Hey, shitbags.

You might remember me. If you don't, I think you'll pick up what I'm putting down. A looooooong time ago, I quite literally posted a thread giving this forum a middle finger. Back then I was a reckless blue collar mess, hard headed and passionate. What I found here was a place where there was personal accountability. There is a long story in there where I was a staff member here for a time.

Life is strange, we can't exactly know our paths, but we can make choices and steer towards the right thing to do. Pick a "social media" platform. Where is the accountability? There is no sense of community, society. Corporations can't do it, profit is a poor metric for freedom.

I was never perfect, and I never will be. But I bend towards truth, personal responsibility, and actual freedom. Life took me away, a compass brought me back here. Online moderated forums are the closest thing to functional society online. In person is still the ideal. Facebook? A finely polished echo chamber. Twitter, it might improve with current ownership, but a wreckage of slightly lighter tone. Tiktok? a Cesspool for those who enjoy having their data stolen.

Nearly 20 years ago, I logged onto this forum to argue with Zeleny about the P7M8, after reading about it on PCT. There is a whole lot of shit that happened in between then, and when I signed off. I was a moderator then, I'm not now. Has that happened before? My memory may not serve, but I think I'm hoeing a new row here.

Guys, ladies, Xers, you couldn't take that piss years ago, because I was too slick, fast and good looking. Then you couldn't take it because I was anointed and wielded too much power. I went on walkabout, but here I am again. Amongst the clay.

Why come back? Why come back not as staff? I didn't mean to be gone so long, and a measure of authority isn't important to me personally. Online, what is missing in so many spaces, is responsibility and reputation. What value is an online "community" if there is little consequence or importance to someone for their behavior?

Everyone can judge someone in the moment, over time no one is a hero if ever their actions were perfect. We are all villains to someone. Lets bury the hatchet. Show me on the doll where I hurt you. Let's get the Allman Brothers and tie me to the whipping post. These past years have indeed been a journey for me. Have I learned anything? I hope so. Am I still a blue collar cunt from the northeast? Yeah, but I'm not a leftist.

I'll be here for as long as you slags will tolerate me. I promise not to cut my dick off and change my pronouns. After that, I'll try to not use salty language. Unless you misgender me, then I'll sue you until you think Greta Thunberg is hot.

I am truly glad you are back. I always appreciated your knowledge and candor. I always tell my employees that everyone wants to be in charge until they have to be. Not an an easy spot. I think the thing I remember from my early days here were the posts about Horse. He was a guy who could get into it and then be endearing. Same with you.

quote:

Unless you misgender me, then I'll sue you until you think Greta Thunberg is hot.

Thanks arc! It is great to see you back and I lol’d at the above quote.

Welcome back Arc.

I'm glad you're back, Arc. You and I seem to have similar personalities in some ways, and I always appreciated that.

quote:

Originally posted by dave7378:
I always tell my employees that everyone wants to be in charge until they have to be.

That's the damn truth.

I had a guy that I supervised for several years. Hard-headed as could be, and close to uncoachable. Regularly ranted to others about how the things his bosses (often me) did were wrong, and he would have done it XYZ. While that's normal to an extent, he took it to the extreme. He knew everything.

He got a wild hair last year and applied for a position elsewhere, which was a supervisory position. I wasn't sorry to see him go.

He lasted about a year in that new leadership position. He actually messaged me a few weeks back when he left that position to take a different (non-leadership) job. The man was downright contrite. You could tell that once he got what he thought he wanted, and what he thought he knew everything about, he then was faced with the realization that it wasn't what he wanted, and that he didn't actually know what he was doing.

While I'm glad he's not my problem any more, I don't hate the guy, or wish him ill. I truly hope he uses that experience as an opportunity for personal growth. But it's a perfect example of how some of the loudest mouths when it comes to criticizing their leaders can't actually hack it when (if) they end up in a leadership role themselves, once it turns out not to be anywhere near as simple and black/white as they assumed it would be.

quote:

Originally posted by dave7378:
I always tell my employees that everyone wants to be in charge until they have to be.

Ain't that the truth!

Glad you're back, arc.

Glad you’re back Arc. You were always cool when you were here.

Your favorite mousetrap to welcome you back amigo!

Arc, my response to your thread here is just coming from my interest in how people think, nothing more, nothing less.

You mention you were "a reckless blue collar mess, hard headed and passionate." What are you now?

You asked where is the accountability on social media platforms. Wouldn't that simply be whether they allowed you continued access on the social media platform with whatever posting rights any member has? You say there is no sense of "community, society." I would say in any group online or real life, the sense of community/society comes from the involvement and interaction of each member. In any group I've been in, I do have a sense of community/society based on the give and take between myself and others in the group. And 50% of that is your responsibility. If you don't have a give and take and feel you're not part of whichever group then you're the unabomber. Corporations are able to have a sense of community. That's easily seen by pointing to the "bad" examples such as Twitter before Elon Musk; they certainly had a sense of community pushing their leftist liberal values.

