This is exactly how I would describe him, too.

I do miss having him around, though.

It was the fact that he didn't want to debate in a style that you wanted, but preferred to state his theories in his own style, that I loved. People didn't like the fact he could be condescending. He could throw an insult better than most. He could be condescending when he wanted to be, but he could also be the best friend in the world. he was not a bully (like hobby was sometimes). Sigh I miss my friend.. oh well.

Nothing wrong with that. One of the things I always loved about the Lounge was the acceptance everyone had for others, and other ideas. Everyone not only acknowledged the little quirks others had, but appreciated them. Everyone of us who has posted regularly has a personality kink, and sometimes rubs others the wrong way. We get over it and learn to appreciate each other.

It happens. We're all different, and all gonna piss someone off, sometime. But the Lounge was where we could come and talk and share opinions, often vigorously, and still remain friends. Blarg spearheaded that mindset, and the comments I made about him were honest, not damning. The good far outweighed the bad. Far from being a bully, he didn't mind going toe-to-toe with anyone; he certainly didn't pick his opponents based on ease of defeat. Neither M8Ludi nor myself (nor several others) are afraid of a good ol' verbal dustup, and both of us have some game. He jumped right in, every time. And far from being a bully, he resented bullying; when Alexsem was getting lambasted, Blarg was not hesitant to come to his defense. Not because he agreed with him, or didn't see how unfocused and annoying he could be, but because he accepted him, warts and all, as a fellow Lounger, and he saw the piling on as something he could not tolerate. And he appreciated, I think, that we accepted him. Regardless of how much of a self-righteous and inflexible prick he could be (and Blarg was well aware of this, even took pride in it), we liked and accepted him for everything he was.

What I hated about Blarg being chased out was the sheer un-Loungeness of it. It was wrong, it was vindictive, and it has no place here. That's juvenile, OOT bullsh*t. It's what our forefathers (Blarg being one of them) came here to escape. I've seen it slip in here from time to time, the snarky dismissals when a lounge regular lays out an opinion in TL; DR fashion, the attempts at piling on and stirring up rancor against someone, and the posting of ridiculous memes that some of these clowns use, being incapable, as they are, of solid discourse. But such childishness usually gets winnowed out.

I wasn't around when Blarg was being attacked, but it reeked of the petty ostracization that comes from insecurity, jealousy, and rank spite. It wasn't misogyny, it was just Blarg being Blarg (and dave's point about some of the women he was rude to being OOT posters should be considered here, as well), and some people decided to shade it with their own prejudices and run with it.

All of us have said a questionable thing or two, and never got the kind of treatment Blarg got. I respect entertainme and NhlNut a lot, and I trust them to be fair in their assessments. So if they say they saw real misogyny in the man, I believe them. Maybe he did, and some of us just don't grok it as easily. Maybe they misread his intent. Probably a little bit of everything.

But let's face it: the problem people had with Blarg wasn't misogyny, it was his condescension and stubbornness. He never apologized for anything, something all of us here have done, and he never admitted he was wrong. We accepted that as a part of his make-up. But when a few of his old sparring partners decided to take him down a few pegs, they resorted to smear tactics and exaggeration. I said it once, and I'll say it again: F*ck them.

My last comment concerning Blarg -

As a soi-disant of soi-disants, I much prefer Blarg to the soi-disant of soi-disants currently occupying The White House. Blarg isn't a phony and although I may have thought he was wrong in many instances, I never found him to be a compulsive liar.

And I never thought of Hobby as a bully. Bit of a drama queen, maybe, but I was always fond of her. I liked the fact she wasn't afraid to jump in and go toe-to-toe.

What the hell is a soi-distant??

soi-di·sant
[swa-dee-zahn]
adjective French.

1. calling oneself thus; self-styled.

2. so-called or pretended.

*********************************

I love when I git some learnin' in

Self-appointed expert.

I always thought Horse would have made a great dominatrix.

the lounge had to come about. the original forum called the exchange, grew fast and somehow got called the oot. that grew too fast and posts got shuffled down too far too fast. so the lounge was going to happen sooner or later.

Unfortunately I wasn't around when Blarg got run out, due to one of my frequent times of divesting myself of all things 2+2, (but I always seem to come back in the end).

However, if I had been here I would have fought long and hard in his defence. He wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but what he brought far out-weighed any faults.

I was very shocked how little support he got, and I do believe that lack of support is what lead him to say a big '**** you guys' in the end. He did have a few, including myself, but I was surprised how little was said, given the group that were attacking him. The only people with any legitimate comments and in that group were EntertainMe and Killa (I think, can't remember how much Killa commented in thread - I certainly discussed it with him, as I wanted to get a perspective from an Orange or Red, and Killa was my goto when modding once Ryan Beal left), but the rest were essentially OOT/other forum trolls. I include HobbyHorse in that group, because she'd already left The Lounge in a huff, and only returned JUST to troll blarg, but there were others including the ubertroll Henry and gizmo that only turned up to crap on Blarg.

