Or love and loss in the time of Disqus.
It started out innocently enough. Gorgeous model who also surfs, and a series of questions the likes of which have not been seen since Woolcott was asking Ke11y if he is eating cereal and if he likes it:
“Have you been travelling a lot lately?”
“Is it creepy if we ask what you had for breakfast this morning?”
“Sounds delicious…For the guys sitting in our comments section, can you describe your perfect man?” [I’m generally curious—is there anyone but guys in these comments sections?]
“What about the best vs worst date you’ve ever been on?”
Par for the course. But as readers here know, no one really shows up for the articles (except that LongTom review of Pyzel—straight up junxt). It was time to dig in and scratch the upvote endorphin high, or fail in vain by trying. Yet this time things quickly got weird—Negs came over and bantered with Newman about the fall from glory-days-grace and then MC started going after comments and out of the blue Rory starts throwing his weight around all the way from Maui and the Scarlet Letter of “M” for misogyny is branded and bannings occur (RIP VONR) and I haven’t seen such hypocrisy since, well, I see it every day with white evangelical Republicans in the States, but not on Stab’s comments.
Who takes this shit seriously? I’ve been a haiku writing dildo as a past avatar—is that reality? My personality type is OCD, sarcastic as hell, and the annoying younger brother. I missed Negs’s rein at Stab by a few months but I entered into his slipstream 3 years ago. He got out when the impact on his psyche was on the wall. 3 years and 6,000 comments later, I’m seeing it to (*too). Negs saw his cynicism, sarcasm, bomb drops, and one-upmanship as a downward spiral; well, I’m Negs 2.0, without the humor, more pimples, and a hairier ass crack. If there’s no fun in the game, time to get out.
The final kicker of the massacre was Rory tracking down my real identity via the email I provided to disqus when I logged in and mentioning this in a comment to me. A touch freaky, but out of respect for his vision of Stab I offered to him I’d gladly call to discuss Stab’s new approach to comments since he knew my real identity. He didn’t take me up on it, but maybe one day in the water we’ll have that talk and can smile to each other in the flesh as real people and not avatars…
So dontneednochokebrain is now choked to death. Why? I figured I’ve spent a combined 6 months of my life in the Stab dungeon (not all that different from the BeachGrit dungeon, just with different furniture arrangement).
This massacre was a good chance to break free from the panopticon and restrategize priorities. For example, now I will have more time to organize my archive of Lucy Pinder pictures; search the dark web for the mythical Gabby and Charlie sex tape; join neo-Nazi websites to help Make America Great Again; play Sudoku; and learn to SUP.
At some point I’ll create a new avatar and rejoin the fun and be more generous with upvotes and less generous with snark, and am willing to do so by old and new community rules at both sites. And as much as I rip the punters publishing typo-ridden pish at Stab, I know they love surfing like the rest of us and are good people, with good humor; and as much as Ashton is ridiculed both here and over there I think he wants to see Stab be a vehicle for positive good in the surf community, and I can dig that, too.
I like all of them, and I hope they know that. And while I’ll still find Chas annoying and narcissistic (Don’t jump the table, bro! And I am looking forward to the new book.), the reality is that he and I are pretty close in personality type and I applaud his desire to see BeachGrit be a vehicle for pointing out the overall hypocrisy of a capital-driven surf community that makes gods and goddesses out of high school drop outs who happen to be skilled at riding 28 ounces of stickered foam down and above a wave face.
Lastly, I’ll still remember some good times at Stab with guys I came to love: VONR, Baldy, Scorn, Newman, Phatty, Dart, Wiggs, and some other anonymous deplorables and how for a bit of time we could be cunts and revel in it because it was all an escape from the bullshit of Babylon to begin with.
P.S. Fuck off, joiny.
You posted some stuff that probably only someone in the industry would know
I straight up thought you were Rory or Chas, man I was wrong
I cannot believe you are this reasonable. #disillusioned
What am I? Chopped liver? In before all you cunts
That would great. I am not real tight with Negs so not sure how it will go. I would like to extent the same invitation to you and choke. It’s been fun.
Stop it you guys! I don’t know what this thread is all about, but I’m gettin’ all misty eyed!
Seems like STAB’s toxicity fucked up friendships.
Just fucking behave Dean, we’re all ears.
And by the way Neg is the boss.
Move forward with no reflection to the past Dean…
If your past actions end up ruining future conversations I’ll have to cut you off… but till then Hello Dean!
Your wit is welcomed, i.e. you’re a funny motherf@cker
See, already you’re trying to make rules and enforce your belief structure onto everyone else… and as history shows us, you only up the instensity.
The only way I’d ever let you stay was if you started an account with your real name.
I know you can comment reasonably sanely when you’re off the gear and the vino.
Can you actually just hold down being yourself instead of 20 people?
Thanks Joiny!
CUI
Gives new meaning to a misdemeanor conviction sentence. Web traffic school. Mandatory attendance at 8 Commenters Anonymous meetings. Brutal!
Packed with Stab’s commenters and a few from BG, but none from Inertia.
no body wants a joiny rundown, unless it was done on horse back.
It was funny that they tried to lump the reason for running that article on Derek R… Then in the same comment had a dig at him. Just goes to show the mentality of Stab these days.
ghost town over there now. just joiny stroking Rory’s ego, made me feel sick so I thought I would track you down. didn’t take long to find you but I wanst expecting to find you penning an article. nice work.
ps, needs more spelling errors.
Cmon over Phat, you’re a witty fucker when you’re not a cunt.
thats one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me.
Thanks for the heads up – I’m banned though. Can’t comment so not interested.
*or read
Yes, I’m also illiterate.
far from it
I thought he was a master troll, but an email exchange with him points more towards someone with serious personal issues and far too much time on his hands…
Previously I’ve banned about 5-6 handles of his, but suspect he has afew still active here.
Luckily for everyone he knows I have a hard on for him so he has to keep a very very low and neutered profile.
You dont hear much about him here as I make a point of deleting any comments mentioning him and have the word filter set so that any comments mentioning him go straight to the comments pending box. ( I turned that off for this article)
Truly a horrible self serving troll that brings nothing to the table.
I ignored him and he went away,
How come you know so much about so much?
He was like a less vulgar Caveira. Still insanely annoying troll, but less “faeces” throwing and so on. The posts I saw made me think this is what it looks like when a dandy tries trolling. It was weird.