I've been a reader of the SOTT pages for many years now, and I respect the ideas here more than any others I have found in all my time online -- and I was online before HTML existed. I have a thirst for truth and a critical mind, and I do try to share what I learn.
One of my vices that I've had since childhood is entertainment addiction, and video games specifically. This is not what my story is about, but it is important to understand my situation. My favorite video game is called Counter-Strike. It's a multiplayer online "first person shooter" which basically means we all run around and shoot at each other with guns and grenades and such. In spite of the violent theme, I love the game because it constantly tests your alertness and control. It becomes a dance of moving your character as quickly as possible, dodging bullets and testing the defences of your enemy, all the while making precision shots and communicating positional information with your team for a common purpose. It's a game of self-control and cooperation.
I admit that the objectives and theme of the game are quite questionable. You play either as terrorists or counter-terrorists and this supports stereotypes that play perfectly into the hands of those who wish us to believe in the war on terror, which I don't. The "scenarios" themselves aren't the reason that I play the game. It's just a game and the theme is incidental. It could be clowns throwing mud pies at each other for all I care, so long as the gameplay was as precise.
One of my favorite servers online to play this game is called "Vir's Pub" run by somebody named Virellek. His server is quite popular, well maintained, and expertly modified by him personally from a standard server in very well balanced ways. "Vir" knows how to run a quality Counter-Strike server. His server has a website for forums and news, he has a voice-conferencing server for regulars so we can talk on our own voice channel. I've gotten to know a lot of people and play with them often through this server. I love to come home after a long day and play for an hour. For about a year, perhaps less, I've played on his server with a twinge in my brain telling me, "I know I've heard his name somewhere before".
I'm not just an average gamer of course. The fact that I consider this my most reliable source for real news tells you that much. In the past year, in an effort to do some good, I've been posting links to articles that I find to be the most important and which cut starkly through the lies on other social networking sites like Facebook. Many articles that I link come from Signs of the Times or a handful of other sites.
After posting a few SOTT articles to Facebook, one of my Counter-Strike friends pointed me to Virellek's smear article about the Signs team being a cult. She said "You might find this interesting", perhaps thinking that I would be woken up to the idea that I'm reading the lies of a cult. But she doesn't know Laura's work, and doesn't know the values espoused by the Signs team and QFS. I recognized Virellek's "editorial" for what it was immediately, a smear article with no basis in fact. My initial reaction was to write up a 10 page response before I realized that his article was almost two years old. Then, I remembered the Shoutwire controversy and attacks from two years ago and I put two and two together. Aha! And oh my...
It's hard to express the feeling of knowing that somebody I would often come home and play games with had viciously and unfairly attacked the site that I respect more than any other in the world. In the gaming world, we try to put contentious issues aside most of the time, but for a while it was too much for me.
For a while I left Vir's server, I sent the girl who had sent me the link to Vir's article a heated response about how ridiculous Vir's article was and that I probably wouldn't ever play there again. I felt he was an enemy, somebody not to be trusted, somebody to be avoided because his article was so ill-intentioned. I didn't want to accept using his server to have fun because he was the enemy and I didn't want to accept any gift from an enemy of the truth.
In the last few days I've read in more detail the forum responses of the Shoutwire situation. From what I've read, its been a learning experience about what to expect from a site like Shoutwire that encourages people to write things that will incite people's passions and reward people for following this model.
Virellek being in the position of administrator or editor of Shoutwire had the ability to post a front-page editorial. It really made me angry that he used this power to do such a thing. I think that he abused his power and that he should apologize, but how do you tell that to somebody who doesn't think he's wrong? My own anger has passed now. I've tried to square his attack with what I know of his personality and I'm pretty sure that he actually believes that he is protecting people and just taking some twisted creative license with it because it makes him look cool or just for shock value. Possibly he takes attacks on Israel very personally and seriously thinks that racist tendencies shape some of the ideas that are hypothesized here, and this justifies his own attack.
Though I completely disagree with his conclusions, from everything else that I've known of him, he's generally a good person who actually cares about the users of his server and tries to make the game fun for everybody. When people break the rules and show disrespect he pulls no punches and has banned dedicated regular players who tried to get around technical restrictions on his server, but otherwise he's responsible for his age and generally well-intentioned.
