Forum participants we have known

[JW Insider]

18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

But with AlanF seeing anything through another person's lens of emotion was something he had trained himself to refrain from as a matter of learning

I'm trying to see your perspective here, and it made me go back and look through the threads that I remembered him in pretty well. I was surprised to notice that in the worst-case posts I had recalled, that he wasn't the one who started it. Others were being nasty, and calling him a "fool" before he responded in kind, but he was less apt to watch his vocabulary even if others were escalating. I also noticed that he was adamant that someone should try to respond to his point rather than constantly dodging and weaving and diverting. 

But I recall once seeing him refer to Arauna as foolish in a chronology topic, and either Tom or I let him know he was picking on "sweet old lady." (Sorry if that offends, Arauna.) He responded that it didn't matter how old anyone is, if they is going to spout nonsense with such conviction, then age is no excuse; she is going to hear where she is wrong. 

It's true that it's easier to ignore empathy and emotion in an online discussion if you are just here to defend your [strong] opinions against the [strong] opinions of others. I know a couple of people who are brilliant intellectually, but who are "on the [autism] spectrum" and have that exact trouble in real life, and they are always getting in trouble with others. I counseled one who has problems at work because he does OK with others in a meeting format, and one-on-one, but he writes scathing emails, and raises his voice with co-workers on the phone. I had also noticed that at meetings he did better when he looked at people's faces when disagreeing with them. I told him about this, as a way to help, but he said he grew up with "Asperger's" and would never look at a person's face when he talked to them. 

As a moderator I remember having to warn Alan a couple of times and sent that warning up the flagpole to the admins:

But who's counting? LOL

Unlike others who got warnings (who would dig in their heels and get suspended), AlanF would respond humbly and contritely and explain himself without making excuses.

 

[Thinking]

26 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I'm trying to see your perspective here, and it made me go back and look through the threads that I remembered him in pretty well. I was surprised to notice that in the worst-case posts I had recalled, that he wasn't the one who started it. Others were being nasty, and calling him a "fool" before he responded in kind, but he was less apt to watch his vocabulary even if others were escalating. I also noticed that he was adamant that someone should try to respond to his point rather than constantly dodging and weaving and diverting. 

But I recall once seeing him refer to Arauna as foolish in a chronology topic, and either Tom or I let him know he was picking on "sweet old lady." (Sorry if that offends, Arauna.) He responded that it didn't matter how old anyone is, if they is going to spout nonsense with such conviction, then age is no excuse; she is going to hear where she is wrong. 

It's true that it's easier to ignore empathy and emotion in an online discussion if you are just here to defend your [strong] opinions against the [strong] opinions of others. I know a couple of people who are brilliant intellectually, but who are "on the [autism] spectrum" and have that exact trouble in real life, and they are always getting in trouble with others. I counseled one who has problems at work because he does OK with others in a meeting format, and one-on-one, but he writes scathing emails, and raises his voice with co-workers on the phone. I had also noticed that at meetings he did better when he looked at people's faces when disagreeing with them. I told him about this, as a way to help, but he said he grew up with "Asperger's" and would never look at a person's face when he talked to them. 

As a moderator I remember having to warn Alan a couple of times and sent that warning up the flagpole to the admins:

But who's counting? LOL

Unlike others who got warnings (who would dig in their heels and get suspended), AlanF would respond humbly and contritely and explain himself without making excuses.

 

Can you share some of his good posts…..was he billy the kid once? 

[Many Miles]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

As a moderator I remember having to warn Alan a couple of times ...

Please don't mistake me, AlanF could dole out as good as he got, if not more. He had it in him. I'm not trying to say otherwise. Whatever warnings he got I'm sure he got them the old fashion way, by honestly earning them. As I said before, I've been down range of assertions of his before as he has of mine.

I've also observed him interact with I don't know how many people over the years, including a now deceased person well-known back in the day as Friend. Those two would go after one another like nothing I'd seen before, mostly AlanF was right in his views, but Friend brought a lot to the table too. Both those men saw good in each other and ultimately they ended up collaborating on a then impressive presentation meant to leverage a known piece of internal information about a change afoot on the society's position on blood. That piece of work helped move the needle for products like Hemopure (a hemoglobin based oxygenation carrier).

My comments about AlanF were really to draw a circle around the man's personality and intent. He wasn't about trying to hurt people. He wanted to help people. But he had some rough edges because of things he had been exposed to himself that caused damage, something he was always trying to help others from having to go through as he did. He was passionate about that. When I look at contributors here I see similar things.

