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This is not the post I wanted to be making this week. If I was going to post anywhere specifically about being back, it would've been in the "Introduce Yourself" thread, since a lot has happened in my life since I was around last, and since I felt that my entire core philosophy had been deeply misunderstood, at a bedrock level, when I left. But, I can't. I don't like who we've become as a group, and I'm no longer comfortable being a member, so it's time for me to move on. I love all of you, individually, and you're all more than welcome to keep in touch.

Discord: Garedicus#9038


- Gared
Oh, and you can go ahead and pronounce it with the hard G, instead of Jared with a J - Fogle, Kushner, and Pro are not people with whom I want to be associated, tyvm.

So serious question. How would you guys feel about shuttering the Political form or moving it to the Hive? Putting a moratorium on all the current bullshittery and negativity. I mean, we can get political shit anywhere. Why not have a politics-free zone? MOHFA - Make Our Halforums Fun Again

Isn't the rest of the forum the politics-free zone? I do what I can to keep politics constrained to there.

That's why I asked. Not sure how people feel about it.

People already have the option to ignore the politics forum. Maybe just change it to opt in instead of opt out.

Dave said:

So serious question. How would you guys feel about shuttering the Political form or moving it to the Hive? Putting a moratorium on all the current bullshittery and negativity. I mean, we can get political shit anywhere. Why not have a politics-free zone? MOHFA - Make Our Halforums Fun Again

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Shuttering, no. There's way too much going on to not have a place to discuss/debate/argue/fight about it. Maybe an opt-in so those who are there knew what they were getting into.

And what happens in the politics pit, STAYS in the politics pit. Or else.

I know I don't join in the discussion often due to not feeling like I have much to input that won't be rebuffed. I am working on opening myself more and trusting. The trust thing isn't from here though, I just don't trust well in general.

I vote Opt In. I'd still do it, but it'd keep things (hopefully) light hearted outside of it.

Except when it involves Buffalo sports teams, of course, but I can't help myself there.

jwhouk said:

Except when it involves Buffalo sports teams, of course, but I can't help myself there.

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And Pittsburgh.

I watched a dental student get dressed down by a preceptor for shit talking Pittsburgh during clinic hours.

Good. He deserved it.

Dave said:

So serious question. How would you guys feel about shuttering the Political form or moving it to the Hive? Putting a moratorium on all the current bullshittery and negativity. I mean, we can get political shit anywhere. Why not have a politics-free zone? MOHFA - Make Our Halforums Fun Again

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The politics forum never bothered me, even when I would strongly disagree with things said in there, because I never saw any logic in getting upset with someone's opinion. I get mad when lawmakers have views counter to mine, but no one here is making governmental policy, at least as far as I'm aware.

In short- just don't give a fuck what other people believe, you'll be happier for it.

I’m sorry to see that you’ll be leaving us.

Is the Politics forum where this is mostly happening?

Squidleybits said:

I’m sorry to see that you’ll be leaving us.

Is the Politics forum where this is mostly happening?

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To be completely honest, Squids, until today I hadn't even read the politics forum since coming back. If we were going to ban subjects that seem to be upsetting people, we'd need to ban talking about food, or ranting about losing people close to us, or technology, or online games, or any subject in which we may feel the need to compare a situation to a certain member's springtime formal dance occasion. It's not the topics that are the problem, it's the way we speak to each other. In fact, the instant call to consider banning a topic of discussion entirely, or change how people interact with that sub-forum, when it had been mentioned in only two of the nine examples given? <shrug>

Gared said:

It's not the topics that are the problem, it's the way we speak to each other.

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They say familiarity breeds contempt. Part of the issue is it's really just been a core group all this time, and we just got used to communicating with certain people in a certain way, without realizing that that person has changed, or their situation has changed. Therefore, what was once taken with a chuckle is now triggering. Take my own example from earlier today. People took certain things said a little too personally, which set off a spiral of "why am I still here?" I slept on it woke up to find reassurances to my little pity party, and came back energized.

I'm having too much fun here to really up and leave for good. Not without good cause. But I agree. We really need to watch out for each other's feelings more.

