End Of An Era, Long Live RT, Yada Yada…

This is overdue, but I am posting about it, anyways. Months ago, Rotten Tomatoes decided, just like IMDB.com did, to kill off their message boards. However unlike IMDB, RT decided not to warn the users, and closed the boards for good, making it impossible for users to recover anything they wanted to save. I keep forgetting to make backups of certain things I want to save or preserve, and every time I regret doing so. This is not why I am angry, though-no, I am upset that after years of giving the site eyeball traffic along with others, RT decided to can a feature that is responsible for them existing in the first place. Too bad, since I think the forums were experiencing sort of a resurgence, and people still posted there, although I will admit things were never the same after 2011 or 2012, I guess. Maybe it was time. I have been a member of numerous sites, and I always departed before they went under, although there were a few that I hung around at long after someone turned off the lights. No apology has been posted, and I feel worse for the user mods, several of whom I am friends with on Facebook. They should have at least received something for their troubles, or some kind of heads up, but the RT higher ups, probably embarrassed by some high profile incidents (thanks insane DC fanboys for making things worse, not better-and yes I blame you, too) that occurred on the site, although those were not related to the actual forums themselves, decided to call it quits. There were some good jokes made in OT that the forums were the dark side of the site, chained up in the basement, hidden from view, which was not wrong considering that RT made it hard to find the forum link around 2008, or 2009.

Goodbye, RT OT. The political and sports talk were always fun, and I have good memories of posting during election time, when things were at their most heated and active. Goodbye, both RT chats, although the OT one was held off site and is still around, while GD’s was at its height when Yahoo hosted it until late 2007, or 2008-I do not recall. I managed to get booted from the OT one a bunch of times, for various reasons or another, heh. The Yahoo one had live cams, which was really cool, and ended up pulling users from different groups. Farewell, GD: Oscar season when Crash won is one of the site’s highlights, a real moment in time. I still have not seen that movie, and I probably never will. All of the neat thread groups departed to different sites, all which I post on, and maybe this is just another downside to the Internet: the fragmenting of people, divided up into sections and groups. There are different streaming services, different social media (Facebook and Twitter have literally killed the message boards, for better, or for worse), multiple entertainment options. A lot of memories, all gone forever, lost in time, quote that overused classic Blade Runner line, or the Children of Men one about the last one left turning out the light,  auf wiedersehen even though I will never seen the site again.

I wish I could be really petty, yet I still follow RT on their twitter feed, mostly to lob meaningless “Bring back the forums” posts at them, a David throwing Internet stones at a Goliath that never cared in the first place. 20,000 some posts, well almost 21k, never to be recovered, along with everything else. Perhaps that is for the best, and there have been jokes about how now that RT’s forums are gone (the site still lives, of course, not that I care too much) they can run for office now, although I doubt anyone worried about that sort of thing. Thus ends a journey that began in 2003, and I imagine that my old posts were really awful, so hooray for them no longer existing, although knowing the Internet nothing is ever really gone, a fact that Donald Trump and others keep forgetting. On to the next phase, whatever that is; I myself hope for virtual reality, or space travel. Both would be nice. MadMan_731/MadMan (the site let me drop the numbers later on)/MadMan_7 and TheOmegaMan71 (aliases), signing out, for good.

Politics, Politics

Over my short time voting I’ve been all over the map politically. I’ve gone third party (Libertarian), Republican, Democrat  (current party) and I’ve even considered voting Green Party. Too bad the GOP has completely gone off the rails by nominating Donald Trump, as in the past I’ve leaned right at times. Lately I’ve turned to more progressive causes, going with Bernie Sanders in a desperate attempt to find a decent candidate. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, he lost and choose to endorse someone based on research and recent Internet quizzes I’ve come to support: Hillary Clinton. 

Look she is not the best choice, and I can’t blame people for voting third party. I wonder why people vote Trump but it’s not much of a mystery: it’s based around fear. However those of us who don’t buy into his bullshit have to go with the lesser of two evils. It’s not great yet I’ll take it over the person who thinks building a wall or killing terrorists families is a good idea. Still we have the problem of Hillary being a hawk on foreign issues, albeit someone who maybe can be persuaded to not embark on too many crazy wars. Anyways the sad fact is that both parties are too close to each on foreign policy issues anyways. 

No its domestic that makes the decision easy. While I want to continue mocking Hillary’s pivoting on certain keys issues such as gay marriage, the truth is that even myself and President Obama took a while to decide to back rights for the LGBQ community. We all can’t be Joe Biden. At this point I favor gun control of some kind or another, am pro-choice, and pro-enviromment. Regardless of what you think of Hillary she either supports these issues or at least pays them lip service. And we all know that she backs the ACA and the idea of universal health care, which is a good thing. Look I may have insurance with my job but there are people who are not so lucky. 

So let’s get to the emails. She lied plenty, yet there was no indictment and therefore the matter is closed in my mind. I’m more worried about her support for the Iraq War and the disastrous Libya conflict. The last one was at least an international effort, while the Iraq War got the support and vote of way too many in Congress. As for Benghazi I’m sick to death of hearing about that, too. Guess what: more people died during the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet you don’t hear about that from Republicans. 

Oh yeah anyone who gets this much hate from many hypocritical and witch hunting Republicans can’t be all bad. I know what I am getting with Clinton Presidency Part II: Hillary Takes Over. I have no idea what Trump will do as president. He’s a loose cannon who cannot be trusted to do the right thing. I would love to vote third party again, or write in Bernie in anger, yet that is irresponsible in my opinion. I live in a swing state and don’t have the luxury of others. I also don’t want minorities who will suffer under a Trump presidency to be let down because I didn’t do everything possible to prevent “Cheeto Jesus” from taking power. We can’t survive another George W. Bush style presidency. I don’t want to live through that again, and oh yeah Jon Stewart retired so we won’t have him around this time. I’m with her. 

A Most Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

No I’m not talking about Washington D.C., although that place certainly qualifies. I’m referring to the comments section of any and all Internet news and opinion articles. If you are wondering about Donald Trump followers, terrible people and those who lack the ability to spell or use proper grammar, well look no further then a place that is now part of the Internet. I can’t recall when this became a feature, although I imagine this is as old as message boards.

What’s even worse is the opinions people post. On any given day you can read racist, sexist, homophobic and degrading posts that make one feel the need to take a shower. It’s sad that discourse has rapidly degraded to a level that you have to wonder if these people’s mothers would be ashamed to find out their children do not have any filters. Maybe they were raised that way, a prospect that sounds depressing and unfortunately not too surprising.

Also the use of insults  (something even I’ve been guilty of) is commonplace on both sides of the political aisle. Many try to assert that it is Republicans largely to blame and yet many Democrats are also guilty of poor behavior. Is there a solution beyond simply avoiding the comments section?

Well encouraging people to behave and hoping for moderators to ban the misbehaving users is maybe the best we can hope for. Acting civily is a good idea, too. Or just skip the comments altogether. I’ll admit they are like a car crash: I can’t look away even though I should.