SnapSlav Posted June 4, 2017 Posted June 4, 2017 ...That is to say, Southern California. Okay, so maybe it's not Hell itself... that would be NORTHERN California. But we're not too far off down here, these days. But enough about that... I've been indulging in Stef's work for a couple years. I was an avid member of another forum that was technically about a certain game franchise, but which just so happened to have encouraged a lively general discussion board, where I got a wonderful opportunity to clash with like and unalike minds with little censorship. I'd moved from forum to forum over the years when the mods would get too domineering, a trend which would always seem to replicate wherever I went, and it seemed like this site was spared that gruesome fate. Then GamerGate happened... Overnight the mods made their white knighting intentions clear by pseudo-banning most posts that had anything to do with the subject. Many of us were on the front lines of the movement, seeing as it WAS a gaming forum to begin with, so GamerGate was going to be very personal to many of us, so seeing the site mutate from this anything-goes wild west of intellectual warfare into a police state of "you shall not be misogynist, and WE decide if you're misogynist" was very disheartening. Then I started getting serious about my career and I just stopped visiting the place. Studies beckoned, and I had better things to do with my time than waste it arguing against intellectually dishonest assholes. (I would later learn from Stef that the apt name for them was sophists.) Almost 2 years later and the itch for some good debate got stronger and stronger. Well a user on that forum had posted a video of Stef's (I can't remember what it was about) roughly 3 or 4 years ago, and from that point I was exposed to his work. So when I could stand no longer NOT being on a forum where I could throw my ideas against (potentially very robust) opposition to get refined into glittering gems, joining FDR seems like the natural chocie! There's much more I'm sure I could say, but I'll leave it at that for now. One word of warning, however: I'm a very verbose SOB. I gotta hold myself back from churning out volumes of text, so I ain't for the "tl;dr or bust" faint of heart. ^_~ -SnapSlav
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