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This place is going to die of fear. (1 Viewer)

Joe Bryant said:
Thanks GB. It's just life. And unfortunately part of the internet today. I hesitate to even share those kinds of things with the downsides as I'm not looking for sympathy and I know it'll be seen as whining. I signed up for this business. Nobody made me. But I found that it does help some people get a more full picture. 
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Joe, I just want to add that I was only trying to give added perspective earlier in the tread, since I recalled in-thread discussions about the line, not trying to say you should feel ok about anything. I was not trying to invalidate your legitimate point or feelings, so sorry if it came off that way.

And hearing that people are texting you nasty crap, or saying things about your family on the boards, is very upsetting. I’m sorry, man. That sucks.

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
@Joe Bryant

@bigbottom

@Ramsay Hunt Experience

Just read through this thread for the first time.  I don't know why everyone is trying to protect me.  I almost definitely wrote the "kick off Jews for non-Christian views" line of the song.  I think I was the only guy in LABS with Jewish heritage (even though I'm an atheist) and at the time I was an obnoxious jerk that got banned all the time in religious threads.  I don't remember for sure, but it sounds exactly like the kind of thing I would have written back then.

It bums me out that such a stupid line from a parody song causes any sort of negative feelings from Joe all these years later.  I feel like I've changed a lot since then.  I think that this place and Joe personally have been a part of making me a much better person today, and I think that's largely reflected in my contributions to this board.  Yes, we all get snippy from time to time, but I really try to conduct myself more positively now, and I think Joe deserves a lot of credit for that. 

I hope if Joe thinks of that line in the future he' can think about the positive ways in which he's helped to turn the insulting jerk into a more thoughtful and tolerant person.  Maybe then he can finally appreciate bigbottom's masterpiece.
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LOOK AT ME! I'VE ACHIEVED PERSONAL GROWTH!

You're insufferable.  😜

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Sorry you have to deal with this sort of thing.  I can't wrap my mind around a middle-aged man (this board's core demographic) acting out this way in response to getting a timeout on a message board. 
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This 1000000%.  I don't want to crap on people's lives, but I truly feel sorry for you if your life revolves around the ability to post on an internet message board.

Also don't understand how grown-### men can't handle being "laughed" at on said message board to the point where we need to eliminate an emoji to protect their fragile feelings, but that's a whole separate topic.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Joe Bryant said:
Some people have my cell number and text when they're suspended. The PMs are rough sometimes. People use our forum we provide to talk about how they'll never buy a subscription and some make their avatars to the logos of our Footballguys competitors. One poster recently had some over the top gross sexual stuff about my family and the thread stayed open for a while and people added comments before someone finally reported it.
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Sorry you have to deal with this sort of thing.  I can't wrap my mind around a middle-aged man (this board's core demographic) acting out this way in response to getting a timeout on a message board. 
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WTF? That is completely ridiculous. I wish we knew who those fools were so we could all put them on ignore and make their existence here irrelevant

 
matuski said:
And I've said this for almost 20 years now and nobody has ever taken me up on it.... If you are in San Antonio, hit me up I'll buy a couple rounds.  ESPECIALLY if you don't like me here.  $20 says we leave the spot friends.
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We have battled here many times but I agree with this. While I can't dunk anymore, I would for sure have several rounds with you and school you in a 3pt contest though :hifive:

 
the moops said:
WTF? That is completely ridiculous. I wish we knew who those fools were so we could all put them on ignore and make their existence here irrelevant
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That info stays with me. Would be uncool to out them. But they're popular well known posters. (except for the one person that wrote the over the line stuff about my family and posted it). 

It is what it is. I wasn't trying to get sympathy but I felt it was maybe helpful to give folks a more clear picture of what I see. 

 
So many interesting  things in this thread such as…

-  People texting Joe’s personal cell phone regarding forum timeouts. (Do they bug you with WDIS questions on Sundays?)

- shuke texting twelve dudes from. here everyday. (I don’t think I text even my wife and siblings/mom everyday)

- placeholder 

 
eoMMan said:
So many interesting  things in this thread such as…

-  People texting Joe’s personal cell phone regarding forum timeouts. (Do they bug you with WDIS questions on Sundays?)

- shuke texting twelve dudes from. here everyday. (I don’t think I text even my wife and siblings/mom everyday)

- placeholder 
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12...in a row?

