Not just an Opus, but a Magnum Opus, at that!
Jaysin,
Idea men are a dime a dozen.
What effort have you put forth to address the areas you find lacking and incorporate the changes you'd like to see made?
Posted on 06/10/2025 11:32:39 AM PDT by Jaysin
Dear Freepers
After almost 25 years of freerepublic.com being a rare bastion of sanity in this crazy world, I will be ending my time as a member of this once great site.
The quality of FR has degraded to the point that I no longer find much usage for the site that I can’t find on other platforms and sources. I have had multiple conversations with many freepers, both in the forum and privately and many of them agree with some of my points of contention:
A) The primary reason I am leaving is the failure of FR to address the rising and blatant antisemitism on here. Yes, a vast majority of freepers call them out and see right through it but the failure of the FR leadership to deal with this issue is not acceptable. There are a few dozen of these posters on here who have a very clear track record of posting their jew-hatred over and over again. Of course they will mask it under the cover of “I’m criticizing Israel, not Jews” or “I’m an American Firster” label or my favorite one “I’m an Appalachian Christian”. But if you look closely at what they comment on and how they do it, it is clear they have a JEW problem. These posters will ignore the atrocities committed by the same types of people who committed 9/11, killed RFK, blew up the USS cole, the marine barracks in Lebanon, shot up a club in Florida and countless other horrific acts that have killed and maimed thousands of people, orphaned many children, and left multi-thousands of grieving loved ones behind. The moral compass of these posters is quite shocking to say the least. And they always use the same tropes–foreign aid, the USS Liberty incident, war-mongering BiBi, AIPAC controls xxxxxx, and my favorite one is when they link to sites like the UN and Amnesty International as their “proof” that Israel is violating some international “law”. Some are more blunt and vicious than others, but it’s come to the point where much of my time is spent responding and commenting to the crazies on here. And of course most of them will deny they hate Jews, they just don’t want American foreign policy dictated by Israel etc….. FR is not twitter and is supposedly a tightly monitored site of like minded conservative individuals. Most of these loonies should be formally warned or banned, but they are not. Whatever happened to zotting?
B) Another significant reason I’m leaving is sadly, the quality of the discourse here. This was a website that was once feared as a threat by the left and helped expose the Dan Rather scandal. Those days are long gone. There was a time when I would come on here to get genuine and insightful opinions on politics and world events from intelligent people. Many of my political understandings and positions over the years were molded from what I read on this forum. Nowadays most of the comments to the real issues facing the USA are nothing more than silly venting comments in the vein of “we should lock up everyone of these rioters and throw away the key” or “Trump needs to fire these judges ASAP” or “It’s time for public tarring and feathering to return” level of quality. I can read through multiple threads without finding a useful insight to glean from it. It is really nothing more than venting and wishful thinking but not really practical–the same level of commentary can be found on a foxnews comments section. The personal assaults and attacks levied against each other don’t bother me so much and are often a natural response and I do sometimes like seeing someone get slammed down. I know I have been guilty of some crude and impolite commenting over the years. It’s the overall value of the content that has declined.
C) As a follow up to B, A vast majority of the articles that are being posted nowadays are from very mainstream fake news sources such as the NYtimes/Reuters/AP/DailyMail/MSNBC/CNN/SFGate etc… with a solid supplement of other almost useless sources such as foxnews/nypost/breitbart. Any halfway intelligent freeper on here KNOWS darn well that there's NOTHING useful published on these websites or articles so the comments turn into nothing more than “this article is such fake news” and similar style comments. It’s the same story over and over and over again and we all point it out. But real thought provoking ideas are not to be found. And of course we have the endless BOMBSHELLS and BOOMS and BREAKING headlines from the gateway pundit and dailymail posted on a daily basis that never amount to anything. Sites like American Thinker / townhall / Sultan Knish and some others are the only ones with real content worthy of real discussion If anyone dares to post some thought provoking article from some small blog or some less-known unfamiliar site, you’re instantly accused of blog-pimping. As a lead on to my next issue, the same news event is often posted multiple times just from a different source.
