Digital Flea Dip Increases Peace and Love

It’s remarkable how disappointing people are!

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about the bizarre behavior of the moderators at a firearms forum I have used. I saw a crazy video featuring Massad Ayoob, a layman who gives people legal advice concerning firearms. He has no business doing this. Someone might see one of his videos and decide not to wait for a lawyer’s advice at a very critical time, and every lawyer knows this can result in prison time or even an execution. I wrote a forum post about it, and early the next morning, the moderators had sent me a personal message. A group of them had assembled for the purpose of telling me I was wrong.

I marveled. I did something insignificant, and I did nothing wrong, but they clearly thought it was momentous. They had assembled something resembling a firing squad, and they did it early in the morning. The guy who started the private message conversation lives in California, and it appeared he had started it at 7:35 Eastern time, or 4:35 a.m. where he lives. Maybe Ayoob got him out of bed.

I was not nasty about Ayoob’s video at any time. I was critical for sure, but criticism is a good thing, especially when your criticism could keep people out of prison.

Jesus was extremely critical and blunt; he said things that would spark protest marches today and send man-bunned college kids into special rooms full of therapy puppies. It’s important, in our efforts to be kind and loving, not to go too far and lose what Jesus called our saltness. When salt loses its saltness, it’s only fit to be trampled underfoot. If you can’t speak the truth when it’s not popular, and you can’t do it unapologetically, you aren’t doing one of the things Christians are supposed to do.

I’m not saying I went to the forum to evangelize, but one of my concerns these days is the danger of letting myself be childish and mean. You have to know the difference between useless, sadistic railing and blunt, well-deserved, useful criticism.

The moderators in the ad hoc forum jury said things that were obviously wrong, and I corrected them at length with no reserve or timidity, but I told them I wasn’t there to cause problems. I said something about how they should delete the thread I started if it bothered them.

Of course, I did cause a problem. The thread wasn’t that big a deal, but I caused a major problem by confronting forum moderators with their own unfairness, lack of real importance, and ignorance about the practice of law.

Shortly thereafter, the thread disappeared, and they claimed it was because I had made misrepresentations, which was completely untrue. The thing that bothered them, it appears, is that I said things that were true, about someone they held to be exempt from all criticism. I think losing a debate very badly in the private message conversation was also a major factor.

I didn’t care about the thread. Who would? It was trivial.

The things I found interesting were the dishonesty and corruption. I told them Ayoob was getting special treatment, and I said they ought to ask themselves why they were bothering to create what I called a star chamber or FISA court in the clandestine direct message conversation. Obviously, they don’t do this for every person who says another person made a bad Youtube video. They denied giving him special treatment, in a conversation, the existence of which was the direct result of special treatment.

I wondered if they knew what a star chamber was, and that’s why I used the term “FISA court.”

Ayoob is a forum member, and he knows some of the poobahs personally. A cynical person would say they singled me out for disparate treatment just because I made their pal look bad. I think that was what got them going, and I think the fact that I stood up for myself put the cherry on the sundae.

Who are Internet forum moderators to me? Should I be intimidated by them or in any way bow down to them? It would be ridiculous.

Ayoob never showed up in the conversation; at least not while I was participating. I thought it was odd that they would do his responding for him as though I had mugged a disabled person. Maybe he’s not doing well. He lives in Florida, where coronavirus is hot right now, and he’s elderly.

Anyway, I wondered why they didn’t ban me. They were clearly not above such things, and it seemed like the obvious next step. Given their childish behavior, I wondered if I would soon find that I had no access to the site. I thought it would happen eventually.

Guess what happened this morning? You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.

Yes, my username is now banned. The reason? “Violations of the rules.” Plural.

That’s all I know.

Of course, I didn’t violate any rules. I cooperated completely.

Oddly, I am still logged in. I can’t log out. There are fresh alerts for me on the site. One appears to be a private message alert. I think maybe they told me I was banned, in a conversation they should know I can’t see. If you go to the site and look at old posts I made, it still says “member” by my username. I guess the software does that. Surely they’re not pretending I’m still active, to cover their behavior.