If we have to choose between making politics opt-in or Hive, then I vote for making it opt-in.

In my opinion, "It might offend someone" should not be the determining factor whether or not to move something into the Hive. We try something like that, we're going to end up sterile and boring just like tumblr did, and I do not want that. Personal attacks and/or baiting should be addressed through the existing mechanisms of reporting, editing, or giving someone a time-out if they refuse to stop.

There is NO WAY that any public forum* can operate without unexpectedly triggering someone at some point. Clowns, one upside-down book on a bookcase, the use of "girl" instead of "woman," a[n in]famous incident at some sporting event, guns/weapons, excessive redundancy, sex/gender/orientation/affect, lists v. tables, opinion v. fact, esoterica, steak, excessive redundancy, and on and on. People are going to get offended, and there is nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the forum...at which point someone will get offended that the forum got shut down. The only way to win this game is not to play.

If the risk of hurt feelings or even full-blown PTSD over Subject A is too great, then I get why someone particularly sensitive to Subject A may get triggered or want to leave (not specifically aimed at you, @Gared ), especially if Subject A is something others wish to discuss or that happens to be blowing up in the news at the moment. That's where behaving like a mature adult is supposed to come in: Someone says, "Please avoid blah or take it private," and then either blah goes behind closed doors, or else someone responds with, "There's just no way to keep from talking about blah right now," in which case it'd probably be best for the blah-hater to avoid the area for a while until the subject cools down. So if you're someone who e.g. hates Trump and who gets a seizure when you hear his voice, this is definitely not a good time to be alive for you. But if you "merely" have a crippling fear of coconut crabs, the odds are pretty good you can live your life, browse our forum, and run at worst an extremely intermittent risk of being triggered (unless you are browsing from Indonesia, I guess).

As a suggestion, we have a [spoilẹr] tag which is already frequently used to hide inconveniently large pictures, actual spoilers, NSFW content, etc. It would be easy to use one to hide something identified as contentious, a sort of extremely local "opt-in" policy, especially if the spoiler is clearly labeled as to its content. It's also possible that people are going to slip up from time to time and suddenly OH NO [media-youtube]coconut_crab_steals_hamburger.htm[/media-youtube] gets posted in full view, and one person will need to be reminded while another one will need to squint through one eye and click the "next" and/or "mark as read" button(s). At least, that's what mature adults do.

And there are going to be arguments over the dumbest things. No way around that, either. It could be over something subjectively specific, like religion, OS preference, or even which end of a boiled egg should be opened first, but there's no reason to go to war over it. And if you are going to go to war over it, then for God's sake take it to PMs. Like Gared says above, nobody wants to watch other members of their family get into a knock-down, drag-out match in public over their preferences for boxers v. boyshorts v. briefs.

So...yeah, I guess my vote is actually for "keep the hierarchy the way it is" unless that is determined by an important someone to be an inadequate solution, in which case my second choice is for "make it opt-in with a disclaimer that you lose the right to complain AND that personal attacks will not be tolerated."

--Patrick
*any forum, not just "web forum" or "town hall meeting" or whatever. Any gathering.

PatrThom said:

nobody wants to watch other members of their family get into a knock-down, drag-out match in public over their preferences for boxers v. boyshorts v. briefs.

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Speak for yourself, that's why I go to family gatherings.

This isn't even a joke, the last holiday family thing I went to, I attended specifically because there was a chance there might be an uncle fight. Sadly, there wasn't.

I feel like I must not read a lot of posts. I felt this place has been much gentler than it was five years ago.

Keeping the political subforum is necessary for keeping that content out of the rest.

I generally agree with @Hailey Knight on this one, this forum is NOTHING like it was during the 2009-2014 period. Anyone remember some of the shit CHAZ used to say? It's way calmer now.

DarkAudit said:

And what happens in the politics pit, STAYS in the politics pit. Or else.

