Disregard above message. I meant:
First off, that took a lot of courage and class and I admire you greatly for it, Diane.
Second, As I read through the Wally tribute thread with tears rolling down my face I thought:
Well, I guess that answers the question about if it’s “just a message board”.
Satan, you read my mind.
Zette
“You don’t know what you’ve got 'till it’s gone.”
Losing Wally taught me exactly how much this place and you folks have come to mean to me. It was shocking how deep and intense the grief is.
Then it came to me that, in actuality, I talk with the people here easily as often but usually with more zest, breadth and interest than my “real life” friends. Somehow this place has attracted and kept an amazing array of fascinating, warm-hearted people.
I put “real life” in quotations because I can’t use that distinction any more: it isn’t accurate. I slept hardly at all last night, and badly at that, headachy from crying. Literally my first thought on waking was, “Oh, God, Wally’s family is waking up to this.” I kept tearing up at work, and had to close my office door when I looked at Wally’s memorial on Opal’s site. The whole day was a long, persistent ache and feeling of unreality, because Wally is gone.
If that isn’t real life, what is? I’m not an easy cryer, e.g. celebrity deaths like Princess Diana cause nothing more than generalized human pity. So what if we know one another by computer? That’s just the means. Damned if I don’t know many of you folks better than many people I interact with everyday face to face.
It’s a miracle I wasn’t looking for. I came here for fun and interest and somehow came to care very much for the people.
Veb
I want to apologize to ultress for holding a grudge over something stupid. I kept bringing it up, and I shouldn’t have. I apologize, hon.
I also want to apologize to Angkins for seeming to be jumping on her all the time. I never meant to hurt you, and I’m sorry.
When Kelli got her computer (before I got mine) and she was online with all you people ALL the time and talking about different things happening in Dopeville, I thought she was insane. What kind of a Putz would become so involved in the faceless people on the internet??
I am that very Putz now. I was introduced to this board a short 6 months ago and since have laughed and cried with you, fought with and against you, praised and bitched about you. I can not think of a group of people I would rather share my secrets with, ask questions to, give advice to, scream at, argue with, laugh and joke with than the group of Putzes I fondly refer to as my Doper friends.
We are a closer knit family than alot of people have IRL. Where else can you go and flame someone’s ass to a crisp, and the next minute flirt with them? I wouldn’t have things any other way. The tragedy is we had to lose such a great man and friend to see the forest for the trees… and if nothing else I have the solice of knowing that Wally’s legacy will live on in all of us. :wally
and because this IS the pit… you are all a bunch of monkey felching Dope addict putzes…now go eat a bowl of fuck!
This IS a message board. And all the more power to it, that the individuals here can send little missives on a delayed time frame and still come to know and care and love and debate and articulate to each other. Messages in bottles, floated across time and space, and unfurled by those that make an effort to connect.
I’ve found my time here to be very enriching. So much so that I’ll travel great distances to meet the bodies behind the words. I’ve never been disappointed.(Except for missing Veb in Chicago) Every Doper I’ve met IRL is an exceptional person.
I didn’t have to work today. Thankfully, because Wally’s passing deeply saddened me. I went out into the grace of my woods, and after sitting awhile, a vision entered my mind. It was from the point of view high above the planet. There were many little lights, each one a person affected by Wally. Separate, spread throughout the US and globe, yet connected to each other. All in unison for someone we cherish. I treasure that visual symbol. It is our collective heart, the bonds we’ve made, and our shared passage in the precious time we have together. It’s fitting that the passing of the most best of us would bring that realization.
Not much BBQ here, but a quite tasty sauce.
I can’t quite describe how I felt when I heard about Wally. Like most here, I never met him, and I can’t say I ever corresponded with him. Still, I knew him, and I’ll miss him, and it hurts. I believe that we each have a unique relationship with nearly everyone we come into contact with, and that the internet has opened up a whole new set of possibilities. I don’t think many people have learned to deal with the subtleties of it yet.
I was thinking later, though–everywhere I look anymore, I see canned emotions. It seems that people have practiced emotional hyperbole or disaffect to cover up self-interest or hide how they really feel, to the point that I sometimes wonder if anyone really feels anything anymore.
Yet today, I logged in to my computer and found more messages than I could possibly read where nearly 1,000 people were expressing genuine sorrow for the death of a man most of them had never met. Many of them (myself included) didn’t even know his last name. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.
