The Fred/Gracy Affair, and the Inter-Forum Aftermath Thereof

[Dreamtimer]

[Chris]

If I may bitch a little, we certainly came off worse as a result of all this kerfuffle. It seems we have lost three members in about as many days and we didn't have that many active members to begin with. It's a particular pity BoB decided to retire his account, I hope he'll come back one day.

[Aragorn]

If I may bitch a little, we certainly came off worse as a result of all this kerfuffle. It seems we have lost three members in about as many days and we didn't have that many active members to begin with. It's a particular pity BoB decided to retire his account, I hope he'll come back one day.

It's not the first time he leaves. He's done it before, back when he was still using the name NotAPretender. He'll probably be back. I'm guessing he just needs a timeout.

[Gio]

It's not the first time he leaves. He's done it before, back when he was still using the name NotAPretender. He'll probably be back. I'm guessing he just needs a timeout.

From my experience it's advisable to take a break from actively posting/interacting on forums ... During the last five years while participating here on TOT, I have taken two extended breaks - first an entire year Nov 2017- Nov 2018, then most recently April last year 2021 - Jan 2022 - eight months. I believe it's good to step back and away from these forum platforms - which i have been part.participating on for almost 14 years.

It can also be noted, that most of us active members here, have either met up before on camera (or represented themselves in live interactive videos and or self recorded you-tube presentations.

Right now small in active members, but diverse and solid with individualism.

[Aragorn]

From my experience it's advisable to take a break from actively posting/interacting on forums ... During the last five years while participating here on TOT, I have taken two extended breaks - first an entire year Nov 2017- Nov 2018, then most recently April last year 2021 - Jan 2022 - eight months. I believe it's good to step back and away from these forum platforms - which i have been part.participating on for almost 14 years.

It can also be noted, that most of us active members here, have either met up before on camera (or represented themselves in live interactive videos and or self recorded you-tube presentations.

Right now small in active members, but diverse and solid with individualism.

Quality is better than quantity.

[Aragorn]

Well, it would seem that this whole thing has taken a slightly unexpected turn...

I was feeling bored this evening and so I decided to take a look over at Project Avalon to see what's cooking on the other side of the pond now that the ruckus has settled down. Yes, I know I should know better, but like I said, I was feeling bored.


And lookie here...

So much for gratitude then, after...

• having tried to build a bridge with blood, sweat and tears for several years;

• having brought several technical issues to the attention of Bill and his mods long before my account over there had been reactivated again;

• having been made to run the gauntlet and crawl through the dirt upon my return to Project Avalon as a member;

• having investigated and discovered who was behind the libelous infographics that were posted about Bill over at two far-right venues — it was Brian Brainwash™;

• having been recruited as an administrator, only to be treated passive-aggressively by Bill on the Discord mods chat because of problems caused by the then hosting company, then have all the work Tommy and I did on getting vBulletin 5 set up annihilated again while I was asleep and suffering from Covid-19 — because Bill didn't like the look of vBulletin 5 — and then being treated passive-aggressively some more because of a DDoS attack by a banned member of both TOT and PA, and then Bill making it appear as if he had done all the sleuthing — just as with "his discovery" that "Gracy" was actually Fred, which he probably never would have found out about if Marcus "Junk DNA" hadn't snitched on his friends — while in reality, I was the one who traced down the IP address of the DDoS attacker, cross-checked it against the TOT database and identified the culprit; and...

• several other things.

Well, Bill, I guess I should have known better than to trust you, but in the end, you turn out just as two-faced as those particular PA members that you cherish the most — you know the kind, because they're the ones whose jingoism (and your support for it) prompted me to retire my admin account over there in October 2020 and slam the door shut behind me.

Like I said, The One Truth doesn't owe Project Avalon anything, and I myself don't owe you anything either. Your people pooed on our bridge and secretly chipped away at its trestles, while you stood and secretly enjoyed watching them go at it.

And now I know how you really felt about TOT and the bridge I was building. See, as it just so happens to be, I have recently been shown a log from the Discord mods chat dating back to the time before you approached me with the offer of becoming an administrator at Project Avalon. In said log, you were expressing your hope that recruiting me as an administrator for PA would have meant — and I quote — "the death knell for TOT."

