FOT Forum

The Best Show on WFMU => Show Discussion => Topic started by: Forrest on September 09, 2007, 07:49:46 PM

Title: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Forrest on September 09, 2007, 07:49:46 PM
What the hell WAS that?
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Jason on September 09, 2007, 08:02:52 PM
Was it Best Show related?
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 08:16:26 PM
zing!
I fear the wrath that we come at me for perpetuating this thread, but my interest in what happened is overpowering that fear.  what happened?
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Forrest on September 09, 2007, 08:52:37 PM
Well, it WAS the Best Show thread I was referring to, yes. A lot of drama.
Title: sorry forrest, but this thread is a terrible idea...
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 08:57:13 PM
Read the rest of pinkhamsters posts and you can easily get the backstory on him and/or his beef with others on the board.

But better yet, why not bring the fight over here to the FOT board? Especially since you know the majority of the people in that thread also post here??

 :-\
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: cron on September 09, 2007, 09:08:32 PM
is whatever happened the reason its down right now?
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 09:11:48 PM
no.

it was just a stupid argument with a poster from AST who is involved with other similar arguments on other topics. So it's not exclusive to any discussion regarding the best show.

I don't think it's worth bringing all the nonsense over to this board. I really don't.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 09:23:50 PM


I don't think it's worth bringing all the nonsense over to this board. I really don't.
I totally want to bring it over here. 
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 09:32:58 PM
woaw, things must have gotten shitty, because that thread is all deleted/modified up.  It doesn't even make sense.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: buffcoat on September 09, 2007, 09:36:43 PM
Probably they're terrified of the wrath of the FOTs.  We scared Cher so much she won't even do any more movies.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 09:46:06 PM
edit: god damn that picture was big and I'm too lazy to resize it.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Jason on September 09, 2007, 09:47:20 PM
Link 2 thread plz. TIA.
Title: I'm only doing this because Jason asked for it.
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 09:52:20 PM
edit: i changed my mind and i don't want to be responsible for this.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Jason on September 09, 2007, 10:21:45 PM
Well, I'm glad that sort of drama never happens here although I'm at a bit of a loss as to what it was all about. I take pride in not over-moderating this board, but that thread has made me realize that its probably because I don't have to because you are all such a nice well behaved bunch.
I have also been guilty of putting down AST posters who also post here, but really, I can see we got the cream of the crop.
For a comedy website AST is a whole lot of not funny.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 10:51:42 PM
1) I'm about to give up my fight on the "FOT"/"FOT's" thing.
2) Not to start a board fight, but I've noticed that there are basically 2 categories that pretty much all forums fall into: the one's where the users are laid back and one's where the users are not.

When the  members are laid back (FOTF), you get sporadic posting, but everything is pretty much quality.  When the members are not, you get people being hyper-critical, overly sensitive, and post padding shit (happy birthday threads, responses that consist purely of snarky comments or "lol" or some stupid emoticon)

Personally, I find the latter harder to read because you have to wade through the shit to get to the info (and there are just so many damn posts).  I'm not ready to lump AST into that category because there seem to be a lot of cool people and I've personally gotten a lot of good info from over there, but holy shit some of those guys need to lighten up.

Also, this thread should probably be deleted before it comes up over there for the sake of this board.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 10:51:52 PM
For a comedy website AST is a whole lot of not funny.

Do you read the rest of the board on a regular basis? Do you go into the chat?

If not then you're not in a position to say what AST is or isn't...

(exactly why I didn't want to post this turd of a thread here, Jason)
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 10:54:08 PM
Also, this thread should probably be deleted before it comes up over there for the sake of this board.

That's right because all the unfunny, uptight posters at AST have these Message Board Nukes that they'll totally deploy and hit the FOT board like a ton of radioactive bricks. It'll be like WWIII and it won't be pretty. That much I can promise you.

You're right to be nervous, Andy...
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: GetOffMyBone on September 09, 2007, 10:56:17 PM
Sometimes that place has some funny and informative stuff, but a lot of time it's just a mean place to be.

That's my take, at least.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 11:00:13 PM


I don't think it's worth bringing all the nonsense over to this board. I really don't.
I was just agreeing with you.  Sorry.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 11:02:05 PM
OK I'm sorry I misunderstood what you meant. People here on FOT seem to share in the opinion that us ASTers are just a confrontational, mean group of people. When really, I've met some of my favorite [awesome] people on that board.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Jason on September 09, 2007, 11:07:31 PM
^^^ Is this to me or Andy.

Yeah I been there a twice. Link me to the funny.

Also forget all that gushy Brady Bunch crap I said earlier, AST is for faggots and you all make me sick.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 11:08:10 PM
don't worry about it.  I did kind of mean it the way that you were thinking, but not totally.

I look at AST every day, and I know that there are an exceptional number of cool people over there compared to the general population, but it's also a big message board, so there are  going to be some assholes/internet tough-guys, etc...   