Facebook is just another social media as in a medium to socialize with other people which means the quality of social interactions depends on the quality of the group you choose to hang with. Twitter and TikTok don't rightly belong in the same grouping of Facebook or Sigforum. They're social media by definition in that they allow social interactions but the structure is different - here and on Facebook, the interaction is closer to one on one with the rest able to look on. On Twitter and Tiktok, the interaction is geared for one to many as it's about content creators and content followers and who can amass followers. It's the proverbial town square with "pundits" standing on top of their soapboxes trying to garner attention.

Your paragraph about not being able to take you because of this or that? Yeah, it's not about you; it's not always about you. I'm sure there are other people like me who are more about the ideas and the operation of the mind that turns out those ideas.

So what have you learned over these past years? Or just name the biggest thing you learned. You ask what is the value of an online community. There's no value in merely declaring you learned something; the value is in sharing what you learned. That's the give and take of interaction.

Welcome back.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
You mention you were "a reckless blue collar mess, hard headed and passionate." What are you now?....

A little further down his post, he said he is "still a blue collar cunt from the northeast...but...not a leftist." Lol.

You must have got your waffles because your posts are fun to read again.

Glad to see you back. Look forward to your posts.

quote:

Originally posted by dave7378:
I always tell my employees that everyone wants to be in charge until they have to be. Not an an easy spot.

That's the impression Soldiers get. They think it's easy being an officer or senior noncommissioned officer: get paid more, do less work. While the physical work is less, the responsibility and expectations are much higher.

I always enjoyed your posts.
Welcome back ya stinking sack of shit.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Oh shit! I'd wondered what to post but with this from Jupiter there is nothing more that need be said!

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Arc. I always enjoyed your posts and will do so again.
Rod

You were missed, keep stirring.

What have I learned? It's been a busy few years, chief among my experiences:

So, I started a new job, and then the pandemic hit. When the pandemic hit, I got to participate in the ludicrous policy of shutting construction jobs down. The dumb part? The jobs that the governor in all his wisdom was shutting down, were single family home stuff. The massive developments? Those kept going. I also saw firsthand what the pandemic did to hotels, restaurants, even churches. Was it worth it? Fuck no. The economic fallout was absolutely not worth it. The pandemic response was absolutely retarded. It could have been way, way more focused.

Anyway, during that time, could you yell at your mayor or governor? Really not. But you could yell directly in the face of the building inspector. So that happened for about 3 solid months. To top it off, the rest of City Hall got to "work" from home, because it was "too dangerous." Meanwhile ISD got paper masks and hand sanitizer. I did eventually get covid, by being coughed directly on during an enforcement.

Peoples behavior during the beginning of the pandemic was extreme, I learned a lot about how to handle upset people, and how to stay calm in those situations. During more normal interactions and enforcements, it pays to be even handed and reasonable as well. "Citizens" will still say all kinds of things when they are upset, but rarely anything like what I experienced back then.

The trend of peoples unreasonableness that began during the election Clinton lost, and has ramped since, really got kicked into the stratosphere these last few years. As a matter of necessity I've learned a lot about being reasonable, and what someone should be allowed in the realm of "speech." Beyond that, I've seen a lot of things I didn't really consider would be a part of the job. Things people don't see, hoarding, housing conditions for the mentally ill, nursing homes, accidents and more.

It's been enlightening.

I don't know if the disparate parts of our society will ever "meet in the middle," with the state of "public discourse," and its poisoning by "social media," I'm not optimistic. The way people talk to eachother has been deeply distorted by how people can tweet or post, and just not have to really be accountable for their BS. People are less likely to destroy a community if they are a part of it... Unless it's Portland, Seattle....

My experiences have cemented my opinions on the roll of government... keeping the lights on, public health and safety, that safety doesn't include laws against "misgendering".... I do think we should all live how we want to live with maximum freedoms. But how much can we ask of the rest of society to accommodate us? Live and let live is an old school New England thing. You don't bother me, I don't bother you, we behave ourselves at the super market.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by arcwelder:

I don't know if the disparate parts of our society will ever "meet in the middle," with the state of "public discourse," and its poisoning by "social media," I'm not optimistic. The way people talk to eachother has been deeply distorted by how people can tweet or post, and just not have to really be accountable for their BS. People are less likely to destroy a community if they are a part of it... Unless it's Portland, Seattle....
-------------

Yup, calling someone a shitbag or a piece of clay on the internet would be different in person for sure....

quote:

Originally posted by rizzle:
Yup, calling someone a shitbag or a piece of clay on the internet would be different in person for sure....

See, what you're missing is that when Arc calls us "shitbags", he does it with love.

I'm going to venture to guess that you don't have any guy friends who rib each other and call each other names, out of a sense of camaraderie and friendship. (Granted, it's more common among the "rough and tumble" types like cops, soldiers, and construction workers.)

It may be foreign to you, but that's how certain groups display endearment. With good-hearted insults and funny names and well-timed curse words, but always from a place of love.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

It may be foreign to you, but that's how certain groups display endearment. With good-hearted insults and funny names, but always from a place of love.