So now I’m cut off forever from all the close friends I’ve made there, as well as the great information the forum contains.

Actually, I don’t find friends by going to Internet forums, and I can still go to the site whenever I want, using a new username they don’t recognize, and ask questions until the cows come home. And I belong to other forums. One wonders what they accomplished.

I suspect the thing that really set them off was a remark I made about the thread. While I was telling them I didn’t want to be a problem and saying they could go ahead and delete the thread, I said there was a website where the boss always agreed with me (since he’s me), and I would put my stuff there. I let them know I respected their very limited authority, but I also did something you should never do to a bully: I made it clear I would continue to defy them elsewhere.

Bullies are about two things: sadism and control. When you tell them their control is extremely limited, it makes them more determined to punish your defiance.

If you want to inflict great suffering on a bully, all you have to do is thwart his efforts to bully you and let him know he can’t do anything to you. You don’t have to do to them what they try to do to you. Just make it clear they can’t do what they want to do. The pain they feel is like red-hot whips. I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen it many times.

I don’t know how many people would have seen the thread I posted, had they not deleted it. Hundreds, maybe? I wrote about the whole business here, where it will remain as long as I pay my hosting fees. Thousands of people will see it. They can’t take it down. They can’t send me private messages. They can’t involve themselves in any way. In trying to cover up dissent, they put it before more people and destroyed their power to participate. They set me free and pulled their own teeth.

If my thread were still up, they could post all sorts of things vilifying me and praising Massad Ayoob to the heavens. Not an option now.

It’s nice to be banned. I feel light because I have been freed from a considerable number of cantankerous, unreasonable people. The atmosphere in the forum was pretty corrosive.

Gun forums are full of obnoxious, posturing men who think owning a Browning Buckmark makes them Rambo, Chris Kyle, and John Moses Browning, rolled up in a needlessly-camo-covered ball of unpleasantness. You have to walk on eggs around them. Insecurity hangs in the air like fallout after a nuclear test. Using a gun forum can be very helpful, but you have to be careful not to become contaminated with hostility and immaturity.

I got somewhat annoyed during the Ayoob digital kangaroo court, and that bothered me, because I don’t want to be infected with lingering anger over tiny trivialities. The prospect of having stuff deleted and being banned didn’t bother me at all. What could be less important? But the gaslighting and unfairness of the silly private conversation made me a little angry.

The majority of the people at the forum are reasonably pleasant, but the minority is not a small one, and it is well-represented among the moderators.

For a long time, I’ve felt that using the forum was a vice. It was something I limited deliberately. Whenever I thought about going there to post something, I asked myself, “Do I really want to do this? I want to be a man of love and please God. Do I want to risk being provoked by very small people in exchange for some unimportant information or a few minutes of diversion?”

I saw it as a throwaway activity. I had the feeling I would eventually be banned for standing up for myself or that the bullies would eventually take so much of the fun out of the forum I would quit, as I have quit other forums.

Gun forums are nasty places for people who don’t cower for bullies, and this particular forum is worse than others I use. To me, it was a place I went when I felt energetic enough to risk being insulted and belittled. I would think, “I know a lot of these people are basically land mines, but I feel like checking the forum out today, so what the heck.”

This is my second forum ban. The other forum was also a gun website. I joined the Rimfire Forum, and I got the boot within a month or so, if memory serves. I had just gotten started. I was trying to find a new trigger for a .22 rifle, and there was a guy who called himself Arrowdodger who was famed for the triggers he made. I tried to get in touch with him via various means, and he never responded.

I mentioned this on the forum, where he is revered, and when people defended him and someone blamed me for not continuing to pursue him, I dismissed their strange remarks, essentially saying a person who runs a business should not have to be chased by customers. I wasn’t nasty about it at all. I just didn’t bother applying a coat of sugar. Why would I? I wasn’t blaspheming God. Just saying a mere man like myself should communicate with potential customers.

