Beaverblitz.com and Scout.com
Probably not using my best judgment by writing this post, but I figure while on the topic of sour grapes might as well air all grievances.
Okay, so my history with all things Beavers and the internet goes something like this: raucous man-child, bored and surfing the net at work, joins the beaverblitz community after a fellow bored buddy found the site and passed it along. Excited to find fellow Beavs on the net, said man-child starts posting opinions on the site’s message board. The posts become more opinionated as he settles into the community and feels comfortable. Cantankerous old farts start yelling at the man-child, known as CastorNation, because he said the Beavers “have WAC corners”. Hey, that’s what they were playing like. Anyway, shortly thereafter, the man-child makes additional comments critiquing poor play, discussing average recruiting classes, pointing out coaching pratfalls, etc. Angie Machado steps in and tells him to stop stirring the community or he’ll be banned; Steve Sanner writes him emails asking him to conform; “”JPTheBeaver” and his posse of old cantankerous farts who post on the forum, known as “the lodge”, all pat one another on the back and cheer the lynching–apparently the internet is a Beaver eat Beaver world. A few days later I’m permanently banned from the forum. Why? For dissent. When parrying with Sanner via email I explained it was like walking on egg shells over there and I couldn’t conform. He asked me to give it a shot and they’d reinstate me yada yada, but even after his lecture and their reinstatement I didn’t know what I could/not say, and every remark I made was misconstrued and misinterpreted by the masses with the intent of building a rap-sheet so they could go to Mama Beav, Angie Machado, and have her ban me a second time. She’s gutless and cares about the money (now that Rival$ is owned by Yahoo), and fearing she’d lose the grumpy old fart members if I stuck around she went ahead and executed the threatened ban. I can’t read their forums anymore. Why? Because I had an opinion and expressed it in a way they didn’t like. These were fellow Beaver fans ostracizing a Beaver. What amazed me about the entire situation was not how worked up they’d get, but rather that they’d pat one another on the back for being these great well-rounded fans who welcome anyone and everyone into their “family”…yet, at the first sign of dissent…gone. Amazing.
Now on to scout.com. They haven’t banned me. In fact, they let me post on their forums. BUT…while I used to be able to post there freely, they now have a message come up “Moderator must approve post” etc before it shows up. Half my statements over there never make it to print. When trying to get signatures for the petition they wouldn’t let me bump or comment in the thread I made about the subject.
Not all is bad. I have to say, Cliff Kirkpatrick is the best. The guy let’s me post freely in his blog, shoots straight, has spot-on opinions, and doesn’t sugar coat a word. Buker is good as well, though he lifted a paragraph from me and that pisses me off, but fuck it, he’s good.
Sure, this diatribe probably sounds like sour grapes, but honestly I’m glad it went down the way it did because now I don’t have to dance around those assholes’ eggshells and read their dimwit, orange-coated opinions (hello Peter71, I’m talking to you and your self-deprecating “jokes”: are you fat? Really? I haven’t heard that one yet…this nanosecond). They’re all delusional, obsessive, controlling, miserable old farts patting each other on the back. The queen Beav, Machado, is practically retarded. She’s the site’s main publisher and she can’t get three sentences in print without a typo, punctuation error, or grammatical butchery (this is where someone points out all the errors in this blog–hey, I don’t proof or edit these things, and I don’t get paid). Her “Giant Killer” award uses 1st grade methodology: “Keaton Kristick made nine tackles and each tackle is 1 point so he had 9 points and he wins the award.” Meanwhile, Dockery has 6 picks but they too are only worth a point! Great stuff.
Why am I posting this now? Because people keep asking me “angry, who are you? why are you so angry? etc etc”…figured I’d remove some of the mystery. Also, the petition made me realize that if fans come together they can do wonderful things, and it simultaneously amazes and disgusts me that people let emotion (aimed at me) stand in the way of a solid cause. If I were able to post the petition over at beaverblitz we’d have 200 signatures. That kind of indignation fires me up.
Jerks.
Anyway, if you post on beaverblitz, you should link them to this blog, and more specifically this post, so they can all gather around and flap each others’ tails like the gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that), cantankerous Beavers that they are.
-angry