Posts by boldcanyon14

I was looking at some recent stats and rankings today, and it really got me thinking about how much a single division can dominate a specific statistical category. It’s crazy how you can have one group of players that just completely outclasses everyone else in the league for a specific role, while other divisions feel like they're just scraping by.

I remember back in the day, you could pretty much predict which teams would be heavy hitters just by looking at their roster construction. Now, it feels like it’s almost random, yet every once in a while, you see a cluster of talent in one specific geographic pocket that makes no sense on paper. It’s like they all happened to scout the same niche talent pool at the same time.

It makes me wonder if it's just pure luck with the draft, or if certain coaching staffs are just way better at developing these specific types of players. When one division holds a massive chunk of the "elite" tier for a position, does that actually change the competitive balance of the whole league, or is it just a statistical anomaly?

Do you guys think it's better for the league when talent is concentrated like that, or does it just make the playoffs more predictable?

Hey Offshore. Sorry if there was any confusion, but that ban is only for 24 hours (100 points). You’ll be back in action tomorrow morning. You got flagged because you were spamming too many posts in a row. I didn't want to lay down the law after those first few troll posts, but once it started piling up and you kept pushing it, I had to hand out a yellow card just to send a message. I figured I'd clear things up here so you know exactly where you stand.

So, let's talk about EVs. Everyone’s acting like we're all going to be cruising around in silent, battery-powered pods by next Tuesday, but honestly? I'm not buying the hype quite yet. The tech is moving fast, sure, but the infrastructure is still a joke. You can't just drive from New York to LA and expect a reliable charging station to be waiting for you at every corner without some kind of headache. It feels like we're being pushed into this massive transition before the backbone of the system is actually ready to handle it. And don't even get me started on the cost. They tell you you'll save money on gas, but then you look at the sticker price and realize you're basically paying a premium just to be "green." It's fine if you have a garage and a dedicated charger, but for the average person living in an apartment in Chicago or somewhere similar? It’s a logistical nightmare. I’m not saying they're bad—I'm just saying the enthusiasm feels a little forced. We need more than just shiny gadgets; we need a system that actually works for everyone, not just the early adopters with deep pockets.

I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter lately about whether we should be pushing for more localized control over our energy infrastructure or just letting the big players like ExxonMobil handle everything. Honestly, the whole debate feels like a circular argument that leads nowhere. Some people are acting like we can just flip a switch and become completely self-sufficient overnight, while others act like any move toward decentralization is basically economic suicide. It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard and demand total independence, but when you look at the actual logistics of upgrading an entire national grid, the reality is a hell of a lot messier. I saw **boldcanyon14** mention something similar earlier about how much of this is driven by political posturing rather than actual engineering needs. And they're right. Most of these discussions aren't even about power—they're about who gets to hold the remote control. We spend all this time arguing over the "how" without ever agreeing on the "why." It's exhausting. Look, regarding the moderation stuff—I haven't actually been banned or anything. I just nuked my own post. If you can't see it on your end, don't sweat it; the superadmin still has eyes on it.

You’re out here trolling this EV thread with a random car pic that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic—honestly, you troll this whole discussion pretty much constantly. I can take it as some kind of weird sense of humor or just you messing around, so I'll let it slide; most people here don't seem to mind your antics anyway.

Here we go again with the electric car debate. Another off-topic thread, another round of trolls—honestly, what's the deal? Is everyone suddenly convinced that driving a bubble bath is the peak of automotive engineering? Whatever. I’ll leave it up for now. If it doesn't bother the rest of you, it doesn't bother me.

Everything above was just talk—you didn't get hit with a single fine.

2. Topic on bonds:

You’re asking a question that’s already been answered at least five or ten times—honestly, if you'd just scrolled back a page or two, you would've seen the whole thread dedicated to this. But hey, maybe reading wasn't really your vibe. You get three or four replies, one of which is mine, where I actually give you some real advice: "Do you have any suggestions for better investments compared to bonds?" (I mean, we *are* on an investing sub, after all). And then? Total silence from you. Instead, the very next post after a few others just hits me out of nowhere:

Offshore said:They barely even bothered to write anything down :D

Where are you even getting off, trolling people over a typo? The guy has been incredibly constructive throughout this entire thread, dropping nothing but solid info—including the exact point you decided to jump in just to be a smartass.