I now have a strange mix of feelings about him, but unless he bans me from his server for having different views, which I really doubt that he would, I'm not going to be avoiding his server any longer. I can no longer respect his political opinions or his writings, but being misled and warning people about a perceived danger is not a sin, even if your reasoning and methods are incorrect. If he has a specific agenda, it exists in parallel with the easy-going and generous personality that I've known from him online. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I think his attack was immature and illogical, he used leading photographs to make his point, and he misrepresented the groups ideas, but those are all signs of ignorance, ego, and immaturity, and nothing specifically evil. I don't think that anybody has managed to convince him to truly consider the possibility that he is wrong, his reality filters have stopped that from happening. I know that he is quite pro-Israel and we all know how powerful of a bias that can be. But if I want him to open his mind up to other possibilities, I'm never going to accomplish that by avoiding him and depriving myself of hanging out with all of the friends I've made on his server.
I sort of understood his perspective and know that the team here handled his attack with relative grace. Even though he authored an attack on this site that was "shouted" and supported by countless internet trolls, it is not the author himself who is the enemy but it's the ignorance and attitude which he perpetuated. He was just following his own nature. Based on his own values, he saw a weakness in something that he perceived as threatening to his own world view and he attacked it. I've told him directly that I think he's utterly wrong, but he just repeats, "No, they're crazy". Maybe one day I'll speak to him more at length about it, and he'll actually consider the possibility.
I'll call it as I see it. If political discussion arises, I will happily speak my mind about any situation. There's always the hope that something in his life will make him question what he thinks he knows. Maybe it will be me. Or maybe I'll be able to talk to him at a time when he isn't defending his sacred ideas and mocking and slandering those whose ideas challenge his own.
I don't subscribe to "Us vs. Them" mentality. Sometimes I'm pushed to it when I'm weakened by shocks, like finding out my favorite server's administrator slandered good people that I respect. But I'd rather exhaust all options in trying to come to an understanding with somebody before I give up on them, and as it is, there's still a lot of options.
One thing this has shown me is that somebody can really excel at one thing and be entirely wrong in another. That's only my opinion of course, but unlike Vir, I'm not going to be telling anybody to stay away from his ideas because he's nutty and dangerous. Instead, I'll just express my own.
Cheers,
Dave
One of my vices that I've had since childhood is entertainment addiction, and video games specifically. This is not what my story is about, but it is important to understand my situation. My favorite video game is called Counter-Strike. It's a multiplayer online "first person shooter" which basically means we all run around and shoot at each other with guns and grenades and such. In spite of the violent theme, I love the game because it constantly tests your alertness and control. It becomes a dance of moving your character as quickly as possible, dodging bullets and testing the defences of your enemy, all the while making precision shots and communicating positional information with your team for a common purpose. It's a game of self-control and cooperation.
I admit that the objectives and theme of the game are quite questionable. You play either as terrorists or counter-terrorists and this supports stereotypes that play perfectly into the hands of those who wish us to believe in the war on terror, which I don't. The "scenarios" themselves aren't the reason that I play the game. It's just a game and the theme is incidental. It could be clowns throwing mud pies at each other for all I care, so long as the gameplay was as precise.
One of my favorite servers online to play this game is called "Vir's Pub" run by somebody named Virellek. His server is quite popular, well maintained, and expertly modified by him personally from a standard server in very well balanced ways. "Vir" knows how to run a quality Counter-Strike server. His server has a website for forums and news, he has a voice-conferencing server for regulars so we can talk on our own voice channel. I've gotten to know a lot of people and play with them often through this server. I love to come home after a long day and play for an hour. For about a year, perhaps less, I've played on his server with a twinge in my brain telling me, "I know I've heard his name somewhere before".
I'm not just an average gamer of course. The fact that I consider this my most reliable source for real news tells you that much. In the past year, in an effort to do some good, I've been posting links to articles that I find to be the most important and which cut starkly through the lies on other social networking sites like Facebook. Many articles that I link come from Signs of the Times or a handful of other sites.
