96 replies to this topic

[Adolf Hitler]

Yeah that's it. Had forgot about him. I remember in 2006 when Jarmo added Falcon and Ignatius as mods it caused a massive shit storm in PMs. Some bitched a bit publicly but in private there was almost a mutiny. That decision played a role in the site's decline as well. I never had aspirations of being a mod there but a lot of people did. No one had much of a problem with Falcon but they were steamed over Ignatius. I didn't understand that choice either but the site was going in an odd direction. Old timers like dave had no chance. While he/she never said it, I guarantee that ppbebe wanted a mod spot. She/He kept going for years after others left and you could tell that constant positive vibe was phony. I bet Jarmo sensed it too. When I came back to the forums I checked for her on there and she last posted a couple years ago and was positive til the end. Probably said fuck it and gave up. Hell, once HTGTH nosedived years ago there was no reason to bring on extra staff. While it needed more mods before the shit hit the fan, it didn't need any after that.

 

I loved HTGTH before that 2006 crap but even if he hadn't went overboard with the post deletions and bannings, I would have left anyways. dark told me during those initial leaks that our PMs were being monitored and he wasn't lying. Certain people there had been flagged and all their activity was monitored. They didn't want to ban legitimate people who were discussing that leak shit, PMing clips,etc. behind the scenes. They wanted to watch them.

 

I sent davegnr2k a clip of something in PMs and the link that showed up in his PM box was not the link I sent. Thats when I knew for sure dark wasn't being paranoid. dark and a few others would only talk to you through an off site messenger. There was crazy shit going down in early 2006 on HTGTH and mygnr. CITR was NEVER supposed to leak.

[Mr. Roboto]

I figured out one of my PMs had been read too, but can't remember now what it was that made me suspicious. I also had another time where I was logged out and my PW had been reset. I had to reset it again, and something fishy happened with a PM then too.

 

I'm not sure how an admin could read PMs though, without logging in as the user. So a PW reset would make sense, but not sure how else they would do it. 

 

I do know that you can block certain links/words etc fairly easily, so that would be a way for an admin to block links. I think that's totally lame though. Sure you don't want it on YOUR forum, I get it, it's your place. But to block links inside of PMs...control freak alert. 

 

I remember when they picked a couple of new Mods, I got a PM from "D" asking me if I was upset. He felt we should have been picked. hahaha. I was like "Uhhh, no." I think I was still in Jarmo's good graces at that point, but I was waaaaaay to disruptive to ever consider myself Mod material. I think he figured we had a high post count and were very active. Which was true, we were some of the bigger post whores on the site.

 

Looking back now, I had a lot of fun at that place for a while. The Iraq thread drove me fucking bonkers, but I also liked it because it made me read more about foreign policy. I probably learned a lot more because of those online feuds to be honest. 

 

I also had something weird happen with "Sterling" on that forum, and also MCT. The whole thing was bizarre, and then MCT got involved and got even more nutty. I sometimes wondered if it was the same person. 

[Adolf Hitler]

Holy shit....a blast from the past. I remember that now. I think we talked about it in PM back in 2007. I agree that was fishy and if memory serves me correctly we noticed a few posts from those two that were identical in type. Its impossible for people to get away with having aliases because the real person eventually comes out in how they write. Unfortunately I don't remember the story behind those two characters. I do know they both vanished at about the same time. I liked "Sterling". 

 

 

On the SMF format it is definitely possible to read all the PMs. It just requires a lot of time to dig through all the guts of the site. I know this for a fact because Brody used to do it on ROV and it pissed me off. IMO PMs are off limits. The users of your forum assume that they are literally private and it should remain that way. 

[Adolf Hitler]

On the subject of GNR mods, I was next in line for a mod spot on mygnr in late 06 but madison pulled the plug on it because a few people on my site back then bitched about her/mygnr and I didn't ban them. I didnt ask for a mod spot  and I was rarely active there and only had a handful of posts. She knew me from HTGTH and of course ROV. That decision would have caused major controversy at mygnr. I wish she had went through with it just to see the nerds spaz out. 

 

She'd deny this now of course but its true.

[Mr. Roboto]

On the subject of GNR mods, I was next in line for a mod spot on mygnr in late 06 but madison pulled the plug on it because a few people on my site back then bitched about her/mygnr and I didn't ban them. I didnt ask for a mod spot  and I was rarely active there and only had a handful of posts. She knew me from HTGTH and of course ROV. That decision would have caused major controversy at mygnr. I wish she had went through with it just to see the nerds spaz out. 

