Responding to the Attack Thread On Me and This Community at Cakewalk Forums

[peter]

The hate crew over at Cakewalk Forum has created a hread aimed at attacking me. Larry states, entirely falsely, that he was banned from this forum after he called me out for being political.” Pure bullshit. This stuff was public, and our moderators saw it and commented about it in this thread about the incident. Larry made a post using a racist trope about Americans on welfare — and let’s be clear about this, he was using the same racist trope about Black people being lazy and on welfare that he obsessively posts on Facebook — and compares his trope with what he represents as the hardworking (Black) people ot Belize where he claimed they had no unemployment and no welfare system and added that the US needs to get rid of is welfare system. First, that post had no business being on this site. It was a thinly coded version of the racism he obsessively posts on Facebook (and probably other social media sites for extremists).

I replied, referring to Larry as my friend, very gently reminding him not to get into politics. It”s documented in the linked thread below, made the day after the incident. Larry is also asserting that he helped set up this forum. He had zero to do with setting it up., I was two people — me with regular input from my son at a time when I  was dealing with Bell’s Palsy. Creating this site with a half paralyzed face, left eye that wouldn’t stop fluttering, made me feel it was all about perseverance. Larry and many other pepole had told others about the site. Brian, bluescat, was easily the biggest champion for this site, and I did video conferencing and a bunch of emails. He was and remains a constant source of encouragement. A wonderful human being. What Larry did is agree that he would handle the deals forum and I would handle everything else. But Larry had the lowest form of access to the site. At no point did a trust him with anything other than the lowest level of security. Doug, Lamia6, and several other members have higher-level access. Never Larry. I didn’t trust that he was stable.

So, when Larry posted the outright lies that he helped set up the forum and that I made a political post. No, he made a racist and political post. I wrote one sentence referring to him as a friend, reminding him not to post politics and he threatened to leave the site and when I DMed him to try to talk about it, he told me that he was out of the site. I didn’t tell him he was banned. I spent months and involved multiple members here, including Bapu, Fleer and others, asking them to reach out to Larry to bring him back to the site. You can read the attached thread linked below and see screenshots that document all of that.

This was Larry’s post on Cakewalk Forum today:

“BTW…I helped him set up that forum and brought people over to it.  One of the main rules was NO POLITICS.
When he got POLITICAL I called him out for it, and that’s what got me BANNED.  Pretty sad really.”

Here’s a thread about what occurred, made a day after Larry’s post calling me a stupid, useful liberal idiot. Note that I use exact quotes and screenshots, and Brian ( @bluescat ), who is a moderator, posts about observing Larry’s posts and finding them very problematic. I NEVER — at any point — discussed politics with Larry, that idea is insane.  I merely asked him to not post about politics. He — in his posts, stated that he was going to quit this site. In PMs — which I posted in the below thread — Larry then said he was done with this site. At that point, I blocked him from posting at this site, in the subreddit, or the Facebook group.

Anyhow, yeah, I realize that not many people may care about this, but I loathe the idea that these individuals are engaging in complete lies and framing it as a partisan dispute, bullshit. Again, I have invited a handful of friends here. They all have different political views, liberal, conservative, and unknown. Larry has been DMing people and emailing people — I have been forwarded a couple of those messages. It’s nuts and filled with lies. People of all political views are welcome here. But it’s not a place to discuss politics or bigoted worldviews, as Larry attempted to do.

What Occurred with cclarry Yesterday

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[peter]

OMG! Now Pragi is lying too.

Pragi created two deal threads — each duplicated already posted deal threads. I commented to tell him that. He quickly shot me a very angry PM demanding that I immediately delete his account, that he no longer wants to be part of this community. I responded that everyone makes duplicate deals — it’s really no big deal and share that I’ve done it a bunch of times. He disparages me, calling me a name like idiot and again demands that I delete his user account immediately (the guy is incredibly entitled and bossy; BTW, there is no legal obligation in my state to delte a users account, which of course, can screw up threads where the member had posted). So, I once again appealed to him to reconsider and wrote, “How about this, I’ll check back with you tomorrow and if you still feel strongly that you don’t want to be part of this community, I’ll close your account and consider deleting it.” He shoots back an insult at me, basically, telling me I’m stupid and just need to listen to him.