It confirmed a conclusion I’ve had lingering for a while–I’m not sure how it’s done it, but the Straight Dope Message Board has managed to pull together the finest damn bunch of putzes that the world has ever seen. Even though I don’t feel like I contribute as much as I could to this community, I’m proud to be a part of it. Sure, it may be “just a message board”, but if this is what a message board is, that’s all it needs to be.
:wally
Dr. J
A few people are taking the opportunity to make amends with other people on the board. I would like to try to make some amends myself. I am Wanderer now, but I was formerly known as lswote (I had my name legally changed by the mods). I made a mistake awhile back and alienated many people I had started to consider friends. I have been mostly a lurker since then and miss the opportunity to be part of the community. I want to apologize formally to ultress for over-reacting to something she said and making a mountain out of a molehill. I also want to apologize to Green Bean for putting her in a bad light by something I said. Finally I would like to apologize to CanadianSue with whom I had started to correspond with via email and who I disappointed so badly she stopped our correspondence.
I know there were others I offended as well. I apologize to all of you. I was thin-skinned, and that just doesn’t fly around here. I have done a lot of sucking it up since the incident and I hope I am shedding the thin-skinned whininess. I am not sure I am asbestos rated yet, but I am working on it.
For anyone who is interested. I got fired from my high paying job in New York, and I am in the process of moving to Fort Lauderdale (I have moved from Austin, Texas to Colorado Springs to New Jersey in the last year and a half and now Fort Lauderdale, hence the new nom de pleur Wanderer). I have an old college friend in Fort Lauderdale who I am close to and I hope to establish a real life down there.
Oh, and you are all fucking putzes. :wally
Wanderer,
I meant to mail you earlier, when I noticed that you were posting again and no one was riding you. Kind of an “All things pass, and isn’t it wonderful”. Welcome home.
Well… I have to admit, and most of you already know, that I was in the “it’s just a message board!” group for a long time. Hell, I was quite close to being a full fledged troll for quite a while.
I don’t know what changed, exactly, but at some point, I stopped considering this to be ‘just’ a message board, and began to think of everyone here as a bunch of friends, just as real as the ones at work or school.
I really want to apologize to everyone I’ve lambasted or offended in any of my early posts.
For some reason, “Will You Remember Me?” or whatever it’s called by Sarah McLauchlin was just playing on TV…
I don’t know why, but somehow I don’t possess the emotional capacity to cry. I stopped myself years ago from caring enough about anyone or anything to truly feel emotions for it. Last night, reading about Wally is honestly the closest I’ve been to tears in a very, very long time.
I don’t think it’s really quite sunk in yet, that Wally truly is gone… He won’t tell us the hijinks that ensue when Amy finally convinces him to install an above ground pool. We won’t hear about how he accidentally tripped Steve’s principal during the graduation ceremony. He’s not going to tell us how he dumped blue paint all over Angelina while he was repainting the house (Why, I can do just as good a job as a pro, and cheaper!). No, Wally won’t be here for us anymore.
I don’t think there was ever any direct dialogue between the two of us, but I do know that many a time, I would post something and hope for a reply from Wally, or one of the other ‘big’ posters, hoping for a ::splort:: or something of that nature.
I guess whether that happened or not doesn’t really matter now. Angelina, Steven, and Amy are experiencing a pain that I can’t even begin to conceive. So are many of the posters here, who knew him much better than I could have dreamed.
The other day, he was just a person who posted here. A really funny poster, yes, but just another poster none the less. Now, today, it’s hard to accept that he wasn’t ‘just’ another poster. He, just like everyone else here, is a real human being, with love, hurt, joy, sadness, and pain. Just as real and as physical as I am and the ones I love.
People don’t realize that sometimes, as we exchange little 1’s and 0’s on this big network of ugly boxes under our desks. The people reading this are just like your girlfriend, your wife, your sons and daughters. Your best friend, your worst enemy, and your boss at K-Mart.
I suppose this all has made everything a little more real to me, now.
I’m gonna take some sudafed and try to sleep.
Rest well, Wally. We’ll all be joining you soon.
Love,
–Tim
note to self:
Homer is also a reformed troll.
Welcome to the club…
Just two members now…
Well they say two’s company,
and three’s a crowd.
We need a third member…
(Jayburner/concrete/etc…join the club man
you’d make a cool [3rd] addition…do it
for Wally’s sake, he would have liked this.)
You know, I’m sure the mods had good reason to remove V8’s post…But when they delete posts in the middle of threads, and then a newcomers to the thread comes along and reads your reactions to it …well, it makes y’all look a tad nuts.