 

She'd deny this now of course but its true.

 

 

Stupid Madison. I had the infrastructure, and she had the following for GnR Syndicate. But that wasn't enough for her. She wanted me to basically give her the keys to the place and walk away. She was also unwilling to put anything into the place, other than inviting people. No money on her end. She was also crazy as a loon and called me every.fucking.day. Sometimes 2-3 times a day. Like she was my boss, calling me to get me working. SMH. 

 

If she wasn't so batshit, I bet that place could have been second to only MyGnR if not bigger than it is today. 

 

Edit: Also...stupid Brody. hahaha

[Adolf Hitler]

That whole thing was bizarre on the outside looking in. I know you and I talked a bit in PM during that and I couldn't really give sound advice even though I had known her quite awhile because her handling of it was off the charts. I still don't know what to make of it. You're right....all the pieces for a successful site were there, they just had to be put in place. She was a red hot commodity at the time. Not only did she have a following, she had a very large group of haters who would follow her every move. She also had the "forum rebel" thing going due to being called out by Axl. You had a killer front page at the time and of course a forum already in place. Why she felt the need to own the damn thing and control it all blows my mind. All she needed to be was the "face" of the site with normal admin functions. That should have satisfied her....but no. That gave people a peek at the real Madison.

 

People paid attention to that. When it was over she went to mygnfnr forum and posted for awhile and was considered a joke. She was laughed out of that place quickly. I haven't seen her since.

[Mr. Roboto]

She had a ton of people looking to leave MyGnR and had even more of people who hated her. I saw it as a risky proposition, but saw the split happening at MyGnR as a fantastic opportunity to build The Syndicate. She also saw it as an opportunity, just differently lol. She was very nice to me in the start, and very eager, so I thought it would work out. 

 

In the short time, there were a bunch of people actively posting almost immediately. If I remember we were only inviting people over until we got functional stuff sorted out, and then would launch it. But we never made it that far. I knew we were headed for problems when people came over and said "Hey great site Madison" and she didn't correct them, or even give me a nod. Then slowly, she demanded more, more...more. 

 

At that point she had been granted admin powers, and I actually had my tech guy go in and remove it, since I was unable to in the regular CP. The thing was I really didn't want to run too much of the day to day stuff of a busy site. I wanted to do  my thing, and hand off ALL GnR stuff to her. I didn't tell her that up front, but it's what I had in mind. So if she would have just been cool, she would have gotten much more (perceived at least) control then she anticipated. I wanted to run the main blog and the off topic section, that was it.

 

I had a couple of "told ya so" comments after it all went down. 

 

I wasn't aware that she went MIA from MyGnR after that. I had seen her posting, and thought it was pretty pathetic. If I got booted in such a way, publicly humiliated by Axl like that, I sure wouldn't stick around. But she kept posting for a while, enduring quite a bit of abuse and taunts by the other posters.  Even though she was an ass, I still kind of found it sad. 

 

And what happened with Brody? I don't remember. He had that site, but then something went down? He split, and you guys rebuilt it? I know there was some other forum drama associated with it of course, ha

[Adolf Hitler]

Oh yeah...the .net thing. It didn't bother me that much since I knew what you were doing. Just spoofing that whole drama about ROV. I did take a more harsher stance publicly but I had to. I should have just talked to you about it privately. It did piss some people off though.

 

In summer of 2007 ROV was kicking ass. We were on the verge of overtaking CD.com as the 3rd most active GNR site on the net. Take away all the worthless trolls from that site and we already had them beat. Some days we were more active than CD.com and HTGTH. We had a few thousand members and  80% of our members were active. Insane statistic. Hard to believe now but its true. We had people working on a killer front page and they had spent months on it. Creating a new logo too. Then one day out of the blue.....

