Steve D verses Santa

Looking back at this old thread we have the inside knowledge, don't we? We know that eventually Santa and MElf and a lot of the people who participated in BC regularly at the time did end up leaving and (as far as we know) never coming back. Steve D did stand the test of time and he still stops in to say hi to BC occasionally. From our privileged perch here in the future it looks like Steve D was right to notice that the best way to enjoy BC is to be excellent to each other and to try to ignore the negative people who will be with us always. Steve D's method is still the best way for an individual to enjoy BC: focus on the people you get something out of interacting with and just ignore the ones who don't bring you joy, but from our privileged perch we can also admit that Steve D's advice was not followed by hardly any of the habituates of this place. Turns out that trying to be positive and staying out of conflicts works much better as an individualistic short term approach, but unless someone is taking on the responsibility of taking the trash out it starts to pile up and people will only complain about the stench for so long before they just recognize that the place has become a dump and start avoiding it. You and Steve D are a lot alike. Nice guys who wish the best for everyone. The bl movement/experience is full of guys like that, but being positive and conciliatory does not make us immune to difficult people. Sadly it was probably people with mindsets like Steve D (and you Chuck) who prevented BC from dealing with it's racist trolls head on. From our perch far into the future we can see that the inability to discourage offensive racism left a lot of the habituates of the place crying for someone to do something about these terrible racists, setting the stage for the appearance of BC's most damaging troll of the past decade. It wasn't too long after Steve D made this post that martirwithacause showed up and quickly went off the rails with his ideas on how to save BC from the racists and the antis. Seb recaps exactly how being nice and friendly with certain people can backfire. Thankfully martirwithacause was eventually permabanned due to his inability to stop sharing fake ass stories about all the boys he has [redacted], because BC is not for child molesters or sex tourist. Using little kids as prostitutes has never been accepted here. By presenting himself as the unofficial leader of BC while also repeating stories painting bls as molesters, he presented a gross distorted picture of who BCers are and he posted so often, often replying to every single post on the index with the same condescending attitude as if he was talking to a bunch of wanna be dumb dumbs who didn't have the balls to get out there and take what they wanted from boys. That was the context leading up to him being restricted to three posts per day referred to in Seb's recap thread. If people had the ability to just focus on the posters that they get along with and ignore the rest then maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much, but the fact turned out to be that most people are not able to stay positive in an arena where the battle lines were drawn between the child molesters verses the racist it was hard for those who didn't fit in to either camp. Which is not to say you are wrong Chuck. Trying to be cool to everyone and focusing on the people you want to hear from is still a great recipe for success as an individual, but what about when that technique starts to break down due to someone harassing you day after day and you complain only to find out that no one seems to care? No one wants to get involved with the negativity, so what happens is wave after wave of newbies were left to deal with harassment coming from practiced almost professional sealion level trolls. "Just stay positive and don't let them bother you," is easy to say, but even if that is good advice, it's not all that convincing, especially when newbies receive replies full of hostility and innuendo and nothing else. At least back when Luigi made his introductory post there were still a few positive friendly posters left to welcome him. Posters at the time had already noticed a massive reduction in boy moment type posts, as the internet was proving itself to not be as anonymous as people once thought, but there was still enough good will left for people to have not stopped making stopping by BC a part of their day. But as you note, this was a long time ago and since then many people did get fed up and few have kept showing up. Now the question is what will the future hold for BC? Besides the relatively harmless monkey repeating his easily recognizable dance moves below many post, BC does not really have much of a troll problem these days. Beracine may behave in a trolling manner at times, but you can tell that deep down he is not a troll and he's just disappointed that he can't find his people. It really is good that you and your interest in metabc issues came along. Thank you for giving a bored sheepdog an old bone to chew on as the flock seems to be fine for the time being.