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Glory Days

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00:25 / 28.05.08

Was he Inner Circle or was that someone else?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:43 / 28.05.08

Someone else. I vaguely recall 100%, he was pre-innercircle. Innercircle was the one who went on GNN and had weird sock-puppet conversations with himself using material cut-and-pasted from Barbelith posts.

10:19 / 28.05.08

Sort of like what I do on Facebook groups then?

Umm...did I say that out loud?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:45 / 28.05.08

I cut out pictures from the Photos thread and stick them onto card or stiff paper, then I tape lolly sticks to the back. Then I play games with them.

11:08 / 28.05.08

I just map the pictures onto my Sims characters, and play Devilgod with them.

17:17 / 28.05.08

Oh, wait. I do remember what happened with 100%. He posted to the Big Brother (series 1) thread - so, 2000 or thereabouts - telling everybody in it how stupid they were for watching something like Big Brother. Very similar to this sort of thing in tone and usefulness. Was told that it was a thread to discuss the show, not how thick and sheeple-like the viewing audience were. Did it again, had post deleted. Started a thread called 'Big Brother is Shit', or something along those lines, with opening post consisting of the words "It is". Had thread locked.

Tried to do the evil genius thing on 2000AD forum, was met with amused yawns. Didn't realise that Barbelith poster was also member of 2000AD forum. Got the boot.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Yes. Yes, it can.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:50 / 28.05.08

I think we need a retroactive thread where we spend 8 or 9 pages re-evaluating 100%'s contributions from a more sympathetic perspective.

For example, was his calling Big Brother "shit" necessarily an insult? Maybe he meant that it was a fertilising agent in the psyche of the veiwers. Maybe by "you're all stupid" he was actually referring back to the original derivation of the word stupid from "stunned." What if he meant that the people discussing Big Brother were all stunning?

Then there's his choice of the 2000AD board to commence an "attack" on Barbelith. At the time, the Y2K meme still had legs, so to speak, with 2000 being identified closely with the Eschaton--the transcendant, the spiritual, the eternal instant of liberation from our worldly constraints. How else can we interpret "bringing down" (more properly drawing down) Barbelith(!!!) via "2000AD" but as a symbolic act of liberation and transcendance, the act of a veritable "Jack Frost"?

You can bask in your smug superiority if you like, having so easily SILENCED a fresh young voice with a trip behind the chemical sheds. Personally I'm going to track this guy down, see if he'll friend me on livejournal. I bet he'd like to join my astral dream warrior squad.

18:04 / 28.05.08

Maybe if he chose to be taken out behind the chemical shed he could have stayed?

18:11 / 28.05.08

Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Yes. Yes, it can.

So what changed?

18:23 / 28.05.08

We started discussing bannings, rather than just going with "you're an arsehole, now hush".

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:29 / 28.05.08

Maybe if he chose to be taken out behind the chemical shed he could have stayed?

I like to think that he did stay. In spirit.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:34 / 28.05.08

I think modzero was the first person banned (repeatedly - him, his imaginary girlfriend, a couple of imaginary friends who just happened to be passing and wanted to mention that he was a cool guy, and so on)

... not to mention a couple of suits who emerged some time later which just happened to write in exactly the same style as Modzy and to take an immediate but entirely coincidental dislike to those who had been the object of his ire (or to come over creepily chummy and palsy-walsy, which if anything was slightly less pleasant).

18:42 / 28.05.08

So....
The Good old days = Easier banning + less muppets?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:12 / 29.05.08

Not really. This was before the discussion about whether Barbelith should be a safe space. Then we had The Fetch try it on with his anti-Semitism which was restricted to (IIRC) one Switchboard thread and one Head-Shop thread. In both cases he was mocked and argued with roundly, I would still argue that it is impossible to read those threads and see any support of his position, it consists of people saying "No, you're wrong!" or "Ha Ha, you suck!" but unfortunately it led to one of Tom's great acts of absentee landlordism by suddenly locking both threads, kicking the Fetch out the door and telling us off for talking about it, while ignoring the fact that, up to that point, we didn't know there was any other way of doing things.

Although without Tom this place would never have started it's also true that it is due to him that most of the problems we have also started, though in a way we're all guilty for making them worse. Except for grant of course. Grant is perfect in all he does and pleasegodletmyparentslive!

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:24 / 29.05.08

You're thinking of Zoemancer. The Fetch was Temple, and his banning was the occasion of a thread on "Censorship among magical practitioners" in the Policy which led, among other things, to the pervasive idea of the Temple catflap.

However, the Fetch and Zoemancer did lead to the realisation that we could actually respond to people by banning them, at around the same time that the one person able to ban people largely stopped dropping by. This had some positives - application of the same standards to less hot-button issues led to the overdue ejection of some others. However, the attempt to work out how to ban people led to arguments, bad feeling, a lot of the older contributors losing heart and probably began the decline in content that is being referenced at the start of this thread.

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