During my daily visit to godhatesfags.com, I began wondering, what would happen if Fred Phelps found the Straight Dope, and decided to post? What would he post? Who would debate him? Would he be mean or nice? And of course, how long would it be until the ban hammer went down upon him?
Just out of curiosity, what is your motivation for doing this? Assuming you are not a fan of his, aren’t you just helping to keep this lunatic in the news? By adding to his website’s hit count, are you raising his site in the search engine rankings?
I’ve said this before, but I had never heard of Phelps or Jack Chick before joining this message board, and I still have yet to encounter Chick anywhere but here.
I did once date a woman who got energy from being offended, and thus did seek out offensive things, so I guess I can relate, although I do not understand.
I’d give him 5 posts or one OP before he gets banned, probably by UncleBeer, although Coldfire might also do it.
There will be a protest thread after the banning, but I can’t think of any members of this board (even among the conservatives) who would definately start it.
And the award for scariest thread title of all time goes to…
I think I can understand the OP’s “daily visits” to the website. I used to lurk on the BNP’s website a while ago, until it got too depressing. All in the spirit of know thine enemy.
Well, Fred wouldn’t care if he got banned. I visit his site quite often, and he believes that God will soon destroy this country. For a non-Fred cite for this, see
This “debate” took place just this week. Wish I had been there, Pedro is a fantastic speaker. As the article says, almost as theatrical as Fred himself, and a fervent defender of civil rights for all.
The mission here is to fight ignorance are you afraid to fall in battle to such as him? Sure we may lose many of our best warriors but I believe that victory would be worth it!
I’ll even register for the draft when it comes up. Though I’ll probably try to be the office supply guy.
No, search engines Like Google have no way of telling how many hits a site is getting. They rank on things like key words, text in the title, and commonness of links to the site.
If a number of dopers were to all link to his website using specific text, perhaps “santorum eater”, then he would show up first for that search without ever having the text on his page.
I visit his site daily mainly just to see what he’s up to. Phred is practically a joke throughout my whole family. Also, unless I’m mistaken, each hit to his site costs a bit of bandwidth. So, by visiting his site, I’m costing him money.
From a bumper sticker I saw in his (and my) hometown: “Phuck Phred”.
I loved it when George Carlin himself bashed him in his concert at TPAC last year. Of course the Phelpsie’s were there protesting before the concert (I think because TPAC allows gays to perform or hires them or something). There was also a radio station van there that kept turning up the music just to drown them out. Free entertainment!
To answer the question you posed, I guess it’s a way of morphing the “f” from Fred into “ph” so that it matches the “ph” in Phelps. Kind of an alliterative exercise, if you will.
Or were you really asking something else regarding the name?