D) Leadership–I know I’m going to get flamed hard for this but who is steering the ship here at FR nowadays? I have much respect for Jim and what he’s built but I really feel like he only appears when appealing for money. He certainly is not actively involved in leading and guiding the site into the future. Perhaps it is time to pass the torch on to someone else who can keep the site as a useful and relevant place on the internet. Sadly, I feel that there is no one clearly calling the shots and no leadership here anymore
E) My final issue with FR is the functionality of the site. There hasn’t been a single update to this site since I joined. Not a thing. No, we don’t need flashy profiles and avatars and other silly bells and jingles but it’s 2025 and simple features like the ability to edit your comment or even delete it would be nice. A like and dislike option to a post would also be a nice feature and save a lot of the commenting issues I mentioned above. The ability to respond inline to comments would also make the flow much easier–If someone makes a comment at #12 and I dont join in until comment #93, I’m forced to copy/paste what they wrote so my comment can be understood in context. And no in 2025, I shouldn’t have to use html to post a picture. The breaking news is often hours behind an actual event happening. The search features are primitive at best. The site can still be very basic looking but can still be user-friendly.
I would love for FR to become a political powerhouse again that it once was but it will need to look in the mirror and decide what it wants the future to be. Or it can bury itself in the sand pretending that young 27 year olds are jumping on here and using the site (they aren’t!) I’m in my early 50’s and I sometimes feel like I bring down the median user age by 10 years. That’s not a bad thing per se, but what's going to be in 5-10 years? I really wonder how FR is going to make it into the next decade without some type of overhaul.
I truly wish FR the very best going forward and I wish only the best. I genuinely hope something good will come out of this final post. I will not be responding to this thread but will probably read direct freepmails sent to me regarding the thread before I log off for the last time. Some of you will tell me good luck and some of you will me good riddance. I understand.
GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
You make some good points.
But, it’s the nature of discussion boards to devolve. I’ve been a participant on many. None are what they once were.
I’m not going away. But, I don’t view Free Republic as much of a discussion board as I do a news consolidator. Sort of a free lance version of The Drudge Report or Liberty Daily.
I don’t have time to scour every news source, twitter posting, YouTube channel and such for interesting articles. Easy to scan Free Republic for articles of interest from diverse sources.
I use FreeRepublic and a couple of shopping sites on my web browsing, plus I bank and pay my bills, so FR is the first site I visit and my biggest use of the internet. It’s been so since the late 90’s. I have never seen antisemitism. I guess if you say anything against Zelensky you are antisemitic because Zelensky is Jewish. Just like the left says saying anything about George Soros is antisemitic. I get annoyed by the Regards guy, it’s not like every post is a correspondence. I get really annoyed by people who say gubmint and goobermint or refer to members of Congress as congresscritters as if they were cute somehow. I don’t like people who say w/ or b/c instead of typing out as much of the word as it takes for your phone or browser to suggest it. I have noticed a fairly large number of people who are chronic posters of sites like medical xpress which fill up the main page with useless information. But I have not seen antisemitism anywhere.
There’s only one place on the internet where I can find the kind of varied and thoughtful discourse on political and current events. I’m certain that there are some agitators and plants around. They post leading comments and there’s definitely some jew hating ‘libertarians’ (yeah right) around. But they’re easy to ignore. There are some idealists around like in any other forum. But I find them easy to ignore too. I come here to find out what other people are thinking. And helps me to moderate my thoughts and opinions based on what I see here. Many times have my thoughts and opinions been affected by what i’ve seen here posted in FR. If I ever ‘left’ FR it would not be with an Opus or a Swansong. I would just not show up anymore. That being said, I doubt that would ever happen. At the very least you’ll find yourself referring and peeking to see what people are saying. So rather than saying goodbye... I’ll just say ‘see you around’.
With a smile...
Great suggestion...
Anti-semitism has always been around because they know how to hide it. We banned the obvious ones. But this is definitely an Israel supporting site.
As far as the religion stuff, be glad you aren’t LDS. I felt sorry for them. Protestants love to debate one another. We will also openly criticize our own denomination. I’m UMC and I do it all the time. We expect others to do it as well.
I can agree with this site’s software being outdated. Many forums allow you to quickly copy and paste images without having to screw around with HTML. Also it would be nice to have a simple up vote or like button to express agreement with another post to get a general feel as to what most people are thinking.