[Many Miles]

35 minutes ago, Thinking said:

... was he billy the kid once? 

You know, there is a photo of him online suggesting that's a possibility! I'll have to see if I can find it. Found it.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

was he billy the kid once? 

You know, there is a photo of him online suggesting that's a possibility! I'll have to see if I can find it. Found it.

No. Billy belonged to our in-house whack-a-mole generator of souls. AI couldn’t crank out personas as quickly as he. They usually met the same end and for the same reason.

I can’t imagine AlanF presenting as anyone other than AlanF

2 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I know a couple of people who are brilliant intellectually, but who are "on the [autism] spectrum" and have that exact trouble in real life, and they are always getting in trouble with others

He presented here exactly this way.

2 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I also noticed that he was adamant that someone should try to respond to his point rather than constantly dodging and weaving and diverting. 

Last night at the mid-week meeting, criticism arose over Stephen’s reply to the Sanhedrin, that he didn’t actually answer their question. More than once I pulled a ‘Stephen’ on Alan’s gotcha questions and he invariably responded the same as that august body did to the evangelizer.

Then there was that time I signed on as ‘Dr Adhominum’ and tried to gradually draw him into a discussion of evolutionary psychology and the very recent hypothesis that boisterous flatulence evolved because it would quickly clear the area of predators, same as it does today with the general populace. To his credit, he saw through the ruse within 2 or 3 posts. Though, in typical AlanF fashion that he cannot be wrong in anything, even the most insignificant of details, he later insisted that he saw through it instantly.

These guys who bluster about their superior knowledge and just assume it puts them in the driver’s seat of anything usually get my goat. I don’t know how God can resist the temptation of stopping the sun in its tracks for a while just to throw off their calculations.

In a recent response to JR, I wrote:

”Key to me is Jesus words at Matthew 11:25

At that time Jesus said in response: “I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to young children. 

“What other topic is like that, in which young children get the sense of it but the wise and intellectual ones do not? I think it means that a person ought park his/her intellectualism at the door, because it doesn’t help. Per Jesus’ words, it may even hinder.

“In any academic topic I can think of, the wise and intellectual always have a leg up over the young children. Here, they lose out. Translation: Worship of God is not an academic subject and the biggest mistake one can make is to treat it as though it is. . . . 

“So, at least three factors exist that trump intellectualism: obedience, humility, and love. For the most part, those who frame discussion of faith as an intellectual endeavor make no mention whatsoever of these qualities.”

Alan may have had some of those latter qualities. But, if so, he displayed none of them here. But you only see of people what they choose to reveal, plus perhaps a bit of speculative  reading between the lines. I’ll allow he was ‘passionate’ and a more complex person than he revealed here.

[JW Insider]

13 hours ago, Thinking said:

Can you share some of his good posts…..was he billy the kid once? 

No, he was not Billy The Kid. BTK was "Wally McNasty" as Pudgy called him. He is also George88, Cesar Chavez, Allen Smith, Alphonse, BTK59 [BillyTheKid59], Moise Racette, Dmitar, Boyle, etc, etc. I used to keep track, but I stopped at around 50 names. 

AlanF never used but that one handle here and evidently in several other forums around the Internet. And he would identify himself with his full name (if you asked) and not just hide behind the handle like some of us. LOL. I never followed him much into those topics about the Flood, the Ice Ages, Evolution, etc., because I'm pretty incompetent about those things and don't care to learn too much just yet about them. Maybe next year.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "his good posts." But I looked back through some chronology topics and found dozens of well written polite posts that merely shared information, and all the while he was getting called names by others here. There was some light-hearted bantering between him and scholarJW  as they had obviously had a long history of previous discussions elsewhere. But I see a lot of obnoxious posts to him before he responded. 

But I will start out with one of his absolute worst, because I thought that TTH's response was about the funniest and most memorable retort:

On 2/11/2021 at 5:58 PM, AlanF said:

You KNOW what you've said. You're not even fooling your braindead fellow cultists, except perhaps the ineluctably brainless Arauna.

On 2/11/2021 at 7:43 PM, TrueTomHarley said:

My worst fear is that someone will pull the curtain away and I will discover that I am actually talking to a precocious 9-year-old child.

But that was after he had developed a kind of persona where he had developed a HISTORY with Cesar, and Arauna and TTH, and we already expected that these were just follow-ups from prior topics. But I go to his old topics in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and he was actually quite helpful in providing sources and resources for information. But a topic couldn't go for 10 pages before he started fighting back.