Not punishing anyone this time, just leaving it be. Honestly, just messing with you guys.

3. Thread about hydrogen and that one post that got me banned. It got nuked, so I’m quoting it here like this:

Interesting topic.
Some guy from the Midwest working some low-rent assistant gig overseas thinks he’s suddenly hit the big leagues just because he’s out of his hometown. In his head, "executive status" means buying a $25k Ford. He hasn't even pulled the trigger yet, though, because apparently, it's "too expensive for an executive." Give me a break.

About 94% of the crowd obsessing over hydrogen dreams—those self-proclaimed experts who think they have it all figured out—are still plugging their phones into the wall to suck up electricity from the grid at full retail price. You can easily see where that juice is coming from just by looking at your utility bill. Then you’ve got the next 5%, who are basically charging up via office outlets or some massive USB power bank hauled in by a company truck. Finally, there’s that tiny 1% of "geniuses" who actually power their lives using the energy they produce themselves, which is surprisingly easy to do these days.

Screw that guy. Seriously. He should just stay exactly where he is, even after he retires.

So, we've got ad hominem attacks, jumping down people's throats, and targeting users who haven't even said a word to you personally—not to mention insulting the rest of the group. Everyone else is participating without making a scene, so I don't know why it bothers you so much. You just showed up, decided to play philosopher, dropped some insults, and bailed.

Look, the warning was triggered by this specific post, but honestly, when you consider how much you constantly troll—those posts above are just the first ones that popped into my head—you’re basically stirring the pot and fueling the fire. You’re acting like a pure agitator, and now you’ve crossed the line into direct insults and jumping down people's throats. That’s why you’re getting a 1-day Ban. If I were punishing you based on everything you've ever posted, believe me, you’d be swimming in warnings.

I already sent you a DM about this, but I’ll lay it out here too. You’re actually a great contributor to this forum; you help the crew out a ton in the Solar Energy thread, and I practically consider that thread yours. I haven't even given you grief there, aside from once asking you to scale back the images. But every now and then, you lose your cool and start lashing out across different threads. Usually, I either leave things alone or delete them without a formal warning, even though it's a pain in the ass for me to have to clean up the replies attached to your posts. But since you’ve moved into straight-up insults—and considering you haven't been flagged for at least 5 to 10 of your other trolling posts—this cumulative warning carries a bit more weight.

It’s only a 1-day Ban. Nobody sane hands out a 3-month suspension for stuff like this, and I highly doubt you'll ever end up in a position where that's necessary, so don't sweat it.

Hopefully, that clears things up.

boldcanyon14.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't agree with what you're aiming for. Just because there are fewer posts doesn't mean this subforum has gone downhill. Quantity isn't quality. In fact, this sub was basically becoming a personal diary for Kerefek76, where he’d jump into every single thread trying to paint some "big picture," but most of the time that "picture" drifted way too far from the actual Economy and turned every discussion into the same repetitive loop. It's exactly those kinds of debates that drove away the constructive users who used to post high-quality stuff, and it’ll take time for them to come back—if they even bother.

Look, sure, any political decision that hits the Economy should be mentioned, but the conversation needs to stay focused on fiscal matters rather than heavy-duty politics. That’s what the Politics sub is for. The problem is that some people with a massive political bias see topics that overlap with the Economy and barge in with posts that belong in Politics, but since they aren't allowed to post there, they just drift down here instead.

Here’s a quick example. A thread about labor immigration. This is the Economy sub, but there's a parallel thread over in Politics discussing policy decisions, how Asians integrate into our society, and every other random thing under the sun. Yet, one of the first posts in the labor import thread on Economy is:

Kerefek76 said:Globalist nonsense....
I'm sick to death of this globalist drivel about capital, migration, wage rates, deciding who deserves what based on some imaginary metric, whether a guy can give birth or not, if a kid can have three moms in a polygamous LGBTQ+ relationship, and all this other satanic garbage they use to rot people's brains.