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This has generally been my opinion of things. Though, there have have been times where I'll spend like... 2 hours writing a 2-5k word post refuting something someone said because it was baseless and without factual backing. Most of the time I just delete it before posting because the act of writing it was enough to expend my anger (and I have thus lost my desire to BURN IT ALL DOWN). I think the only one I've done in the past few months was the gun control one. It's just not worth going nuclear all the time.

DarkAudit said:

They say familiarity breeds contempt. Part of the issue is it's really just been a core group all this time, and we just got used to communicating with certain people in a certain way, without realizing that that person has changed, or their situation has changed. Therefore, what was once taken with a chuckle is now triggering.

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I wouldn't necessarily say triggering in all instances, but it definitely can be an "I know how to push your buttons" thing. I think we each need to be more responsible for our actions and be considerate of others' feelings. Sometimes we need to apologize and just back the hell off rather than making the situation worse with knee-jerk retaliation.

To my knowledge, nobody's ever left because of something that was in a political thread.

AshburnerX said:

this forum is NOTHING like it was during the 2009-2014 period. Anyone remember some of the shit CHAZ used to say? It's way calmer now.

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Hell, remember the shit that GasBandit asshole used to say??

Dig it. I was just floating stuff out there. I hate to lose anyone over vitriol and I guess I conflate most of that with the current political climate.

Carry on, but be excellent to each other.

I am completely unaffected by any of this, but we have been doing this for a long time. I was a kid(19?) when I joined. Im 32 now. Ive been so many different people in that time it boggles my mind. good luck to Gared, and I hope this place can continue to be a gathering place for the people who want it to be. thanks for listening, ill be quiet now.

I agree with @Gared that we can really come down hard on folks and grind a joke into the ground. I know I've used some of our memes that pissed off Calleja and N_R, and probably a bunch of other folks.

However, there were some folks like: CDS and LeQuack that said some really inflammatory things. I kind of think they wanted the drama. I don't know what should be done about folks that seem to be actively stirring up shit.

When it comes to politics and religion, I think we should all go easy on the rhetoric and hyperbole. It becomes so toxic and hate-filled that it can't possibly be discussed reasonably.

I am reminded of one of our founding guidelines, which I'm slightly proud to say I was the first to put in writing here on HF. To the best of my recollection anyway.

Anywho, here it is: Don't be a dick.

It's a guideline I generally try to follow here and elsewhere. I don't always succeed, but I still try.

drawn_inward said:

I don't know what should be done about folks that seem to be actively stirring up shit.

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PatrThom said:

Personal attacks and/or baiting should be addressed through the existing mechanisms of reporting, editing, or giving someone a time-out if they refuse to stop.

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Bones said:

ill be quiet now.

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Only if you feel you have to.

—Patrick

Good luck Gared. I'm sorry to see you go for good and I'll miss you.

drawn_inward said:

I agree with @Gared that we can really come down hard on folks and grind a joke into the ground. I know I've used some of our memes that pissed off Calleja and N_R, and probably a bunch of other folks.

However, there were some folks like: CDS and LeQuack that said some really inflammatory things. I kind of think they wanted the drama. I don't know what should be done about folks that seem to be actively stirring up shit.

When it comes to politics and religion, I think we should all go easy on the rhetoric and hyperbole. It becomes so toxic and hate-filled that it can't possibly be discussed reasonably.

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See, the thing is, someone like Invader or CS worked as a good lightning rod. Yes, they were covered in vitriol...And that's just what they were looking for. Yes, we may be milder towards...say, Krisken, than we were to CDS, but still way harsher than we were back then - because with the more "moderate" people on either side, we could have a debate, while the extremes flung poo at one another. With the extremes gone, more moderate voices are now seen as extreme and handled more roughly than they were before.

GasBandit said:

To my knowledge, nobody's ever left because of something that was in a political thread.

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I can think of several who've said they did. Unless you only mean people who publicly and loudly proclaimed it was for that. I left for a year because of names I was called and people attacking me in Politics. Stienman left because of the politics and all the political bagage being dragged out to the other threads. Krisken lurks instead of posts, AFAIK for similar reasons. Philosopher B left because of the politics drama spilling over elsewhere. I don't know if Chaz/Mattias woulld describe politics drama as his reason for leaving, he might - though he liked to troll and knew what was coming.

drawn_inward said:

I agree with @Gared grind a joke into the ground. I know I've used some of our memes that pissed off Calleja and N_R, and probably a bunch of other folks.

