3. Brush242, or whatever - what's with the patois? I take it you don't do much Civil Rights work.
I'd probably hire him for civil rights work myself. . .if I were the defendant.
Seriously, you fucking retards drove off someone who was giving good information. Because you were personally hostile to its source.
Does anyone here even understand why that was a fucking stupid thing to do?
Am I the only sane person here?
Well, we are part of the small percentage of sane ones here, I'll say that.
For those of you who think I "poked the bear" and thus "got what I deserved", that's simply more ignorance and stupidity.
We sign up on boards such as these without giving real names and addresses because it provides a level of separation from our daily lives. While we are free to give our real names and identity or whatnot, most people don't for a number of reasons.
- It provides a bit more freedom to say what you wish, without fear of some jackass Unabombering your home. Of course, some people go overboard with vicious, repeated, and unfounded online attacks, but we don't require Social Security numbers and state-issued IDs to sign up because some psychos take it too far—people protect themselves with a bit of anonymity. Personally, there's not much I've ever said online that I wouldn't say to someone's face. Those I have met from online? In context I have done precisely that. Not one of them has ever said the venomous things they've said to me online to my face. Not one.
- It allows you a bit of a different persona without judgment or fear of retribution. Some people don't want their liberal friends to see how conservative they really are. Some people don't want their coworkers or colleagues to know that they are a fuzzy, or an anarchist, or that they "play" for a different "team". Some don't want friends and family to know of their personal interests, or even more simply, how much time they spend sitting in front of a computer chatting with, discussing/arguing with, or helping mostly anonymous strangers on the internet. Some don't want their supervisors monitoring their online activity that is unrelated to work.
- Most importantly, it allows you the freedom to be whoever you want to be, whenever you want to be, for whatever reason you want to be. That's important for many people. Of course, it doesn't hold to child abuse, fraud, initiating force against others, but that should be self-evident. And for those that just love being public, there is Facebook, et al, where *everything* you do is directly attributable. Even then, most people DON'T give their supervisors, et al., access, because they want to maintain that degree of separation.
Some of you got mad because I called your unfounded and ignorant opinions unfounded and ignorant. I called stupid opinions stupid. That doesn't imply that you aren't entitled to hold or express your stupid or ignorant opinions, but the whole point of putting them on a discussion board is to discuss them. They stand or fall on their merits and everyone learns something. Those that don't get to continue to hold their stupid or ignorant opinion without any issues.
In the instant case, I tried like hell to explain TROs and ex parte orders under US law and I wasn't wrong. Others posted materials reinforcing my point. You didn't have to agree with me, of course not. But then your best option, as I noted, is to demonstrate my errors and provide the reasons your feel I was wrong, e.g., "Oh Most Holy MahaRushie, you are wrong because (insert your reasoning here)". When people have unrealistic and ignorant expectations concerning the law and "justice" they get beyond angry—that thread demonstrates that, and I tried to explain and mitigate that. Even after a case has been fully litigated on the merits, the parties have had vigorous and aggressive representation, and they have "had their say in court" rare indeed does the loser (or one who thinks they got the short end of the stick) walk thrilled out of a court room saying, "Yes, justice was done there. I am proud of my participation in the American Justice SYSTEM!" (see: BFL TRO being lifted)
But, since some of you thought it was somehow possible to "derail" a thread with almost fifteen thousand posts (90+% of which are worthless) with twenty or so, you figured I was "poking the bear". Thus, you were gonna fix my hash by taking the reasonable pseudo-anonymity provided by the board away, and posting the results of your rudimentary Googling. One option would have been to say that you didn't appreciate my tone and that something I said bothered you. Of course, given what many of you have said in that thread, that comes across as empty, and I certainly didn't set the tone there. But it never hurts to ask. The point is: I'm not involved with BFL other than having bought a little single and having had it replaced. I didn't commit fraud. I didn't do anything that warranted your stupid, erroneous, and unjustified accusations.
To come full circle: some of you think I "poked the bear" and thus "got what I deserved" as if that is some sort of reasonable response to your feeling irritation at my posts. You were free to unleash the unholy hounds of hell against me verbally. You could have posted all the chickenhead, gumby, unicorn, goatse, et cetera ad infinitum crap you wanted, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over as some of you are wont to do. Everything that was generally done in that thread, you could have done. You could have complained to the moderators, like I did. Doxxing people who defrauded you, well, I wouldn't do it, but it's not beyond the pale. In this context, all of those are generally accepted (if *really* irritating to some) responses to "poking the bear" on a bulletin board.
However, poking the bear does not grant you the right to respond disproportionally. If you think it does, then I have two words for you: Charlie Hebdo.
Those guys made it a point to print a magazine that had many of the aspects of the thread in question. Some ignorant and stupid hotheads responded disproportionally to Charlie Hebdo's "poking the bear", by murdering twelve people. That's wrong. The murderers had any number of options: print their own magazine and poke at Charlie Hebdo. Take to that inteweb dealio and tweet da hell outta 'dem. Make parodies of Charlie Hebdo parodies and issue those. Ask for a meeting with the editors. Bitch to Charlie Hebdo's advertisers. Pray to some ancient Muhammulon for enough cash to buy the damn paper and shut it down. Frankly, they could have taken the BFL thread that spawned this one, edited it (over the course of several years given all the idiocy in there) to make fun of Charlie Hebdo and posted that.
They did not have the right to print CB's home addresses. They did not have the right to post erroneous and unrelated accusations ("Hey, a guy named Charlie Hebdo had an email address in 1066 CE, and then after the unmitigated disaster that was the Norman Conquest, he used a USPS tracking number a long time ago, and then, THEN, a bunch of other people did some similar things as well!"). But most importantly, even if some simpletons thought their "bear" was being "poked", no matter how hard, they did not have the right to do anything even mildly approaching what they did. Even accosting them in the street to try to have a reasonable discussion would have been unacceptable.
Now certainly, there are times where poking the bear means just that, poking the bear, and someone gets what they deserved. Initiating force against someone (which still does not grant a disproportionate response) is one example. Or when the "bear" in question has no moral responsibility for their actions. For example, poking a bear enough to get a bear to kill you is a well-deserved result. Poking a beehive enough to get a bunch a bees to sting you such that you go into anaphylactic shock is a well-deserved outcome. But most of you aren't bees or bears, and even if you were, I wouldn't know because you chose not to reveal that aspect of your offline persona, and you don't get to use an extreme response or the reasoning that applies to non-moral actors.
Whatever you think of Darkmule's posts about this, his point is valid: you create an atmosphere where many people simply will not consider posting at all, even if they could help. They won't do it, because if someone here without first-hand knowledge happens to disagree with them, and gets irritated >boom< doxxed. In this case, that could be an insider that, while horrified at BFL's behavior, happens to be close friends with or related to with the primary actors. I can't fathom why anyone would have to explain to you why police and journalists keep their sources secret, even if those sources are sometimes a bit shady. It's because the value of what they provide far outweighs their identity or their other unsavory characteristics.
Some of you guys think that is a smart idea. Note, the journalists and police that risk contempt and imprisonment think it is a stupid idea. Why? Because it is is a stupid opinion to hold. Even if you hold it dearest to your heart.
Either way, 'nuff said, I will not be returning to/nor commenting on this thread. Thanks to all who PMed. For those I offended, my apologies.
My fault, but I wish I had the last 20 minutes of my life back. Heh.
