The <link removed> jerkness continues.
John Mace, in the future please just report such posts so as not to give the offender the attention they’re obviously seeking.
Unidexter?
I’m a little surprised — okay, okay, I’m thoroughly blindsided — by the reason for the ban. The signature item, which I’d never seen until today when I looked at his profile (I have signatures turned off), seems perfectly benign. Other than the fact that it quotes the object of his career obsession, there is nothing trollish, jerkish, or intimidating about it that I can see. I do realize that reviving the signature violated an agreement he made, but what I’m saying is that I don’t understand why it was ever a problem.
Almost immediately upon his return from suspension, he began opening Poly-bait threads, and started pushing buttons all around. I mean, if a person cannot bring anything better to a community than pasting saved lists and then bellowing about how stupid some of us are (theists) and how cowardly some of us are (atheists) and how hypocritical some of us are (mods) — then fuck. Surely, no further justification is needed. It’s almost like having a rule against plagiarism and then banning someone for using the quote tag.
[…shrug…]
It is also relevant that badchad has already created a sock, using a variant of his user name…think it was bad chad…and posted a taunting thread in ATMB. He got rebanned almost immediately, and that post has dissappeared. Going by memory, think the post was time stamped at 3:03 pm.
Edit: this was posted before I saw Giraffe’s post #22
One-legged. Coined, if I’m not much mistaken, in a sketch where Dudley Moore played a one-legged man interviewing for a film part as Tarzan in oblivious defiance of one glaringly obvious reason why he was unsuited to the role.
When someone is given a final warning and suspension, they’re automatically on thin ice when they return. Some felt that badchad’s posts immediately following his return showed that he intended to continue the behavior for which he was suspended, others felt that they were combative but not so clearly over the line as to warrant immediate banning. Rather than risk being unfairly harsh, it was decided that no one would be harmed by allowing a bit of extra reasonable doubt.
Directly disobeying the mod instructions under which one is suspended carries no such gray area – if we tell you not to do X when your suspension is over and you do it, you’re out. It doesn’t matter if you agree that X is a reasonable condition or not – part of being a member here is agreeing to obey moderator instructions. You can argue against those instructions, but you can’t just ignore them.
Interesting point, perhaps this was simply the final straw combined with the non-working Email address? He seemed to be at the breaking point as it was.
ETA: Or what **Giraffe ** posted before I hit submit. 
You are making an assumption that might be false. It could have been any old troll just trying to get you to think what you thought.
You just blew my mind.
You’ve explained that so well that even I can understand it. Thanks.
handy went pretty much the same way. They had a restriction on him to refrain from posting medical advice, which was unique to him, and when he ran afoul of it, away he went. It seems there are times when particular posters can abuse specific privileges, such as posting medical advice(which is very common here), or using a .sig and be singled out for administrative action based on said abuse. So while unusual, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. No bigger a deal than when handy was put on his personal short leash and then whacked for another violation.
Enjoy,
Steven
Even the priests of the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Spaghetti Flying Monster are singing their praises…
I do know that many hard atheists will be really upset for what happened, I’m an agnostic, but after a big thread long ago it is fair to say that I can be called a plain soft atheist.
On the whole I have to conclude that **badchad ** was not really helping in the long run. Make no mistake, sometimes hard nosed and in your face tactics are needed in the fight against ignorance, but seeing how his last mistake was to reuse a sig that management already told him not to use again as condition for his return, then the realization is that his in-your-face tactics caused more harm than good.
It is true, one many times is compelled to post not to change the opinions of your thread opponents, but to appeal to the lurking peanut gallery. badchad’s posts were appealing all right, but to the plain nutty gallery.
After so many years in this planet (41, not so old, but enough to just beginning to get a clue) I have concluded that organized religion is silly, but organized religion was not always so; in the past, because of its position, it had more power to influence governments on items that do cause harm (Kings by the right of god, wars defended by the same logic).
In many developing nations that influence remains, but in developed countries they lost their best arguments once their power to burn infidels was lost. So to me it is leave and let live for people that follow now mostly harmless silliness. However, one should remember that “eternal vigilance” it is not just for democracy. The thing that badchad then ignored was that the fight is there, but it is there now to prevent and limit any growing influence of organized religion in the lives of people that not belong to it, to concentrate on eliminating the bad influences. (attempts to destroy separations of church and state, preventing progress in contraception choices, etc)
Concentrating on dissing the faith of posters ignores that many posters here are indeed against the harmful elements of their faiths. For in the end, after so many years of seeing Marx and other philosophers’ promises falling short, one has to be humble and face the fact that religion will be with us for a very long time, and therefore the purpose in life for people that do not have faith in organized religions is to make sure religion members do remain benevolent, as they themselves claim to be. We have to constantly demand them to become what they claim.
Going for the throat may be effective, but so far I only see that the remains of people like badchad are telling me another story, and it is not telling me that the lesson is that they were not correct, but that they demanded too much, too soon. And IMO they attacked the wrong targets.
So there is a God?
(Not aimed at the post directly above this, just at the thread in general)
If you wouldn’t mind explaining one more thing, Giraffe — what was the problem with the signature? Why was it forbidden?
Hey, if they could get Al Capone for tax evasion…
This diamond-hard atheist is glad the fucker is gone. We didn’t need his “help” to explain our position. Like you said, did more harm than good, and all that.
It’s pretty low class to take pot shots like this, even for a troll like badchad. So all I will say is, farewell. May you end your ignorance and find peace.
I can see how it would offend me if someone I really disliked, and who had followed me around the Boards on a personal vendetta against me, decided to quote me in his profile. In this case, it was clearly done to to aggravate Polycarp. IMO, it’s no different than one of your antagonists constantly referring to you using your former user name. Petty and assholish.
And it further cements my belief that BadChad wanted to get banned. As many people suggested, he was going to flame out sooner or later, it was just a matter of when.
One of the conditions of badchad’s return was that he drop his stated campaign targeting Polycarp. We removed a Polycarp quote from his signature and told him not to replace it with anything similar as part of this.
Did BC ever post a pic? I have always wondered what he looked like. I have an idea, but I will keep it to myself.
On that note, did we ever glean any information on his demographic? Age? Occupation? Anything?
Best I can get is that it’s a merger between Invisible Pink Unicorn LLC and Dexter’s Laboratories GmBH. Their line of business I leave completely to your imagination 