Dear Fort Members,
Enough confusion, mayhem and hurt feelings have been caused recently
by a single individual that I am moved to speak out. Many of you,
especially those of you who are newbies and lurkers, have been
confused by the multitude of posts by a dizzying array of 'characters'
who show a particularly nasty streak. It is usually easy to see that
in most cases the individual is trolling and tends to seek out Fort
members as targets. What is really confusing is that SOME of these
'characters' appear to be boylovers.
The poster who most frequently and lately calls himself:
Pig Castrator Hatchet Mus.cled George
Fort Kittens (Registered, #1, #2 and #3)
has been in The Fort almost since the beginning. Originally known as
Oden, he was in those days an entirely evil entity. Since then he has
gone away and returned on a fairly regular basis. The names often
change and include the following:
Abdul
human talking ROVER
Fort Reporter
newUSER
**_fact_**
Choirboy Helper
there are many others.
His posts are easy to spot because they are almost always angry attack
posts, they tend to be repeated almost obsessively and they seldom
make any sense.
You may have noticed that he really hates me, a deceased poster called
Y-Not and now Victor Victorian, who least of all people in usenet
deserves any scorn. The implication is that Y-Not is me, I am
apparently dead and Victor Victorian is Y-Not. The genesis of this
idea goes back many years and is not worth dredging up. Very recently
George's posts have been extremely nasty and completely untrue attack
ads aimed at Victor Victorian. So offensive are these attacks that
they have genuinely hurt the feelings of Victor. What hurts him the
most is that not one of his many friends in The Fort has stood up for
him. Including me, until now. I can sympathize with Victor, I have
been in the same exact place. I have helped hundreds of you over the
years and when I was attacked about a year ago I felt abandoned by my
friends and I do have friends here. I came to realize that the
majority of Fort members either have George kill filtered or totally
ignore him. That makes sense, but sometimes, as our friends in Egypt
are teaching us, it is time to stand up to the bully.
I want you all to think about this:
George picks on Victor and no one complains - what if Victor goes away
and stops posting? George picks on Insane For Boys all the time, what
if IFB follows Victor out the door? What would keep Dexter from being
next? Or jimmy? Or Cosmos? Do you see what is at risk?
Here is the question you need to ask yourself: would The Fort be
better off without Victor or without George? Because Victor won't
stick around if he isn't appreciated. If Victor isn't here, then I
don't want to be here. In my mind, Victor embodies everything that is
good about The Fort.
Two weeks from today The Fort will turn 13 years old. A teenager!
There is a core of people, including me, who have worked hard the past
few years to keep The Fort going through the group being banned by
some news service providers and apathy after The Great Unpleasantness.
Victor is one of these folks and you can tell who the others are if
you don't know.
George has no problem with flaming anyone who crosses him. He does it
mercilessly until he goes into one of his 3-4 month quiet cycles.
(These are the times when I suspect he has been hospitalized because
he is a danger to himself and others). What if we shout him down? What
if we ALL shout him down? Why don't we tell him to play nice or leave?
Why don't we act like this is OUR group and demand that he behave?
We've chased out trolls before, we've chased out criminals who
attempted to prey on boys in The Fort. We can at the very east let
George know that his disruption and lies are not welcome.
Join me or not. But if things don't change soon, The Fort will atrophy
because those who make it work will leave.
Doc
NP-f31
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