Curious "I think if a ghost wants to haunt us bad enough they will keep materializing"

Yes. It must be sad not to be able to realize that you're the one whose arguments make no sense and who's totally unhinged.

@100~ “...Couldn't they just track his IP address and block it? I presume it's illegal...”
I’m gonna say this is a privately owned space and TheStranger has the right to control who appears here. Too bad, I kinda enjoy some of the idiots that post here just from a “Wow. Look at those snakes in the viper pit!” perspective, but Sporty couldn’t seem to stay away from the Dark Side of his lunacy, and ultimately the name-calling just stops the whole “rational discourse” purpose of the comments board. Lotta anger directed a a bunch of anonymous people... I hope he doesn’t go all Ted Kaczynski. We’ve got too much of that shit as it is.

@104~ “... it must be sad not to be able to realize that you're the one whose arguments make no sense and who's totally unhinged...”
Sounds like a certain orange-faced politician and his enablers...

Being white is like being a boomer.. one has no choice. /The word boomer is slang here for Kangaroors. So it’s funny being called one./ As Sportlandia was born black, and he had no choice.
I do like him, yes, even with his spit fire words, his essence is good. I don’t know what he wants though? It’s a horror what black American have gone thru.. slaves ffs.. and still go thru, like with the Aborigines of our country. I do understand where Sportlandia’s rage is coming from. However.. spoiling his chance to be a real part of this community, over and over again, is self fulfilling. Puts it down to us being whites, and therefore blah blah blah.
Sportlandia, if you’re still reading. Everybody is jack of your anger.... Nothing to do with your skin colour. And if you bothered to read comments, you’d see racism is never tolerated here. Even yours, with your white butt buddies comment.
Before you do get banned, and Dan will do it if enough here complain, what’s in it for you.. all this negativity coming from you and at you? Satisfy some self loathing or what.
White people, black people, all bleed the same.

Yes Fan, I do think Sportlandia is learning, very slowly sure, he still hangs about for some reason.
We are not a political thread though, we comment on people’s intimacy issues. There’s enough politics right outside, in here, it’s cosier in a way. We can all pretend it’s not going to shit for five minutes. So Sportlandia needs to focus on helping others, because that’s what this is about. Must be lots of places he can talk of white butts and nobody blinks.
Least he’s not a smarmy con man like Mr D. I find his rage at women much less palatable.

DonnyK @ 106 - I'm happy to see somebody spotted the parallel I was discreetly trying to draw. Unfortunately, there are millions like him; we know because they voted for him and still go to his rallies.

Lava @ 107 - "I don’t know what he wants though?"

I was thinking that this thread is the only outlet he has for all his pent-up anger at everyone and everything, and he comes here to just pour vitriol on us so he can go back to real life and act normally. Then again, his avowed willingness to pick actual fights when they can be avoided (if he wasn't making that up) kind of contradicts that view.

Ricardo -- I don't see why it would be illegal to block a user based on their IP address. I'm pretty sure many sites do that in terms of blocking comments. I'm pretty sure some can even block certain IP addresses from even seeing the website, though I doubt that's something The Stranger would do.

I feel like he just doesn't want to "let them win." I understand that impulse, having grown up in a family with a lot of very stubborn people who yell at each other a lot. The impulse to have the last word can be overwhelming, even if it doesn't do anybody any good to keep arguing. It's something I've had to work very hard to overcome in real life. Some people just can't stand to "let them win."

The problem for him here is that it's basically impossible for him to have the last word because he's so outnumbered; there's always going to be at least one person willing to call him on his bullshit.

Ricardo @97-@98: I'm sure he's already spending lots of time on the incel forums, because that seems to be the direct font of all that rhetoric he's spewing.
And it's comment @80 that's missing, which must have been directed at least in part toward me (and Lava) if it referred to "uppity women" and to my point that people are less blunt to Sporty's face because they fear he'll hit them. He's inaccurately speculated that I, too, grew up in a cozy white suburb (which, even if true, would somehow render anything I had to say irrelevant? Hmm). That's ok though, you can be white butt buddies with me and Lava! ;)

Ricardo @100: You would think, but Commenter Commentatus pops up now and again with a new alias each time, gets banned straightaway and comes back in a few weeks like a particularly bad case of herpes (great analogy!). Though perhaps you're right, I haven't seen him in a while, so maybe they can ban people via their IP address. We live in hope!