After posting a few SOTT articles to Facebook, one of my Counter-Strike friends pointed me to Virellek's smear article about the Signs team being a cult. She said "You might find this interesting", perhaps thinking that I would be woken up to the idea that I'm reading the lies of a cult. But she doesn't know Laura's work, and doesn't know the values espoused by the Signs team and QFS. I recognized Virellek's "editorial" for what it was immediately, a smear article with no basis in fact. My initial reaction was to write up a 10 page response before I realized that his article was almost two years old. Then, I remembered the Shoutwire controversy and attacks from two years ago and I put two and two together. Aha! And oh my...
It's hard to express the feeling of knowing that somebody I would often come home and play games with had viciously and unfairly attacked the site that I respect more than any other in the world. In the gaming world, we try to put contentious issues aside most of the time, but for a while it was too much for me.
For a while I left Vir's server, I sent the girl who had sent me the link to Vir's article a heated response about how ridiculous Vir's article was and that I probably wouldn't ever play there again. I felt he was an enemy, somebody not to be trusted, somebody to be avoided because his article was so ill-intentioned. I didn't want to accept using his server to have fun because he was the enemy and I didn't want to accept any gift from an enemy of the truth.
In the last few days I've read in more detail the forum responses of the Shoutwire situation. From what I've read, its been a learning experience about what to expect from a site like Shoutwire that encourages people to write things that will incite people's passions and reward people for following this model.
Virellek being in the position of administrator or editor of Shoutwire had the ability to post a front-page editorial. It really made me angry that he used this power to do such a thing. I think that he abused his power and that he should apologize, but how do you tell that to somebody who doesn't think he's wrong? My own anger has passed now. I've tried to square his attack with what I know of his personality and I'm pretty sure that he actually believes that he is protecting people and just taking some twisted creative license with it because it makes him look cool or just for shock value. Possibly he takes attacks on Israel very personally and seriously thinks that racist tendencies shape some of the ideas that are hypothesized here, and this justifies his own attack.
Though I completely disagree with his conclusions, from everything else that I've known of him, he's generally a good person who actually cares about the users of his server and tries to make the game fun for everybody. When people break the rules and show disrespect he pulls no punches and has banned dedicated regular players who tried to get around technical restrictions on his server, but otherwise he's responsible for his age and generally well-intentioned.
I now have a strange mix of feelings about him, but unless he bans me from his server for having different views, which I really doubt that he would, I'm not going to be avoiding his server any longer. I can no longer respect his political opinions or his writings, but being misled and warning people about a perceived danger is not a sin, even if your reasoning and methods are incorrect. If he has a specific agenda, it exists in parallel with the easy-going and generous personality that I've known from him online. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I think his attack was immature and illogical, he used leading photographs to make his point, and he misrepresented the groups ideas, but those are all signs of ignorance, ego, and immaturity, and nothing specifically evil. I don't think that anybody has managed to convince him to truly consider the possibility that he is wrong, his reality filters have stopped that from happening. I know that he is quite pro-Israel and we all know how powerful of a bias that can be. But if I want him to open his mind up to other possibilities, I'm never going to accomplish that by avoiding him and depriving myself of hanging out with all of the friends I've made on his server.
I sort of understood his perspective and know that the team here handled his attack with relative grace. Even though he authored an attack on this site that was "shouted" and supported by countless internet trolls, it is not the author himself who is the enemy but it's the ignorance and attitude which he perpetuated. He was just following his own nature. Based on his own values, he saw a weakness in something that he perceived as threatening to his own world view and he attacked it. I've told him directly that I think he's utterly wrong, but he just repeats, "No, they're crazy". Maybe one day I'll speak to him more at length about it, and he'll actually consider the possibility.
I'll call it as I see it. If political discussion arises, I will happily speak my mind about any situation. There's always the hope that something in his life will make him question what he thinks he knows. Maybe it will be me. Or maybe I'll be able to talk to him at a time when he isn't defending his sacred ideas and mocking and slandering those whose ideas challenge his own.
I don't subscribe to "Us vs. Them" mentality. Sometimes I'm pushed to it when I'm weakened by shocks, like finding out my favorite server's administrator slandered good people that I respect. But I'd rather exhaust all options in trying to come to an understanding with somebody before I give up on them, and as it is, there's still a lot of options.
One thing this has shown me is that somebody can really excel at one thing and be entirely wrong in another. That's only my opinion of course, but unlike Vir, I'm not going to be telling anybody to stay away from his ideas because he's nutty and dangerous. Instead, I'll just express my own.
Cheers,
Dave