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This is true, but it's also true that it's partly up to the target/victim/butt of the joke to pipe up and say they *really* don't like it. I love that sort of jokes and I've made them a lot - but once I knew the person involved didn't like it, I really do try to stop. Once Calleja said he didn't like the Frosty Susan thing anymore, I dialed it way back. I never really participated in the Icarus/Iaculus jokes, as far as involving the normal guy was concerned, because he was quite vocal about not liking it. I don't think I've made a reference to the big end-of-senior-year festivities of a local author in 6 months or more. I still make the occasional Dave-is-old joke, but I try to only make them somewhat more sparingly, and always exagerated - since I assume it's more clearly just fun if I say he's so old the Cycle of Life is like a carnival ride to him, than it is when I say "gee old guy, shouldn't you be retired by now?". The second, to me, comes off meaner and might be interpreted as an actual insult.
As a participant, it can be hard to distinguish "gentle ribbing" from "mercilessly pigeonholing someone and mocking them 'till they cry" in an online space. "Piling on" and "continuing a theme"/"running with a running joke". I don't mean this as victim blaming; it's up to us as individuals to recognize signals and adapt our behavior accordingly. It's a social skill I'm absolutely rubbish at, and I'm aware. I very rarely try to be mean - but I do come off as mean more often than I want to. Still, "signals" can be easily misread or be absent all together in a written, anonymous place, and as such, it can really be worth it to spell things out. Some of my jokes can be hurtful, but I've gotten an "ok" from the person involved. Some other things I say/said may seem to me fairly innocent, but I've been asked by the person not to bring it up anymore - so I don't.

@Doomweasel minion volunteers to bite the ankles of anyone acting like an arse.

Emrys said:

@Doomweasel minion volunteers to bite the ankles of anyone acting like an arse.

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...Guess I better invest in some asbestos shin guards....

Bubble181 said:

...Guess I better invest in some asbestos shin guards....

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Just wear a shiny bauble around your ankle. It's decorative and distracting!

Also, I don't know how much this is true for others, but it's certainly true for me, I don't browse per forum but through new posts. That means I don't always know what forum I'm in. Sometimes I let anger or annoyance spill out to other threads, that may not need/want/warrant that negativity.

I personally just stay out of the politics threads (for the most part) and the whole board seems so much more pleasant--it's honestly a surprise when hostility breaks out. And when it does, I assume it's spillover from that board.

My opinion is that you can't keep these things self contained. If you call someone a fucktard in one context enough, that's gonna color your conversations you have with them elsewhere.

Tinwhistler said:

I personally just stay out of the politics threads (for the most part) and the whole board seems so much more pleasant--it's honestly a surprise when hostility breaks out. And when it does, I assume it's spillover from that board.

My opinion is that you can't keep these things self contained. If you call someone a fucktard in one context enough, that's gonna color your conversations you have with them elsewhere.

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That's why I silently judge people as fucktards instead.

I'm pretty used to compartmentalizing discussions, but I realize everybody isn't that way. Really, in my case, I might actually do it to a fault. I sometimes completely disconnect that the guy I'm arguing with vociferously in thread A is the same guy I'm brofisting in thread B.

Emrys said:

@Doomweasel minion volunteers to bite the ankles of anyone acting like an arse.

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How about biting the arse on the buttcheek instead?

Lmao I just reread the "burger" thread and described chipotle as "one of my 5 favorite places to eat." It's amazing how true that was and how much that has changed.

Spoiler: forcing yourself to eat at the same restaurant known for a limited menu 3 times a week for 3 months is a good way to get sick of it.

I think what we really need is an influx of new members. Otherwise it's the same several dozen who have been talking to each other over the past decade.

Social media kind of killed most people's interest in forums.

IronBrig4 said:

I think what we really need is an influx of new members. Otherwise it's the same several dozen who have been talking to each other over the past decade.