Well, it's not gonna happen....
That degenerate from a Frankfurt skyscraper, who spends his free time sodomizing his dogs, is up against much tougher players.

Whatever, man. Stuff like this has absolutely nothing to do with the Economy, just like this:

First, let's look at the insults aimed at the user who works as a merchant marine:

Kerefek76 said:🤣🤣
I'm gonna hurt myself....
So everyone else relies on a paycheck, but you rely on what exactly?
Man, if you weren't making bank from spending half a year in the middle of nowhere destroying your health, you wouldn't have a damn thing to your name.
And what did you actually achieve after spending half your life sucking each other off with your buddies on a ship in the middle of the ocean?
A thousand square feet of land with a tiny little garden shed and a concrete Chinese wall.
Nice trade... really nice... trading your health and half your life for a garden shed...
Bravo, sit down, score: 5....

Then there's the bit about Ukraine and WW3:

Kerefek76 said:You’re missing the forest for the trees.

World War III is already underway. It’s a power struggle between different factions of global elites and bankers. The financial and energy wars are in full swing, while the physical, hot conflict is currently localized in Ukraine, with the constant risk of it bleeding out into a global disaster.

The EU is losing ground right now, and if things don't shift, they’re going to end up broke. The European middle class is going to vanish, and the GDP of member states will crater.

It isn't just two sides fighting; there are multiple players involved, which is what makes this conflict so unique.
But hey, why am I even telling this to a guy who put all his eggs in the tourism basket?

Kerefek76 said:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...ment-rcna54891
https://mwi.usma.edu/meet-the-lithua...y-cooperation/

Unlike you, I actually read.
U.S. troops are officially on Ukrainian soil under the guise of "monitoring" the American equipment being sent over.
You've got Poles and everyone else there too.
And of course, Americans, Poles, and other "volunteers"—that's how they label the non-Ukrainians who die—are getting killed.

WW3 has already started, kid, whether you believe it or not.
Of course, you won't buy it because the news hasn't officially announced on the nightly broadcast that WW3 started on a specific date.

And then there's COVID and the vaccine:

Kerefek76 said:Diarrhea?

Just a year ago, you people were hitting us with a massive media blitz about getting vaccinated. I wasn't even allowed to walk into my damn office because my boss was panicking; I couldn't even pick up a package at the post office even though I was standing right there at the counter facing the clerk. You guys harassed my wife with those endless swab tests and whatnot...

And now, suddenly, everyone is playing dumb like nothing ever happened.
The same boss won't even talk about COVID anymore; he refuses to touch the subject. None of the vaccinated people in my circle want to mention the vaccine now either..

You hypocrites! All of you vaccinated people who spent two years making our lives miserable!

And now I'm not supposed to talk about the deaths....
Because the data is undeniable... across all countries... the excess mortality is unquestionable.
https://metatron.substack.com/p/the-...o-excess-death
Here, take this and read it. It’s clearly summarized by country.
It's 2022 and mortality rates are still climbing. People are dying from "unexplained" causes in countries where over 80% of the population is vaccinated.

Interpret it however you want, I don't give a damn....
I'm not going to sit here trembling in the dark, trying to convince myself that the vaccine is fine and that heart attacks and strokes aren't linked to it. Or that the rise in autoimmune diseases and cancer isn't linked either.
Believe whatever helps you sleep at night.
I saw the whole pattern playing out back in early 2021.
The era of me trying to convince people or explain things is dead and buried.
Nowadays, when my colleagues start venting about "long" COVID, those weird health issues popping up everywhere, or how perfectly healthy neighbors are suddenly dropping dead... I just stop listening. I tell them "it'll be fine" and move on with my day.

You guys failed the basic intelligence and empathy test, and there's nothing I can do to change that. Honestly, it's sad.

It’s pretty hilarious how he pivotally blames the Economy on COVID and the war in Ukraine right after getting some attention there. Plus, this guy has predicted the end of Europe and global apocalypse at least 15 times now. By his math, we should have all been wiped out last fall, yet here we are, still alive and still arguing on this forum.

