The original post can be viewed here.
Open letter to Bud Helms: Don’t pretend you know me. You don’t and I don’t know you. You’ve labelled me a troll, so I label you a dinosaur. At his point, I will respond to your sad commentary, the commentary you slammed the door shut on, in what would have been a colorful, though-provoking thread full of reasoned discourse.
This week, Smoke & Thunder has been intentionally making a fool of itself and trolling a few gun blogs such as xxxxx, xxxxxx, and xxxxxxx to prove a point…
Dinosaur Bud: Wow.
Smoke & Thunder Admin: I see you are surprised.
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Why, you ask, does Smoke & Thunder feel strongly that many gun blogs and gun websites are a powerful deterrent to gun ownership? That’s an easy question to answer… because many newbies and young people simply can’t help but to think that if they purchase a gun, they’ll end up like xxxxx and many (but not all) of the rock-star gun bloggers and snarky gun blog commenters out there. So, … I am a person with a new interest in the world of firearms, but if I buy a gun, I think I will end up like xxxxx.
Dinosaur Bud: Where in the world did you get that idea?
Smoke & Thunder Admin: You’d know if you bothered to read an article or two on the front page of Smoke & Thunder before you went off half-cocked and decided to play poor-mans judge, jury, and executioner.
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He or she is presented with complex gun reviews, technical jargon, political rants, survivalist scribblings, 2nd Amendment screeching, and the same kind of hate and disdain for the anti-gun crowd as the anti-gun crowd has for gun people. Throw in the endless snarky comments and the glaring lack of a true social networking platform for gun people and guess what? The potential gun owner takes a deep breath, pushes the keyboard back, and decides to forego buying a gun, lest he or she become another stereotypical gun owner owner, whatever that stereotype may be.
Dinosaur Bud: Complex gun reviews are valuable. Technical jargon is something you simply have to learn, as with any complex topic. Hate is an overused word these days. Disdain is accurate and it is reciprocated, in defense. But Screeching? Snark? A glaring lack of a true social networking platform for gun people? So what? Gun boards ARE social networks, they just aren’t wired with a desktop and interconnections like Facebook or Twitter.
Smoke & Thunder Admin: Bud, you ought to retire. Complex gun reviews are valuable to fanatics, not the average Joe or Julianne. You have lost the ability to see through the eyes of someone other than yourself, if you ever had it to begin with. Newbies are routinely intimidated by as one fool put it “the highly insular online gun community”. Newbies are, more often than you think, turned off by the political rants and borderline hate purveyed on so many gun blogs. Technical jargon is only valuable to your Q&A forum. It means nothing to the average newbie or the casual gun owner. Yes, I just said casual gun owner. One that keeps a piece to defend himself or herself put could NOT CARE LESS about open-bolt vs. closed bolt, ballistic coefficients, or 1:10 left hand twist. And no… sorry Bud, Q&A forums are not true social networks. Put all of the Q&A in the back seat on TFL and put the individual users in the front seat of TFL and your stone age message board would be on life support within a few days. If your message board was really a social network, the front page would be covered with user profiles and their activity, not covered in the Q&A it is so absolutely dependent on.
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Smoke & Thunder aims to create a space where confusing technical jargon about guns and stereotypes about gun people don’t exist, or is at least, easy to minimize and avoid.
You seem to equate snarkiness, technical jargon and stereotyping, as if they are all equally undesirable. My conclusion is that you are looking for a social network to your liking, and strive to limit it to an interest area. One of the reasons for the success of the most popular social networking sites is that they don’t do that. They are not topic-limited. They are social networks. Period.
Dinosaur Bud: As for the disdain you express for technical jargon, confusing or not, that is due to your ability, interest, willingness and time to learn. That’s part of the deal. When a newbie comes into the world of firearms, they, by their own choices and abilities, become users at different levels. You may or may not be interested in every little mechanical detail of how your particular gun works, but that is your choice, according to your interest or ability to understand. Technical jargon is not something that should be associated with bad behavior or bad attitude, such as snarkiness or stereotyping.
Smoke & Thunder Admin: I was a little drunk when I wrote that one, but the message is still on target. No heavy Q&A dominating the pages of Smoke & Thunder. Too damn technical for the aforementioned casual gun owner. If they want heavy Q&A they’ll go to your narrow, non-social network. If they want real social networking like the “wired with a desktop and interconnections like Facebook or Twitter” that you mentioned they will come here. You and your dinosaur Q&A format caters primarily to old men and gun fanatics… I cater to nobody and welcome everybody, but I certainly welcome old men and fanatics. One thing is for sure bud, the typical teen takes one look at your 90s style message board and they click “back”.
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The parody and trolling will end shortly, once Smoke & Thunder has finished researching what it already knows about the gun blogoshpere, makes a few friends, and moves on to further site development.
Dinosaur Bud: Well, that’s comforting.
FAIL.
Smoke & Thunder Admin: That’s comforting, especially coming from someone running a 90s style dinosaur Q&A format with zero face appeal to anyone under 40. The success of my format is assured.
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Dinosaur Bud: You have established yourself as a troll in public. You have reinforced that claim by action. Then you launch a campaign to deny that you are really a troll but that you only used that behavior to get attention for the launch of your new social networking site. That is nevertheless, trolling. It is not research.
I predict you will have little success with this method of trolling the gun boards, then claiming it is only to prove a point. Your reasoning is faulty and your methods are offensive.
Good luck with your social networking idea, but I don’t look for it to go IPO any time soon.
We don’t tolerate trolls here. This is the deep end of the pool.
Smoke & Thunder Admin: Ummmm okay. I’m sure your 90s-style message board followers are shaking their heads in agreement and worshipping at the altar of TFL. The “online gun community” needs an enema of epic proportions. It has needed one for years. You and your kind have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to appeal to the younger generation (i.e. the people who are the future of gun ownership in America). The bloggers are nearly as bad as TFL and similar message boards in that regard. It’s sad that while every other niche community has progressed relatively in line with the younger generation, the “online gun community” has been stuck in neutral every since Al Gore invented the internet. Bud, when is the last time you had an original thought? At least one that didn’t revolve around rotating bolts and tightly-toleranced elliptical gas piston rings? Sad. FAIL YOU.
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