Lava @107-@108, everything you've read by Sportlandia and you still believe he is a good person? He is mixed race, for starters; his rage is not based on racial injustice but misogyny. He only brings race into a forum that's not even about race to throw in a "you're white so fuck you" when he's losing an argument. He's been on this forum for years and if anything he has gotten worse, he hasn't learned a thing. And he's pushing 40 so at what point will you stop using "youth" as an excuse? Sportlandia is a man with violent and dangerous attitudes towards women, his race does not excuse that. I have a lot more respect for Dadddy because, though we butt heads, he never calls other commenters names, he keeps the discourse civil. He has fixed gender ideas but he does not hate women, and only wants to hurt the ones who are into that.

Ricardo @109, I'm sure he's spewing his bile elsewhere; this may be the only place that's not an incel echo chamber, though, which may explain his frustration at our inability to see things his way. It would be nice to think that he uses this forum as a catharsis for all his anger and isn't taking it out on women in the real world, but I fear that is probably naive.

BDF @ 113 - He had another comment at 84 that was removed and replaced (which doesn't usually happen) by one from curious2. The combination of those two comments, where you could clearly feel his anger and vitriol mount, is what I think led to his removal.

Comment 80 was indeed directed at you and Lava, if I remember correctly.

"you can be white butt buddies with me and Lava"

Other than the fact that I wish my butt wasn't so white (it's almost transparent), I would most definitely be happy to be you two's white butt buddy. Then we can joyously not relate to 99% of the men together (where does he get those figures, I wonder).

"I fear that is probably naive"

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure of that.

Calliope @ 110 - I thought I had read somewhere a few years back that you needed a warrant to search for someone's IP address. This may not have been in the US, though. I read an awful lot of stuff because of my work and can't possibly remember all the details.

@114 Ricardo
"what I think led to his removal"

I think what immediately preceded his temporary removal was somebody clicking the "Report this" button.

That's happened about a half dozen times in the last couple months. Each time he was reinstated within a couple days.

Oh maybe I didn't see @84, I forget. Maybe it's just @80 that wasn't even in his top hundred most offensive/abusive/threatening posts. It was infinitely rude and angry of course.

One of the pair of comments said that if he met BiDanFan and LavaGirl in person, they'd be 10000% more likely to be physically violent than he would. So reassuring!

Once upon a time on a private list where everyone knew each others' real identities, I thought it was not unlikely a particular ultra-rightwing gun lunatic would take a road trip to ambush me.

@15 p.s.
Oh by "That's happened" I only mean he's been /temporarily/removed/ (but always re-appears) half a dozen times.

I'm just guessing this is happening because of clicking the "Report this" button; after the first few times I haven't expected the removals to last. And I've wondered who is doing the Reporting; I had a theory but that person posted something suggesting they wouldn't, so now I don't know.

I've reported some of Sporty's comments in the past, and I believe some of them were removed, but I don't think any of them led to a temporary ban. I imagine it might take multiple reports to make that happen. You would think if these reports were reviewed by an actual person, they would ban him permanently, since he hasn't learned to chill tf out.

Thanks, Ricardo @114. So there were two #84 comments (this happens sometimes) hence there not being an obvious omission from the sequence. His earlier comment about the butt buddies was also removed. I've clicked "Report this" on a few occasions, but this time it wasn't me!
"Then we can joyously not relate to 99% of the men together (where does he get those figures, I wonder)"
Sportlandia: 99% of men think the way I do.
Also Sportlandia: I don't project.
And, 10000% more likely, eh? So he doesn't understand math any better than vocabulary.

I guess we'll see whether he's re-reinstated once the Stranger staff get back to work tomorrow.