Wally would be amused. 
Although I’ve just started posting, I’ve been lurking for a while. I regret now that I didn’t get involved sooner. I think one thing to be grateful for is that this is a message board – Wally’s words are captured here is a way that would not have happened IRL. (I like that – Wally’s Words of Wisdom.) I hope that the mods are able to create a permanent place archiving Wally’s threads.
I woke up this morning and thought of this thread.
Seems we’re all doing our bits of apologizing. Well, I realized that I forgot someone. Lisa, I thought I might have apologized to you before, but I can’t remember. So I’m doing it again, just in case. I’m sorry for being rude to you.
Of course, since this is the Pit, for one last time I might as well call you an inflamed, pus-dripping, syphillitic cu–
Hey, who hit me?
One of Wally’s emails that I had saved came from right after I was banned, and spoke of the hope that there might be peace again soon. I was in tears rereading his emails yesterday; so many "I love ya"s that will never be repeated.
For Wally, I apologized to Ed in an IM yesterday morning. But I thought I ought to do it publicly, too.
I’m sorry for the grief I’ve caused in the past.
-Melin
Rest In Peace, Wally
At the risk of calling fire down on my head . . . .
I hope that everyone who’s now acknowledging that this is not “just” a message board, and that real people exist behind it, will keep that in mind when they post. Because there have been multiple times that I’ve seen people profess this before and then minutes, days, or weeks later post vindictive, brutal, no-holds-barred shit that they wouldn’t dream of hurling at any person they were talking to face to face. So if you acknowledge today that real people read this and are affected by what you say, and tomorrow post that someone who disagrees with you is a “goat-felcher” or an “asshole,” then you are a hypocrite, plain and simple. And part of what made Wally great was that he never stooped to that level, either of vindictiveness or of hypocricy. And I find that my profound sadness over Wally’s passing hasn’t lessened my skepticism; I’m glad to see everyone talking the talk – and I’m happy to join in – but I’ll be more interested to see how many walk the walk when this tragedy becomes, as it must, one more piece of message board history.
Jodi 12:28-32
Amen, sister.
You will see it continue I’m sure. As I’ve stated before, this is where we post our opinions. It won’t always be what someone else thinks. That doesn’t make us right or wrong. It makes us individual.
A lot of apologies have been made on this thread. I must step forward and say that none to me are necessary. I know that while some posts get strong, and sometimes we all get carried away, I don’t take any personally. We can flame each other in the Pit and then turn around and hug each other on another forum. As it should be. If you can’t say to me what you want, then I’m not much of a Doper.
So flame me, curse me, call me names, disagree with me. Point out when I post stupid replies. I’ll still love ya, and you’ll still always be my friend.
And since this is the ‘Pit’, you are all a bunch of :wally s
I’ve only been posting for a month, but I’ve lurked for much longer, and I enjoyed reading Wally’s posts. I regret never interacting with him. The genuine grief you all feel and the way so many of you have taken this opportunity to heal wounds and mend fences has touched me deeply. You are all truly excellent, kind, and decent folks. I’m honored to know you.
I thought about starting a topic like this in MPSIMS, but I’ll just say what I have to say here. I know it’s the not PIT-like, but not much of this thread is.
In the past month, my life has been an emotional roller coaster. I don’t even know how to begin to express how much my fellow dopers have supported me through all of this, don’t know if it’s possible to express.
I don’t know how many of ya’ll are in the same boat as me, but this message board has been a godsend to me. I’m a stay at home mom, my husband works outrageous hours, so as you can imagine I’m alone an awful lot. Sure, I’ve got IRL friends, but they’ve got families of their own to care for and are not always available. Mostly I’m just here for a few laughs, a way to use up an hour or two, but sometimes I need so much more.
(sorry, I’m crying again)
And every time I’ve asked for help or support, it’s been so freely given that sometimes it’s hard to believe. Again, I can’t express myself, I’m sure you know what I mean.
I guess I’m just trying to say thank you for everything. I just wish Wally were here to thank, too.
I’m not so sure of that, ultress. Sure, joking, nudge-nudge, goat-felching flames are one thing, but this is still one message board, and true flames, with real anger, can damage as much in the Pit as anywhere else.
If someone spews bile at me here, I’m not likely to hug them in another forum, just because “this is the Pit and it doesn’t mean anything.” Apologies are necessary, and as useful and important here as they are in face to face interaction.
My $.02