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Not only that, but the ever-shrinking subset of that group who still manage to make time to come here.

I been saying that for years but couldn't find a way to bring people here. We get occasional one-offs that stick around and we LOVE them! But it's hard driving traffic here.

Yeah, I know. We don't really have a strong unifying thing, and I don't want to force one - saying "we're THE premier forum for talking about Minotaur Penis" isn't all that useful, saying "we're the number one forum to talk about golf" is, well, laughable, and would invalidate all the non-golf people here.

Thé number one place to talk about fat cats?

I don't see an influx as something that should be steady. My expectation is that we occasionally get handfuls of people thrown at us, a few stick, fast forward a few years and it happens again, etc.

--Patrick

TBH I hate new people. And if they are under the age of 30 I'm likely to find them really annoying.

Dei said:

TBH I hate new people. And if they are under the age of 30 I'm likely to find them really annoying.

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TIL Dei has an (X/2)+7 rule about finding people annoying.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

TIL Dei has an (X/2)+7 rule about finding people annoying.

--Patrick

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Well no, because then my threshold would be lower.

IronBrig4 said:

I think what we really need is an influx of new members. Otherwise it's the same several dozen who have been talking to each other over the past decade.

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I've tried several times over the years. Only "success" was a couple of past girlfriends. One which I think still participates in the Secret Santa every year. The other...doesn't come here anymore thanks to post-breakup drama.

But I've tried inviting other friends to join, but to no success.

I remember that a few years ago we got a new member who only made one post, and that was to ask me for an apple brownies recipe. She got the recipe and disappeared. How weird is that?

And combing through old threads, we had a ton of people leave in 2012-13. I think the late North Ranger was the glue that kept some Halforumites here.

IronBrig4 said:

I remember that a few years ago we got a new member who only made one post, and that was to ask me for an apple brownies recipe. She got the recipe and disappeared. How weird is that?

And combing through old threads, we had a ton of people leave in 2012-13. I think the late North Ranger was the glue that kept some Halforumites here.

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I think this predates North Ranger's passing, but there was also big drama involving The Artist Formerly Known as Chaz, when he was banned. There was a Halforums IRC group with a bunch of people who left over it. I can't remember any details from it. Something about a conspiracy that a new forum member was actually Chaz or something.

Speaking of drama, I'm genuinely surprised Charlie Don't Surf hasn't resurfaced. I don't think he's posted since Trump's election.

I feel like the 2013-2014 era is when I sort of stopped thinking to check Halforums as often because that's when I got into Reddit, which was hitting the dopamine rush of new threads and new topics more frequently and has zero shortage of new person influx. But there's definitely an advantage to a smaller community where you immediately recognize each person posting and have a general idea of their personality and post history. I may lurk more often than I actually post, heck there's a lot of times I'll type out a post just to not submit it or to immediately delete it, but browsing Halforums feels more intimate and I find myself thinking about what specific people here said far more often than on other sites, even if I personally disagree with the politics of a lot of them. Really sad to come back and notice that certain major players have been gone for six months or more, or see people leave over drama I didn't even realize was ongoing.

Gared said:

This is not the post I wanted to be making this week. If I was going to post anywhere specifically about being back, it would've been in the "Introduce Yourself" thread, since a lot has happened in my life since I was around last, and since I felt that my entire core philosophy had been deeply misunderstood, at a bedrock level, when I left. But, I can't. I don't like who we've become as a group, and I'm no longer comfortable being a member, so it's time for me to move on. I love all of you, individually, and you're all more than welcome to keep in touch.

Discord: Garedicus#9038

Spoiler: The Way We Were

This forum, in this iteration, has been around for 10.5 years. I was always proud to be a member, but lately, it has started to make me feel very uncomfortable. So much so that I took a six month hiatus, and then sat down and thought long and hard about whether or not I wanted to open myself emotionally to this group, before ever coming back to post anything. I decided that having a community, and being involved in the lives of the people I love and miss, was worth the risk; but I didn't even have to post anything outside of my PTSD thread before that notion had been knocked out of my head.