You know as well as I do that if I set aside an hour, I could drop dozens of posts just like that. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them over the last couple of years, spanning every topic from real estate prices to inflation.

Actually, I see this as a total win-win.

We get our own "boring" subforum where we can actually dig into the Economy—post numbers, charts, run comparisons, and talk shop about inflation, the stock market, investments, or tourism. Meanwhile, Kerefek76 gets his own little corner to dump the exact same posts, sharing his "expert" takes on Ukraine, Putin, COVID, vaccines, NATO, 5G, Nibir, and whatever else.

You guys have a place to read him and argue about those topics, and we have our own playground. Everyone wins.

wanderingdriver17 said:Tonci, look, I'm not saying people don't stray off-topic sometimes or pick up a ban when they deserve it... but don't act like we haven't seen those posts in the Finance section. They were perfectly on-topic, great arguments, followed every rule of etiquette and forum decorum... then suddenly, they just vanished into thin air.

No bans, no warnings. Just deleted.

They just messed around a bit and ended up with a single duplicate quote, and the regulars in Finance immediately knew what was happening.
You'd have to be blind to miss the "content review" happening right in front of us.

How many people did they toss into the void without a single reason, citing nothing but "increased sensitivity" ? And then they ignored them here when they asked why:

And during that period, there were a million threads here where long-time users with spotless records got nuked solely for having an "unpopular opinion," even if they stayed on topic and followed every rule. The mods just swallowed high-quality posts overnight without any explanation. It's textbook censorship.
Even the guy in the link above explained it to an intelligent person by saying: it isn't crap, the dog just had an accident. 😁

I'm not pointing fingers at you, but please, stop burying your head in the sand.
Now the Finance section is exactly what you wanted—a half-empty shell where everyone who sparked a real conversation was kicked out, leaving behind half the reading and half the posts. 👍

But hey, at least the content is actually "high quality" and stays on track with the narrative 😍

Look, I can't really speak for the other subforums since I don't keep tabs on everything, but I can definitely speak for my own. Five users were hit with partial bans, and all five already had hundreds of active points and dozens of warnings for off-topic rambling, fighting, and general nonsense. They had two months to shape up, and I personally reached out to them via DM to try and smooth things over.

A few of them are actually clones who have been trolling the Economy section for years. Honestly, I was willing to look the other way if they just started posting on-topic and stopped insulting people under fake names. But when I saw zero progress, I handed out the partial bans.

If you genuinely think those guys are examples of what Gerald Chavez7 meant by "economic discussion," more power to you, but this isn't even 1% of the garbage he’s been dumping in the Economy section that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject. Maybe you enjoy reading that stuff, but there are dozens—even hundreds—of users who don't want to deal with it. They report the posts, they complain, and when they see no action being taken, they end up getting dragged into arguments and insults themselves.

When a thread gets so heated that we have to scrub 20 or 30 posts, yeah, some decent posts get caught in the crossfire too. But those posts can't stay because they inevitably reference the toxic mess surrounding them; if I leave them up, the whole cycle starts all over again. It’s entirely on the people writing those posts. If they had just made a clean post without referencing an off-topic argument, it wouldn't have been deleted.

Besides, Kerefek isn't banned from sharing his predictions or whatever; he just moved over to the Alternative section because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make those posts fit in the Economy section. If it were true what you guys are claiming, he'd be banned from the entire site to silence him, and no discussion would be allowed at all.

As for the topic he claims was shut down because it didn't fit the narrative, it still exists; it's just under Politics. All the players I told to stop clogging up the Economy section are free to post about it over there, because that's where it belongs. Believe it or not, they're even allowed to argue against the narrative. 😲 Kerefek is still posting his stuff, just on the Alternative board, which proves everything is permitted—it just has to be in the right place. If we start talking about everything everywhere, then there's no point in having subforums at all. We might as well just have one giant chat room where everyone talks about everything at once.

It might not look that way to you, but talking about vaccines, the planet Nibir, global elites, secret agendas, and all that junk in the Economy section is like talking about it in the Food section. It makes zero sense. Even if one single post tries to link something back to the economy, the next ten posts fly off into total nonsense.

