Oh, I don't avoid them because I think they're jerks. I avoid them because I've gotten vibes they don't like me. Not that I think everyone has to.
How else are we to discern the quality of the man if not by his actions? Specifically, by the way he treats others? These weren't isolated incidents, and we have years and years of examples of his poor behaviour. Granted, it's true that you rarely know another man well enough to truly pass judgement, which is why some people say things like "Never judge another." And there's quite a bit of wisdom in that line of thinking. But based on your posts, you don't seem to be an adherent of that philosophy. Fair enough... you have a reason to be grateful to the man, and that would definitely explain why you might make the distinction. (BTW, I don't mean that in an Internet-condescending kind of way.) At the risk of turning this into an argument, I would say that one act of kindness doesn't really atone for the multiple acts of being a raging asshole. You might say that his actions around Mink Staccatto's death were good moral actions when it really mattered, while his asshole nature is generally about inconsequential things. But if you look at Kalle's recent posts in this thread, you'll see that that community really mattered to a lot of people, and he pointlessly destroyed something that was very very important to a lot of people.* In any case, thanks for responding. I was genuinely curious, and I think I understand a little better now. *Full disclaimer: I can't claim to be one of those people. Although I've been around forever, I simply haven't invested in it as much as some people, nor have I been one of organizers of any of the community-building threads or events. I'm more like the guy who wanders through the party asking where the cheetos are. I know this will sound like defensiveness because you're currently criticizing me, but I'll go ahead and say it anyways with the disclaimer that it has nothing to do with your current target, except that I'm bothering to respond at all: I don't give a shit what you in particular think. You're a moralistic, pompous, dim-witted ass, and always have been. To be more specific, what line exactly did I cross? That I issued a judgement of another person? No, that can't be it, because I've seen you offer judgements of other people many, many times. Hell, offering up your opinion of other people unsolicited is practically a cottage industry for you. Perhaps it was that I explained the reason for my judgement, and was open to discussion about it. No... although those are things I've never seen you do, they are things that I've seen you loudly approve of when people you like do it. Perhaps the line is that I offered a judgement which you disagreed with? That's a possibility, but it doesn't really explain your emphatic-ness when declaring how far over the line I went. Who knows? Such things are a mystery to me. But then again, those are the mysteries I don't lose any sleep over.
Last September (2011), I attended a Shoot Club while I was in LA for work. I met Tom (obviously) and Christien who both made me feel extremely welcome at their weekly gaming gathering. It was a great time where we shot the shit while playing board games into the wee hours of the night. I'd do it again in a heartbeat because I had so much fun. I've disagreed with Tom's QT3 moderation practices on many occasions, but still like talking with him in threads about games. As such, I still frequent both forums and occasionally listen to his podcast. I'm still saddened that the community was split, because I really enjoyed feeling part of one integrated community. I now always feel I'm getting only a part of the whole, and I like to keep up with people on both sides of the proverbial fence. Still, I'd rather do that than lose contact with any of you, so here I am!
<eyetwitch> fuckyoutombytom Seriously I fucking hate that so much. SO MUCH. Also I am beginning to get the sense (haha, I got this sense months ago, when I first started feasting on the delicious Qt3 drama leftovers because I am a horrible rubbernecking internet person) that Tom has a few issues with the ladies.
How about we start with his actions that don't take place on an internet forum? Of which I know very little. Hence, I won't judge him as a human being.
It makes more sense to start with the actions which you do know about; there will always be areas that are unknown to you. That mass murderer may be very kind to dogs for all you know, that doesn't change what you do know about him. Similarly, with Tom Chick what I do know about him paints a pretty unpleasant picture. And most of the positive things that people mention about him I don't care about in the slightest. He's a good conversationalist? He makes you feel welcome? He's very warm? Who the fuck cares?* Some people are pleasant on the surface, but that doesn't change the fact that deep down they're petty vindictive little shits. Which, unfortunately, is exactly how I'm coming across now, but them's the breaks when you enter "criticize other people" territory. FWIW, I found his actions during the Mink Staccato incident to be genuinely admirable, and I totally get where BlueJackalope is coming from. *I don't mean to rip on people sharing positive stories about Tom, by the way. If that stuff matters to you, great. And if that persuades you to overlook his flaws, more power to you. Honestly.
Tom makes me go all ragefacey-feminist inside and want to lecture him about kyriarchy and bayesian outcome prediction until he passes out from cognitive dissonance. What I'm saying is, he thinks it's okay to be physically aggressive to women and just because they sometimes bruise easily that doesn't mean it's not okay. ... which is, if I'm not being clear enough here, really not okay.
That's actually a pretty good troll, particularly since you can claim it was inadvertent because your Australian military is comprised entirely of kangaroo cavalry and wombat sappers.