I do see one thing in his favor, in my opinion. Those attacking him were often just offering empty opposition and ignoring his points, or offering "tired" old standby arguments from Young Earth Creationists which he considered totally debunked scientifically. Even though he wasn't attacked with foul language, he was attacked with constant escalating levels of antagonism, and ad hominem stuff. But in the middle of his rather-too-direct responses to those, whenever someone asked a reasonable question, he was right back to giving emotionless straightforward facts to think about. These are the same facts we should be aware of as counter-arguments to, let's say, the Flood, should it ever come up. In the middle of all this bantering, notice how he goes right back to being an encyclopedic resource, even though we don't like the info. Here:

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/88407-creation-evolution-creative-days-age-of-the-earth-humanoid-fossils-great-flood/?do=findComment&comment=153844

It's too long to display the contents here, but his follow-up comment is also thought-provoking and I'll quote it in full:

On 1/18/2021 at 10:12 AM, AlanF said:

Faith is by definition belief without evidence. Without evidence, one can 'believe' anything at all -- astrology, scientology, space alien abductions, etc.

The question I examined is not whether one can believe in fairy tales, but whether there is physical evidence for a recent global Flood, and whether specific physical disproofs are valid. Hence, Ann O'Maly's challenge.

The idea of a recent global Flood has logical difficulties. Why would a God who could kill 185,000 Assyrians in one night commit massive overkill by a global Flood that wiped out nearly all life -- life that had nothing to do with "wicked men"? It's like using a hydrogen bomb to swat a fly. One who believes such things must believe that his God is a murderous nutjob.

That's not faith-building, of course. And it's not stuff I personally want to think about. But it's thought-provoking information and the kind of thing that's useful in a discussion forum, especially if others know how to respond and defend against it (especially the informative post above it with only the link).

 

[BTK59]

8 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

No. Billy belonged to our in-house whack-a-mole generator of souls. AI couldn’t crank out personas as quickly as he. They usually met the same end and for the same reason.

I can’t imagine AlanF presenting as anyone other than AlanF

Let's see if I grasp the hypocrisy. So you're saying that you refused to learn from someone who was providing accurate information in a form consistent to the ridicule and insults given to that individual by all the participants in your little exclusive club, and instead you people in the closed club chose to listen and keep in this forum a loud and disrespectful person who was sharing false information. Is this statement accurate?

[Many Miles]

18 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I can’t imagine AlanF presenting as anyone other than AlanF

I wasn't saying AlanF presented as Billy the Kid but, rather, that he identified as Billy the Kid. Isn't that considered real these days?

[BTK59]

7 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

No, he was not Billy The Kid. BTK was "Wally McNasty" as Pudgy called him. He is also George88, Cesar Chavez, Allen Smith, Alphonse, BTK59 [BillyTheKid59], etc, etc. I used to keep track, but I stopped at around 50 names. 

Will you be including James Thomas Rook Jr. in your humorous analogy, LOL? Grow up! The behavior of most people here often resembles that of spiritually immature children, making it quite challenging to communicate with you.

By continuously showcasing the individuals you have mistreated and kicked out by persistently highlighting your own misconduct, you consistently discredit yourselves through your actions. What does that reveal about your character?

[Many Miles]

3 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

No, he was not Billy The Kid. BTK was "Wally McNasty" ...

Oops. I thought Thinking was being humorous about AlanF and Billy the Kid, and I responded in kind. I had no idea this forum had a contributor "Billy the Kid". In that case I have to agree with Tom. There is no way AlanF would use a sock-puppet on a forum. Wasn't his style, at all.

[JW Insider]

12 hours ago, Many Miles said:

You know, there is a photo of him online suggesting that's a possibility! I'll have to see if I can find it. Found it.

Reminds me of the image that Allen Smith and BillyTheKid would use here. I think one or two of Allen Smith's names are still active and you can see it for yourself if you click on this: @AllenSmith35

That one above was actually when he used the Wyatt Earp picture. He also used this one as Billy the Kid:

He also picked names related to a few other Wild West gunslingers, Texas Rangers, etc. But there were also names from Latin, from Spanish, etc., and several regular-sounding names of people you might never associate with him, until they started posting. 

[JW Insider]

10 minutes ago, BTK59 said:

Will you be including James Thomas Rook Jr. in your humorous analogy, LOL? Grow up!

LOL. Pudgy JTR has had two names on this forum, but never used both at the same time.