Not around these parts anyways
Right, because that’s exactly what we’ve been saying. Former Navy SEALS do not exist. :rolleyes:
Navy SEALs never die…
They just stomp off in a huff.
So your point was that people’s opinions should be weighted based on their experience in similar matters. Thanks, but that’s why I was giving her information based on my own personal experience.
I asked her questions which she has oddly ignored since she’s responded to pretty much anyone else who uses her name. You came in and advised me that she has (in your opinion based on her 30K+ posts) led one. That I understand and appreciate.
The rest of your comment seemed as if you were trying to chastise me for some reason.
I can certainly believe you are a writer. I’ve decided to put you at the top of my Dopers I Crush On list, is that okay?
I think we can all drop the beating on Guin. As others have said it wasn’t the posts here it was the accusatory email and I don’t think Guin sent the email, did she?
Also, I don’t see why the odds that a Navy Seal would show up on these boards is so outrageous. Is it anymore outrageous that a couple ex-seals would become governors or astronauts? Become successful authors? Or how about get on a reality TV show?
Those doubting that a man who just had facial surgery and uses a cane would go fishing and wrestle a 37 pound salmon are obviously just not dedicated fisherman. Also, my experience with men is that they tend to do things they’re not supposed to when they are injured. My dad went out to work in the yard after eye surgery(even though he was told not to do anything strenuous) and ended up having his eye rupture. I also think that it’s more admirable than hard to believe that a man trained to fight would not raise his hand to a woman even in self-defense.
As storyteller said, sure you can be skeptical, but really what was the point? What harm was being done? Would it have really have been so bad to just let him be and have him stick around a while so we could learn more about him? If he was lying eventually it would have become obvious. If he wasn’t we’d have had another interesting poster on the board.
Not necessarily-he might have taken a basic neighborhood feud (kids vandalizing his house, mother not doing anything about it and getting hostile, police tired of hearing about her), and just embellishing the fuck out of it.
Sleeps With Butterflies, sorry, I missed your question. Yes, I have had a pretty sheltered life. But yet AGAIN, if you have a problem with my posting record, TAKE IT TO ANOTHER GODDAMNED THREAD. Dammit, quit hijacking this one.
Now then, yes, I have heard of asshole cops. BUT…his story just seemed a bit over the top. The old vet (former SEAL) who has cancer, walks with a cane, was raised by nuns, etc-attacked by a crazy woman. And because her sociopathic, animal-torturing sons were vandalizing his property (which, actually, is the most plausible part), and the police tell him that the woman’s been abused, so they can’t do anything, until she attacks them.
It struck me as another sob-story to catch doper sympathies.
Oh, and then as others point to his other threads, he spends his weekends catching forty-pound salmon, even though he’s so week with his cane and from chemo?
And now he’s leaving because he can’t handle questioning on a message board that tends to be pretty skeptical, especially in the Pit, where he chose to post, even after surviving all of the above?
I know worse things happen in real life, and perhaps it did happen the way he said it did. And maybe it didn’t. Who knows? I’m just saying that MY personal spidey-sense was tingling a bit.
The whole thing reminds me of the time the one poster (name withheld) who claimed that she passed out from an asthma attack in the ER waiting room, and when she came to, she was being beaten by seven security guards-and nobody did anything. AND she was pregnant at the time, and her lesbian lover had to pull them off of her. Despite her being an established poster, unlike the one above, most of us called bullshit, and I don’t believe she’s posted since.
So it’s not the first time someone’s said, “Wait a minute! This is a wee bit far-fetched.” I don’t think I was nasty, either. At least not at first.
ETA: I also don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with some e-mail he was sent. Unless you’re talking about the one who asked about gigi return her money.
Whoah. Let’s hold our horses here. It is not like he begged and pleaded until gigi finally paid up to hush him. She volunteered, and probably didn’t offer, just paid up and informed him “hey, you are in”. This is how it normally happens around here (I don’t know exactly how and where this happened, link anyone?).
No trespassing, no taking her money. She paid the SDMB. He never saw any of it, and never asked for it. Many people here take their chances sponsoring newbs. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes not so much. This time it didn’t.
Now he doesn’t want gigi to pay the price of her lost gamble. She paid for him expecting more fun stories to come and now it won’t happen. He feels somewhat responsible and wants to absorb the loss. That is very gentlemanly of him, even if you think he is being lazy about it.
Oversensitive? I think the oversensitive people are the ones who overidentify with a poster to such an extent that they’re crushed when it turns out that not 100% of what he says is true. And the hurt stays with them for so long that they can never trust another poster again. No, they have to challenge anything he says that might be false, even if it’s completely irrelevant to his story. Then they high-five one another for how they saved themselves from being hurt again.
I liked his story. I’m sorry he’s gone. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not he was a Navy SEAL.
His thread was in the pit because he was pitting his crap neighbor and his crap police force. Not because he was inviting everyone to call him a lying asshole.
I know we’re 266 posts deep into this but I’ll come to Guin’s defense and say “Yes, that story does sound a bit like a tall tale to me!”
Condensed the story reads as: Kids come on my property and destroy my property (knocking planters over), I’m old and walked with my cane to their house where a woman 1) Scratched me across the face enough to make me bleed, and 2) Hit my hand with a baseball bat hard enough to smash my cellphone and knock me over. I call the police, they shrug their shoulders and say “we can’t do nuthin, she’s just crazy.”