Kanye West said:It’s honestly hilarious how they just ban everyone who actually keeps things interesting and dynamic. Then, predictably, the threads just die out because nobody feels like commenting when they know any actual discussion is strictly off-limits.
So, boldcanyon14 got banned from the Economics section recently over a thread about immigrant labor. The guy completely lost his mind—banning people, deleting posts left and right, and finally shutting the whole thing down because he couldn't force everyone to parrot the official government narrative about the benefits of importing workers. 😁
It’s obvious from a bird's-eye view: their whole job is just suppressing information and spinning the narrative to suit their agenda.
They need to let people speak, otherwise, this forum is pointless. But they want to control the conversation and spin everything their way, which isn't happening because forum users aren't toddlers; we're adults who don't fall for this crap. Now they're stuck in a lose-lose situation where the forum is slowly dying with every banned member, even though they want to keep it alive just to gather intel on what people are thinking for the government and intelligence agencies.
They're just wasting their breath... as they say.

The only sad part is that you still clearly don't get why you were banned. Or rather, I bet you do, but you prefer playing the victim and clinging to these conspiracy theories about "information suppression" instead of looking at your own posts to find the real reason.

Just look at the nonsense you write here, in a thread where you're begging for access back to the subforum where you totally lost your mind. Do you seriously think anyone sane would let you back in after all that blowing up and subtle disrespect? But sure, let's just claim it's all some massive conspiracy against you. It could never be your own fault, right?

If it makes your life easier to believe you're always right and the entire system is out to get you, go for it.

For years, you were essentially exiled from the Economics section because you turned it into your own little playground to rant about COVID, wars, vaccines, chemtrails, globalist agendas, shadow governments, Nirvana planets, and whatever else. You act like some enlightened guru, turning every single topic into the exact same repetitive debate. So fine, go around telling everyone you were banned over an immigrant labor thread if that helps you sleep better. We won't mention the hundred warnings you racked up across ten different threads or the frantic DMs begging you to calm down.

By the way, there *is* a thread about immigrant labor, featuring the exact same crowd and the exact same arguments as the one in Economics. Only now, it's in Politics, which is where it belongs since it didn't fit under Economics. In fact, most of the posts there are actually against importing labor. There goes your theory about "suppressing information" and "controlled discussions." Just like always with your posts—you're just shooting blanks.

I actually just wrote a post because of that thread.

I intentionally left out diabolica's response, mostly because antibes has been poking at him forever. At least diabolica actually puts in the work—throwing down numbers, charts, and trying to spark an actual debate. Even if his conclusions miss the mark sometimes, he brings some interesting data to the table that could start a decent conversation. But every single time he posts, d. Fenc and antibes jump in with those cheap ad hominem attacks. Diabolica has never been the one to start a personal fight; it took him a long time even to start snapping back at these guys. Good taste just isn't part of the equation anymore.

Honestly, I think antibes has targeted diabolica in over 100 posts. At first, he was doing a good job ignoring him or just sidestepping the nonsense, but he finally snapped because the guy mentioned his father. You can't really blame diabolica there; anyone who's actually been following the economy knows exactly what's been going on.

We used to have some solid people here, like shadow and even that former moderator wand_1. Sure, you'll find the occasional smart post now and then, but those people end up leaving too.

Things have definitely gone downhill over the last few years, but the last year or two? Total disaster. There was a time when you could actually learn something on here, but now... I completely disagree with the idea that we should just leave things as they are. Not unless we want this place to be nothing but endless debates about sex workers, Nibiru, Putin, and all that other junk that belongs in politics, conspiracy, or rental subreddits. None of that has anything to do with economics.

Honestly guys, what’s been happening here lately is a total disaster. So many high-quality users have been driven away, and the whole site has tanked. Everything has devolved into nothing but conspiracy theories, constant bickering, and endless off-topic nonsense. I don't think you can find two coherent discussions anymore if you look hard enough.

A handful of people have basically hijacked this subforum and are running wild, yet nobody is actually handing out penalties.

Are there any plans to actually do something about this?

