This thread doesn't have to remain. I'm not trying to start an us vs them thread. I'm posting it because people have asked what went down with me being banned and I've wondered about other users who were banned. I did tell my side of the story in my thread on the other Lake the other night, but that's been removed.
I had heard from Daisey what went down with Billy and I was incredulous. I just read his account of it on his profile and I remain incredulous. Unlike myself, Billy was never nasty or insulting.
I have drawn 5 warnings in the six years I posted at Greasy Lake. All were from Joan Fontaine and three of them were early on and deserved. I came to the Lake with an attitude held over from the previous board I had posted on, where things were pretty rough and tumble. I also posted some angry thoughts here and there along the way that I was never warned for and maybe should have been.
Flash forward to the recent Coronavirus thread and I commented on the forum about a moderator's openly and admittedly political post. I think it must have been the same post Billy reported. Anyway, I drew two more quick warnings from Joan Fontaine and with the second warning, I was censured from posting indefinitely. I could still read the board, react to posts and access my PMs. I had already responded to both warnings, but my responses were too defiant and not groveling enough. There was no open communication from the moderators to me. I changed my signature to "hell hath no fury like a moderator scorned" and within 24 hours my account was banned.
I definitely stepped up to their line and across it. I expected the banning, so it wasn't any surprise to me like it was to some of my friends. I felt it was more important to call out the hypocrisy of someone who wields her authority around there like a sledgehammer. There was a very telling comment from another mod, made on the public board, asking me if I felt it were more important to be right than to remain in the community. It seemed to me an admission that they knew there was hypocrisy among their ranks and a foretelling of my banning if I persisted.
Thus, I persisted.
When I was initially banned, I reached out to Karsten on facebook. The opening of his response to me was "why do you even care about this?" and the rest of it was pretty similar to what he posted in his PSA on Greasy Lake. I read both of those statements from him and Mikey and neither one of them took what I considered the proper approach in addressing the people who actually populate Greasy Lake and pay the bills with their donations.
I'm grateful to be here and won't carry any old beefs from the Lake over to this Lake. This should be a clean slate for everyone who comes here.
But I'm wondering...are we the other Lakers or are they the other Lakers.
As one of 'The Banned' I fell compelled to tell a little more about my feelings about GL, what happened and all that.
I was a member of GL for many many years...made thousands of posts and was I think mostly respectful of the rules, the other members and the mods. I was most active in the FC and then LOHAD...but I of course kept up with the main board and all things Bruce. It all started going downhill when then shut down the FC. Then they came up with LOHAD and a bunch of new rules. I felt uneasy about much of it, but was grateful to be able to discuss, debate or argue over politics or whatever was the 'news of the day'. Side note - it was mentioned somewhere here about how nobody ever changes someones mind about politics...so why debate? For me it wasn't about trying to change minds...maybe make someone at least appreciate other points of view...or for me to learn something from others...but almost nobody will change decades of having a certain mindset.
For me those discussions were occasionally enlightening, but more often than not I thought of it as entertaining....we had some great people posting their thoughts and opinions back then...often with humor...even during some of the most heated discussions about the most difficult subjects people would make me smile...and that was good.
So LOHAD was closed up and I was pretty livid. I pretty much decided to stop posting and was mostly successful at it. But after all those years...GL was pretty important to me and I kept going back to see what was going on...hoping the powers that be would wake up and realize the error they were making. There were PMs to Mods and the fearless leader to no avail. One thing I loved doing was going back into the older stuff on LOHAD. As some of you may know there was a guy named Welby/Miami MArk who was also my best friend...when he passed away it hurt...and I would sometimes look for his old crazy assed posts. But with LOHAD gone, so were those great old threads and posts. I will say that Karsten offered to cull all of Marks posts out and send them to me. But taken on there own, out of context and without the replies and comments it wouldn't be the same as my dives into GL's history...so I declined that kind offer.
Sorry this is getting a little long winded. Eventually I gave up on the idea that they would ever bring back the part of the Lake that was missing and was still annoyed. Especially when I would see or get wind of Mods posting something political or deleting stuff for no good reason beyond their lack of ability to see humor in some stuff. So I started using the 'smiley' emoji on political posts that were not deleted and Mod posts employing people to stop making political posts. Apparently the some of the Mods not only were humorless they also didn't understand how hypocritical they were being. The Smiley's got me put in the corner, but my response to the mods got me the ban. Funny thing...I actually got banned without actually posting a word on any threads...lol. While on timeout, I reported ModJudys political President Nixon post for 2nd time and added a comment and hypocrisy and how they fucked up GL. They didn't like that and I was gone....excessive smileys (mocking they said) and 'stalking'.
The 'Smiley' thing still cracks me up, I think I was give a timeout during LOHAD days for using them...to this day I still don't get how a stupid Smiley face can piss people off so much. I can guess the one or two posters from GL that would have actually complained. I'm not sure if it was me, bbb's or a combination that actually made them implement the 'No Smiley' rule...but it still amazes me that they did it.😀
Anyway...sorry for long post...I'm happy to be here and hoping we see a 'Political' section soon....but taking time to get it right is a good thing.
Thanks,
BB
I wasn’t banned but I’m quite happy being here.
"Where the banned" are is only for the truly banned?
Well, I felt banned because of events even though lightning never struck me.
Never been banned, I only have the link to this place on a WhatsApp message, and cant get on when I type the address into Google. Thanks.