I started a whole thread about it! In this case, I actually did read the thread, and somehow just skimmed across it too fast!
I still occasionally trot out a “Rio by Duran Duran” reference.
I was looking for a cheap used car and I purposely passed on a good-looking Kia Rio… I knew I’d be thinking of the Dope (and humming ‘My car’s name is Rio/and she slides across the snow…’ every single day).
Props to @Aeschines for getting banned from their own thread “How can Donald Trump win at this point?” in Politics. You did your best, but there’s too many posters who are terminally pessimistic and/or stuck in their own rut. Don’t take it personally, that thread was in a death spiral anyway.
It really became a general election thread that I was managing. I don’t think an accretion of mostly minor mod notes (and most of them for minor hijacks) is a good reason for banning an OP in a thread that long, but oh well. And yeah, I was surprised at just how pessimistic everyone was. Harris is going to win.
I haven’t even read that thread, let alone participated in it for a while. It was growing too fast and getting too crazy. It has been only a few weeks and there have been like 800 new posts since then.
I feel like that thread has been off the rails for a while.
The thread title is a trigger for almost everybody. The poll wonks find the optimism unsupported by facts, and everybody else recognizes the kind of certainty that helped suppress the anti-Trump vote in 2016. That said, banning an OP from their own thread (IMO) isn’t warranted in any circumstance.
I disagree, not about this particular thread (because I avoided it like the plague) but in general. First, I think it has been established that an OP does not own a thread once it has started. The OP can express preferences for how they want it to go, but that is no guarantee of what will actually be posted (note: I understand that OPs in some kinds of threads can have more say than in other kinds of threads). Second, it is certainly possible for an OP to go off the rails in some way so that it makes perfect sense to ban them from the thread. To say “not in any circumstance” is way too broad.
Again, I am not saying any of the above applies to the specific thread in question. I only make this point to attempt to short-circuit any suggestion of a possible rule change that would reflect the sentiment that I have quoted.
Totally agree.
Here’s an example… Let’s say a person asks a really good question about vaccines. It gets some good answers and turns into a pretty active, positive, and informative discussion. Then the OP starts to disagree and posts some antivax nonsense. The thread gets hijacked, turns into a bunch of arguing. The thread gets modded to get back on track and the OP is advised to cut it out, and the OP gets aggressive about their POV. In that case you ban the OP from the thread, it gets back to being useful again.
That’s a bit of an extreme example but I think it’s a plausible one.
I was amused by it enough to translate it into:
Let us locomote to the lithic extraction site and propel matter geotropically therein!
Hey, that’s catchy! Maybe it’ll catch on!
It’s relatable because I think all of us at one time or another have longed to propel matter.
Especially after drinking too much.
“Projectile mattering” just sings, doesn’t it? 
Peter_Morris … Step away from the shovel !
I long for the day when I can own a Gravity Gun.
Only when it is time for Christmas music.
I debated whether to say this here, or in the Trolls R Us thread, but probably is better here.
Good lord, Der_Trihs has taken up doomposting as a full-time job. Today alone, they’ve made something over 100 post in a number of threads (nearly all in P&E), almost all of which amount to, “we’re fucked, Trump will be able to do whatever he damned well pleases now, his followers are all racists and/or Nazis, and they’re going to be persecuting, if not outright killing, Democrats and non-whites.”
This week has had me in an introspective mood, and I was actually thinking something of the reverse about the same poster. DT’s schtick is waaaay toned down from several years ago, which still surprises me sometimes.
I saw that. Seriously they are struggling with this. It seems to me.
I feel sorry.