Over New Year’s weekend, life got a bit interesting over on the Great Debates forum, due to some interesting interactions with the Left Behind Message Board (LBMB).
While the brief flare-up has died down, and the GD forum has gained a number of articulate voices from the LBMB as a result, it’s still worth mentioning that this wouldn’t have become the big deal it briefly was, without the help of the LBMB admin, Mike Bagnall.
But to demonstrate that there are no hard feelings, I have collected every Mike Bagnall post I could find from the brief period of turbulence (plus a couple of other doodads attributable to him), and am posting them here under the title you see above, “The Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bagnall”. I have added occasional words of introduction, as well as giving sources for everything. Enjoy!
LBMB posting rule 6, 12/28/99
(A handful of us had been intermittently posting on the LBMB, joining in their debates. The tendency of some threads to disappear inexplicably bothered some of our posters there, who put up posts questioning whether the LBMB admins were deleting threads that questioned local orthodoxy. The response, apparently, was this rule.)
We had been discussing our interactions with the LBMBers on the “For David B…” thread on the GD forum. After SoulFrost, in response to the rule cited above, put up a post entitled “Then Ban Me” on the LBMB, he got banned. A poster here suggested we see who could get banned the fastest, and someone else forwarded a copy of the post to the LBMB admin. The first result:
LBMB, 12/31/99, 10:40 am, “We’re Under Attack”
He then posted the following to the SDMB:
SDMB, GD, “What is your problem” 12/31/99, 11:29am
After which we did indeed get a sudden influx of Christian spammers. Next, on the “For David B…” thread: SDMB,GD, “For David B…” , 12-31-99, 11:50 am
The ‘fake stories’ bit was totally false, as was the bit about swapping passwords. It had been briefly suggested, and ignored. But to continue (same thread, same day, 3:21pm):
As it turned out, he had indeed encouraged the LBMBers to stop posting here(SDMB, GD, “Left Behind Members Return Home Please”, 12-31-99, 3:05pm):
After a few mostly rather pointed but reasoned responses (plus one mordant crack about the kool-aid), he made another post to the same thread (3:22pm):
Several days before, I’d started a thread about the Atlantic Monthly’s review of the “Left Behind” books in its January 2000 issue. Someone asked about where to find it, to which Bagnall replied (LBMB,12/31/99, 11:40am, “Atlantic Monthly’s “Left Behind” review”):
Funny, on my copy of the Jan. 2000 issue, it mentions the review, right on the cover.
A bit later, back on the “We’re under attack” thread on the LBMB (12/31/99, 11:17pm - what a party animal!):
It’s still the 20th century, but you can’t expect him to know that, I suppose.
Finally, back on the SDMB the next day (1/1/00, 7:42pm, “Enough Is Enough!”):
He did, however, tone down the LBMB posting rules (1/3/00):
Still pretty extreme by our standards, but an improvement over earlier versions of the rules.
Don’t ask me why I bothered with this. Part of it is the short-lived nature of any thread on the LBMB, so it seemed worthwhile to record his words on the LBMB over here as well. And while I was at it, I figured I might as well get all his remarks in one place. So consider this an archive of sorts.
Well, way before any of this ever happened, Bagnall closed the one thread I started (which WAS within their rules) and bragged about it in a thread, where he said I was the same person as another poster based upon my IP.
I e-mailed him and asked him how he could make that assertion, since I was on a dial-up ISP, and he then changed his tune to “you were both on Prodigy.” All I could say was, “Oh… Me and how many millions of people?” He didn’t reply.
The only reply he gave since was when I cc’d him on an e-mail exchange with kat2, who invited us there to begin with.
His reply, after we had a spirited exchange (but not Spam or hatered, even though kat2 posted that on LBMB - I mean, she replied to me three times) was “No not e-mail me anymore.”
You don’t even men tion the supposed “death threats,” that have yet to have been put forth to my knowledge.
Bottom line: Man is an over-zealous jerk who abuses his authority, cannot appologize (let alone, recognize) when he makes a mistake, and he is willing to lie if it will help further his agenda.
Makes me absolutely LOVE Nick in comparison!
Yer pal,
Satan
First Place
Most Popular Poster of the 20th Century Competition
As overseen by Coldfire
SoulFrost - no biggie. It took maybe 45 minutes to track everything down and put it in a Notepad file, and maybe another hour putting it into posts, especially getting rid of all the extra line breaks you get when you C&P. (Anybody know a way around that, btw?)
Satan - you’re right, I should have mentioned the alleged death threats. I’ll bet TubaDiva has never gotten anything from him to back up his accusation. Given the number of times he exaggerated the intensity of the attacks on him, and the way he repeatedly angled for pity, it would be a natural for him to combine the two by alleging a death threat.
And I’d say I can’t believe he’d not only shut down your thread, but brag about it on his board, except that, with him, it’s all too in character. What’s unbelievable is that they, meaning whoever he reports to at LB, let him be an admin.
P.S. Where’s the thread where they voted on the most popular posters? I missed my chance to vote when it was happening - bummer!
I had intended to gather Bagnall’s posts while the issue was still live; in that case, I might have posted in GD. I hesitated because of the death-threat allegation; it seemed unreasonable to dump on a guy who was being harassed in that manner, even by using his own words.
By the time it was clear that I had no reason to believe in the existence of such a threat, the spammers had left, you and the others who have stayed have proved to be congenial company, and a recap of Bagnall’s remarks definitely qualified as mundane and pointless.
But since I’d already done the work of collecting all his posts early last week, I felt the need to post it somewhere. Besides, I thought the evidence of his persecution complex ought to be on record someplace. So here we are.