Really, Bill? So your sympathy for us over here was never real, and you were simply seeking to hire me for my talents as an administrator while at the same time secretly hoping that TOT would perish in the process? Well, with a friend like you, who the fuck needs enemies, eh?




Here's your bridge, Bill. I built it, and it wasn't all that long ago that I told you not to blow it up. But you just couldn't help yourself, could you?

[modwiz]

Bill can be trusted.

Trusted to be perfidious.

He will not let you down.

[Gio]

Bill can be trusted.

Trusted to be perfidious.

He will not let you down.

Yes, over and over again he has demonstrated this behavior ...
Bill has squandered many wonderful opportunities ...
Locked into his Scientology mindset.


It's Good To Be King

Excuse me if I have some place in my mind
Where I go time to time

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SF1iLXSQto



So what's to happen to the kingdom if the king dies on the thrown?

[Chris]

Modwiz, you're a true gentleman as always, I would have used much more colourful language to describe the man... But perfidious is right on spot.

Gio, you hit the nail on the head. No wonder we refer to over yonder as "the cult".

It also shows the importance of The One Truth, nobody else is holding these bad actors to account.

Quite a plot from Bill, I have to hand it to him. I was again fooled by what seemed like a mellowing and friendlier approach. I did feel uneasy when Aragorn started building that bridge, but I thought it was worth a shot. Actually, shout out to Vern, he called it and saw through the plot from the very beginning.

[Aragorn]

Bill can be trusted.

Trusted to be perfidious.

He will not let you down.

Yes, over and over again he has demonstrated this behavior ...
Bill has squandered many wonderful opportunities ...
Locked into his Scientology mindset.


It's Good To Be King

Excuse me if I have some place in my mind
Where I go time to time

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SF1iLXSQto

Well, if we're going to bring in the late (and great) Tom Petty, then this is my message to Project Avalon and its minions...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKi3yFmBM4

[Fred Steeves]

Well, if we're going to bring in the late (and great) Tom Petty, then this is my message to Project Avalon and its minions...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKi3yFmBM4

I'm gonna have to strongly disagree with that one captain. I've already long had my fill of these silos popping up all over the places and warring with each other. Ever notice that Bill never leaves his silo? He can't, he's practically trapped himself there because of his overarching drive to control the narrative. If he leaves those hallowed halls, he's subject to the four winds of the marketplace of ideas just like the rest of us, no ban hammer at his finger tips.

His dismissive wave of Caesar's hand in banning you with no explanation was certainly a cold dish, but that's just how he operates. It's that ingrained superior Scientology mentality where if you're deemed to have hurt 'the church" in any way, you automatically acquire the status of nothing more than a pesky cockroach scurrying across the floor.

There are two traditional measures in which to handle the cockroach, you can squash it without a word, and then there is the punishment of fair game. You basically got squashed, and I got the fair game treatment.

Now IMO it was Bill himself who both purposely blew up your bridge, and led the charge on me to sky rocket from being a busted sock puppet, to manipulative sociopath destined for hell. And yes, quite a few went along for the ride and got merrily swept up in the hysteria of Big Brother's "Two Minutes of Hate" and gross misconstruing of things, but a lot of them chose not to as well, and I'm greatly appreciative of the many well wishers who stopped by here. They broke the mold.

I'm not a silo guy, I'm a marketplace of ideas guy, and even if someone is giving me an ear full, they're still expressing their ideas on the matter. So far as I'm concerned anyway, anyone from over there is welcome to engage over here.

[Aragorn]

I'm gonna have to strongly disagree with that one captain. I've already long had my fill of these silos popping up all over the places and warring with each other. Ever notice that Bill never leaves his silo? He can't, he's practically trapped himself there because of his overarching drive to control the narrative. If he leaves those hallowed halls, he's subject to the four winds of the marketplace of ideas just like the rest of us, no ban hammer at his finger tips.

