Name one. Name one who posted inane crap every few minutes and wasn’t pitted.
Pile on? Pile on?! This is most definitely not a pile on. Most of the posts here are downright civil. In fact a fair number of them point out that, although he is irritating, he really hasn’t done anything banworthy. The OP himself says as much.
A majority of Major Kong’s threads are nothing but navel gazing inanities-- saying so does not constitute a pile on.
By my count 17 of the 40 replies to this thread were of an anti-Kong nature. 2 of those 17 replies (not counting the OP) were mine. About 5 of those 17 contain some form of honest advice to Major Kong or mention his other contributions.
Pile-on? Hardly.
Let alone King Kong…
In the admittedly ill-advised “child-aduction [sic]” thread, poster after poster just had to chime in to say that Major Kong was the worst person ever to exist in the history of humanity. One third-trimester abortion even flat-out accused him of being a child abductor. I’d have reported the post and expected him to be banned if s/he weren’t some clueless newbie.
That disaster, plus this one, plus the fact that people were gleefully posting to his threads until they were locked and public opinion turned on him (the first “dump” thread went to a second page), to me, equals pile-on. BZ00000 got himself flamed pretty good, but he was the only participant in his silliness, and nobody ever accused him of a crime.
That’s nice.
But your claim that this thread is a pile-on is erroneous.
cuauhtemoc, BZ00000 was pitted:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143015
The thread is three pages long.
I never understood the accusations of “pile-on”. So, suppose 53 people point at 27 posts by a certain doper and agree that there is something wrong with them. What is wrong with that? If many people agree a certain poster is behaving badly it is probably true. If anyone disagrees then he should point out especifically with what points he disagrees but saying the thread is a pile-on is the weakest of excuses. Maybe it is a pile-on because the guy is a jerk? or is there a rule against piling-on jerks?
In summary: if you disagree with the pitting then say so and explain why but just saying it is a pile-on is the weakest of arguments.
dantheman, remember when I said this?
I acknowledge that BZ00000 was knocked around a lot, but as I said, it was entirely his fault, and even when he did get pitted, nobody accused him of any serious crimes. Major Kong had a lot of people joining in the fun with his first “dump” thread, and he got accused of being a kidnapper in another thread.
sailor, piling on does not refer to many people agreeing that a poster’s behavior is bad and saying so. It goes like this:
- Somebody flames Poster
- Somebody else "me-too"s flame of Poster
- Somebody else, who agrees that Poster is bad, but wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t been for the first two, flames Poster
- Somebody who doesn’t care either way flames Poster
- Flaming Poster becomes the latest craze, and thirty or forty people respond to the thread to flame Poster, and it turns into some kind of, I don’t know, some kind of outdoor party with food being cooked over burning charcoal by one or more guys in aprons and big funny hats.
Christfuck I must have a lot of free time!
cuauhtemoc sorry but I have no problem with that. I will generally not start a pit thread if someone annoys me but if later someone else starts one I will contribute and I think it works the other way: if I start one some posters who did not want to start themselves will contribute. I think it is perfectly valid as a measure of whether the Pitting is deserved or not. If you think it is not deserved then say so and explain why. But if a poster attracts many negative comments maybe he deserves them?
I have been the object of a pitting or two myself and if I found many people agreed I was obnoxious it would make me think. Even if I disagreed with the majority it would make me think I was doing something wrong to be perceived that way or that they are all asholes in which case i would not be interested in posting. The fact that the last time I remember being pitted the OP got almost no support tells me . . . well, it tells me he had no support for his POV.
But when a poster is roundly and squarely and directly and obliquely criticised by almost everybody and refuses to acknowledge anything and just says he is the victim of a pile-on, well, he may be but that does not mean it is not deserved.
If you want to argue the criticism is not deserved then argue that but Saying it is a pile-on does not justify anything.
This is like Charlie Brown saying “nobody likes me and the reason is that I am not popular”.
I think a pile on is where no matter what the poster or his (usually few) defenders do, people will flame him.
Example:
Poster1: She was asking for it.
A lot of posters flame him, deservedly so.
Poster1: Ok, I realized my error. It was the wrong thing to say.
Even after posting an apology, or justification if it’s not quite as cut and dry as the example above, people still continue to flame them.
Another good example, I don’t have the links, but it did happen on the boards. Paraphrased:
Poster1: I have been on this board for years.
Poster2: Funny, your reg date is only a few months old.
Poster2 to about 10: I bet he’s a returning troll! You were banned! It seems odd that you indicate you have been here a lot longer than your reg date!
Poster1: :smack: What I meant is that I’ve been lurking for a few years.
Poster11 to about 20: Same thing as posters 2 to 10.
Poster1: LURKING!
Poster2-20: Same as previous dialogue.
I don’t think Major Kong’s pitting fits underneath those definitions of pile on…
Yeah, probably. Mostly he’s just annoying.
Thing is, being a parent, the thought of something bad happening to my child is my worst nightmare, and his “I don’t care about the kid, I just want to watch TV” thread really jerked my chain. (Anyone with an ounce of sense would have known better than to post such a thing, even if they thought it.) If it weren’t for that one, I’d probably just roll my eyes (privately) and move on.
So okay, he’s a grade C fuckwit and Junior Asshole in Training. Happy now? 
The biggest Q. – Q.E.D. in the PIT? Must be the End of Days.
Aslan of Narnia, I have never seen a thread where a sincere apology and retraction were not accepted by almost every one. I think the board, as a whole, is quite forgiving and understanding. I have seen “pile-ons” only on posters who refuse to acknowledge they are pissing off almost everybody or who post a non-apology of the type “I am sorry if I offended anyone BUT I still think what I said was right etc”.
Now that I think of it, you’re correct Sailor, but I recall a situation that was similar to examples 1 and 2, where people were accusing someone of something and no matter that she said that she was wrong and that it was a bad thing to do, people still flamed her. I believe it was Indygirl. IIRC, she wasn’t saying “I apologize”, but it was close.
Well pile on or not, he needs to change his posting style or get the fuck off the boards.
The hamsters already have to deal with enough shit without any help from this bandwidth wasting choad.
Well, I’ve missed all of MK’s threads so far, so I don’t really know what he is up to. I have noticed, however, that “Major Kong” was Slim Pickens character in Doctor Strangelove and our good friend Taggert (one of my favorite posters of all time!) named himself after a similar Slim Pickens character from Blazing Saddles.
Could it be? Surely he couldn’t outwit those clever mods!
“I’m gonna git those bomb-doors open if’n it hairlips ever’one on Bear Creek!”
“Somebodys gotta go back and git a shit-load of dimes!” --Slim Pickens
I wish I was smart like gatopescado.
Ditto, cuauhtemoc.
Ditto?! Ditto, You Provincial Putz?!
You’re kidding, you’ve missed them? Should bombs be legal? is pure comic genius if you know how to appreciate it. Which I’m sure you will.