While I generally agree we are going soft as a whole, the guy was straight-up childish and argumentative. While he was a wealth of information 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time he was berating anyone who asked a "stupid" question or corrected him on anything. I called him out a few times on things he was blatantly wrong on, and instead of engaging in constructive discussion he would have a temper tantrum and resort to straight-up name calling. IMO the forum is better without him, but it sucks to lose the good knowledge he did provide. Luckily most of that is just a search away, and we have plenty of others on here whom I regard very highly for their knowledge and willingness to help others.

 

Agreed, he might be gone but his posts are still here.

i knew as soon as i saw “what happened to…..” i knew it was gonna be him.


i was gonna add, i wasnt on the receiving end of being felt like an idiot but there is a difference between being soft and being berated by an eh hole.

 

Oh man, glad I never knew the guy. I've been on tons of forums and many times you'll have "That Guy." Super knowledgeable, can answer any question, but absolutely fragile beyond belief, unable to read social situations, lives on a hair trigger and will explode if even slightly questioned. There is no winning move for the forum admins - keep him around for his knowledge, and you drive away the chill, regular people who don't like the drama the diva brings. Ban them, and you lose the knowledge they have and you anger the "everybody is so whiny these days" whiners.

Many examples of this - there's a guy on the RX-8 forums that has single-handedly driven away almost every other knowledgeable driver/builder/racer with his drama. People out there winning national championships in RX-8s have completely quit the forum and are no longer sharing their builds and technical info because the guy is such an *******.

The Ford Contour forums fractured over a guy who was on the original engineering and development team and knew everything about the car, but absolutely couldn't say a single nice or friendly thing without berating those beneath him, which was everyone. He eventually got banned and then with a few other people started a competing forum. The Ford Contour doesn't need two fourms.

The Kawasaki H1 forums - one guy there developed the Kawasaki factory race engines in the '70s and '80s, knew more than anyone, maybe in the world. Someone asks him a simple follow-up question on one of his posts and he interprets it as a violent attack on his character and has a multi-post meltdown where he has to be comforted and consoled by everyone else until his fragile ego was rebuilt and he could bring himself to suffer through dealing with us peasants.

For anyone interested in learning more, the Wikipedia article on Asperger syndrome is enlightening.

 

Still 🤔, it’s not even a real (in person) verbal lashing… more like words typed mean on the Internet. Words that could be ignored but clearly couldn’t be by other members or he’d still be around, it takes two to tango.

 

Careful there, there is a difference between being an A*hole and having a condition that falls on the spectrum. If someone truly did have such a disability I would hate for them to be excluded from something like an internet forum just because other people are unable to deal with mean words on the internet. I would bet that would be the story of their life, and you must step back and ask yourself, who's really the A*hole?

 

"Words typed on the internet" have caused people to fall in love, to venture out and start a business, to travel to a new country, to physically hurt another human, to kill themselves. This delusion that "words typed on the internet" have no power needs to go away.

If I run around a room kicking everyone I see in the shins, is it everyone else's fault for being in the room? After all, it takes two to tango.

I'm not talking about *******s, I'm talking about a very specific "That Guy":



High technical knowledge or skill due to an obsession with a singular topic, but an inability to appropriately interact with other people - no empathy, no recognition of nuance.

The ******* is the one unable to adhere to the social guidelines that exist for the productive continuation of the community. Unfortunately, that may not be because the ******* is a narcissist or a troll, but because of reasons beyond their control.

 

“If I run around a room kicking everyone I see in the shins, is it everyone else's fault for being in the room? After all, it takes two to tango.”


You’re engaging in Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Shin-kicking can’t be ignored. Internet comments can.


"”Words typed on the internet" have caused people to fall in love, to venture out and start a business, to travel to a new country, to physically hurt another human, to kill themselves. This delusion that "words typed on the internet" have no power needs to go away.””


Words, in person, have the same power. Are you saying we should silence and imprison the “mean” people? Or just ignore them?

if I type on the Internet, “I think pineapples should be thrown at Tom Brady” and someone throws a pineapple at Tom Brady, is it my fault?

im just playing devils advocate here, but I don’t like banning any speech that isn’t a direct threat. Let’s man up.

 

This is definitely starting to feel like a thread with RLXXI in it.

 

That’s kinda my point… how can we compare someone running around a room kicking people vs someone typing unfriendly words on a forum. The Internet is the last place someone with thin skin should be hanging out but its always been the opposite.

 

And we are done here. OP, if you have any more questions feel free to PM me