His dismissive wave of Caesar's hand in banning you with no explanation was certainly a cold dish, but that's just how he operates. It's that ingrained superior Scientology mentality where if you're deemed to have hurt 'the church" in any way, you automatically acquire the status of nothing more than a pesky cockroach scurrying across the floor.

There are two traditional measures in which to handle the cockroach, you can squash it without a word, and then there is the punishment of fair game. You basically got squashed, and I got the fair game treatment.

Now IMO it was Bill himself who both purposely blew up your bridge, and led the charge on me to sky rocket from being a busted sock puppet, to manipulative sociopath destined for hell.

Yes, all of the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place now, and I agree. Bill isn't the only one who bears the responsibility in how your sock-puppeteering was quickly turned into the crime of the century, but he was and still is indeed — as you say — leading the charge.

And yes, quite a few went along for the ride and got merrily swept up in the hysteria of Big Brother's "Two Minutes of Hate" and gross misconstruing of things, but a lot of them chose not to as well, and I'm greatly appreciative of the many well wishers who stopped by here. They broke the mold.

I'm not a silo guy, I'm a marketplace of ideas guy, and even if someone is giving me an ear full, they're still expressing their ideas on the matter. So far as I'm concerned anyway, anyone from over there is welcome to engage over here.

I understand and appreciate your explanation, Fred, and I see now where I should have communicated more carefully. But the Tom Petty cue was just too good to pass up on.

My message was of course intended for all of the PA sycophants who only join up here so as to snoop around or tell us how to run our forum, as well as for those who join up here pretending to be our friends, only to then return to PA and talk behind our backs in their members-only section — the backstabbers and the two-faced keyboard warriors (inasmuch there is a difference).

Just take a look at the bottom of this page, at the list with the names of every registered TOT member — active or retired — that has looked at this thread but never posted anything on it. Many of them have been logging on and looking at this thread for multiple days in a row — if you hover your mouse over their names, you can even see the date of their last visit to the thread — even though we hadn't seen any of those particular people around here anymore in years, which unmistakably shows that they were only logging on here again in order to specifically look at this thread. And then they went back over to PA in order to speak ill of us in their members-only section, which I have seen with my own eyes in the few days that my account over there was active again, and then also after my account was initially retired again.

And for the record, I never even had a chance to request the retirement of my PA account again, even though I would have requested it eventually. It's just that while I was there again with an active account in those couple of days, people over there started sending me PMs in which they stated that they agreed with my calling the lynch mob out on its blood lust — as well as that they had already long noticed that iota is untouchable over there — but that they could not say those things in public because there would have been repercussions.

So my idea was to keep the line open for a few more days, so that I could reply to any new PMs arriving at my PA inbox, but Bill cut me — and any sympathizers — off by immediately retiring my account again right after closing the thread. And just as I hadn't requested retirement yet, he also never told me that he was going to retire me, nor that he already had.

I could already sense that he was pretty pissed at me from the moment that I stood up against his new pet, which was then made even worse when I stated in a later post that you are most certainly not a sociopath, and that they were simply looking for a witch to burn. But of course, considering that Bill's friendship was never even real to begin with and that he simply sought to exploit my knowledge of vBulletin even though he secretly loathed both myself and TOT, it would have been very easy for him to quickly get all pissed off with me.

And speaking of sociopaths, the irony of ironies is that Pervy Simon™'s account over there has still not been retired after all of these years, let alone banned. Gotta love those double standards, man!

Project Avalon

... where hypocrisy and Dunning-Kruger meet

and

... where all lives matter, especially if they are white, pro-capitalist, US-centric, pro-nationalist and anti-science.

[Aragorn]

A message to mojo, in response to his PA post here

First of all, I want to thank you, mojo, for your very human(e) and reconciliatory words.

Now, please bear with me, because first I'm going to have to address your criticism regarding how Malc would feel about all this. Malc is a very busy man, and he hasn't even looked at this thread anymore since the 31st of January 2022, even though he has been online again in the meantime. But I'm sure he'll agree with what I have said, because Malc knows me well enough, and he knows he can trust me.

