So out of curiousity who here has a history with DU?

[unaltered]

.

I bet almost everyone who's been a DU member and posts here was at some point tombstoned.

Tell us your story.

Were you tombstoned there Jack? I know I have seen you post there from time to time.

[Avalon]

I've got a few hundred posts, mostly in the dungeon, under a different handle.

I don't tend to waste my energy or equilibrium getting in hopeless pissing contests with jerks. Did once get a posting removed by a mod because I dished back at Bolobuffoon. I tend to be fairly polite even when slitting someone's throat with my keyboard.

"Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!

And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering."

And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.

[medicis]

I've got a few hundred posts, mostly in the dungeon, under a different handle.

I don't tend to waste my energy or equilibrium getting in hopeless pissing contests with jerks. Did once get a posting removed by a mod because I dished back at Bolobuffoon. I tend to be fairly polite even when slitting someone's throat with my keyboard.

"Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!

And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering."

And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.

Ah, God what a quote! One of my favoritist evers...

Re: DU, got kicked off almost three years ago. For some stupid reason, when I changed ISPs got a new membership ... almost got kicked off again.... but lost interest. Rubes upon rubes upon rubes.... and I liked WMR's revelation regarding DU's origin and funding....

[JackRiddler]

.

and I liked WMR's revelation regarding DU's origin and funding....

Please tell us about that, I have no idea.

[bks]

Post at DU under my given name, mostly in the 9/11 dungeon, and have had dozens of posts deleted. I don't any longer consider it a place where intelligent conversation can happen.

If I get kicked off, it'll be for calling the DU management 'liberal totalitarians' one too many times. I've tried to discuss DU's brand of totalitarianism on DU, always to no avail.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

How can any of you read, never mind post, at that place? I only heard of it through here, and it has the ugliest and most counter-intuitive thread and post system I have ever seen online.

I do like what I have read quoted from DU here, mainly because here it is readable.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

DU is where I learned there was such a thing as infowar. The hard way.
Very educational.

It's a battlefield and used for training professionals.
I see the same username gangs doing the same subject patrolling and gang-targeting they were doing ages ago. They are acting as mods, too. Just like at Wikipedia.

I think there is a calculated strategy of weeding out the non-mainstream, over-informed, and outright subversive thinkers from DU so instead they gather at the Group W bench.


on edit:
Anti-war folkie Arlo Guthrie, son of legend Woody Guthrie, told a satirical tale of being rejected for the Vietnam War draft because he'd been arrested for littering.
At the induction center he was...sent to the Group W bench where "they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army..."

[OP ED]

DU is where I learned there was such a thing as infowar. The hard way.
Very educational.

It's a battlefield and used for training professionals.
I see the same username gangs doing the same subject patrolling and gang-targeting they were doing ages ago. They are acting as mods, too. Just like at Wikipedia.

I think there is a calculated strategy of weeding out the non-mainstream, over-informed, and outright subversive thinkers from DU so instead they gather at the Group W bench.

Indeed.

former DUer here. Hated the place, went for friends, left for lack of interest and inability to post as I pleased.

Found this place on accident. Looking for arcane cookie recipe actually.

Thank Glykon for Jeff and all his little friends (and enemies, honestly). This is definitely (definitely) in my top 5 coolest boards of all time.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

See, I don't even know what the Group W bench is. (sorry, I thought it was to do with supporting W. Glad to see it's not). I have met plenty of Bush supporters on other mainstream forums, and they are nearly all united in one respect - I just don't believe them.

It's not that I can't believe anyone honestly supports him (though I do find it a bit of a stretch) - I just don't believe that THESE PARTICULAR PEOPLE do. They're too smart, and know to much. No one who knows the facts can support that man, or his family. I don't mind people who say they don't WANT to know, because if they really don't want to, then they must already know, at heart.

You are right about gangs attempting to shape opinion on the Internet. Have you heard of Editorial Intelligence, from the UK? They're an interesting bunch. An Astroturfing company, working for some very high-profile suspects at the moment:

http://www.editorialintelligence.com/

A more in-depth look, though I can't vouch for the site itself:

http://www.thesargeants.net/dblog/artic ... rticolo=73

Seems like good research to me. Food for thought, anyway, and there's no question of what the company was designed to do. There's obviously money in it.

[justdrew]

the W bench thing is a quote from the Alice's Restaurant song and it's about the bench at the draft station where the bad kids who don't get to go to war have to sit before being dismissed (or made an offer). at that time the army didn't draft convicts.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

the W bench thing is a quote from the Alice's Restaurant song and it's about the bench at the draft station where the bad kids who don't get to go to war have to sit before being dismissed (or made an offer). at that time the army didn't draft convicts.

Just pointed them towards the CIA? Hehe.

That's a film I'm going to have to search for. Thanks Drew.

The W Bench should be a place of pride, then. William Calley and his boys bypassed it.

[stickdog99]

DU is generally a Skinner box.

However, most truly original thought is greeted with Pavlovian dissuasion.

[stickdog99]

I remember the Wellstone debates very well (and all the sophism by the denialists who pretend accidents happen all the time, but assassinations are extraordinary events).