Within a day or two, without warning, I was banned for spamming. Of course, I don’t spam. I don’t sell anything. It was a lie someone told, perhaps because the forum software required an explanation for the ban, and something had to be typed in a box. That’s a guess. They were never man enough to respond to email inquiries, so I will never hear their explanation.

One of the illusions firearms forum people tend to have is that they are manlier than everyone else, but in this case, they ran away and hid. Because I am so scary? What good are guns to people who don’t have the courage to stand their ground in emails? Gun owners like to call leftist protestors snowflakes, but at least the protestors have the guts and integrity to show up.

Bottom line: Internet forum moderators tend to be immature and corrupt, some are not rocket scientists, and the problem is worse in certain types of forums where insecurity and hostility are higher than normal.

The ban will be helpful to me, because it takes a source of irritation away. I can’t say I feel damaged, even though I was wronged, because the people who wanted to chew on my ankles ended up blessing me by removing themselves from my life.

Every day, I pray for a group of people I know, and of course, I’m on the list. As part of the process, I pray the Lord’s Prayer. What does it say? “Lead us not into temptation.” I expound on it. I say, “Please keep us away from temptation and provocation, and help us not to tempt or provoke others.” Provocation is temptation. Bullies are some of the worst tempters around. They are great at infecting you with rage it’s hard to get rid of.

The ban is a direct answer to my prayers, and I am thrilled to get it. I love seeing a prayer answered. I hope similar things are happening to the people I pray for.

It’s surprising how many doors Satan will use to get into your life. Things that seem insignificant can be chinks that turn into major perimeter breaches. Being given a desk next to a rude coworker, receiving a credit card charge for something you didn’t buy, or being lied about on an Internet forum can open the door to anger and unforgiveness that come between you and God.

In about 2015, God gave me what I call “the little rapture.” He told me to get rid of my social media accounts. I had been dishonored and sassed online repeatedly by numerous people I knew from church. Christian “friends” were the main problem. They had no respect for older people, the educated, or people with good prayer lives. Trying to help them was like trying to clean up Somalia. I was punished for it.

When I got rid of my social media accounts, I missed certain people, but I had peace. I was insulated. God still had access to me, and so did good people I knew, but unrepentant, arrogant, impudent boneheads did not. I was no longer required or permitted to wrestle with them. It was, and is, very nice.

The forum thing is also like the rapture. It separates me from an endeavor that did me little good and had the potential to be infectious.

I truly look forward to the rapture. Imagine the peace of being away from protestors, road ragers, politicians, abusive relatives, sadistic employers, and so on. It will be magnificent. Everyone around you will be bursting with love and support, and they will agree with you about absolutely everything. The love you will share with every person in heaven will be much deeper and cleaner than the strongest love you share with anyone here on earth.

Forgiving people is a beautiful, powerful experience, but it will be much better to be around people who never, ever have to be forgiven.

It was annoying to receive the strange treatment I got at the forum, but I can be purged of annoyance, and the freedom from provocation is very, very pleasant.

MORE

I mentioned the coward who banned me from The High Road on another forum where one member of the super-secret THR forum jury is also a moderator, to let people know I might not be around later. I wanted to thank the people on the other forum for their help, in case I got banned there, too. My remarks were up for an hour or two, and then they were deleted with no explanation. My guess is that a ban will be handed down later today.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this site, all they can do is watch.

MORE

Things keep developing. A moderator at the second forum sent me a message telling me to stop talking about the first forum. I told him I was actually glad someone was talking to me instead of sniping from cover. I said I would gladly comply, or he could ban me if he wanted, and there would be no hard feelings.

This is a moderator who lost an argument with me pretty badly a while back, and he’s a hothead who doesn’t like admitting error. I was polite, but his arguments were extremely poor and easily refuted, and he didn’t prevail or come close to prevailing. I expect to be banned because of that, not because I mentioned the other moderator.