And did we watch his back? Did we hell.

I don't blame him for quitting 2+2, I was close to it myself. I quit modding over it all, because the lack of support for him made it clear to me I was out of touch with this forum to such a degree I wasn't suited to mod it any more. I'm not sure I ever told that story before.

I just want to be clear, I still have EntertainMe as a figure I totally respect here, as I believe she spoke from honesty and integrity, but the rest of them...immature, spiteful trolls.

I don't even remember being at all involved in the thread in question (I could be wrong, tho), and I certainly didn't want Blarg gone.

You touch on something here with alexsem. Clearly, the guy was either out to troll like hell or he really was just a plain weirdo. I never got the impression that his intentions were honest, and I refuse to consider that he was.

I will say though, that he did represent something unique about a certain part of The Lounge, which was that most of us simply accepted that The Lounge will grow and, although it may not always grow in the way we'd like, it was growing. I sort of recall having the discussion I am describing right now, but the point was that there was a few "other forum" regulars who came in and made great contributions to this forum: Landonfan and Conspire (is that right?), who were both more or less 4Lifers and OOTers.

While most of us wanted to see The Lounge grow faster, there was a few elements that seemed to want to quash any growth if it didn't fit his vision, and honestly, Blarg embodied this viewpoint more than anyone. Why did *he* get to decree that everyone like alexsem, but there was quite a few posters who came in here that made awesome contributions but were summarily chased out by Blarg: Voracious Reader comes to mind.

And that was the issue, The Lounge, even to this day, is widely considered "Blarg's Forum," and that is an image that is not only wrong, but frankly insulting to the rest of The Loungers: the vast majority of us were far more welcoming to outsiders. The fact that Blarg was dumped on at one point was just all of this irritation of frustration at him for controlling the welcome mat here. How would you feel if you were attacked by Blarg, but then along comes some irritating prick called alexsem and Blarg goes out of his way to defend him and welcome him? You'd be pissed off too, especially if you were a woman who got smacked by him; especially if you came in here and did your best to follow all of the unspoken rules that make this community this community? You make your long thought-out post, go out of your way to enter into an intelligent debate, then along comes Blarg to insult you, so why would alexsem get a free pass from Blarg?

So, if you are going to make the argument that Blarg didn't like piling on, you must be able to reconcile the way he treated posters he didn't want around, and there is no way you can do that. By himself, he piled onto many posters who he deemed "bad" *without* the rest of the Lounge's input. Despite the fact that I did like him, this is exactly what I didn't like about him. Yes, he was 90% misogynist as well, though he did have a few lines wouldn't cross.

FWIW, I felt sick about the outcome. It kept me out of here for a long while.

Yeah sorry all about the partial rant, I thought I had this bottled up, but the antiBlargism in some recent posts rubbed the bottle and let out the genie.

I still love you all, but I sometimes hate you too.



As for Blarg and misogyny. I never detected it. I felt Blarg was more like Dirty Harry, hated everyone equally.

This is a rambling bunch of nonsense. How can you even semi-seriously write that the lounge is today regarded as Blarg's forum? And oh, so he liked a poster called alexsem but not others, well woop-ti-******g-do. Aren't you the poor hard done by poster - he liked that other guy more than the people I like.
And anyone who can put a measurement on misogyny seems grossly suspect to me.

The truth is that Blarg was a person who held frequent contrarian views, and because of this you ran him out of town. And what do we have in the lounge now? A bunch of people who like agreeing with one another. Well gee, that's exciting.

I'm sorry? I think you misunderstood my post. I didn't run him out nor did I say I didn't like him. I simply stated what had actually happened and showed how feelings could get hurt. Yes, The Lounge most certainly has always been Blarg's Forum, whether or not you like that description should not obscure the truth.

I simply stated what happened and showed that Kudzu's assertion that Blarg was welcoming and didn't like piling on flies in the face of evidence. He chased a TON of great posters out of The Lounge, and my opinion, good or bad, of alexsem or any poster is not pertinent to my post. I am simply saying that the amount of posters he pushed out was far higher in number than the posters he embraced. You simply cannot deny this truth. Do NOT attempt to paint me in the way you are attempting because those arguments will be ignored by me and they don't hold water.