 

 

Brody knocks it offline. Didn't talk to me, any other staff member. NOTHING. We tried emailing him, messenger, myspace,etc. Not a word back. He read the messages but ignored them. Laura and I were going to buy it from him. Still no word. We were getting hundreds of messages from people wanting to know what was going on. To prevent the community from dying off we created one of those little free forums for the community to hang out at temporarily until we could figure things out. Still no word from brody. The guy who ran Izzy's official site was a member of ROV and offered to host our community if we wanted to continue. I knew to jump at the offer. So we started from scratch but decided to use the ROV name temporarily. THEN he comes out of hiding saying we're ripping him off, stealing the site, blah blah blah. NEVER apologized for what he did and never bothered to explain why he'd willingly kill the 3rd biggest GNR site for no reason at all. A few weeks after that he said he was going to continue the ROV forum. Was no point since it was dead and he forgot to back up the site before killing it. Then he tried that lame "gunnerstube" idea that had less than zero chance.

 

Even though its been 8 years I would like for him to resurface and tell me why he did that. I deserved an explanation. So did many others.

[freedom78]

The online GNR fan community needs therapy...

[Mr. Roboto]

The online GNR fan community needs therapy...

 

GnR community is rather dysfunctional...to say the least. Although I used to find it all very entertaining. 

 

 

Even though its been 8 years I would like for him to resurface and tell me why he did that. I deserved an explanation. So did many others.

 

That's bizarre, sounded like somebody pissed Brody off. He probably was snooping in PMs and found something he didn't like, haha. 

 

I actually forgot I did that until you brought it up. Gawd I was such a dick. 

 

As for the spoof site...I don't know if you were aware of this, but Brody gave that to me.

 

I heard Brody had a fight with somebody over there. Keep in mind we hated one another, Brody and I argued about Iraq all day long. I thought he was a huge jerk off. But again, I saw an opportunity to exploit. If I remember correctly, he was claiming you guys dicked him over about something. I told him how lousy that was of them, boo hoo hoo, and within another day or two I convinced him to hand me over all the coding for the site. I got a web host and the next day another crank I knew put it up for us.

 

Personally I thought it was hilarious, but I guess you guys did not, hahahahaha.     

 

Edit; I looked back on the Madison saga in pruned threads. Apparently she wanted access to all data, including CP and admin login. That's when I said no, and that's when she said I was a big meanie and she was leaving. I guarantee you if I was stupid enough to give her access to that, she would have brought in somebody who could bump me right out of my forum and lock the door behind me. 

[AxlsMainMan]

You guys hear that Annie chick from HTGTH that's obsessed with Hello Kitty and Twilight returned Marc Canter's book to him personally and told him "an enemy of Axl is an enemy of mine"?

 

[Adolf Hitler]

That's a good point and I hadn't thought of it like that. He probably did see something in PMs. He was not well liked by the staff there. 

 

Yeah we knew Brody gave it to you. What sealed the deal on that was when you sent emails to every ROV member. If Brody had a one in a million chance of bringing ROV back, he flushed it with that decision. Even the few people who liked him(Jim Bob, monkeychow, SlashMckagan, scabbie,etc.) washed their hands of him over that. 

 

 

 

 

On the subject of classic rock, I thought it was hilarious when they did that special issue of the making of Chinese Democracy based on our site and EVERY forum posted that article but deleted the page that specifically credited my site. I just let it slide. Wasn't worth going to HTGTH, mygnr, and cd.com bitching about it. Those sites have the gall to watermark photos that aren't theirs but wont even give any credit to a GNR site that's not them.

 

 

I don't think madison would have ditched you but I can see why you'd think that. Its possible but I think she was just a control freak and wanted to be able to say she did it all. Had she not freaked out so quickly I might could have mediated that. Maybe a compromise where you let people think she runs it but actually doesn't. I have always been a puppet regime and I don't see anything wrong with it.

 

I vaguely remember that name Annie. Its just been so long since being active at HTGTH I mainly remember the more notorious characters. I think my last post there was in 2007. DAMN. Since coming back a couple months ago I  check it every couple weeks or so but its not interesting. There are still some old timers there that I like AMM, pilferk,etc. but the forum has no personality anymore, GNR section anyways. Thats the only section I check.

[Mr. Roboto]

I always liked Pilferk. Voice of reason. 

[Adolf Hitler]

He's one of those people that cant really lose a debate even if they're wrong HAHA. Not that he was wrong very often. EvaGNRAxlRosette was like that as well. I miss her. She was really active in the old days but when her husband died she pretty much vanished.

 

So many people from the golden age are gone. That 2002-05 community at HTGTH really deserved an album release to discuss.

[Timothy]

Jarmos girlfriend....

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