As far as antisemitism is concerned I can’t agree. If you want to see real antisemitism take a look at X (Twitter). Criticizing Israel does not constitute antisemitism. Some of the pro-Israel people on here go ballistic at even the mildest criticism of Israel and are quick to demand censorship. You have to understand that many of us are sick of spending hundreds of billions on these never ending wars that seem to accomplish little or nothing beneficial to US interests. The US is broke and what little money we have we want to see it spent here at home on American problems. So when we see others trying to draw as into the Ukraine/Russia war or the Israel/Iran dispute we react against it. Seems that many pro-Israel have such strong personal feelings towards Israel that they take any criticism against it as some kind of personal attack. You guys think anything less than total support of everything Israel says or does must mean they hate Jews which is nonsense. Either grow a thicker skin or find a forum that exclusively caters to pro Israel people and quit trying to push more censorship here.
Another significant reason I’m leaving is sadly, the quality of the discourse here. This was a website that was once feared as a threat by the left and helped expose the Dan Rather scandal. Those days are long gone.... Nowadays most of the comments to the real issues facing the USA are nothing more than silly venting comments in the vein of “we should lock up everyone of these rioters and throw away the key” or “Trump needs to fire these judges ASAP” or “It’s time for public tarring and feathering to return” level of quality.
But then completely lost me with this:
As a follow up to B, A vast majority of the articles that are being posted nowadays are from very mainstream fake news sources such as the NYtimes/Reuters/AP/DailyMail/MSNBC/CNN/SFGate etc… with a solid supplement of other almost useless sources such as foxnews/nypost/breitbart. Any halfway intelligent freeper on here KNOWS darn well that there's NOTHING useful published on these websites or articles.
And that second point seems to directly contradict your first -- it's like you're advocating that we live in an information bubble and shouldn't dare even look at what the other side is saying. The Rathergate/Buckhead episode you lauded was based on documents uploaded onto CBS's website. Had Freepers followed then what you are encouraging now, that FR highpoint would never have happened.
What should we be doing -- reading only "the Gateway Pundit" and "Revolver News", neither of which even existed during the heydey you celebrate??
Knowing thine enemy is one important reason to be aware of what they are saying, but it also is important to what what our enemies are telling the masses out there, what swing voters may be reading, etc.. And even leaving that aside, those outfits do occasionally have useful information -- even if it is only reporting something they believe should be interpreted one way but actually means quite the opposite.
I cannot fathom the kind of high-level discourse you claim to crave when you simultaneously advocate exclusion of every media source you don't like.
As someone who has spoken out about the Catholic church for many years here, please know that my criticisms have NEVER been about Catholic people. They’ve always been about the church hierarchy and their misplaced dogmas. My discourse have never been meant to bash, only to try and persuade, and those type of back and forth discussions are valuable and is kind of what discussion forums like FR do best.
I rarely go deeper than the first 20 because the “married” couples start bickering when they see each other. If anything important is happening, I come here first. I don’t watch TV so I rely on those who do. I was locked down on campus during the Virginia Tech shooting and I came here to find out what was going on several blocks away from me.
What?
No bashing of the QTards?
This is NOT a true Magnum Opus without that.
It’s “Set your beebers to stune.” 👻🔫
Not just an Opus, but a Magnum Opus, at that!
Jaysin,
Idea men are a dime a dozen.
What effort have you put forth to address the areas you find lacking and incorporate the changes you'd like to see made?
With you. I rarely post or even comment here these days but I do check in every morning. FR is still the best place to get real news without the extraneous BS.
The secret is to ignore what you don’t like. With text as opposed to video, that’s easy to do.
Jewbacca and Lazamataz here are Jewish, they are also well loved. Neither one let’s the crazies win the day.
sheesh, I wasnt even close. LOLOLOLOL
I’ve been posting on Free Republic for 27 years. I have never seen ANYTHING antisemitic here—and I would not tolerate it if I did. What’s this guy talking about anyway?
We haven’t had a whiny, virtue signalling opus in a while. 😆
A great point - Almost all of the Jewish people I know around me are Democrats and they talk so badly about Israel, you would think it was worse than North Korea! I guess they are all antisemites.
It seems like US Christians support Israel way more than US Jews do.
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