Is STaxi more hated than this time last year? (Yes) (No) by DrSupey - Page 3 - TribalWar Forums
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LadYofDarknesS
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Old
41 - 06-22-2008, 07:24
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Meow meow sang the cat-playing fiddle,
Oink oink oink went piggy in the middle,
Grrr grrr grrr growled the dancing bear,
jumping up and down with his hands in the air.
Woof woof woof barked the juggling dog,
Croak croak croak croaked the jumping frog,
To wit to woo sang the wise owl who
could play the guitar and the banjo too
 
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SuicideTaxi
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Old
42 - 06-22-2008, 07:31
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1 was Johnny who lived by himself
2 was a rat who jumped on his shelf
3 was a cat who chased the rat
4 was a dog who came in and sat
5 was a turtle who bit the dog's tail
6 was a monkey who brought in the mail
7 a blackbird pecked poor Johnny's nose
8 was a tiger out selling old clothes
9 was a robber who took an old shoe
10 was a puzzle - what should Johnny do?

He stood on a chair and said "Here's what I'll do -
I'll start to count backwards
And when I am through
If this house isn't empty
I'll eat all of you!"

9 was the robber who left looking pale
8 was the tiger who chased him to jail
7 was the blackbird flew off to Havana
6 was the monkey who stole a banana
5 was the turtle who crawled off to bed
4 was the dog who slid home on a sled
3 was the cat who pounced on the rat
2 was the rat who left with the cat
1 was Johnny who lived by himself

And he liked it like that.
 
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LadYofDarknesS
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Old
43 - 06-22-2008, 07:32
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pure brilliance
 
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Dumpy Dooby
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Old
44 - 06-22-2008, 07:35
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Good thread.
 
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Dumpy Dooby
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Old
45 - 06-22-2008, 07:36
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I like eggs when I ride my bike,
I like ham when my name is mike,
I like them both in om-el-ettes,
I don't like them in fishing nets,
I like to wear them on my head,
I like to eat them in my shed,
I like them with a slice of cheese,
I like them cool at 2 degrees,
I do not like them in my pants,
I do not like them with red ants,
I will not shove them up my ass,
I do like ham and egg fart gas,
I will not put them in a box,
I will not eat them with a fox,
I stack them up in layers of six,
I eat them with my weetabix,
I shove them in my DVD,
I warm them in my cup of tea,
I throw them at the neighbour's cat,
I keep them hidden in my hat,
I eat them here, I eat them there,
I eat them ****ing anywhere.
 
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DrSupey
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Rayn
Old
46 - 06-22-2008, 07:42
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There once was a Taxi shaped fellow,
Whose belly was shaped just like jello,
Online was a thread,
On page one he said:
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, no-name."

Now friends you will probably see
That that line did not rhyme typically
But wait one line more
And find I assure
Another word that doesn't rhyme like it should if this was a poem that conformed to most people's standards of limericks
 
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SuicideTaxi
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Old
47 - 06-22-2008, 07:45
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There once was a ****** named Supey
Who ****ed dingos
So I stabbed him
The end.



Yes I think I like your form of poetry much better.
 
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hyung
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Old
48 - 06-22-2008, 07:45
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
The problem with people is, as usual, they take something good (like the concept of God) and abuse it to where they ruin the good of it.

The concept of "God" should be limited to the spiritual need of a "higher power", not the intellectual need of knowing "what it's all about".

Me personally, I believe in a higher power. But I'm not so arrogant as to put a name or a face on it, or assume that me or anyone else has the faintest ****ing clue of "what it's all about". I believe in simply a power, an energy greater than our puny selves, coursing through the universe, which we can turn to for inspiration, consolation, motivation, and peace of mind.

And that has precisely ****-all to do with science. The "higher power" that speaks to me spiritually and gives my soul strength doesn't tell me jack dick about the physics of the universe. It doesn't explain what cancer is. It doesn't help predict the weather, and it didn't create the periodic table. On the other hand, science has never consoled me after the death of someone I knew, or pulled me up from severe depression without the use of drugs, or made me flush with awe and happiness at simply being alive.


God and science have always existed harmoniously together. It's people and their own stupidity and arrogance that have caused them to clash. The truth is, nobody knows dick about what life is, or why the universe is here, or "what it's all about". Nobody. All anyone is doing is trying to fill in the blanks of our common ignorance.
 
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hyung
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Old
49 - 06-22-2008, 07:48
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi
Kind of a dramatic forum title, but it's true.