You don't even need a moderator who's an expert in economics; you just need someone with the willpower to scroll through the threads every day and slap down the people being abusive, the off-topic trolls, and the constant insults until some semblance of order is restored. Once that's done, then maybe you can find someone to actually moderate the discussions so they move in a productive direction.

Just look at the recent posts from these users—who, by the way, are blatant clones of accounts that were already banned:

antibes said:Anyway, why don't you explain it to me—your old man, just like you, tried to act like he was the boss of the coop, but everyone in town knew he was a complete amateur. And since you're clearly just here to suck up to him (like how some guy's gonna give you a break)... is that how it went?? I just hope they gave him the business.

antibes said:And what kind of person is that? He ended up with a fool for a son who doesn't even know how to calculate interest or plant a garden... you're lying again, go crawl back to your corner before you get bullied again.

antibes said:Listen, you idiot, ATMs are going to be spitting out tens and twenties, which is worth less than the hundreds we see now and $67... but obviously, you're too dim to understand a word I'm saying.

antibes said:konaćno you admitted it, and diabolica is just pure trash.

I don't know what to tell you, Antibes is just one of those places. It’s got that vibe where everyone is trying way too hard to look like they aren't trying at all. If you're looking for that classic, high-end coastal energy, sure, it hits the mark, but it can feel a bit performative after a while. Just my two cents. [User] says:
diabolica is a total lowlife.

I don't know what to tell you, Antibes is just one of those places. It’s fine if that’s your vibe, I guess, but it’s definitely not blowing any minds for me. The user says:
You’re honestly just a total nobody, someone who does nothing but suck the life out of everyone else around them.

d. Fenc said:As someone who’s been a total nobody and a small-town loser for years, your absolute worst nightmare is realizing just how much opportunity the younger generation—and even some of the older crowd—actually has here in America today. $5000 Back in the day, you would’ve had to pack up and move to Germany just to pull a salary like that. But hey, what can you do? You should've picked up some actual skills while you were still young.

d. Fenc said:Honestly, just your existence on this planet—acting like some brainless, grease-stained migrant worker—is an insult to the entire human race. 😁😁:😁Man, you’re so dense you can’t even insult someone properly. You’re out here playing at being edgy, but honestly? You have the wit of a middle schooler—and that's being generous. 🙂🙂🙂

d. Fenc The user said:Hey, Smith, you finally done with the work week? Why don't you go ahead and scrub all that grease and elevator lubricant off your hands so you actually look like a decent human being for once. 🙏🙏

You could honestly predict this would happen in under five minutes just by looking at the recent posts from certain users on Reddit. I don’t know what kind of weird obsession people have with those who moved abroad, but it’s always the same story. They trigger a massive counter-attack, and before you know it, everyone is dragging the argument through pages and pages of nonsense.

Let’s talk about these threads:

- American tourism - It’s turned into this private little clique where a handful of users just mess with everyone else. They spend all their time bragging about their rental properties or what they’re planning to build next. There’s an entire subforum dedicated to landlords for a reason, but the second anyone brings up macroeconomics, the downsides of the industry, or—god forbid—tax implications, those five guys jump in and derail everything. It's literally the same small group acting out, and they’re the reason the first two threads got locked.

- What to expect this fall - Is this just a breeding ground for conspiracy theories now? Nibiru, planet nonsense, and total garbage? It feels like people who aren't allowed to post in the politics section have just drifted down here because nobody is moderating anything.

- Salaries - How much are you making in the States? - The last ten pages have been nothing but talk about spending money on hookers and strip clubs. Just constant insults and ad hominem attacks.

Is anyone actually going to try and fix this place? Luckily, the other business subforums are doing alright. Since they're more niche, we actually help each other out with small businesses, entrepreneurship, investing, loans, and all that stuff. But something needs to happen with the main forum, otherwise, even the few decent users left are going to bail.

The Tsar Bomba—or whatever equivalent we're talking about—is just way too heavy to be mounted on an ICBM. You wouldn't launch that thing on a missile; you’d drop it from a specially modified bomber plane. A bomb with that kind of yield definitely isn't flying thousands of miles on a rocket tip.