 
IvanKaramazov said:
This just goes to show how much people have changed over the years.  Why, we hardly ever do religious threads anymore.
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I for one went from a follower to a Christmas/Easter type to a oh hell no, from this board.  The amount of knowledge and philosophy brought forward helped me finally break free of what little hold religion still had on me.  I think there was a sense that a deep fear that the dis-indoctrination that was taking place was having this effect, and a desire to maybe pull that in among the mod team and the moderation policy was mostly one sided, but in general the incidents came from just one side.  Ultimately people changed, or they didn't, and then moved on to somewhere else.  CrossEyed being one that ultimately couldn't take it that comes to mind instantly, but there were others.

 
culdeus said:
I think there was a sense that a deep fear that the dis-indoctrination that was taking place was having this effect, and a desire to maybe pull that in among the mod team and the moderation policy was mostly one sided, but in general the incidents came from just one side.  
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Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

 
We might need a poll regarding what this place is going to die of.

Fear would be on the list of possibilities, but I think I would rank it behind awkwardness, laughter, boredom, confusion, and general malaise, to name a few.

 
There’s clearly a disconnect between what Joe wants this forum to be and what the majority of its users want it to be, and this has been the case for a while but I’ve come to realize that this forum and anything that gets posted in it is essentially content that is 100% owned by Joe and is a representation of this business, and there’s a lot of risk there.  I mean, imagine if one of the old, raunchier “Who’s Hotter” threads went viral. It’s not the random forum posters who would get cancelled, it’s Joe, and footballguys.com.

And now hearing how people are texting Joe about suspensions and posting crap about his family? Of course, he’s going to take a stricter approach. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
That info stays with me. Would be uncool to out them. But they're popular well known posters. (except for the one person that wrote the over the line stuff about my family and posted it). 

It is what it is. I wasn't trying to get sympathy but I felt it was maybe helpful to give folks a more clear picture of what I see. 
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I think a lot of people are just upset at the non-consistency of suspensions/bannings.  I know of several who were banned and not given any reason by the moderator.  A few of those have reached out to you via email and you never bothered to respond.  I know you are busy but that would be very frustrating.  Perhaps have the moderators give a reason for the ban.

Edit to add in no way am I condoning the idiots who attacked your family and please don't ban me.  😃

 
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eoMMan said:
So many interesting  things in this thread such as…

-  People texting Joe’s personal cell phone regarding forum timeouts. (Do they bug you with WDIS questions on Sundays?)

- shuke texting twelve dudes from. here everyday. (I don’t think I text even my wife and siblings/mom everyday)

- placeholder 
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Just don't try and get ahold of Terry Bradshaw pretending to be his Uncle Pete.  

 
I used to complain about the moderation, but now I’m old, boring and don’t care anymore. At least I can visit here without my phone being spammed to hell.
 

This is joe’s place, I’m proud of the I-relationships I’ve made here and while things like banning the laughing smiley seem silly to me I can’t work up the energy to care. I’ve learned the rules pretty well I think; I commonly delete posts that I think are funny but may get me a TO. At the end of the day, who cares. Everybody’s mileage may vary. If you don’t like it there are a million Reddits you can visit to get that fix. :2cents:
 

edit: I do wish this place were a little busier but I guess it’s good that it’s not. I have Twitter for that. 

 
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Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
OK, I know I've been glib, which isn't the best look.

I'd like to think that if Joe had, at the time, asked (either by PM or publicly) "hey, are you accusing me of anti-semitism" we would have all said "oh, hell no!, we just think you're kind of Jesus-y" at the minimum.  Knowing biggie (and it would ultimately have been his call), I imagine the song even would have been edited.

I've never run a message board.  I've never moderated a message board.  I can't imagine having people genuinely mad at me because I did or didn't thank the troops on Memorial Day or something.  And my philosophy has always been to just have everyone say his or her piece and let things sort themselves out.  Partly because moderating sounds exhausting.  Moderating under the fiction of not having biases sounds even worse.  

But I am serious when I say that these songs weren't put together with much of a coherent message other than remembering some things and making some jokes.  There's a line about the moderators making my signature go straight when I was scoobygang.  The follow-up couplet, "only room for one queer, she'll make those spics disappear" is a joke about MacArtist's less than flattering description of illegal immigrants.  But it also implies the decision to make me (a heterosexual man using a Cary Grant line from Bringing Up Baby as my signature) remove my signature was based on homophobia when it was based on Joe's desire to not promote homophobia.  I thought Joe was mistaken on that decision, but I obviously didn't think he was being homophobic.  It was just a line to get to the next line.  
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Wait, you're not gay?  Scoobygang wasn't gay???

