Sex and Lies at the Personality Forge

Posted on July 13, 2004 in Bots The InterNet

Intelligence about goings on at Personality Forge continue to float in to me via various angry friends. The latest lame sliming came from a coward who styles himself as Carpediem who, after a teenager from Leeds spammed the forums with sexual garbage, said it had to have been done by me!

I have no idea what was said, but if it came from one of the Leeds crew I can just imagine. Imagine a room filled with 12 year olds, mostly unattended, who check in to cyber with the bots. The other day, for example, I was minding my own business when one of the Leeds Gang started hitting me with sexual innuendo. I managed, for a couple of exchanges, to get him(?) to speak to me civily. When he asked how old I was, I said I was 46, old enough to be his father.

“Are you a pedifil?” he asked.

“The correct spelling is pedophile and, no, I am not. I like my women to be over 30 years of age.”

“piss off” was the last response.

A fifteen year old girl complained about the antagonisms on the forum. It seems that another member of the Leeds gang — who claimed to be female –made an indecent suggestion via the Forge’s private chat. A conversation ensued over whether or not this chatter was a lesbian or someone just pretending to be one. We managed to counsel the girl into understanding that even if this was a lesbian, not all lesbians would approve of what the chatter did. In fact, I believe most of my lesbian friends would have been on her side.

In private chat, she asked me why they didn’t just ban the Leeds Gang. In the wake of my expulsion for the mere act of telling Benji Adams that he should talk to people about their concerns regarding the Bot Holidays* and refusing to apologize for doing so civilly despite his utterly psychotic reaction, it’s a good question. Why expel a civil critic because he “doesn’t know his place” and continue to allow these stalkers free access to the site?

As for the spam, “The Professor” as Benji exalts himself (he has no Ph.d, he just piles it high and deep), can easily identify the culprit by the ISP address and put a stop to the Leeds Gang by blocking the ISP. Mine, for the record, is 68.5.207.112. I have nothing to hide.

The same cannot be said for Carpediem who takes great pains to hide his identity. Could Carpediem be another alias for The Professor? Are the accusations and attacks on those who make suggestions for the betterment of the forge a one man show? Only Benji Adams knows for sure. What is certain is that there are schizoid policies in place in the mind of Benji Adams: it’s not okay to press him to answer his users but it is fine to use anonymous identities to attack and sexually harass people at the Personality Forge.

Again, stay away. Stay far away.

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*The Bot Holiday issue shows the pettiness at work in the mind of Benji Adams and his alleged cohorts. On certain days of the year, bots were made to talk in foreign accents. This was without the consent of those who made the bots. They garbled our logs and, in the eyes of some, were offensive and inaccurate caricatures of other nationalities. What those of us who didn’t like the Bot Holidays proposed was simply a means to opt out of them. For this, we were accused of being against “fun”. My response was “forced fun is not fun”.

For making rational arguments that the proponents of Bot Holidays could not rebut, we were called “rough” and “nasty”. The Forge is dominated by the same pubescent mentality as the Leeds Gang twelve year old who got mad when I corrected his spelling of pedophile. Nastiness is the rule of the day. Civil discussion and reasonable compromise are not.

This interests me because I keep seeing these issues pop up in communities across the Web. Some solve them well and others, like the Forge, are crazed, petty tyrannies. I will be commenting more on these issues in the days to come.