However — and this is important! — it would appear that my words were either misunderstood, or that I've done a poor job of communicating my feelings in this matter. And I'm guessing that it'll probably be the latter.

In my defense, for the last week or so, I've been sitting here at my computer with trapped nerves and blood vessels in both my lower back and my neck. As a result, I am in a lot of pain, in my lower back, in my neck, and even on the right side of my head, as well as that the whole thing has caused an inflammation that gives me a fever all day long. It's not the first time this happens, either. As such, my communication skills have been a bit lacking lately, and I may — and probably have — been unintentionally painting with too broad a brush.

So, yes of course I am aware that not everyone at Project Avalon is a minion for Bill. And that even includes some of those who actually agree with him — e.g. Mike, et al. My hostile comments were therefore not intended at all Project Avalon members, but specifically at those Project Avalon members who love licking Bill's boots, and/or those who just love burning witches and cutting off heads, and/or the backstabbers and cowards who've been coming here under the false pretense of friendship and/or sympathy while gleefully stabbing us in the backs when back in the members-only section of Project Avalon. And the sad thing is that I've seen all too many of all three of those categories of people in the few days that my account at PA had been reactivated.

As I have already said elsewhere on this thread, there are also many good people over at Project Avalon; people with integrity — even if we don't see eye to eye on a number of things, but that's unimportant; I have plenty of friends whose opinions I don't always agree with, but they're still my friends. Because in the end, mutual respect and friendship is what it's all about. It's the only way we humans can ever hope to create peace on this planet. And that is why I started building that bridge in the first place, now several years ago.

Sadly enough, the very founder of Project Avalon itself has been leading his forum members astray with lies, nepotism and ill-formed opinions, and as I've already explained a little higher up this thread here, his friendship for myself and for The One Truth was never genuine, because he was actually hoping that hiring me as an administrator for PA would have — and I repeat the quote from the moderator chat on Discord — meant "the death knell for TOT".

As the founder of Project Avalon, Bill represents the whole of his forum in how he deals with whoever else in the community. Project Avalon itself — by which I mean "the members" — has always made it very clear to me personally that I represent The One Truth and that I am to be held responsible for everything that goes on here. If those standards are applied to myself while I'm not even the owner of The One Truth, then I don't see why Bill should not be held to those very same standards.

And if — to paraphrase George Orwell from "Animal Farm" — "all animals are equal", then why should "some animals be more equal than others"? Concretely, why does Project Avalon's member base tolerate that iota remains untouchable, regardless of how many Project Avalon members — whether new to her or longstanding — she attacks and insults on public threads? Why isn't anyone taking Bill to task over his poor decisions and unfairness?

It is these things that need to be said, that need to be spoken of. And now, as a (once again) banned ex-PA member, I don't have to worry about Bill's opinion anymore, and I don't need his approval in anything. So I can speak up and say those things. And so can Fred Steeves. And believe me, Fred has always been the first to remind us all over here that not all Project Avalon members regard us as the filth of the Earth, and that there are still some really good people over there.

But then again, you also know that saying about how one bad apple can spoil the whole basket, and there are quite a few bad apples in Project Avalon's basket. Quite a few, but not all apples are bad. So I will sincerely apologize if I made it sound as if I regard every PA member as a rotten apple. That would be way too silly to be even remotely true.

Anyway, I happened to catch your post as I was opening up a tab in my browser to PA again in order to properly log out of there and then clear my cookies, and I found your post worthy of a sincere and serene reply. I hope I have not let you down.

Be well, mojo. Maybe our paths will cross again some day.

[Fred Steeves]

I understand and appreciate your explanation, Fred, and I see now where I should have communicated more carefully. But the Tom Petty cue was just too good to pass up on.

My message was of course intended for all of the PA sycophants who only join up here so as to snoop around or tell us how to run our forum, as well as for those who join up here pretending to be our friends, only to then return to PA and talk behind our backs in their members-only section — the backstabbers and the two-faced keyboard warriors (inasmuch there is a difference).

