While we are on the subject, WTF was up with him being able to use that snarky “Regards” for years? Has any other doper been accommodated like that?
PS I’m a woman. The word harpy doesn’t bother me. What does is when grown-up adults can’t abide by the rules of the place where they are. It disturbs everyone else who is following the rules and trying to enjoy themself.
What rule? A poster just showed numerous posts that used the word “harpy”. If there was a rule against it, each one of those would have received a warning.
Mixed feelings. He (almost) never was one to apologize, but I always chalked that up to his midwestern strong-silent male culture.
I’d like to share something about Shodan: following a discussion in the wake of the 2016 election, after I’d commended him for acknowledging Trump’s flaws, he IMed me to thank me. “Trump a uniter, whoda thunk it”, he mused.
IMO he did seem to become more deliberately obnoxious in the last few years since that exchange. It’s unfortunate that happened as the board was tightening up on various things, like misogynist language.
One thing I’m kicking myself over (and I hope it’s appropriate to mention this now that he can’t respond) is that I didn’t get around to revisiting a thread* he and I conversed in right before the 2004 election. Recall that there was speculation at the time by Democrats that the critical Ohio vote might be influenced by vote tampering–the Diebold corporation was in Ohio.
Anyway, Shodan expressed the opinion that if indisputeable evidence of voter fraud came out, even Republicans would admit it. I said that I disagreed, but I remember thinking that he seemed to sincerely believe it. He recalled the way Republicans in Congress stood by Nixon until it was clear he was guilty, at which point they deserted him.
In 2020, I don’t believe for a minute that any significant number of Republicans in Congress would ever hold Trump accountable for anything, unless their own electoral fortunes were jeopardized by it.
What I wanted to ask Shodan was whether he still believed otherwise. Too late now.
As I recall, this came up more than once in Pit threads directed at Shodan, but the Mods, you know, the ones who supposedly just now invented a flimsy excuse to ban him, did not consider it a rules violation.
I wasn’t saying that using the word harpy is against the rules. I was saying that people who don’t follow the rules ruin the experience for the people who are. When I reread my post it isn’t clear so I’m going to edit it.
I think that a true misandrist would use the word “gryphon” or “satyr” instead of “dick”. 
Actually, I can’t think of a male counterpart to harpy or fishwife or other terms of the sort. “He’s such a fisherman!” would just leave people looking confused.
“Regards” was the name of his sled.
It’s too late to edit that post so what I SHOULD have said was,
The word harpy doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is when people don’t follow the rules of the place they’re in and ruin the experience for the people who are obeying them. Shodan dind’t follow the rules so he got kicked out.
More likely, he would have been confronted with Who are you, and what have you done with Shodan?
Well said.
I, too, am a woman who isn't bothered out of the box by the term 'harpy,' but context matters a lot. In another discussion on another board, a male participant dismissed the points made by a female participant simply by replying to her post, "Silly woman." There's nothing wrong with either of the words "silly" or "woman" -- but in that context, they were an outright disparagement of her gender as a basis to ignore her (well made) points. Same deal here.
I long ago learned to ignore **Shodan**. It was obvious his posts were only intended to troll. They were simplistic, weak minded, never defended and meant to be inflammatory. I found his little tropes tedious and dumb. I gathered along the way that other posters had in the past found his posts useful. I never saw those.
Good ban.Not only unneeded, but having the effect of overwhelming said logical point.
Sure, it happens all the time.
Sent via Tapatalk from my expensive mobile device.
Isn’t that when he admitted that he used regards as an FU? Sounds like he should have been banned years ago, but conservatives get very long leashes here.
Posters of a certain vintage will recall:
Yer Pal,
Satan
The reasons Satan was banned had nothing to do with that sign-off. (IIRC, it had to do with being unable to restrain himself outside the Pit, but don’t hold me to it: that was a looooooong time ago.)
This difference in the posts quoted by Velocity is that they were not made by Shodan.
He was clearly targeted for elimination for not being one of the cool kids that agree with everyone and was an irritant to the board “culture.”
The fact that a banning is usually discussed among all the mods only makes this banning worse. Clearly targeted elimination. It is a shame that there is no one really in charge of this board any longer.
Never thought that I would miss Ed.
Just in case anyone wants to send their sympathies and kind regards or continue to debate with our dearly departed Shodan, his email is in his profile. Have at it.
I’m offended that we all assume the gender The Harpy self-identifies as. We should all be deeply ashamed.
It’s like someone scratching their head with their extended middle finger, and when you ask “Hey, were you flipping the bird at me?” they smile and reply, “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.”
Whenever this little “habit” came up in threads, some people would complain about how trolly and irritating it was, and others would insist that it was a merely a cordial signoff and they simply couldn’t imagine how anyone could POSSIBLY think otherwise. I’m sure Shodan enjoyed this immensely.
The trouble is, there are lots of threadshitting jerks on these boards. There are plenty of posters I could name who do next to nothing but flit from thread to thread dropping smoking hot turds of witless snark wherever they go. Even on those rare occasions where they deign to make a point, they tend to wrap it up in snark, or indiscriminate jabs at their political opponents.
Shodan spent years flirting with getting banned. That’s undeniable. He loved to tap dance on the line and he did it very well. It finally caught up with him. But there are plenty of liberal posters who tap dance on that very same line, and they’ve been doing it every bit as long, and every bit as often, and in ways which, to an impartial observer, are every bit as egregious and intellectually dishonest. Yet, somehow, they only get warned when they lose their shit like Budget Player Cadet used to do. The bias here is pretty transparent, even to a Trump hating Sanders supporter like me.
In their defense, I don’t think the moderators are actually biased. I’ve seen no evidence that, Jonathan Chance, say, is anti-conservative. However, moderators are much more likely to respond to posts that get reported, and since this board is 90% liberal, a snarky conservative will likely generate far more reports than ten snarky liberals. Over time, this results in conservatives getting banned for things which liberal turd-droppers do with abandon. It’s not deliberate. It’s just something that arises organically once the political leaning of a forum tilts too far in one direction.