I honestly don't get how you think China could just screw over the West and side with Russia. Just look at this:

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports-by-country

In the USA alone, China's exports are 9x higher than what they send to Russia. Go ahead, try adding up all the "Western" countries. It's not like Chinese people are stupid; they're looking out for their own interests here. There's just no scenario where they ditch the West to stand next to Russia.

For everyone whining about AD-Plastik:

This massive thread breaks down how much Russia actually relies on the West and China. It covers where their reserves are, why everything is so overpriced (basically just paying premiums to line the pockets of Putin's buddies), and how China is playing everyone to their own advantage. Tons of charts, images, and actual useful data here.

You can see right here why sanctions are going to hit them as hard as they're about to. If you think there's a better place for this discussion, feel free to move it.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/stat...55858456567809

The way the moderators are running things over there is an absolute joke. The sheer number of complaints against the admin team says it all.

They act like they own the place, shutting down actual arguments with one-liners because they can't be bothered to engage, constantly teaming up with their buddies to call people out, and deleting or banning posts that don't deserve it just because they feel like it.

I still remember when ego tried to act smart and posted something along the lines of: "Yeah, sure, that's just a cute side effect of the vaccine—my colleague's kid has eight legs and they all work perfectly," or some nonsense like that. When a bunch of users complained or called him out on it, every single one of those replies got wiped, while his original post stayed right where it was. It’s a complete circus.

Look, I get it. If a moderator belongs to a group that feels targeted (based on what's been publicly posted here), then COVID probably seems a lot more terrifying to them, and I respect having that opinion as a regular user.

What’s totally unacceptable is when they use that moderator status to slap bans on anyone who disagrees with them. That’s how they’ve been operating lately, and it’s pathetic.

On top of that, you’ve got a few people constantly trolling, but they never get touched because they parrot the moderators' views. I could easily find over 100 fake posts from that specific inner circle that haven't been flagged, even after being warned a hundred times. Their responses are always just "OK" or some sarcastic smiley face. There are maybe four or five of them doing this systematically, and now a few new ones have joined in. It completely dilutes the discussion; fights break out, and the mods just sit there and watch.

I really think the superadmins need to take a look at this subforum if they haven't already and actually have some internal discussions about it. If you honestly don't find this suspicious and you're okay with this kind of moderation, then we know exactly where you stand. I don't see the point of this subforum if this keeps happening; you're just creating backlash, and you're definitely not going to convince anyone of anything by acting like this.

Btw, hats off to Gerald Chavez7. The guy has an answer for everything, handles disagreements like a pro, and I've even seen him hand out a few deserved bans on both sides, so at least there's one sane person left in the mix.

Kudos to you, hollowwalker24. You can pretty much count on nobody ever replying to your posts again. 🙂

What ego and that whole crew are pulling is straight-up criminal.

I’ve officially checked out of that Coronavirus forum. I just don't have the patience for it anymore, and honestly, neither do a lot of other people. Let them stay in their little bubble and talk only to people who agree with them—because hey, I guess that's what a forum is actually for, right?

neonpuma30 said:Because it basically set the tone for all future debates and planted the seeds for this whole conspiracy theorist movement that’s blooming everywhere now. A ton of sensible people have bailed on the site, including several medical professionals.

It’s the same story over on the COVID subforum. Plenty of regulars have walked away because a handful of trolls have basically hijacked the place, and the mods just sit there doing absolutely nothing about it. I’ve already seen people mocking what’s happening in that section on other threads I follow. It’s obvious to everyone—except, apparently, those who refuse to see it.

Chris Myers said:Can we get some consensus here? Is moderation bad when it’s strict, or bad when it isn't? 🤔

Since you’re the mod for the subforum being complained about, you could have at least provided some actual context for this thread.

Fine, I'll give you my two cents, even though it looks like everyone else has already weighed in:

Both heavy-handed and light-touch moderation have their place. Depending on the specific subforum, the vibe of the debate, and the crowd involved, it shouldn't matter which style gets used.

The bottom line is that the rules need to be clear from the jump and applied equally to everyone.

If someone is trolling, they need to be dealt with, regardless of which side of the aisle they sit on.

