I got banned from a website devoted to table top RPGs. The final straw was in an off topic thread about autism where I referred to it as a disorder.
I once received a temporary ban from an online MUD. I forget the exact reason; maybe inappropriately asking for a favor from one of the administrators? I never went back.
I once wanted to close an investment account that was related to a previous job. The person I talked to refused to discuss my request until he had gone through a lengthy script asking what my investment objectives were, how much money I made, etc. I was frustrated (because I was on a tight schedule) and I banged on the table. They told me to leave and closed my account, sending me a letter saying they no longer wanted my business. Mission accomplished, I guess.
Although not quite banned, on a horse discussion board I was given demerit points and a big fat warning for telling someone they needed to use punctuation. As in, ANY punctuation. I didn’t even mention the spelling!
If you don’t say “Goodbye, I had a wonderful time!”
Or make at least some attempt at a polite exit. “Wish I could’ve stayed longer.” will also work.
Think I was banned from the same 9-11 Forum; the Forum I was posting in at the time (a rather Skeptical bunch) had been ‘invaded’ by 9-11 truthers and we fought back by entering their territory. We were not appreciated and I got banned after 5-6 messages (and I was perfectly polite, even trying to help…). Have no idea if that forum still exists and really don’t care.
Oh, and BippityBoppityBoo; you know that you’re my hero…
Around 30 years ago I got kicked out of both bars in Dutch Harbor, AK. I don’t know if that counts.
Does being prevented from signing up in the first place count as a ban?
Some animation forum sign up asked a few random questions that had nothing to do with the forum subject as part of the registration. I figured it was just something to weed out bots, so I gave smartass but applicable answers. An hour later I got an email indicating my application for forum membership was rejected.
I drove a group of college students from Chicago to a Christian weekend event in IN. I was driving a church van. Driving back from the event, I skidded a bit on an ice patch and was struck by a truck. (I should not have been driving in the winter weather, but the students were desperate to be back in class on Monday.) Fortunately, there were only minor injuries.
Of course, I was unable to locate the insurance information for the IN troopers investigating. When I got back to Chicago, the church’s auto insurance company promised to send the policy information to IN. Didn’t happen…even after multiple requests.
I had not been cited by the troopers, but about 6 months later I got a very nice letter telling me that, due to my failure to provide proper insurance information, I was prohibited from operating a motor vehicle in IN. As far as I know, the insurance company never did send the information. Since there was no outstanding citation, I’ve had no problem getting a license in IL, VA, or NC.
I got banned from EBay for no reason I could see. I’d sold exactly one thing - an iPad Mini I’d won in a contest - years before. When I logged in a few months ago I got “Your account has been suspended. According to our records, your account has violated our site policies”, along with a bunch of links to try to fix the problem. None of the links work. At some point I’ll call them and probably spend hours on hold trying to fix this.
I didn’t get banned, but I was driven out of a forum for a tabletop gaming-themed web comic. (I don’t want to name the comic or link to the forum to not throw shame on another community.)
Which sucked, because I’m a huge fan of the comic and I have been a gamer my whole life. But the community was awful.
To start with, there was a thread on the forums talking about how people used spells creatively in a game. I mentioned how I once conjured water (a pretty minor spell) on a mountaintop to get a giant to slip on it, and we killed it. I had folks jump on me, calling my GM stupid for allowing it, and calling me stupid for thinking it was a good example. Nobody pushed back on the rudeness, and I just slunk away from the thread rather than escalating.
In another thread, the subject was about the moral panic in the 80s and how people claimed D&D was Satanic at the time. A number of people talked about being religious and still being a gamer, in fact most of the thread was about that. I joined in with my own experience. I got a warning (as did a bunch of other people) that religious talk was banned, and my post was blanked out. (An official warning that stayed on my profile forever.) It was total BS, because it was a long-running thread and there were no comments that anyone was doing anything wrong, and I was warned just for participating. You’d think a note to get things back on track would be sufficient, but some discussion boards aren’t run nearly as well as the SDMB is.
It was clear to me that the forum was not being managed properly. Personal attacks were fine, but you slip up and participate in the wrong discussion and you are a pariah. I just stopped posting and haven’t been back. (Granted, it was over a decade ago and the community might be completely different now, so I’m not saying it’s still bad, I just had a terrible experience.)
I’m still a big fan of the comic strip and it didn’t sour me on it at all. I just knew to stay away from discussions.
I’ve been on BBSes, then Usenet, then web forums since the mid-80s and can only think of one place I was banned from and that was completely weird and unexplained. It was an alternate sub-Reddit for a video game than the “official” one and I went there one day just because I was looking for stuff to read and the main one was slow. I posted one or two very basic things (“Another good place to get ABC is to try Zone XYZ and kill the whoever-critters…”) and the next day got a message saying I was banned, that it was irrevocable, and not to contact any mods about it because they wouldn’t help me. Pretty immediate and harsh response for a couple basic video game tips.
I looked briefly, thinking maybe they got hacked or some other weird event was happening but couldn’t see anything else different. The place was very low traffic and I wasn’t missing anything by not being able to post there any longer so I just shrugged it off.
Man, that must been some serious rowdyness.
I was teaching a computer course in Montreal. All of the equipment for the labs was shipped ‘in bond’ from the US. When the course was over and the contractor was packing up the ‘in bond’ equipment, he pointed to a portable oscilloscope and asked “you want to just take that one back with you?”. Without thinking I agreed and just carried it on the airplane.
So when customs checked what came in against what went out there was a $3000 Oscilloscope missing. They assumed it had been sold and no tax paid. Hence the warrant for arrest.
The contractor should have known better, and so should I.
I got an instaban by putting an obscenity in my password for a Heroes of Might & Magic forum… Figgered nobody would be able to see it, or care if they did. Apparently an autobot did. Did manage to straighten it out with the human admin.
I’ve been widowed 2x. I got banned from a message board for widows. I don’t recall why.
And I am currently on my 6th FB suspension.
If you had just posted once on a new subreddit you might have been caught up in a weird auto-block bot that only scans people who have just posted.
It was an established sub, just not a well populated one since there was an ‘official’ sub for the game already. But, yeah, if it was a bot or something, I wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, that’s much more reasonable than a living mod taking offense (which is why my first thought was a hack/takeover type thing)
Not been banned from an internet forum, but have been “yelled at” by self-proclaimed admins (prominent posters who try to regulate the posts around them, but not actually admins). It took me a surprisingly long time to accustom myself to forum posting; it’s a whole new thing compared to normal face to face communication.
I was phone interviewed by a cat adoption group, who asked me about de-clawing, then balked at the fact that we had de-clawed our previous cats. (We decided against it for our next round of kitties.) Anyway, they told me no. But then, we just adopted two cats from other groups. This was in Seattle.
I was banned from a Disney message board for a culmination of issues. The board was officially about Disney travel, Disney media, etc., but I mostly participated on the “Community” board which was ostensibly just for this & that. I ruffled a few feathers with my … “colorful” … language, and a few more with my open discussion of my cannabis use and advocacy, more still with my blue jokes. I got banned, however, when we were discussing this or that, and I linked to a news article. The article was one that I had written, and apparently that crossed a line.