In regards to the misogynistic accusation, I am not in the mood to sift through his posting history, but I know that when those accusations came up in that thread, many of the women pulled up tons of posts displaying him as such. You can either look it up yourself or not, but don't defend him until you've seen the evidence yourself. I said that there was lines he did not cross, and to be honest, he was less so than a few of the posters.

EDIT TO ADD: You say that all we have now are people that agree with each other. Gee, I wonder why? Don't you think it may have been in part because a lot of those people who posted here were chased off?

He wasn't a troll, and he was no more a weirdo than any of us, here. Part of what I always liked about the Lounge was we appreciated each other for those eccentricities.

He was a clumsy writer (English was not his first language), and a young kid who wanted to be a part of the give and take here, and he shot off in the wrong way, at the wrong time, like all of us have, and do.

He didn't try to make anyone "like" Alex. He was as harsh on Alex as he was on anybody, in their exchanges. He was pretty brutal. I don't even know that he "liked" him. But he was one of the first to stand up against the lynch mob mentality that formed around Alex.

I remember Voracious Reader, but I don't remember Blarg being particularly savage towards him. I certainly don't recall Blarg treating him any differently than he did anyone else. But there is a certain Nietzschean quality to any forum, and survival skills for the Lounge were unique.

The primary reason the "intellectual velocity" that is missing here, as M8Ludi mentioned, is because Blarg isn't here to challenge anyone, like he used to do. Nobody else did that like him. That was his real gift; he wasn't the smartest or give the best advice, and he could be tiresome.

But, at his best, he challenged you. You better bring your game when you came to the Lounge, and went up against Blarg.

Those OOT trolls who came in and stirred the pot? They couldn't hang against Blarg. So they hurled poo, instead, and it stuck.

That sh*t did change the Lounge. Like db said, he almost quit, as well. And few of us post here as much as we used to.

Most agree that it isn't the same since he left. Some like it more, some less. It is what it is.

He didn't get a free pass. Blarg gave him hell. Again, though, Blarg was conscious of the OOT mentality, and he didn't want it here. I remember people coming in and, far from making "great posts", pushing off a line or two of smarm, and thinking they had just made some brilliant declaration. He didn't want that element in here.

Bullsh*t, dave. Blarg gave hell to everyone, even the people he liked. He was honest to everyone. Alex didn't get a free pass. Blarg was as
blunt and biting with him as he was with anyone else.

Yeah, he took it upon himself to weed out some. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't

Those clowns who chased him out...are they still around?

No. They did the same thing you say Blarg did, only for reasons of personal vindictiveness. They saw not a thoughtful person, contrarian and stubborn, but ultimately fair, but a condescending tight-ass, and, By God, it was their duty to rid the world of him. So they piled on, and succeeded.

So, now, what do they add to the conversation? Nothing. They split, and ran off to sling the pithy skewerings that they mistakenly refer to as "wit", and live as self-worshiping kings in the land of the dunces.

They were, and are, chickensh*t, pure and simple. That tin-eared, one-note jackass Henry, and his yapping lapdogs. F*ck 'em.

The whole "misogynist" stuff was overblown. entertainme did post a link, when I first asked about it, that was questionable, but hardly hateful. Then again, I'm not a woman. Maybe I'm just not as attuned to it as some.
I never made the assertion that Blarg was "welcoming", not once. I think he did fear new posters coming in and turning his forum into something he wouldn't like.

But he didn't "push" anyone out. If they ran, tough sh*t. And he didn't "embrace" anyone. He was an equal opportunity a**hole. Your "evidence" does nothing to dispute that fact.

But Alexsem wasn't the only one whose back he had. There were others. And it wasn't because he "liked" him, or them; He may not have. It was because Blarg, no matter how he came off, no matter how obstinate or obnoxious he got, loved this forum, and believed in a sense of fairness that many of us let slide in the name of personal satisfaction and schadenfreude.

Please remember one thing about me: I was not part of the original OO / zoo crowd, and I'm not aware of the drama that occurred there, but I want to point out a few pieces of misinformation in your post:

- VR is a woman
- Henry17 was banned over that stuff, and I agree, in part, with the ban, but to say that he isn't here by his own volition is false.

The misogynistic stuff was not brought up strictly by the OOT crowd. It was brought up by Loungers, and the rest of the posters simply expounded on the subject and pointed out that that is why the collective "she's" did not like posting here. There was probably one post that triggered a response and the mud-ball kept on rolling.

No less than El D's forum was / is a circle-jerk to him, this forum is a circle-jerk to Blarg, even after he is long gone. To raise up Blarg to mythological standing is the very crux of why this forum never advanced beyond him and his so-called wants and philosophies. I do not find his legacy so important that there is or cannot be anything beyond his ideal vision of The Lounge.