The next day, I contact him via email and send a really positive email — hoping that he’s cooled down and more reasonable. He replies, calling me names — to the effect of clueless idiot — and then he compares me to Napoleon, writing that I’ve let the power of having a forum go to my head and using a quote about dictators. I did reply by telling him that he’s been a real jerk. That’s the only part of his story that’s true. And I stand by that comment. That guy is a jerk and a very strange individual, plain and simple.

In JIH64 case, he had posted right after Larry’s racist trope post and referred to me as a “stupid f*cking ret*rded prick.” I quickly suspended him.  He then sent me a series of hateful emails calling me similar crude insulting names. He then forwarded me hateful emails Larry had sent him about me. JIH64 still called me more names. Then he calmed down. After I shrared screenshots of Larry’s posts, he stated that Larry had been lying to him about what occurred, but he still hurled some insults at me. Then, a couple of weeks went by and he started sending me emails about gear that were friendly, it was very, very strange. I banned him and it wasn’t because I couldn’t forgive the guy for calling me names, it was because this guy isn’t someone I could trust to behave in a civil manner.

This site is a passion project. It’s also a money pit for me and a huge time suck. I am doing it out of ideals. I don’t want or need to deal with toxic people like cclarry, JIH64 and anyone who lashes out at others. I have thick skin. I forgive easy. But I am not going to bring back people who use this forum to call others — me in this case — a “”stupid f*cking ret*rded p*ick.”

Anyhow, on to more enjoyable things. It’s pretty easy to see why those individuals are a terrible fit for a non-toxic community. But clcarry and Pragi both quit this community — and I later would consider them banned permanently. I immediately banned JIH64 after he called me a “stupid f*cking ret*rded pr*ck” and it’s not simply because the guy lashed out at me, it was because someone like that — who proceeded to send me more than a dozen emails that went from profane rants, to acknowledging that Larry was lying to him, to then stating that I was responsible for Larry’s bad behavior because I had constantly praised him, then sending me emails as if we were pals, it was unstable and extremely toxic. I didn’t trust this guy and this forum is my passion project. I and the other moderators, don’t have time to deal with people who are already proven to be off-the-rails ragaholics lashing out at others. So, it’s really just a matter of not trusting that this guy can control himself. I think it would be foolish to think that he could.

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[peter]

Only because I’m meticulous about facts and not a fan of liars.

When Pragi was a member of LM he made two posts within minutes of each other that duplicated recently posted deals that were in the most recent 5 threads. I wrote a comment in each thread that the deals had already been posted. I am grateful for everyone who pitches in and posts deals and that duplicates happen all the time. I wrote my comment to reflect that and to show that I appreciated his effort, but I would delete the posts after he had a chance to see my comments. Soon thereafter, Pragi DMed me, furious. I really never anticipated that anyone could be furious over being informed that they duplicated a couple of deal posts, but this guy was raging. I responded that it’s no big deal, that I’ve done dupolicate posts a bunch of times and again thanked him for pitching in. He immediately started calling me disparaging names — basically, asserting that I’m an idiot — and demanded that I delete his user account. It got even stranger when he started making up a bizarres story that he had searched the forums before posting, but the search engine didn’t work. I actually checked after that, and let him know that it did work. That made him even more ticked off. He again demanded that I delete his account, tried to calm him. With every attempt I made to calm him down, he became more abusive — over something so ridiculous? I was blown away.

