10th Anniversary Classic Rant: It's Funny When Fascists Get Nervous

The dogs are still barking, over at RPG.net. That's not much of a surprise though.

They did the same thing way back when I started this blog, and back then, they had less cause to. I hadn't been a success at anything back then other than making a lot of noise. It was easy to write me off as an annoying solitary voice that didn't represent anyone, that no one agreed with.
It was easy too, for them to predict that I wouldn't amount to anything with this blog. That I wouldn't last, that I'd get bored, that everyone would ignore me, that I was just a troll with nothing to say; or to accuse me of being ignorant or immature or a philistine (the worst of all possible crimes to the Swine).

Yes, back then it was easy for them to do that.
And they were wrong.

So imagine what it's like for them now, today?

Saying almost exactly the same things about me taking over theRPGsite. The hint of falseness already in their dismissals, the nervous excess which says "the Swine doth protest too much", the way they try to dismiss me as if in desperate hope that just by saying it that will somehow make it true.
Or the paniced hyperactive mudslinging of Eric and Darren, like monkeys throwing feces at something that terrifies them because they know it is more than they can handle, a sad pathetic reaction to a fight they know they lost long ago.
Now, with one of the most successful gaming blogs under my belt, with theRPGsite blooming to life a mere three days since I took control of it (with dozens of new members and regular activity on every forum!), it must be very hard for some of the RPG.net swine.
So of course they must talk, they must sling their feces, because they know the danger that they face, when someone with a backbone stands up and says "we're doing it differently".

RPG.net has quite the lead on us, there's no doubt about that; a lead that we may never fully overcome given that many non-gamers post on RPG.net for the "tangency" off-topic forums that are immensely popular. And right now, we are lucky to have one-tenth their number of currently active users.

But that will be changing, and we will be providing an alternative, and we will do it without becoming a fascist state.

Of all the things that the RPG.netters have slung at me, there was only one that bothered me. It wasn't the cheap insults of the likes of Darren or Eric, the predictable uninspired slander. The day those human losers disturb me with anything other than their unhealthy fetishistic obsession for my spiked baseball bat is the day I hang up my Pundit hat.
The only one that bothered me was the comment from Lisa Nadazdy insinuating that I will end up being an aggresive moderator who will censor people just like they do on RPG.net (or supposedly, in precisely the opposite way or something).

Whether this sort of statement is in ignorance of my dedication to my principles, or a willing effort to slander me, this is the one that gets to me.
It gets to me partly in the sense of angering me that someone would essentially accuse me of hypocrisy, but mostly it gets to me in the sense of a kind of pathos; of feeling deeply sorry for these people.
Because I think they say this, because they really can't imagine any other way.

They really don't believe that you can create a place where people can speak their minds and still end up being able to argue and defend your positions.
Of course, I understand why they would think that way: their positions are so absurd that they really honestly couldn't hold up their positions in a free place of debate. So of course they have to use censorship to support their views, of course they need to come into the fight with a whole modteam on their side ready to arbitrarily manipulate the playing field so their side comes on top, because that's the only way their side could ever come out on top.

But I don't need to do that. I have enough confidence in the truth of my convictions that I can tolerate other points of view.

And that's what REALLY scares the crap out of them. It was one thing when it was a blog, but this is their turf; this is a forum. And if theRPGsite manages to be an interesting, active, fascinating, appealing place for discussion of the hobby of RPGs and does all that without needing a modclique and a set of fascistic "we can silence anyone we want to" set of rules, it will prove that all the RPG.net modclique's arguments about their relevance and necessity were just a bunch of bullshit. People will realize what many of us do already, that the modclique only serve the modclique, and serve no other useful purpose.

You think that you can't have a successful RPG board without a clique of ham-handed moderators? Just watch.

You think I won't talk the talk of free speech? Just watch me.

RPGPundit

(Originally posted August 29, 2006)