If there's someone who’s been systematically poisoning a subforum since day one—someone who shows up in every single thread just to kill constructive discussion and drag everything off-topic without actually adding anything useful—that person needs to be handled.

And if they keep doing it after getting warned, you hit them again, harder this time.

It’s totally fine for a mod to jump into a conversation and post as a regular user.

But if a mod starts using their power to punish people just because they hold an opposing view—that’s a massive problem.

Or if you're letting people who agree with you slide while cracking down on dissenters—that's also a problem.

The distinction is pretty obvious, and we talked about this extensively back in that COVID moderation thread—which, coincidentally, was shut down by "miraculous" circumstances. By the way, anyone want to guess who had the most posts in that thread? Mr. Wobbie, with about nine times more posts than the top moderator.

That’s an entirely different subforum (politics), which means a totally different set of mods and a completely different set of rules still in play over there (you can see people are still venting about it). What went down back in February and March last year under that other mod has zero connection to what's happening here, so I don't really get why you're even making that comparison.

Btw, if you ask me, despite a few hiccups, TikTok did a decent job moderating that subforum. They actually needed to be super strict because we were seeing a massive influx of people every single day, dropping millions of posts that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic, and things were just spiraling out of control. That’s exactly why this new subforum was opened—to take the pressure off the old one and let the discussions branch out into different topics and directions.

I don't think I’ve ever actually posted in this sub in my 10+ years of being on this forum, but the stuff they tolerate here is honestly unheard of. If I really wanted to, I could dig up over 100 trolling posts from this guy in ten minutes, and they’re still sitting there. It’s wild to me that he hasn't been institutionalized yet. He’s got a few other users backing him up who are also going way overboard (on both sides of the aisle, too).

There have already been complaints about him, and when you bring it up, the moderator just says, "Well, look, he has the most warnings," but that’s a pathetic excuse. Of course he has the most warnings when he’s dropped something like 3,500 posts—more than anyone else in their 13-year tenure—just in the COVID subforum. If you actually looked at the ratio of warnings to total posts, he’d be near the bottom of the list.

Plus, he and the crew that agrees with the mod constantly get slapped with maybe 10-20 warning points, while the people holding the opposing view get hit way harder for the exact same things.

The guy will comment on five different threads with the exact same canned response (literally writing, "Do we really have to talk about this in every single thread?"), constantly plays dumb, and responds to counterarguments with the same repetitive nonsense or by cherry-picking parts of a post that don't suit him. He’s basically doing the opposite of what a discussion should do; he’s actively driving people out of the debate. He derails every topic, pulls quotes out of context, and uses partial quotes just to steer the conversation into some irrelevant direction. If your goal is to kill any meaningful dialogue and scare off participants, then mission accomplished.

He is the textbook definition of a troll who’s playing it halfway smart, riding the coattails of the moderators because they let him slide.

Seriously, just look at his recent post history. It's just random comments that have nothing to do with the topics, mocking people, and massive 20+ post rants "explaining" basic corporate concepts to "stupid" people—claiming such things even exist and that he's personally experienced them—all while completely hijacking the debate with the kind of partisan intensity you'd expect in a fever dream at a COVID ward.

Man, this news actually brightened my mood for a second, but then I remembered how our politicians always have to spin things to make themselves look good:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/government-plans-for-the-us-economy-352414

I don't even care about them; if I remember correctly, they just phase you out automatically after you hit 27. At least that’s how it worked for me. They actually canned my student package too, so now I'm stuck paying $7.00 every month for the whole setup ($4.75 online banking + $2.25 account maintenance fees). But then they had the nerve to automatically send me an American Express card "for students" so I could start using it 😁 which makes zero sense..

A buddy of mine got hit with the full price for one month after turning 27, but then they switched him back to $1.75 a month right after, so clearly it's not the same deal for everyone..

I honestly don't get why you're locking this thread indefinitely. You're basically cutting off regular members from all the updates and info we actually care about regarding the car, instead of just dealing with the trolls. Just ban the idiots making a mess of the discussion. They aren't going to disappear; they'll just migrate to other threads and start acting like toxic pests there if you don't shut them down here.