Just take a look at the bottom of this page, at the list with the names of every registered TOT member — active or retired — that has looked at this thread but never posted anything on it. Many of them have been logging on and looking at this thread for multiple days in a row — if you hover your mouse over their names, you can even see the date of their last visit to the thread — even though we hadn't seen any of those particular people around here anymore in years, which unmistakably shows that they were only logging on here again in order to specifically look at this thread. And then they went back over to PA in order to speak ill of us in their members-only section, which I have seen with my own eyes in the few days that my account over there was active again, and then also after my account was initially retired again.

Okay I gotcha, thanks for the clarification.

You know, it doesn't even bother me all that much to be gossiped about on another forum by those who are members here as well, that's human nature. The only thing that really bothers me is the unwillingness to communicate here as well if you're a member of both forums. What that tells me is that there's no intellectual curiosity to engage, and maybe figure out more of what's really going on, what really happened. That the account is only being used to find the juiciest tidbits, take them back over there to rejoin the rotten tomatoes club, and let those tidbits fly to become grossly distorted as they get "passed around the circle" like in the children's game "telephone".

Remember telephone? Everyone gets in a circle, first person whispers a message in second person's ear, second person to third person and so on, until the message gets back to the first person and we see how closely the passed on message resembles the original. The passed around story is often much different than the original.

Now for instance mojo really did have a good idea when the "Gracy" story broke, of creating a room there for me to come in and explain myself to the angry crowd. I certainly would have done that, I'm not afraid to run the crucible for the purpose of explaining myself, setting the record straight, and letting everyone have their say; but unfortunately, although not unsurprisingly, "Gracy's" departure was never intended to be anything other than a two minutes of hate witch burning session. No other narrative was acceptable, not even the very very person who just may know a thing or two about what really happened, and how it happened.

But no such top/down control structure exists here, and hurt people like Masha were more than free to ask me "wtf was that?" directly, but they chose to go the tomato throwing gossip route instead. She could have actually engaged me directly, and come to find out that our many personal conversations over there were just that, one on one personal conversations, she just happened to have been talking to me instead of "Gracy", but either way my intent was honorable in trying to help her through some things.

Also had she chosen to engage, she may have found out that I always genuinely liked and highly respect her (I thought she was amongst the brightest minds over there but was a little rough around the edges), wanted the best for her, and tried to give advice here and there best I could, but how in the world was I supposed to just up and tell her that she's really talking to me and not "Gracy". How was that supposed to work?

She may have also come to learn, by actually talking to me, that the reason I immediately PM'd her over here soon as I saw the jig was up, was because I wanted the news to come from me first. That was important to me, not to just hear it from Bill with his usual spin on people when he bans them. But she chose to talk to other people about it instead, chose to join the two minutes of hate that was contorting reality like a fucking pretzel, and because of those choices, she'll foolishly spend the rest of her days convinced that she was manipulated and taken advantage of by a parasitic sociopath.

When nothing could have been farther from the truth...

That's the kind of shit that happens when people don't talk, especially when there's a concurrent smear campaign going on. You can certainly join in the festivities of the witch hunt, but you'll never have a clue as to what really happened because of that negligence. A big lose/lose all around.

People also could have found out for themselves whether or not Aragorn really is the big bad censorship wolf as reported in that big game of "Telephone". No need to even lift a finger to research any of this, even though the information is right here, and the people who would know are right here, just count the grape vine and unsubstantiated accusations as stand alone objective fact, and call it a day.

So yeah, that's a disappointment, the utter lack of intellectual curiosity.

And for the record, I never even had a chance to request the retirement of my PA account again, even though I would have requested it eventually. It's just that while I was there again with an active account in those couple of days, people over there started sending me PMs in which they stated that they agreed with my calling the lynch mob out on its blood lust — as well as that they had already long noticed that iota is untouchable over there — but that they could not say those things in public because there would have been repercussions.

I'm glad to hear you were approached in the same manner by people who had noticed certain things that were quite obvious, but for reasons all too well known by this time, thought better of voicing concerns in public.