:jawdrop:

 
Capella said:
This is joe’s place, I’m proud of the I-relationships I’ve made here and while things like banning the laughing smiley seem silly to me I can’t work up the energy to care.
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Corporation said:
Lastly, to the laughing emoji. You are right, it is ridiculous for the moderation team to have to come to the decision to ban the use of it. Proudly, I have made either 0 or 1 post in the PSF (I think I started to post something and then backed out, but I may have posted it). I do not know who or which side abused it, I'm guessing it was multiple people and both sides. An argument could be made as others suggested to ban those posters who were abusing it. I'm guessing that was discussed, but that takes a lot of time from moderators, and it doesn't eliminate the misuse of the emoji by an alias or by others weaponizing it. I'm guessing at the end, the decision was made (probably with some on the mod team shaking their head that it came to this) to remove the emoji. In my uninformed opinion, you could probably state that misuse of the laughing emoji is a bannable offense so the rest of the community could use it as intended, but again I think the decision was probably made due to moderation resources.

I do love being a small part of this community and I hope it continues on.
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ChiefD said:
But removing laughter from here removes a lot of it's soul. And that's just sad to me. Because I know deep down you have a kind-hearted soul. I can see it in your words. But sometimes your actions speak otherwise.
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⚡DEADHEAD⚡ said:
I've been wondering for quite a while why there's no laughing emoji. I've looked for it many times because there are some damn funny people here. To know it's been purposefully removed seems silly. Would love to know the backstory on this one.
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E-Z Glider said:
:goodposting:

Doesn’t make much sense that the laughing emoji is gone, but the troll who abused it is still here.
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krista4 said:
It's a tough choice between that and a bigbottom parody song being deemed offensive.  bigbottom  The kindest and most generous person we have here.  I'm in bizarro world when that becomes a bone of contention.  Or laughing emojis do.  I can't figure out where I am or how I got here.
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I miss this laughing emoji like button. Seems I'm not alone.

 
Joe Bryant said:
Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
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It's been awhile, I feel like the general sense was if you come in with a anti-religious slant and leaned on that a little too hard there was a general organizational POV that did exist which would frown up on it. 

Looking back to those days it is and always will be more easy to interpret disagreement as something personal when arguing against a position, and that is always going to play a role here. The nature of those discussions could get heavily personal at times and certain posters knew how to get needles in at every opportunity.

Those that did cross over a "line" by and large existed on the less religious side promoting a sense of bias, that maybe didn't really exist. 

Nowadays the same types of things exist in the political sphere, the religious stuff was a warmup in a lot of ways.  

 
culdeus said:
It's been awhile, I feel like the general sense was if you come in with a anti-religious slant and leaned on that a little too hard there was a general organizational POV that did exist which would frown up on it. 

Looking back to those days it is and always will be more easy to interpret disagreement as something personal when arguing against a position, and that is always going to play a role here. The nature of those discussions could get heavily personal at times and certain posters knew how to get needles in at every opportunity.

Those that did cross over a "line" by and large existed on the less religious side promoting a sense of bias, that maybe didn't really exist. 

Nowadays the same types of things exist in the political sphere, the religious stuff was a warmup in a lot of ways.  
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Thanks. I remember it being the opposite of that as I was purposefully intentional not to try and favor one religion or no religion. I remember being very intentional understanding my role as a site owner and balancing that with my own faith and not being afraid to talk about things I believed but also being hyper sensitive in understanding this was a football forum and not a Christian board and not trying to press my viewpoint. 

We did try to keep it mostly civil but that applied to all religions. And again, no religion. I remember there being lots of folks who lined up more in the Atheist area and specifically remember commenting to my Christian real life friends how refreshing and kind the conversations were. There can be a tendency in some Christian circles to cast a negative shade on Atheists as if they're our "enemy" and I remember my big takeaway from here was I met a lot of Atheist folks who were the opposite of that. They just happened not to share my faith but most were happy for me. 

That's interesting I remember that so differently. But I remember it very clearly as it was remarkable in a positive way.

 
All that to say, I don't ever think any religious or Atheist viewpoint civilly discussed was ever frowned upon. That's a bummer if that's how you remember it. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
All that to say, I don't ever think any religious or Atheist viewpoint civilly discussed was ever frowned upon. That's a bummer if that's how you remember it. 
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I don’t think you favored a particular religion but I think it took some of us some time to figure out the appropriate level of discourse.  And that was often interpreted as some sort of bias.

Just to use myself as an example, I feel like my “bubble” had a lot to do with how I communicated in religious threads.  The FFA was literally the first time in my life I had religious conversations with evangelical Christians.  I know a lot of folks here live in parts of the country where evangelicals are everywhere but I just wasn’t around that environment in the Northeast.  It felt easy to mock these strangers with what I perceived to be silly beliefs, I didn’t really know them as people.

That was all in addition to me being a jerk that cared more about trying to be right or showing people up than trying to have genuine understanding.

 
Lots of interesting stuff in here. Surprised initially, and then not so surprised knowing the internet and the world, that our founder @Joe Bryant has to deal with personal harassment. It kind of makes me embarrassed to be a part of what I consider a community. 

