One's just gotta love all of this ad hominem stuff. Little do any of you know of me, my activities, my motives, my own actual beliefs, nor the chain of events that occurred on the BIGFOOT FORUMS. Parnassus knows some, as he helped out in the argument there. Since, it seems, we get along decently here and on the new BFF.
I was "warned" about NOTHING by the crony crowd that was then in charge of dictating arbitrary enforcement of the rules on the BFF, and who were using it for their own sardonic and cultish stomping ground. I did nothing out of line on there. I did not overtly promote any form of commercialism, self-aggrandizement, or self-deluded propositions. All I did was try to share my blog, something I spend a lot of time on for the love of the subject, not to make money or build my ego.
I have never been a Forums maven or troll, or anything like that. I was simply posting on there to spread word of my blog, which to me seemed like I was sharing something. I was just offering this to the Bigfooting community, that is all. No, I am not trying to be "important," nor did I ever claim to be the "cause" of the BFF's downfall. No, I am not being a whiner. There was injustice, and I commented upon it. I helped expose it. It needed to be done. That place was out of control, an obvious fact. Thankfully, it is a far better place now; though, I'd love to see the archives brought back.
I was attacked by the insider-group in charge of the BFF at the time and their buddies. I tried to respond reasonably, and was attacked even further. For nothing. Calmly defending my position that I was not on the BFF to sell books only incited more attacks, and I was accused of talking back to the head honcho then, Teresa. As if I should act in some kind of awe-struck deference toward her holy highness! Even then, I was not even being confrontational nor disrespectful; if I quipped a bit, it was in a joking tone, perhaps not noticed by the knee-jerk reactions that were going on in that thread. When I commented on this on my blog (NOT on the BFF), that is what bothered them even more. Yes, I also noticed an "insane furor" on the BFF over the ENOCH book. I thought it was a wild and interesting, but also an unbalanced one tending toward slanderous expressions about Autumn Williams, the book's author. So, I said this on my blog. That's all. I never called anyone in particular "insane" on there, nor on my blog.
Attacked by a pack of rabid dogs, treated trollishly, accused of things that I had not done, and all of this BY the moderators, the very ones supposed to be preventing such misbehavior??? To me, it was obvious that this situation had to be exposed, commented upon, satirized, and hopefully changed. I tried to do so on my blog. It was a JOKE, folks. It does not make me prone to "Megalomania; disordered thinking; paranoid ideation, ahistorical references." Give me a break, please. It was like a POLITICAL CARTOON, Parnassus. Don't you see that? It was not a literal attack, it was a caricature.
Brian Brown, the founder of the BFF, was in my shop here a week before he shut down the original BFF. We talked about this. He AGREED with my position, though he obviously felt some chagrin over some of the satirical graphics I had made and the facetious "boycott" I had stirred up. He said that some "big changes were coming," and seemed to recognize that what had happened to me on there was at the heart of the problem with the Bigfoot Forums. He was not angry with me. He sympathized, and concurred with what I said about the problem. Jerry Riedel, another old-time moderator on there (Tugboatwa) was in my shop the day before Brian. He, TOO, agreed with me. What more can I say? That is not me trying to claim credit for anything; but it was clearly no coincidence that both of these guys came all the way out of their way to Willow Creek to come and talk about it.
For your information, too--this article was the cover story of The Journal that week, the feature article, and it covered five pages of the paper. Bigfoot was on the cover weeping over his computer. It was NOT a story about "Bigfoot" or even "Bigfooting." It was about how crazy the internet can be, and how one local blogger got caught up in something much bigger than he'd expected, and how it affected something quite huge in the admittedly small and counter-cultural field of Bigfoot studies. Before that my blog was fairly small in readership, now it gets much more attention. I'm glad about that, but I never really wanted to cause turmoil. I only wanted fairness and justice, and when I saw that there was no strictly logical way to get--and to spread attention to the problem--that I decided to go with humor and faux-emotional exaggeration. Yes, what I did was propaganda, but it was funny, at least to me. And it was a frank fact that those nasty trolls on the BFF really deserved it. Overwhelmingly, the commentaries and responses I got over this were POSITIVE. People were glad I'd stirred up the sh**, and done whatever small part I played in the mess to hopefully change things for the better.
So, let's move on, eh?
Best,
Steve
Bigfoot Books
