DAMN YOU CHICK

I can't imagine how I missed that (well, half of the answer is obvious enough) in the communal high-fiving of each other over mocking Tom's bachelorhood and another dozen "bruises easily" jokes, at least three or four of which had humor content discernible to the naked eye.

Say what you will; it's gotten this thread back on track.

SAY HI TO TOM FOR ME!

That was deleted, I think. Can deleted posts still cross lines?

IMO The original post with its obscure and completely inside "easily bruised" joke would have been noticed by almost nobody had Tom not decided to call Matt out by name and try to embarrass his wife into reining him in.
Not saying Matt covered himself in troll glory by going after the slow hanging curve of Tom's editorial, but the line he crossed was pretty murky before it got personal.

Had Tom been a halfway competent mod he'd have just deleted the troll post and taken the high ground. Instead he decided to engage and promptly lost a battle he didn't have to fight to begin with.

Stalking, hahahaha

As entertaining as this has been, I'm wary of the Tom Chick Defense Force leaping into action cross-forums. I'd much rather have a cold war than a detente, if only because the Union of Soviet Socialist RepubliChicks is filled with enough assholes, idiots, and morons to upset our current policy of Mutually Assured Banning.

That's a nice bit of realpolichik, MrMolecule.

What?

It's going to bother you no matter who you are sympathetic to or how far those sympathies go. Every time Matt has one of these encounters, it's a shitty moment, but I'm not sure if it's shitty because of his single-minded dedication to not letting it go or if it's shitty because the core underlying issues are pretty ugly and I don't like being reminded of them (actually I'm pretty sure it's the latter but I'm sure you get what I mean). There are a lot of good reasons underlying his behavior, and while I would prefer the whole thing just go away, I try to keep clear on what is ultimately worse: being an asshole who uses a position of marginal public influence to say things to protect horrible ideas in the manner of guys who think they are too smart to be sexist,* or being mean to that asshole. Because there really isn't a lot of middle space due in large part to the limitations of forums.

*I knew the Snowcrashocalypse would pay off!

I think a large part of the shittiness is due to the tactics. Sock puppets and anonymous* trolling are dick moves regardless of the rest of the context, to me.

*Anonymous in this context meaning ones that don't use our forum-world identities, not a commentary on the use or lack of real names in any way.

That and coming over here to make sure we all are aware of his trolling exploits. Most of us wouldn't have even noticed it without that.

That would be one of the downsides of banning someone under their own name.

Especially someone as familiar with pro wrestling as Matt is.

I don't know how up to date you are on the length and breadth of this feud, but some trolling and sockpuppeting is like a millionth of the aggregate shittiness involved. You can ignore the context if you choose, but I suspect it puts you in a pretty lousy position in terms of assessing what is happening. Which isn't *necessarily* important or earth-shaking, but the context is about as crucial as it would be in something you do care about.

Sure, I'm not a QT3 guy so my context is necessarily limited - only what comes over here really has the potential to affect me in any way, certainly. And the sock puppeting thing did come up here in an unrelated context as well (the IMO fairly vile "like" trolling thing), which is probably a bigger influence on how the situation looks to me than anything involving Chick. It's an important point of principle for me in online interactions; if you aren't willing to put your name (or your handle, which has value equivalent to a name in any kind of persistent community IMO) behind a statement, don't make it. YMMV.

I'd rather have a full-blown forum war. Between Flowers, Bill D, myself and many others, we'd have a field day with Tom and his group of sycophantic mental midgets.

Dislike!

You couldn't even get the GOTY rules right and you expect to win a forum war :P

I'm not sure how a forum war is supposed to work. This forum exists because Tom doesn't know how to deal with dissent except through banning. So, Tom allowing us to post over there is unlikely. But Tom coming over here is equally unlikely because Tom doesn't know how to deal with dissent except through banning. I guess he could send his legions over here to fight without him, but they'd probably end up milling around confused, like ants without a queen.

The Chickizens would seize the means of production. All Likes would belong to the people, and you wouldn't be guilty of profiting from the like-farming of an honest poster.

No he wouldn't post over here because he doesn't seem to care all that much about the people here.

Except for Angie, apparently.

Which was in a response to your idiotic trolling. Nothing would have mentioned anyone here without that.

Yeah, Matt, get a fuckin' grip.

Tom only cares about Angie inasmuch as she relates to you! Women are just props for men participating in manly struggles!

Duh!

So it's Matt's fault that Tom dragged Angie into what was a confrontation between them and had nothing to do with her? A kind of "if you deal with one, you're also dealing with the other" thing? That sounds as bad as Tom.

It was obvious trolling response to what Matt did. Unless you think out of the blue with no provocation at all Tom would have said Hi Angie in a comment on the front page there.

I agree. Tom would never waste thought cycles on any female unless he was verbally sparring with the man that owns her.

I just don't see the point of trolling Tom on his website anyway. What was it supposed to accomplish?

Dude, that's like a stable of Ric Flair, Randy Savage, and Barry Horowitz. You KNOW who's taking the pinfall there.

What is concern trolling about Tom on this website supposed to accomplish? Clearly you have feelings about it that you are expressing in a manner you think appropriate, no matter how futile or misguided.

Since he made sure to come here right away and lets us know he did it, I think the reason for it is pretty obvious.

I think it says a lot about how people relate to women when they assume that I should intervene to change Matt's posting behavior. Last time I checked he was a grown man and I'm not his mom. It's not the first time Tom has done it, and Tom's not the first one to do it.

Plus, I post shit online that he doesn't care for all the time. That should be the subheader for my tumblr blog.

It wasn't trolling. I sincerely wanted to tweak his nose for writing such a terrible article.

I told you before I'm sorry more people didn't vote for your choice of Pirates in Love, but that's not my fault!

It can go the other way too (although not necessarily in your case). Ingmar has essentially been asked to tug on my leash on occasion. It's very strange.

It doesn't matter what comes after that part of the sentence, in this situation the answer is yes. It wasn't clever, it wasn't even his joke in the first place, and it was followed up by HEY GUYS LOOK WHAT I DID, HIT LIKE. Tom took the low road and tried to counterbait, coming up with the two most personal things he knows about Matt.

If you hate what Tom said (I didn't agree with it either, and I've been arguing against it in their Riptide thread), then explain why he's wrong so that other people can see it. The comments section on that article is about half and half. Believe it or not, nobody over there is taking potshots at BF (except for Vetarnias, their closest analog to someone willing to throw down across internet forums and probably needs to "get help.")