no faith in anything external or even being a part of something that's invested in your unique snowflaky badassery. You are ultimately alone driving at the helm of your spaceship reality bubble. Everything and everyone who you interact with is read, as Apophenia suggests, through your lens of the absolute: ally or enemy... and you already know enough to be sure of these decisions as unchangeable.

It's a permanent LARP kind of headspace that works for some people but sadly excludes, I believe, more than it includes.
Again I don't wish to sound like I'm picking on anyone's set of beliefs or practices but this seems like a recurring pitfall of a certain type of practice. I imagine the other end of the spectrum is too much reliance on the external forces for validation. Another vote for the path of moderation is me.

Not to mention the aura of hubris and unpleasant reality assumptions freaks me out. I suspect Epop is able to create his own reality and it seems a bit on the hostile to human side of things. Mind you I'm sure I often sound like a doomsayer compared to some folks but I try to balance that razor blade surface out with an altogether purrball center.

..and though Epop seems to think he's shutting the board down if he'd bothered to poke about and read a few threads he'd see that the discussion of the {{{FUTURE}}}-jet packs included, was already well under way.

Once again I'm left with the feeling of losing a potential friend because the person stood a bit too far on the other side of the line of fanaticism. If I have to accept your reality as my own in order to talk to you, it ain't happening.

13:19 / 11.04.07

It's a permanent LARP kind of headspace that works for some people but sadly excludes, I believe, more than it includes.

An old friend told me the ability to laugh at your own supposed magical achievements is priceless.

I actually found the thread quite upsetting to read (despite the odd gem from various posters) - one, because of the shit it is very likely that Epop had been through, and the way none of it appeared to be resolved by this situation, just made worse. Two, because of the way he was upsetting and distressing other posters. Not nice.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:43 / 11.04.07

I'm in agreement with Boboss (and the posts following his).

I think this enters similar territory to Ganesh's thread about those with mental health issues- at what point does one person's coping mechanism become a license to attack others?

Unfortunately, I think that point was reached, breached and crossed a long time ago in this case.

As I said before, Epop was downright rude, and refused to change his style of communication on having this pointed out to him. Any other board would have kicked him days ago. It's to Barbelith's credit that we didn't, really, even though I was (and still would be) in favour of a ban. (I don't like the convoluted baning process in and of itself, but I do like the fact that we DON'T ban people out of hand, even in cases, like this one, when I'd be all in favour of doing so, if you see what I mean). It's a shame, but I don't think there's a lot else anyone here could have done.

Unconditional Love

20:25 / 11.04.07

I hope he gets himself back into therapy with a good group or therapist to be honest, then maybe his posting style wont be so Naff.

00:31 / 12.04.07

Oh he'll be all right, I'm sure. Epop has crossed The Abyss which is something that nobody else on this board seems to have done.

Except, that is, for me.

But I don't like to talk about it.

02:48 / 12.04.07

I blame Alex's Grandma for inspiring this with that last post.

04:48 / 12.04.07

Streuth! Stop talking about Epop! You're giving him power! He may be invisibly lurking! Go to the Comics forum and post about OMEGA FLIGHT, for god's sake, or you may doom us all...

12:39 / 12.04.07

TYPO Keggers! It is "Epop", which is "Pope" backwards.

Either way, it is ridiculous.

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