Unfortunately, I've seen this pattern across the strat forums as well, and honestly, this pattern has done much more destroy these sub-forums than anything. Even after seeing so many forums be held back in quality over some master poster, I've seen excellent players and posters banned because they rubbed ONE alpha dog incorrectly, and the good strat posters all left because, let's be honest, it's bull **** that ONE poster must be respected among all others. We should do more to welcome the outsiders and gunslingers, not go out of our way to bury them for disagreeing with us. These outsiders exposed a few posters as exactly what they were: a bunch of frauds using their status, whether green or not, to abuse their power and profit from other posters. There has to be a check-and-balance, but all I've seen, especially in the strat forums, is unchecked and unreasonable tamping down of disagreement. This is unhealthy for any community and it is exactly why I eschew many of the strat forums here.

Two Plus Two has a long history of carcasses banned over no good reason with the pigs running their own version of the asylum. I refuse to take part of it in any way, shape or form, but I gladly left strat forums that dived more into politics than substance. The lead-up to Blarg's leaving was a result of politicking and definitions of "good" and "bad" that did nothing to help growth, health, or reflect reality.

In one simple sentence, THIS is what is wrong with the Lounge and why the whole issue with Blarg went down. So long as Blarg wasn't combative with a special few of you, then it was OK if he ran roughshod over the rest of us. This mentality is just mind-blowing to me in its total lack of self-awareness, empathy, and anything admirable really. I remember a long-time Lounge poster who PM'd me after they had had a nasty round with Blarg (with Blarg bringing all the nasty per usual), wherein they said "I see exactly what you were talking about with Blarg." Really? You only can see how horrible he is AFTER it actually happens to you? Where in the hell did your empathy go?

Katy, I'm not a bully, but it's so sweet of you to say that (and it was a convenient deflection of the fact that Blarg was a bully to 95% of the people who ever posted in the Lounge.)

Diebitter, your revisionist memory is crap. I was still posting in the Lounge - you just had me on ignore. And you defended Blarg to the utmost - that's what led you to unfairly ban Henry when Blarg was the one completely out of line...again. And I believe Gizmo came to contribute to the discussion because Blarg had gone into 4L and was flinging his misogynistic poo over there too. You keep coming up with these flimsy justifications for how the people who had legitimate criticisms and gripes of Blarg were "un-Lounge" which is not the truth at all. This is what daveT is talkinga bout and he's right imo. Perhaps it's time for some self-reflection and self-awareness, no?

kudz, it utterly amazes me that you can describe all of the Blarg detractors (of which I was the lead one which I have no problem claiming) as "petty, immature, jealous" etc. (I can't remember all the adjectives) and then turn RIGHT AROUND in the next bit and defend Blarg for exhibiting those same qualities (you yourself called him a bully) as "Blarg being Blarg". Come on, really?

I do not think the Lounge has an atmosphere that fosters any type of critical discussion of anything. Many of the past discussions that were controversial in which people would voice heated opinions are declared "un-Loungey". And why was this? Because there were ****ty moderators who didn't actual moderate in a fair and impartial manner. When Blarg would talk himself into a corner, he got very nasty and that was allowed to go along without any reprimand, which fostered that attitude in other posters as well. And that is where discussion ended. And frankly, some current Lounge posters are still treated differently than others, and a lot of their bull**** is allowed to pass without comment. There's no discussion to be had when you're being "fake nice" all the time. And there is so much more of a clique here than OOT, perhaps as a result of the Lounge being smaller. And like any good clique, it thrives on being exclusive.

And Blarg was a misogynist. I had no doubt about it when I accused him of it. And you all are not doing him any favors by bending over backwards to make flimsy excuses and ridiculous justifications for his, quite frankly, harmful attitude.

I do lurk (just the Movie thread sometimes). So, Blarg, if you read this (which I'm pretty sure you will), feel free to come back anytime (unless you're enjoying playing the martyr?). The big bad bitch Hobby isn't coming back so you can feel free to spread your misogynistic bull**** far and wide in the Lounge since the majority don't have any problem with it. Your acolytes have been lonely in the Blarg shrine without you.

--Hobby (I don't have my old email to get into my original account, but this is 110% me)

Now that Hobby has reappeared as Simple Sam, maybe Blarg will come back and we can all put the gloves back on and have a little fun in here.

Misogynist seems to be a burning pivot word here. Is a misogynist to be shunned liked a pedophile? On the other hand, is a man-hating lesbian misanthrope more welcome in the sacred lounge conversation than a presumptive misogynist?

I never saw what the big deal was.

0 for 3. But good try. This whole thread turned into a plaintive wail for Blarg's return so obviously no, I am not more welcome in the Lounge than Blarg.