Posted on 04/20/2005 9:22:15 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
I'll keep this short and simple. After six years of membership on FR I've decided to resign from the forum today. I'll keep checking my freepmail for a few days and wind down my posts here, so if any of you wish to contact me please do so there and I will provide you with a means to do so. I hope to continue future posting activities elsewhere - perhaps a blog - but only time will tell.
It's truly been a blast and left me with many fond memories, but all good things had to come to an end. My favorites comprise a long list, the most noted being the exposition of Rathergate, leading freeps of Algore in the 2000 recounts, protesting Hildebeast's book tour, and giving her impeached husband a freeper's welcome to Texas on several of his visits. Thank you to all who made these events fun and entertaining. Unfortunately the past few months have made it clear to me that FR and I are drifting apart on key issues of conservatism. I'll spare the details, pausing only to state that it isn't just the usuals like illegal immigration, but also things like religion, the culture of political correctness, an overall decline in reasoned civil conversation that used to flourish here, and the purposes and uses of the site in general. More concerning, for the past few months I have been unable to even obtain rational discourse and commentary on many routine threads and issues without being personally maligned and attacked - many times out of the blue and on topics unrelated to the given thread - by a small, petty-minded, and vitriolic group of posters who conduct themselves in a manner unbefitting of what this forum used to be when I joined in 1999, and do so with apparent impunity.
I also find that I simply don't have the time to post as much as I once did, and regrettably so.
I'll leave it at that, as my fond memories outweigh the unpleasant ones. A time arises when parting courses on friendly terms is best before something less desirable arises. Therefore I have volunteered my resignation. To everyone who has made my FR experience enjoyable, I thank you and wish you only the best.
Usually people give up or leave when they can't defend their positions or know they are wrong.
Are you interested in selling your screen name? I'm serious.
It's a shame that you have decided to part company with us. I have been in here since the beginning as well. A good thing to do is change screen names. There are the Democrap underground types that pick you out from the search function and send you flames just to tick you off. Don't let them get to you. Like I said, create a new screen name and keep going. the troublemakers will eventually become tired and fade away.
If you feel you must go, I understand and wish you well. If, after a time, you would like to return, I'm sure you would be welcome.
I think an excellent example of this was the recent Terri Schiavo case. In my opinion, given that this was NOT a case of euthanasia, the true conservative position would have been to honor the patient's wishes -- not promote judicial activism and federal government intervention.
Now, I don't know if this was the type of thread to which you were referring, but I do know that quite a few Freepers had your attitude and said they were leaving.
It won't take too many more threads like that, filled with emotion-based propaganda, distortions of the truth, outright lies and name-calling in every other post to result in more true conservatives leaving what is starting to look like that other "forum".
I've long believed that many banned ex-posters returned in that so-called "Class of '04" you're referring to while a flurry of activity was going on. I've encountered probably half a dozen or more "new" posters who joined around the time of Rathergate who posted messages to me as if they knew me from past threads, even though I'd never seen them before and they joined a few days or weeks earlier. One of them from early 2005, I soon found out, was some joker I had reported sometime in the previous year for posting neo-nazi material on several "Smokey Backroom" threads. He was promptly dealt with as he should've been, but many disrupters from the Class of '04 are not and it has drastically changed the posting composition of this forum from what it used to be from '99-'03.
Hmm, I wonder how long it will take to:
-dredge up the Shiavo debate again
-dredge up the border debate again
-get seemingly all the pre-2000 signups to post how the "good ol days of FR are gone", again
Let's see. After all, what is an Opus on FR these days without all of that?
"Quitters never win and winners never quit!"
So you got your feelings hurt and your nose tweaked a couple of times by other posters? Tough it out!
Lurk for a while and take the shots that are necessary! When you leave the field of battle, you give the enemy too much ground.
Sound off like you got a pair!
(Sure hope you're a guy!) Haha
My experience is that there has ben a considerable uptick of bigoted, inarticulate so and so's spewing bile. I would peg it about the time the Rathergate story broke, generating a lot of free publicity.
Read post #44
Big Whoop.
You'll be back...believe me, I know!
Why not just take a break?
I've stepped away from FR....for weeks at a time. It didn't hurt...And it probably helped.
Best FRegards,
I wondered too, and checked GOPCapitalist's posting history.
Check!
Thank you and I'm certainly open to the option. For the time being it is simply too uncivilized on too many parts of the forum to make it fun anymore. Perhaps a solution will be worked out in the future to bring this sort of thing under control (and I sincerely hope they do because I believe FR's survival and relevancy depend upon improving the forum's quality, which has slipped of late). But that's up to the remaining freepers to work out. Anyway, all the best to you!
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