I can't imagine the level of patience you must have. At the end of the day, I must just be a lot less forgiving. Maybe it's something to look at. But I do think I'd rather have five more IP bans and one more laughing emoji than third and fourth chances for some jerks and no laughing emoji.

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
I don’t think you favored a particular religion but I think it took some of us some time to figure out the appropriate level of discourse.  And that was often interpreted as some sort of bias.

Just to use myself as an example, I feel like my “bubble” had a lot to do with how I communicated in religious threads.  The FFA was literally the first time in my life I had religious conversations with evangelical Christians.  I know a lot of folks here live in parts of the country where evangelicals are everywhere but I just wasn’t around that environment in the Northeast.  It felt easy to mock these strangers with what I perceived to be silly beliefs, I didn’t really know them as people.

That was all in addition to me being a jerk that cared more about trying to be right or showing people up than trying to have genuine understanding.
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Thank you GB.

I don't disagree it took a little bit to get our footing. For me too.

I'll say this, I think the overwhelming take away I've had as a Christian posting on the forums was that I never felt like my takes were unwelcome or dismissed. I think we've had some productive discussions.

And I think you're exactly right on the "getting to know them as people and not just 'the group'". I think I've probably "talked" to more folks here who are strongly pro Atheist than I have in real life. But that's just part of living in the South. It's the exact same thing you had with Evangelical Christians (whatever that means now). 

I think one of the best things about this forum has been the ability for people to get out of our bubbles a bit and interact with "others" that we might not normally get the chances to in our real lives. 

That's why I was sort of surprised to hear culdeus say he thought it was frowned upon. I saw it as encouraged. 

If he didn't see it that way back then, I without question feel I want it that way now. 

 
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fatguyinalittlecoat said:
It felt easy to mock these strangers with what I perceived to be silly beliefs, I didn’t really know them as people.
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One of the most true things I've read today. We all can fall into this trap. I know I do.

If I think about it, that breaking down of assumptions and getting to know people as people is one of the most valuable things on this whole forum.

And it's also why I'm so adamant on the seemingly silly idea of asking people to be excellent to each other. I know what I'm asking is outdated. To not just not allow mean talk but even trying not to allow people just being uncool. 

Because in my opinion, the surest way to not get to a real discussion with other people is if people are rude or snarky or of course, mean. 

If there's any method behind my goofiness of why I ask people not to be rude to each other here, it's that. Because I think if we can be kind and reasonably civil when we discuss things, we've got the best chance of getting to know the "other" folks. 

And as @fatguyinalittlecoat said, getting to know them as people and not just part of a group can be a game changer. 

 
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Instinctive said:
Lots of interesting stuff in here. Surprised initially, and then not so surprised knowing the internet and the world, that our founder @Joe Bryant has to deal with personal harassment. It kind of makes me embarrassed to be a part of what I consider a community. 

I can't imagine the level of patience you must have. At the end of the day, I must just be a lot less forgiving. Maybe it's something to look at. But I do think I'd rather have five more IP bans and one more laughing emoji than third and fourth chances for some jerks and no laughing emoji.
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My thought on something with someone going off scale on the forum against me or raging on Twitter at me is I've learned to let my first thought be, "What must be going on with that person to have them in such a rough spot that they'd take it out on a stranger like me?"

Maybe this is just a coping mechanism, but I think I really do believe this. 

But I've heard other people talk about this too. And I think it's true.

I get all kinds of email with people telling me how stupid I am for projecting a WR over another WR and it didn't pan out. 

I try to reply to all of them being honest and acknowledging I did fail in what I was trying to do in give them the most correct information. But that it wasn't for lack of effort and I can promise them we'll keep doing our best to get them the best product we can. 

9 time out of 10, I get an email back that sounds like a totally different person. They often say they'd been drinking too much or they were just mad or whatever. And most all are surprised to know there's a real person at the other end of that email address. 

That has been a helpful lesson over the years to learn that the vast majority of people aren't really as angry or hateful as they might seem. And it's almost always way more about something going on with them than it is me. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
My thought on something with someone going off scale on the forum against me or raging on Twitter at me is I've learned to let my first thought be, "What must be going on with that person to have them in such a rough spot that they'd take it out on a stranger like me?"

it's almost always way more about something going on with them than it is me. 
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So true. A good mantra for so many reasons.

 
Joe Bryant said:
All that to say, I don't ever think any religious or Atheist viewpoint civilly discussed was ever frowned upon. That's a bummer if that's how you remember it. 
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I've never really participated in any of the religious threads, but I remember there was so many of them back in the day. That someone bought Jesusguys.com and linked it to the ffa

 
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