Overall, I like it, but I don't want the kind of shitstorm that happened over there to overflow into this board.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 11:10:57 PM
Erika- please don't misunderstand Jason.  He is British so when he says that ASTers are "faggots" he really means "fags", which is a common term for cigarettes in his slang and when he says "you all make me sick" he is referring to a story from his past when his parents caught him smoking and made him finish the pack, which made him sick.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on September 09, 2007, 11:14:19 PM
Yeah, yeesh.  The funny thing is, that thread has exactly all the weird obsessive culty characteristics  that FOTs are being accused of therein.  I actually think this board is kinda nice, and I'm perfectly comfortable drifting in and out of it, though I do have kind of a man-crush on Tom.

Someone needs to come up with a name for this sort of phenomenon on the internets.  It reminded me a LOT of this recent event in the theater blogosphere - basically a blogger went to see a preview of a play at Playwrights' Horizons in NY, hated it, left at intermission, and trashed it on his blog.  There was this ridiculous blogs-linking-to-blogs-linking-to-blogs argument, as if this blogger had tried to kill somebody.  I actually happen to be really good friends with the director and he had no idea any of this was going on.  No one at the theater did.  In fact, it hasn't really made a difference at all, the show is selling out.  I pointed this out on one of the blogs, and mentioned maybe, just maybe, this was a tempest in a teapot, and bloggers (including me) are nowhere near as important as we tend to think we are.  I didn't exactly get my head bitten off, but there was a lot of bloviation, even though I was pointing out the obvious.

Anyway, I don't if I'm making the connection adequately clear here, but there is a kind of crazymaking feeling one gets from reading these obsessive, black-hole arguments online.
Title: what can i say? i'm a smoker.
Post by: erika on September 09, 2007, 11:17:40 PM
Andy/Jason, no worries.

You're my favorite FOT faggots and that will never change.

xoxo
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: Andy on September 09, 2007, 11:21:13 PM
... maybe, just maybe, this was a tempest in a teapot, and bloggers (including me) are nowhere near as important as we tend to think we are. 
this is what I like to call "Jason-nip", it's like cat-nip for Jason.

Seriously, though, I think there is a common thread between SOME of the posters on AST and the bloggers you mention.  Now that anyone can say anything on the internet with almost no filters, you have a bunch of has-beens/never-weres that are out there being hyper critical of everything and writing diatribes in forums and on their blogs instead of doing something with their lives.  The thing that gets me about a board like AST is that it would be almost a full time job to go through every thread and fight with other posters and make shitty comments, but some people appear to do just that.  It's almost overwhelming to keep up with just the threads I'm interested in over there.
Title: Re: A Busy Sunday On A Special Thing
Post by: John Junk on September 10, 2007, 12:20:54 AM
Also forget all that gushy Brady Bunch crap I said earlier, AST is for faggots and you all make me sick.

 :o :D LOL! ;) :) :D ;D 8) :P :-*

ALSO --I don't really know what anyone's talking about, but the only real observation about AST I have is that there only seem to be like 50 threads, but they're all 25 pages long.  I like talking about LOST on AST because people here aren't as in to talking about that show.  But people on AST aren't as into talking about TBSOWFMU.  Go figure.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Forrest on September 10, 2007, 12:35:42 AM
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I really didn't expect that I would open this can of worms. I have encountered the arbitrary hostility that seems to pervade AST at times, and I can't stand it. Anyone that saw the thread on AST today knows that all I ever tried to do was contribute to bringing it back into the civil world. I certainly don't want to see the kind of bile that can occur of there spill over to FOT.

Separately, and I made my position known on the now-deleted AST thread from today, can I request that we please refrain from the use of a certain slur for gay people? Look, I know nobody here is a homophobe. I know that there is irony, in-joking, and a lot of tongue-in-cheek involved here. I respect Jason, and all of you for that matter. This is a personal request. That word, whether in jest or not, offends me on a personal level.

I swear I am not the bad guy in all of this.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Jason on September 10, 2007, 12:48:49 AM
...please refrain from the use of a certain slur for gay people?

Sorry, I saw an AST mod use it.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: John Junk on September 10, 2007, 01:02:03 AM

I swear I am not the bad guy in all of this.

Forrest is one of the good guys!  I just read that thread.  Holy Mackeral.  I got a little mad at the one guy for what he said about the FOT, but after awhile I felt really bad for him!  Seriously, any way you slice it, it's not a big deal. People need to lighten up. 

People have come at me once or twice on this board, but it's only been every few years or something.  And it usually ends up getting turned into a joke or something. The FOT really are pretty laid back. Except when we are thinking in mass-mind and erasing people from history.

 I mean, we made a whole thread trying to get that guy Matt to come back (still feel somewhat responsible for his leaving.  I'm sorry!).  The FOT board used to be more like the AST board with long-ass arguments and whatnot, but after awhile a lot of people who were into that packed it up and left... or just decided to keep it light.  Except when all that crazy shit happened with Bobo and Sarah. 
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Ason on September 10, 2007, 02:35:13 AM
BOARD WARS!!