I could already sense that he was pretty pissed at me from the moment that I stood up against his new pet, which was then made even worse when I stated in a later post that you are most certainly not a sociopath, and that they were simply looking for a witch to burn. But of course, considering that Bill's friendship was never even real to begin with and that he simply sought to exploit my knowledge of vBulletin even though he secretly loathed both myself and TOT, it would have been very easy for him to quickly get all pissed off with me.

As you would well know, Tommy's not always that easy to get ahold of when the technical sparks start flying behind the scenes. Right towards the end there I'm pretty sure I recall something along the lines of Bill was interested in having some tech savvy members that could be counted on to step up and help out when those technical sparks fly. Not 100% sure, but pretty darn sure that basic idea was already in the old hopper, so if that's indeed correct and the extra help has already been lined up, that would certainly free him to cut you loose without a care in the world. If that's not the case, then he may have just cut off his nose to spite his face.

But either way that's a classic example of why he'll never venture outside those castle walls. He controls the narrative there, he controls everything, and it doesn't work that way outside those walls. Inside that warm cocoon he doesn't have to answer to anyone from his lofty perch on that mountain top, and he can cancel away as it suits him, just a wave of Caesar's hand.

And speaking of sociopaths, the irony of ironies is that Pervy Simon™'s account over there has still not been retired after all of these years, let alone banned. Gotta love those double standards, man!

That says a lot doesn't it?

Bill can be trusted.

Trusted to be perfidious.

He will not let you down.

Funny, true, and succinct.

Yes, over and over again he has demonstrated this behavior ...
Bill has squandered many wonderful opportunities ...
Locked into his Scientology mindset.


It's Good To Be King

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SF1iLXSQto

That about sums it up Gio. It's indeed good to be the king, but only when you have a need to be the king.

[Aragorn]

[...]

Now for instance I really did have a good idea when the "Gracy" story broke, of creating a room there for me to come in and explain herself to the angry crowd. I certainly would have done that, I'm not afraid to run the crucible for the purpose of explaining myself, setting the record straight, and letting everyone have their say; but unfortunately, although not unsurprisingly, "Gracy's" departure was never intended to be anything other than a two minutes of hate witch burning session. No other narrative was acceptable, not even the very very person who just may know a thing or two about what really happened, and how it happened.

But no such top/down control structure exists here, and hurt people like Masha were more than free to ask me "wtf was that?" directly, but they chose to go the tomato throwing gossip route instead. She could have actually engaged me directly, and come to find out that our many personal conversations over there were just that, one on one personal conversations, she just happened to have been talking to me instead of "Gracy", but either way my intent was honorable in trying to help her through some things.

Also had she chosen to engage, she may have found out that I always genuinely liked and highly respect her (I thought she was amongst the brightest minds over there but was a little rough around the edges), wanted the best for her, and tried to give advice here and there best I could, but how in the world was I supposed to just up and tell her that she's really talking to me and not "Gracy". How was that supposed to work?

She may have also come to learn, by actually talking to me, that the reason I immediately PM'd her over here soon as I saw the jig was up, was because I wanted the news to come from me first. That was important to me, not to just hear it from Bill with his usual spin on people when he bans them. But she chose to talk to other people about it instead, chose to join the two minutes of hate that was contorting reality like a fucking pretzel, and because of those choices, she'll foolishly spend the rest of her days convinced that she was manipulated and taken advantage of by a parasitic sociopath.

When nothing could have been farther from the truth...

That's the kind of shit that happens when people don't talk, especially when there's a concurrent smear campaign going on. You can certainly join in the festivities of the witch hunt, but you'll never have a clue as to what really happened because of that negligence. A big lose/lose all around. [...]

And likewise with regard to why I had no choice but to retire Christian when he sabotaged his notification emails by setting an invalid email address in his account, and why I did not retire Masha when her emails bounced. She could have asked me — whether here on the thread or in a PM — but instead she made it a rhetorical innuendo among the lynch mob in their members-only section.

People also could have found out for themselves whether or not Aragorn really is the big bad censorship wolf as reported in that big game of "Telephone". No need to even lift a finger to research any of this, even though the information is right here, and the people who would know are right here, just count the grape vine and unsubstantiated accusations as stand alone objective fact, and call it a day.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0fawc73Hy8