What is he going to do now that he’s banned? He had so many posts here, this board had to have been a huge part of his time.
OK, what are the differences?
Dio was the most frequent violator of the “don’t be a jerk” rule in my time on this board. If you think that what he added to religious discussions made his jerkdom worth stomaching, then I think you need to read more broadly on that topic. Good riddance.
Look, folks – this is still the ATMB forum. Try to be civil. I know, technically our rules about insults don’t apply to non-posters (presumably including "ex-posters), but let’s try to keep this polite.
We are stretching a point in allowing this thread, because Dio is unable to respond, and it’s unfair to lash out at him this way.
The GW threads are certainly teeming with them now.
But he lacked wisdom-if by that we agree to mean discernment, perspective, grasping another’s viewpoint, or even compassion/empathy, among many other things.
It does make me wonder just how much (or how little) people can change. In my own personal case, I know I have changed a great deal (anyone who knew me before/after can attest to that). It breaks my heart to see depressed people post here in despair that they can’t ever seem to get over their despair, knowing that I managed to pull it off. Likewise this is a man with a wife and kid, who apparently spends 12 hours a day on this board, and who never bothered to even try to change his prickly and obstinate ways, and has now paid the price. I hope with all his newfound free time that he’ll find more useful ways to spend it, vs. just going over to some other board somewhere and obsessively spending 12 hours a day there, while his family members become strangers. If I ever have a kid I’ll be spending most of my free time with them doing this or that; hell maybe the 1-2 hours a day I spend here is too much (and I’ve almost quit for good on several occasions).
He’ll be back as a sock. Short-lived.
I think the guy was an unrepentant ass, but counseling would piss me off, too. 
Wow. I’m not going to get this much of a bruhaha when I get banned! 
I certainly didn’t get any hand-holding before my suspension. I was surprised at mine, actually. (It was for telling Dio he was on my ignore list, ironically.)
I hear that Dio had a lot of smarts and smart things to say, but I found that he was incorrect several times with this ‘knowledge’. And he had a habit of calling me names or telling me I couldn’t read. So, no, not sorry to see Dio go.
I am surprised, though.
Can I get counseled? I know I only have 35,000 posts, but I’m just so darn depressed I may start lashing out at people!
Nah, he’ll just post at Giraffe’s board more.
I was looking through some old threads a while back, and stumbled across some Dio posts from 4-5 years ago. He was much calmer and more reasonable. I’ve talked about it with a few people who post here that I know IRL and they agreed. I wonder what happened to him.
**Dio **was the only poster I have ever put on my ignore list. Since he’s banned, I can say that right? I am ecstatic to hear that his malfeasant ass won’t be dropping fecal bombs in any more threads.
He was obnoxious to the point of insanity, even inanity. It was totally worthless ever engaging him in conversation about anything.
And about those “potential” contributions… 
What could they really have been? It’s not like he was the only clean source of water in an arid desert. Fer chris’sake it’s the internet! There’s plenty of smart people around here. GQ sure isn’t gonna fall to pieces without him. All we ever got was his opinionated, and often jaded, view of things peppered with some odd facts here and there. Facts which were presented on the business end of a hammer to the face. No ignorance can be fought that way.
You know that saying “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Well guess what? **Dio **almost *always *said it wrong.
Good point.
I’m outta the thread.
I will miss him. The things that drove others crazy never bothered me a bit. I noticed his posting style changed (not for the better) over the years, but the shit that bugged others I just didn’t care about, and to be honest, I often wondered why others found him so disruptive when I was able to overlook his nonsense so easily.
I’m gonna miss him. Plus he was often funny. Chuckles is a huge part of why I love this board.
Oh God. I forgot all about that.
Not that remembering it makes me disagree with the banning, because he did get plenty of warnings and really didn’t seem able to change his ways to be less obstinate and disruptive.
But it does make me feel more sympathy for him. I don’t know what, if any, issues he had that were helped by posting as often and as… let’s say idiosyncratically… as he did. It seems clear that the SDMB was an outlet for him during a difficult time, and thus it makes me sadder that he doesn’t have that outlet any longer.
Of course he was breaking / stretching the rules long before his mom died, so I’m not trying to excuse him or anything. He certainly should’ve known better.
I’m just saying… well, I don’t know. I don’t expect the people who are thrilled by his banning to rend their garments in woe or anything if they remember (or even knew in the first place) what he went through. In the end he was a flawed poster but a human one. So I hope he finds another place to hang out where he feels comfortable, and maybe learns how to interact in a more positive way.
Don’t worry. Another network has picked up the remaining episodes.
Joe
Coll was a shit-ton more entertaining when he crossed the line than Dio ever was. He’d launch into someone with so much arrogance and disdain that you could have sculpted a shrine to Loki out of the stuff. Dio would just shout, “Is not! Is not!” over and over again.
My bad – I didn’t mean it in an attacking way. I meant it more in a Samuel L. Jackson way. You have to read it in his voice. “They offered therapy to the motherfucker?”
No less, I’ll stop.
The board will seem different, that’s for sure. For some reason I really kind of liked Dio, and found that I had no trouble separating the wheat from the chaff when it came to his posts. I’ve felt from time to time that he spent far too much time on this board considering he’s married and has three (I think) children. I doubt that he’ll find other boards as compelling as this one, with perhaps the result that he’ll begin to spend more time with his family and to develop more rewarding interests.
Speaking from personal experience, this place can really get a grip on you if you’re an argumentative type of person (:p) and it can be hard to pull yourself away to do other things that in reality would be more rewarding. Hopefully Dio will now be able to live a life centered more upon his family and the world outside this board, and I think he’ll be a better person and have a happier life if he does.
The bottom line though is that I’m sad he’s gone. A huge element of the board’s personality and a fair amount of well-expressed knowledge has been lost and that’s gonna take some getting used to.
This here is what you call irony, isn’t it? (The lack of an official warning, that is.)
Actually he’s a member and a mod at other fora, my guess is he’ll put in some time there.
I appreciated his insight in religious threads. He was given chances by the mods, and even though I’ll miss his insight, I can’t fault the mods.
Besides if I did, they’d ban me… 