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/216/504396682_c6a8afe78d.jpg)
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: TacoSmith on September 10, 2007, 03:16:25 AM
I am EXTREMELY offended by all of this badmouthing of AST since I am clearly the most beloved member of that community and therefore the de facto ambassador. This also means that I have diplomatic immunity which allows me to call anyone I choose a faggot.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: erika on September 10, 2007, 08:14:52 AM
I am EXTREMELY offended by all of this badmouthing of AST

me too! me too!
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Stan on September 10, 2007, 10:23:06 AM
Oy vey.

 That thread on AST should be titled "Four Pages of Reasons to Not Join this Board". Although I must say that the Friends of Tom who do post over there seem perfectly reasonable, not like British cigarettes in the least.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on September 10, 2007, 10:58:13 AM

People have come at me once or twice on this board, but it's only been every few years or something.  And it usually ends up getting turned into a joke or something. The FOT really are pretty laid back. Except when we are thinking in mass-mind and erasing people from history.
 

I would like to see the FOTs get more Stalinist, though.  I mean, show trials, forced industrialization, gulags.  What's not to like?  I want to see Captain Jack confess to a litany of real and imagined crimes against Tomism.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Sarah on September 10, 2007, 11:01:24 AM
Separately, and I made my position known on the now-deleted AST thread from today, can I request that we please refrain from the use of a certain slur for gay people? Look, I know nobody here is a homophobe. I know that there is irony, in-joking, and a lot of tongue-in-cheek involved here. I respect Jason, and all of you for that matter. This is a personal request. That word, whether in jest or not, offends me on a personal level.

In my never-ending effort to detour threads, I will now take the time to muse on the way words' meanings evolve.  When I first encountered the word "faggot," referring to homosexuals, in the early seventies, it was fairly standard over all groups.  When homophobes used it, it was negative--but no more than "homosexual" was.  It was also standard for homosexuals to use it to describe themselves--and not as a way of co-opting the enemies' slur to defuse its power (in case you're wondering how I can claim any knowledge of this, at the time I was hitching to NYC regularly to go to gay bars in the Village, the Ninth Circle and the Firehouse being favorite haunts).  In other words, as a slang term, it was fairly neutral.  Within ten years, however, it became overwhelmingly negative.  And now, for a far too broad cross-section of the population, it has been somewhat unlinked from even the original negative sense and is now used as a generic insult. 

I find all this interesting.  I was similarly interested when I learned years ago, as I was editing a book on so-called cultural tourism, that the term "tour bus" was anathema in the tourism business, where "motor coach" had become the term of choice. 

Usage is weird.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Josh on September 10, 2007, 11:21:18 AM
Usage is weird.

What about the overuse of the word "exclusive"? Talk about a devalued term.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Sarah on September 10, 2007, 11:26:47 AM
So many superlatives have been devalued, it's hard to find ways of expressing extreme anything these days.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Andy on September 10, 2007, 11:34:29 AM
I just resort to adding 'fucking' into something when i'm trying to emphasize
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Sarah on September 10, 2007, 11:43:48 AM
Good idea.  It's impossible for that to be overused.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Jason on September 10, 2007, 11:56:12 AM
Remember when gay meant happy, queer meant strange and we hung rainbow flags from our houses simply because we liked rainbows.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Sarah on September 10, 2007, 12:12:32 PM
I wonder how many people who post on this board really do remember those days.  Dave from Knoxville.  Me.  Stan, perhaps.  One or two more, maybe. 

 
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Laurie on September 10, 2007, 12:20:45 PM
Remember when gay meant happy, queer meant strange and we hung rainbow flags from our houses simply because we liked rainbows.

"And you can't use the word 'faggot' anymore either. It used to be a lovely bundle of sticks. On cold winters' nights you'd throw another faggot on the fire."
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: dave from knoxville on September 10, 2007, 01:15:43 PM
I wonder how many people who post on this board really do remember those days.  Dave from Knoxville.  Me.  Stan, perhaps.  One or two more, maybe. 

 

I don't know if I love or hate that I have so quickly become the FOT community's go-to "old guy". Oh wait, I am an attention ho. Carry on.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: dave from knoxville on September 10, 2007, 01:19:46 PM
Oh, how Andy's head must spin when he needs to lend special emphasis to the word "fucking".
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Chris L on September 10, 2007, 01:21:44 PM
Everyone else is posting on this thread so I thought I would too.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Forrest on September 10, 2007, 04:12:49 PM
I wonder how many people who post on this board really do remember those days.  Dave from Knoxville.  Me.  Stan, perhaps.  One or two more, maybe. 

 

I don't know if I love or hate that I have so quickly become the FOT community's go-to "old guy". Oh wait, I am an attention ho. Carry on.

No, Dave, you make me feel like I'm listening to a program that has, dare I say, class. You are needed.
Title: Re: How not to post on Friends of Tom
Post by: Stan on September 10, 2007, 04:53:58 PM
Oh, how Andy's head must spin when he needs to lend special emphasis to the word "fucking".

 Indeed.

Everyone else is posting on this thread so I thought I would too.

 It's about fucking time!