Those were memorable; some of stickdog's best moments on DU.

Are the archives, like the pre-05 GD, member's only? Because I find it almost impossible to find the old threads.

That's what I'm talking about. It's almost as if many of the most important and critical pre-2005 threads were "randomly" lost. But that's probably just my paranoia talking.

I must admit that the DU posts of Minstrel Boy, JackRiddler, Tinoire (progressiveindependent.com) and seemslikeadream have always been among my very favorites.

Jeff, as an aside, I would like to make it clear that I have the utmost respect for you both as an analyst and a writer. Your insight is tremendous, and your ability to express it is always of the highest caliber. Thank you for creating a seminal blog and a forum in which intelligent discussion has at least an opportunity to flourish.

Finally, although I am a little pissed at the "Democratic Underground," it is obviously far from the very worst place around. This single post got me banned from dailykos.com: http://dailykos.com/story/2006/5/30/491 ... 261/214328

[MacCruiskeen]

Finally, although I am a little harsh on "Democratic Underground" it's not the very worst place around. This single post got me banned from dailykos.com: http://dailykos.com/story/2006/5/30/491 ... 261/214328

Urrrhh, stickdog, that Kos thread is nauseating.

I managed about three dozen posts to Democratic Underlings before being banned. Ninety percent of my posts were about 9/11, and at least three or four of them were deleted without explanation. When I asked - always politely - why the post had been erased, I never once got a reply from a Mod. They are sneaks and liars, and the place is a joke, but not a funny one.

The post I eventually got banned for had nothing to do with 9/11, though.

I posted it after hearing about an ex-colleague who had just been diagnosed HIV-positive. It was horrible news, because he is a very nice guy and it's a horrible disease. But this got me thinking about a late-night conversation I'd had in about 1991 with my kid brother and his two friends, who were visiting here from Britain. He was born in 1969, which made him and his friends ten years younger than me. One of these three young guys said his sex life had been "blighted" by fear of AIDS. Not that it had prevented him from having a sex life at all; just that he worried about it every time he met a new girl. So this led to a discussion about how real the danger actually was. There were about eight of us at the table (the others, male and female, wrer all from my generation) and we all agreed that we didn't know a single straight person who had caught the disease. Not one. Just as a plain matter of fact. Nor had we even heard of one, in any of our circles of acquaintance.

And over the next 15 years or so, that never changed, in my experience. I should add that I've personally known at least six people who've died of AIDS, and several others who are living with being HIV-positive. At least two of these people are, or were, very close to me. The plain fact is, though: they were, or are, all gay. So I started thinking: The risk of AIDs for non-heroin-addicted heterosexuals is surely greatly exaggerated. By this time, I had a ten-year-old kid who was already being bombarded with AIDS education at school, much of which struck me as hysterical; and I didn't want her growing up associating sex with death unless it was absolutely necessary for her to do so.

So then I did something rash: I started a thread at DU entitled: "Has the AIDS threat among heterosexuals been exaggerated?" And I appended a poll to it. The post was short, carefully written, polite, and in no way homophobic. Within 15 minutes I had been called mad, irresponsible, a homophobe, a John Bircher, an anti-gay fascist, an evil bastard and god knows what else. Within 20 minutes, the thread had vanished without trace and I was tombstoned without explanation. The question was not just inadmissable but literally intolerable.

Independent, Sunday June 8, 2008:

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

(I might actually start a separate thread about this. Maybe even with a poll.)

[8bitagent]

If I get kicked off, it'll be for calling the DU management 'liberal totalitarians' one too many times. I've tried to discuss DU's brand of totalitarianism on DU, always to no avail.

Nice one. Yeah ultra gatekeeper sites like DailyKos, Crooks and Liars, etc are why so many true progressives have woken up to the fact the liberals are just as blind as the Fox News Bush bots they always hate on.

I was the most rabid, anti neocon, anti Republican person...thinking the liberals and Democrats were saints. Now I see both sides as just a scam, all keeping us from seeing the obvious elephants in the room.

"oh no, musn't discuss 9/11 in any terms other than blowback and incompetence!"

"musn't bad mouth Bill Clinton's handling of Iraq or Kosovo!"

"musn't" say anything bad about Obama!"

"musn't be against the war in Afghanistan, only Iraq!"

"musn't dare question Darwin!"

"musn't question global climate change's impetus!"

Bill Maher, Bill O'reilley...Steven Colbert, Sean Hannity...all the same bull shit to me. Fox News, Comedy Central, all controlled propaganda.

So then I did something rash: I started a thread at DU entitled: "Has the AIDS threat among heterosexuals been exaggerated?" And I appended a poll to it. The post was short, carefully written, polite, and in no way homophobic. Within 15 minutes I had been called mad, irresponsible, a homophobe, a John Bircher, an anti-gay fascist, an evil bastard and god knows what else. Within 20 minutes, the thread had vanished without trace and I was tombstoned without explanation. The question was not just inadmissable but literally intolerable.

Geezus man. This shows how nasty the left can be. I thought they would be banning a thread questioning the origins of AIDS, not merely a thread discussing the very real world statistics of who is at risk.