We have a problem, as a community. We pick on people. We don't mean to do it, I don't think, for the most part, but we do. We find one thing that a member has as a trigger, and we poke at it until they explode. I've been a part of the poking, and I've been one of the poked, and neither of them felt good. Stienman made a comment (paraphrasing) in my previous goodbye thread about how there was no one specific comment or incident that made him leave, but rather that he felt he had to put on a mask and cover his true self in order to be part of the community, because his own beliefs were so anathema to others here, that he didn't feel comfortable sharing them. I feel very similar, only in my case I feel like I have to put on a mask and a pair of blinders and pretend that very good friends of mine haven't said really horrible, hurtful things about and to other friends of mine, so that I can have people to commiserate with when I had a shitty meal or bad day mental-health wise.

In the past almost 11 years we've poked to explosion/exclusion:

• Pojodan because he was a furry,
• Icarus and/or Iaculus because one of them was a paedophile and the other had a similar name,
• figmentPez, because we refused to accept that he could honestly be LittleKagSin's friend and not have feelings for her, and he used the word gams,
• North_Ranger regarding sauna pants (and a whole bunch of shit while he was dying of cancer that was so far beyond the pale that I'm still sickened by some of us),
• Calleja, over tacos (it was actually in 2013, in the thread "How to Properly Eat a Burger," I went back and re-read it today),
• Stienman, over his various religious and personal beliefs,
• Me, for expressing fear of the authoritarianism that I felt at the time of the last election,
• DarkAudit, over his calling out of PatrThom,
• PatrThom, because (as near as I can tell) he once used the letters RNG instead of the letters GOD, and because he doesn't have a replacement for iTunes,

And those are only the ones of us that I remember, the ones who didn't just quietly slip away, or decide to bugger off before they even became familiar names/avatars/view points. For most of us, I'm sure it's not something we're doing intentionally. We say things about each other that we don't mean, that we would never say in most circumstances, but in a moment of anger, or frustration, or hurt, we lash out at each other and once one of us has a scent, the whole pack leaps into the fray. We pick sides, we circle around for a page or two, and then we either strike hard and fast, or we let it fade away and simmer for months before bringing it up again. In short - we're in an abusive relationship with ourselves.

Can the relationship be saved? I don't know. There are some big cracks, and this is a bad time in the world. We need to come together, and stand up for one another, and love one another - online, as well as in real life. We need to stop and think more, instead of posting and speaking in haste. We need to remember not just the person behind the keyboard, but everything we know about the person behind the keyboard. It's going to be hard. And, you're going to have to do it without me, because I'm just not strong enough to walk back onto the firing line yet.

- Gared
Oh, and you can go ahead and pronounce it with the hard G, instead of Jared with a J - Fogle, Kushner, and Pro are not people with whom I want to be associated, tyvm.

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I feel you, man. It's more or less the same reason I left. That, and it seemed like literally every single thing I said was met with some drawn out, angry argument. And usually one that seems so silly in retrospect. The straw that broke the camel's back was when a member I actually liked a lot decided apparently to make it his personal mission to find fault with every thing I said. Oh well. It's kind of end-of-Stand-By-Me sad. I remember the good times fondly, but now some of us are working part time at the scrap yard or in and out of prison.

fade said:

I feel you, man. It's more or less the same reason I left. That, and it seemed like literally every single thing I said was met with some drawn out, angry argument. And usually one that seems so silly in retrospect. The straw that broke the camel's back was when a member I actually liked a lot decided apparently to make it his personal mission to find fault with every thing I said. Oh well. It's kind of end-of-Stand-By-Me sad. I remember the good times fondly, but now some of us are working part time at the scrap yard or in and out of prison.

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I actually work at an In-N-Out in a prison.

Fun Size said:

I actually work at an In-N-Out in a prison.

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...I'm calling BS on this.


EDIT: And thank you, @Ravenpoe for pointing out that my Chromebook has a LOUSY word replacement algorithm.

jwhouk said:

...I'm calling be on this.

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It's these kinds of attacks that make people leave.


this is sarcasm