It'll be 2013 in a couple weeks, I think it's a little late in the game to act like what people do on the internet doesn't matter, especially in a community that interacts almost exclusively via the internet. You can tell a lot about someone by how they treat other people. Even adjusting for the internet, Tom is a petty, vindictive asshole. I don't believe it would make any difference whether he's the moderator of a forum or a middle manager at a company or the head of the neighbourhood Homeowners Association, a shitty person is a shitty person. Doesn't mean he has no good qualities, or even that he isn't totally fine 95% of the time, but it does mean that I would not trust him with any sort of power over other people. And seriously, holding grudges for years is not something you can just wave away by saying "it's just an internet forum." In fact, it says the opposite. Clearly Tom takes it very seriously, so why shouldn't we?
jesus christ Bahimiron why would you tag me into this thread y u do dis? Yeah, the whole business with Tom was a bizarre time. The first Google result for busybodied little dipshit is still tom calling me that, and for a while there I had Skype like Nute has helium. A few people severely disliked me there due to the whole thing, like jerri blank and triggercut, though I hope they're cool with me now. Still, little annoyances and embarrassments aside, I'm still the dude that made a forum admin self-ban and turn his forum into Ethiopia governance-wise, and that will never not be hilarious. In any case, now we have this place and Lum so I guess everybody wins.
Counter-trolled. Nice! No effing Kangaroos in the NZ army. Not much of anything in our army really... ..erk, sorry for the string of posts.
My favorite part about Tom's self-banning was that qt3 pretty much went on as normal. There were a handful more trolls, and a bit more in the way of spam, but when Tom went off in a huff I think he imagined the forum would fall apart and we'd be begging for him to come back and moderate and that... didn't happen.
Next time ask if your wife can come. You will always be my goddam hero for that. I was banned when the whole Avatars Y/N thing went down and when people were taking him seriously I was practically screaming at my monitor 'HE IS TROLLING YOU, GODDAMMIT!' When you were the first person to point out that the Emperor not only had no clothes but was crapping in his hands and telling them it was chocolate cream pie, I fucking cheered. Uh. Clearly you missed all of the people like stusser who went on at length about how the board utterly went to hell. I mean, sure, he never gave any examples at all, just insisted that he had a lot and then wouldn't share them, but I have no reason to disbelieve him at all. Despite the fact that I was participating and never noticed any spike in poor behavior.
Haha stusser. And Avatars Y/N. Good times! I think that's what frustrated Tom the most: qt3 grew its own culture. It happened organically and it ended up being not what Tom wanted. His attempts to shape the culture were increasingly ham-handed and always ineffective, hence banageddon.
Tom's period of exile is where everybody including him, who didn't already know this, realized that the community that he founded had grown to be it's own self sustaining thing and whether or not he participated had no bearing on it. That didn't sit well with Tom, which is why most of the community lives on here and Tom spend most of his time talking to people in the comments on the front page, because they're talking about Tom and the stuff he cares about. Meanwhile the actual forum ambles along with a bunch of mostly new members and a much worse signal to noise ratio. Edit: Or what Jeffd said.
Tom did want to make QT3 more welcoming for the people who he wanted to be commenting on his front page articles. Then he actually saw what those people were like.
Question for the long-time QT3 veterans - what was the site like years ago? I only started reading it regularly at the end of 2010, but it's been around much longer than that. I remember occasionally browsing it in the mid 2000s and feeling intimidated by the sheer volume of posts there.
Great for the most part. I think the biggest problem was that the site just got way too big to work with Tom's moderating style. I always thought it had the best signal to noise ratio of any forum I'd used, which this place does now.
Is there a women-at-Shoot-Club story I don't remember? I'm really drawing a blank on why this one's coming up, and I'm curious.
A question I could direct back at YOU, mister. For the record, I didn't dislike you, but I had a hard time understanding why you were so emotionally invested in talking to Tom about the board. It's all good now, though, because your passion for your chosen forum has led you to pick up the ball and start an awesome BF podcast. :) And curse you, RyanMM, for starting this up again. :) I was blissfully unaware that BF was obsessed with TC YET AGAIN until Astromarine tagged me. Grr.
I think I got banned (Chickenshit never told me why I was banned) because I declined to do a podcast with him. He invited me to do a podcast and I replied with "no thanks, I don't listen to them anyway". I was banned very shortly thereafter - like within 48 hours or something. Whatever.
Qt3 was awesome for many, many years. It was a place where people actually seemed to care about sentence structure, for one thing, and the no-sigs no-avatars rule meant that there was a much greater emphasis on words. (Not coincidentally, I've turned off avatars here as well.) It could be snarky and mean, which I suppose was a turn-off to people who fled such safe snuggle havens as Gone Gold or whatever, but snarky mean people can also be hilarious. And there were enough people who seemed to really care about the things I also care about (movies, music, games, politics) that the conversations created were easily the best interactions I've ever had anywhere online.
I don't think this is over a line. I think Tom's an insecure, indecisive, self-righteous asshole who thinks his shit doesn't stink. I think he's demonstrated that time and time again in the things that he does. That's who he is - or at least a large part of who he is. Of course, I'm a self-righteous, judgemental, aggressive asshole. The difference is that I'll freely admit it and can recognize those character flaws (even if sometimes I enjoy those flaws). Tom can't and that's what makes him a pretty weak individual. Does that make him a horrible human being? No. But it does make him a Grade-A hypocrite and that's one thing that I can't abide.
