I can’t really explain what brings me to state that, but I’ll just say that it wasn’t anything I did. Situations get really complicated with alcohol mixed in, as some people are finding out tonight.

I feel like posting now, but don’t have that much to say. (That turned out to be an understatement. This whole post is me ranting about a member of the forum who was incredibly annoying. It probably won’t be interesting to anyone, except me.) Here I go!

In the Aloof Forum I’m a member of, there had been a member who just was rather annoying. In his first incarnation, Madeye always was complaining about the lousy features, or that Admin needed to fix something. Some of the things he brought up were actually valid concerns, but the way he brought them up was just horrible. He couldn’t take a joke, either. It just went downhill for a while, until he personally insulted two of the moderators. Apparently, they had been trying to decide whether to ban him, and that was the last straw. A few days later, Madeye Revisited registered at the forum, with his first post as “I’m Back! Ha, you thought you got rid of me” He went on about how he had realized what he did wrong, and would be better this time. He was around a few weeks, but on thin ice. Understandably, some of the mods (moderators, the people who oversee the forum) still didn’t like him, and edited a few of his posts. One ended with “I’m a crybaby”, which I think was added, but was not inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the post.

Now here’s where I come in. Up till today, I’d been ignoring the scuffle, or treating him like a regular member. But yesterday, a link to my site was in a prominent location on the forum, and he went to look at the page mentioned. He posted something like “Wow, I can’t believe your blog template, it looks so prefessional. Did you really design it?” I had just written him a long post about how things can be misinterpreted in text, and that he needed to understand that, both to be more conscious of what he wrote, and so he would not mis-interperet our posts. In response to his “awesome blog” comment, I said that, as an example of what I was meaning, I could have taken that to mean that I was stealing the template, but I wasn’t, because it came free with blogger, and I didn’t take anything out, so they must be okay with me using it this way. I also said that
“I’ll assume you were unaware of the way your comment came off, but be warned that I can, and eventually will, take things in the worst possible way.”

He posted this reply, which was a typical one.

I just cannot believe how people can underestimate my posts like this, this is some kind of joke right. You are trying to tease me right?
I was making a compliment, an honest compliment and there you do breaking it out to me that I am acusing you of stealing the template. This is ridiculous man!

He declared that he was leaving, which was the third time he’d done so, and was gone for a while. I wrote one more post, clarifying that the internet was not quite like real life, or more like a foreign country, and that he might say something offensive without meaning it. As long as one is properly apologetic, it’s no big deal. But when you don’t look/sound sorry, eventually, the foreigners think you mean to insult them.

Then he was back, complaining that the board was probably all ’18+s’, and that we demanded perfection in all things, and that we weren’t royalty, and that he always posts like this at another forum, and we just don’t understand him, but it’s not really his problem. He isn’t perfect, and we’re always guessing that he’s trying to insult us over the templates.

Still trying to resolve it peacefully, I posted back that regardless of what I had thought, I now knew that it wasn’t an accusation, and asked for a truce. He accepted. That was the end of last night’s posting.

When I got up Saturday, he’d visited the rest of my site, and decided that it was “a little messy but has amazing content”. He’d designed a layout for me to use. Now what was I supposed to do with that? I didn’t really like it, and despite his insistence that my site “wasn’t crap”, he’d called it messy. So I asked him why he thought it was messy. I ended up with a few decent suggestions, and some wasted time. He posted an image called “Nathanproof” to show me why he thought it was messy, and I guess he uses some strange skin on his machine, because everything was blue. Which made my red corners stand out too much.

Anyway, he went on to post in another thread, where a new user had posted a link to their site, and he’d, among other things, used a rolling eyes emoticon, and said that he had no clue what they were talking about. This evening, AloofKitten, the administrator’s wife, deleted the post, banned him from the forum permanently, while her husband simultaneously deleted his website.

I don’t know where along the line my opinion switched, but two days ago, I would have said that he was annoying, but that he shouldn’t be banned from the forum. But when he was banned, I was glad. Something about dealing with him personally changes your opinion. He just doesn’t understand anything, or ignores it. I have no idea how much advice he ignored over the course of his two lives here. I’m just glad he’s gone, and won’t be coming back.

And if that bored you, I’m sorry, but I feel better now.

–Nathan