So I suggested that I give him a day to think about it, and I’d email him and see if he still wanted me to close his account. He hurled another insult back at me for that idea. asserting that I’m too stupid to listen. The next day, I emailed him to double-check, hoping that he had calmed down. He didn’t. He took his abusiveness to a new level and started comparing me to a dictator, asserting that the power of having a “Forum” had gone to my head and I was basically drunk with power. It was so ridiculous and he was so rude and obnoxious without a hint of respect or decency, that I gave up trying with the guy and agreed to close his account. I no longer wanted the guy as part of the community at that point anyhow. So, I told him that I would close his account and look into deleting all of his posts, like he asked (there’s no legal obligation to do that, but I really just wanted to be done with the guy). So I give him everything he wants, and it insults me once more. At that point, I was ticked, and I told him I thought he was a real jerk. And I stand by that. Pragi is certainly a jerk and if I showed every single screenshot, I don’t think any fair-minded person would disagree.

Now, here’s the fictitious version of events Pragi shared on Cakewalk Forum:

“He banned me and called me a jerk after I posted a deal 2 times in the deals forum by accident.”  – Pragi today on the Cakewalk Forum.

Here is a screenshot of my initial email to Pragi following his making a request to leave at the site. You can decide for yourself if the subject line, “Are you sure you want to terminate your membership?”  and his response, “Yes,” reflects his claim that I banned him and caled him a jerk after he posted a deal 2 times — and he didn’t make 2 duplicate posts, he duplicated other people’s posts twice. And it’s ridiculous, the most absurd of lies that I would ban someone for doing that.  But of course, this is social media, so when there’s a conflict — as there was here — I always take screenshots and have receipts on everything. Here goes:

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This is a private — members only — post. I realize that some people may be here that share things. I’m going to share some things. I had seen terrible, hateful racist, racist xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic posts advocating violence against liberal posts from Larry in the past. As I shared, when I told him that I was from a part Jewish family and liberal, he immediately responded by calling me a god-hating, baby murdering, Marxist. It was so hate-filled and unexpected. And yeah,  years later I still invited him here, because I thought that he could control that. He clearly coudln’t. It came out in a post where he called me a stupid, useful liberal idiot. I never wanted people to publicly know my political leanings. I’m not aligned with a political party. I’m not even a fan of politicians. And America is so politically divided right now. I don’t make any posts in public social media that give away my political leanings, because you can be attacked for that these days. Larry spends hours each day doing Facebook rants.

So, as I wrote, and I don’t think I shared this, but I had been emailing Larry  nearly monthly urging him to have a call. I thought, in a phone call, he might see my humanity and not stereotype me. So I had been sending him these emails until a few months ago. Within the same week, Larry made one post with the video of the leader of the neo-Nazi Proud Boys. and shortly thereafter, he made a post that he was doing crowd control against the “demon crats” at a protest. Now, that’s not something police use. He was boasting about being part of an extremist group. Then, I saw a couple of posts away from that, he had a chart he reposted from a white nationalist, that had photos of US government officials identifying each person by name and a star of David that mimicked the star of David sewn on the uniforms of Jews in the  Nazi concentration camps.

So, a few months ago, after sending him an email telling him how I was incredibly disappointed to see him posting those three things, I stated that he was never welcome at the site again. So that was fairly recent. My son was home from college at the time. I showed all of that to him and he said, “Come on, dad,  are you really surprised? You knew what this guy was all about.” Yes and no. I knew he was bigoted and hateful, but I didn’t realize until the stars of David how deep that hate went. At that point, I also questioned if I had betrayed my Jewish family by allowing him here in the first place. Candidly, I thought about my grandfather, who is long gone, more than my aunt and cousins. Did I allow this hateful man into this community out of convenience and persuade myself that there was hope for impacting his views? I had thought because he confided so many personal things to me — but yes, I suppose that mostly stopped after I shared that my family was part Jewish and that I am liberal.

Anyhow, yeah, I go on too long. When they mock me for that they’re not wrong.  But I created this place to combat hateful environments. I could handle the stupidity of superficial arguments people have over things that don’t matter. But I invested myself in Larry. I talked to my kids about him. And yes, I shared that he was immersed in bigotry, but I shared his humanity too. In the end, he didn’t see my humanity or have any regard for truth or decency. Is posting about the toxicity going to alienate a good deal of people. Absolutely. But this site is a passion project. It’s my heart. It isn’t a money maker. It isn’t anything but a passion project, so I’m going to be real with everyone.

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