Curious @ 115 - Let me rephrase this, then: "what I think led to people reporting him, which in turn led to his removal."

And I thought I was the pedantic one lol.

Ricardo @114 "I thought I had read somewhere a few years back that you needed a warrant to search for someone's IP address."

Anyone who operates a web site already has the IP addresses of all the visitors, unless they make a special effort to not log them.
What you need a warrant for is, as far as I know, to get at someone's real world identity on the basis of their IP address + time when they connected. That is something that the person's ISP can provide (provided there is a warrant).

RE @ 120 - Thanks for the explanation.

Ms Muse @111 - I can bring this back to the letter by suggesting that LW gave me the impression of being a bit like that as well. Her careful insertion of his caretaking when she was chronically ill, sandwiching that between her no longer being fulfilled sexually or mentally in ANY way (her capitals) and his being no longer the same person (inviting the inference that it's his fault and not the disease's), came off as almost resentful. And I can understand that. If she dumps him (and possibly in her mind even "just" if she cheats), he "wins" - at least, on the facts as presented. He stuck it out. She'll go down as having received more than she gave, which for some people is extremely galling indeed.

I'm an admin on another website, and yeah, we don't have to search for the IP, we've already got it. And over there we ban someone nearly every day, for violating our terms of service - we moderate heavily and don't allow any controversial discussions, as it's not part of what we are there for.

So whether or not to ban is a decision The Stranger makes, for their own purposes. They may be happy to have a bit of conflict in the comments section, because it draws page views.

I'm an admin on another website, and yeah, we don't have to search for the IP, we've already got it. And over there we ban someone nearly every day, for violating our terms of service - we moderate heavily and don't allow any controversial discussions, as it's not part of what we are there for.

So whether or not to ban is a decision The Stranger makes, for their own purposes. They may be happy to have a bit of conflict in the comments section, because it draws page views.

Agony @123: "They may be happy to have a bit of conflict in the comments section, because it draws page views." That's a good point. Latest conspiracy theory: Sportlandia is actually Dan himself!!!!1ONE!!

Make a decision, and live with the consequences. Sometimes there are outside insights that might help clarify a situation or suggest a way to cut the knot, but in a lot of cases, the requrst for advice is just seeking validation to pursue an impossible fantasy - the person actually has a good handle on what's going on and what the mutually exclusive options are, but still wants a way to have contradictory results. Stop trying to do the impossible and make a choice from those options that are actually possible.

FWIW - I can tell you're white (and not like, the good kind of white people) when the following things happen:

You talk shit about someone and are surprised when they talk shit right back to you
And then you cry that you feel "unsafe"

For those wondering about the apocryphal "Message 84" it didn't contain anything notable other than detailing some of BiDanFan's more obvious lies (I'm sure she's the one who reported the post).

@125 Dan and I do have mutual friends and we've hung out in a non-official capacity. Granted that was almost 20 years ago but still. Not him, however, I disagree with Dan about 70% of the time.

They'll be an essay upcoming about why I'm "so angry" (sneak preview: It's because you are no different than your moral majority parents, you do not believe in "liberalism" except when it serves you, and you are non-stop liars who have essentially never been truthful in your entire lives and you aggressively attack those who point it out to you)

(There was also a lot of name-calling, from what I recall.)

Add my being the person who reported a post I've expressed sincere regret at not having had the chance to see before it was deleted (time zones, Poirot?) to Sporty's misconceptions about me. Bad case of herpes is back. Sigh.

back on topic - my husband & I stopped having sex due to his physical ailments. And we were in a place where FWB wasn't really possible (small town). Quite frankly, given all I was doing, I was pretty resentful of him anyway and sex seemed like just another chore.

We are in a much better place now. No sex; but we have worked out a relationship that works for us. He has a lot of good qualities. We now live somewhere where I probably could get a FWB relationship but I'm old enough now it doesn't seem as urgent.

Everyone is different; my upbringing and various life stuff made me decide not to leave him. Others will leave. Others will stay but have affairs. No one can tell you what you "should" do. It's up to you.