How not to post on Friends of Tom

[erika]

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)

[erika]

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...

[GetOffMyBone]

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.

[Andy]

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.

[erika]

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.

[Jason]

^^^ 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.

[Andy]

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.

[Andy]

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.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

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.

[erika]

Andy/Jason, no worries.

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

xoxo

[Andy]

... 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.

[John Junk]

Also forget all that gushy Brady Bunch crap I said earlier, AST is for faggots and you all make me sick.

  LOL!

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.

[Forrest]

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.

[Jason]

...please refrain from the use of a certain slur for gay people?

Sorry, I saw an AST mod use it.
Monkey see, monkey do.

[John Junk]

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.