I know everyone has stories of police being lazy, yada-yada, but when they’d arrive to find an old man with a cane bleeding from the face, with a smashed cellphone, and visually damaged property (planters), and a baseball bat weilding crazy woman and all the cops do is shrug it off???
Well, my B.S. meter quietly “dings!” also.
Apparently someone sent him an email that he describes as “an email demanding I provide proof, and calling me a liar flat out.” No idea who did it. But that’s the email he’s referring to that was the last straw for him, apparently.
And as for his story being suspicious, I can think of at least five or six incidents from my life or my husband’s life that nobody would believe could be true, and yet are. Just because it seems over the top doesn’t mean that it necessarily is.
I’m one of the folks who would have liked to see him given the benefit of the doubt, at least for a while; as others have said, it’s hard to sustain lies indefinitely, even online. And we might have ended up with a great poster who has some hilariously entertaining stories to tell. Instead, we have one Doper sending the guy a nasty email over something that really, truly DID NOT MATTER to that Doper. Who cares if he’s really a SEAL or not? Does knowing whether that’s true or not change the entertaining nature of what he’d been writing?
Well, it’s a good thing that no one did, then. Certainly not in this thread.
Well, it certainly wasn’t me who sent it. (If you choose not to believe me, well, that’s your choice)
Once again, it’s not so much the “I think he’s a fucking liar!” Whether he is or he isn’t doesn’t really matter at this point.
It’s more the “How dare you express even a slight bit of skepticism! You must spit on old veterans walking down the street!”
And if he chooses to leave, well, that’s his decision, not mine. We’ve said time and time again-if you want people to agree with you 100%, you don’t post in the Pit.
I initially defended justanoldvet because his story seemed plausible to me and because, I’m afraid, Guinastasia isn’t exactly one of my favorite persons. I’d like to retract my defense.
You see, I was going to e-mail him this morning to ask him to stick around. The story he started this thread with, fictional or otherwise, was entertaining enough and I don’t like to see people run off for nothing. However, something in his e-mail address looked hinky to me. Now, as it happens, I have a friend who writes military fiction for a living and is quite knowledgeable about SEALs. I’ll be happy to e-mail anyone who’d like verification the names he writes under and a way to verify that information. I e-mailed my friend a summary of the information, including the part of his address that looked odd and asked him his opinion. He referred me to an organization called “VeriSEAL”, http://www.veriseal.org/, which specializes in exposing people who falsely claim to be Navy SEALs on-line. According to my friend,
He suggested asking for the guy’s BUD/S class number. A bit further along in his e-mail, he said something that sounded familiar:
Now, I haven’t checked justandoldvet’s e-mail address with VeriSEAL, so I don’t have proof that he’s a faker, but the odds don’t look good. I’ll do so shortly and, if they say he’s for real, I’ll return here for my serving of crow. Meanwhile, Guinastasia, I apologize for doubting your doubt.
I was trying to help you get down off the cross.
It wasn’t you. You didn’t cause him to leave. It wasn’t you. This thread isn’t about you. It wasn’t you.
Can we move on now?
God dammit!!! The point is, so what? So the hell what?? Big deal. All we have managed to do is scare off another poster that has something new and entertaining to add to this board outside of the same tired crap. Ok, hero? You win. You proved he is a Seal imposter. Or not. Or whatever. Who cares? I just want us to stop shouting troll at the top of our lungs all the time, the mods waving the banning wand around at everyone that has an unpopular opinion, everyone trying to prove how sensitive and shiny their bullshit meters are…goddammit, it is annoying as fuck.
Sorry 'bout that. Thank you.
:o
Agreed.
Yeah, it’s like some sort of competition for bragging rights just so someone can say that from the beginning they knew there was something off with Poster SoandSo. In the meantime they may end up chasing off plenty of legitimate and interesting posters.
I didn’t realize all Seals had to register their emails so we could verify that they are who they say they are. Well, that’s convenient.
Did you notice that justanoldvet himself mentioned VeriSEAL in one of his posts?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9255426&postcount=113
He also mentioned that he got out in '87.
Let us know how it goes, Sherlock.
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seated]
God dammit!!! The point is, so what? So the hell what?? Big deal. [/QOTE]
In my humble opinion, with a fake story similar to this, it’s incredibly disrespectful to those who have served (in any capacity).
I agree that he would’ve brought something new and entertaining to the board. I liked him on the small basis I’d read his posts; he reminded me of my grandfather (on the small basis that I knew him).
[QUOTE]
Ok, hero? You win. You proved he is a Seal imposter. Or not. Or whatever. Who cares?[?QUOTE]
Well, not to parrot the cliche too loudly, but many do because it’s the specific purpose of the whole boards and to have anyone abuse that (or their trust) is anathema to the SDMb in general.
I also wish that the word troll wasn’t trotted out so much or quickly. However, I didn’t know we’d ever had a poster banned for unpopular opinions. Could you point me to where that’s happened? Because if so, I’d like to lodge a complaint with the Powers That Be for doing something so incredibly wrong. Lastly, I understand that some couldn’t care less about the more emotional reasons they are skeptical, however I recognize that it’s important to them.
Finally, Siege I would like to know if you find anything out, one way or another. And although I’m desperately disappointed over the email, I’m glad that he pointed out that it wasn’t anyone’s concerns in this thread that did it.