It's funny when you look back on certain things you've done and play over in your mind why things happened the way they did. Although there might be a thousand diferent events and decisions and moments that have directly effected where & who you are today, if you're any good at using hindsight you can often boil down all of those events to only a few critical things. In my case, when I look back on the events of my life for the past ten years, mIRC has played a critical role, and really - dramatic as it may sound - actually had a life-changing effect on me. Let me explain-

I've never liked computers. I grew up in the Commodore 64 era when computers were nothing more than a toy for "nerds" and "geeks". And they were boring toys, at that. (Not to mention expensive!) I had friends who were interested in them, but I couldnt be bothered. There were so many other things in the world that were more interesting. Hot rod cars, girls, art, music, sports, history, a whole catalog of things that caught my attention more than a screen full of goofy symbols ever would.

By the time I reached my mid-20's, computers had gotten out of the stone age and a "personal computer" actually began to become more common. I'd occasionally see my friend's computers and I noticed that the technology had certainly advanced since the Commodore 64 days, but there still wasn't anything there to really "interest" me in them. I would say things such as, "Well, maybe if I did my own accounting or ran a home office or something, I'd get one... other than that though, what use do I have for a computer?" Spending $2,000 or so dollars on something I really didn't need didnt seem like the brightest idea in the world, either.

Eventually I stumbled upon a pretty good deal for an IBM Thinkpad, and I didnt pass it up. What started off as an innocuous little item on the corner of my desk eventually wound sucking me into a world of fascination and excitement. I was a complete computer newbie, I didn't know any terminologies, I didn't know any references, I didn't even know what a "Windows" was. But fortunately my friend had an interest in computers ever since we were kids, and he ushered me along with patient explainations of what was what. One of the first things he did was install mIRC on my machine. "What is this?" I asked him, as I tried to read the mass of confusing text. "Oh it's cool man... you can type on your machine, and I can read it on mine." I thought about that for a second. "You mean I could ask you a question here at my house, and you can read it at your house? Like a letter?" My friend laughed, "No man, that's email. What this program does is live. Whatever you type I can instantly see it." "Wow!" I thought. "That kicks ass..."

After he installed it I immedately had about a thousand questions. "What does 'modes' mean?" and "What the hell is Ping? Pong???" I'm pretty quizzical by nature, always one to tinker and investigate and see why things work, and this new mIRC stuff took full advantage of that personality trait of mine, sucking me right in. Being so new to computers I immediately wanted to know, "Wow! How does it know how to do that?"

From there I began to absorb information on computers both through web sites and through one-on-one conversations with people in IRC. I prowled chat rooms when I was quizzical about something computer-related, finding some kind soul who was patient enough to explain the answers to my questions. I began to learn the components of a computer, the terminologies, the history behind them, and in general it interested me alot. It was a challenging hobby, something I did when I didnt have anything else to do. "Tinkering".

Along the way I of course stumbled onto the negative side to the internet too, meeting rude people, virii, exploits, and so on. The worst thing I came across was child pornography, most notably in IRC. I was a fixture on Undernet, and it absolutely horrified me to find child pornography channels rampant there. Sickened me. I filled me with the urge to do something about it, but it frustrated me because, after all, what would a newbie like myself be able to do about that?

Well, during one of our usual conversations, I mentioned my disgust to my friend and he passingly suggested I "dossattack them". I didnt know what that was. "Wuzzat?" I asked. He explained to me, in primitive terms, what a DoS attack was, and I was fascinated. I also knew such things were beyond my capability though. During the conversation, my friend did mention "scripting", and after he explained to me what the basis of scripting was, I began to understand a little more. "So THAT'S how people do that stuff I see in IRC???" It started to make sense to me.

I wound up getting a script and installing it, and after popping the hood on the Remote section, I was immediately fascinated. "Sweet Jesus" I thought to myself, "How the hell can all this chickenscratch mean anything?" I was pretty intimidated, but my natural curiosity got the best of me and I began to dissect the code bit by bit. I eventualy stumbled into #mIRC-Scripts and became a rapt pupil of DonDon and company, sucking up every bit of knowledge they could give me. For a guy who'd never done anything like that before, I felt like I was stumbling upon the secrets of the universe. I spent many frustrating nights learning the most rudimentary things, but I stuck with it and eventually began figuring things out on my own.

Eventually I wound up becoming fairly familiar with mIRC scripting and Windows in general. My disgust for the kiddyporn channels was still there too, so as I began to become proficient in computers I also began to look into the malicious side of them, figuring out ways to prevent those kiddyporn channels from operating. My revulsion to the abuse of such a cool thing as IRC really compelled me to wade through the frustation of learning networking, scripting, exploits, firewalls, hostmasks, peering, on and on a huge list of things that otherwise would have never gotten my attention in any way whatsoever. What started off as futile, laughable attempts at text-flooding kiddyporn channels on a dialup modem eventually graduated into full-blown warfare with elaborate scripting, floodbot networks, clone attacks, netsplit takeovers, a whole catalog of nasty tricks designed to make the use of those channels a miserable experience for anyone. My hobby had turned into a crusade.

Eventually though, the entire situation wore on me and depressed me. What started off as some well-intentioned vigilantism on my part turned into a depressing nightly fight against the dark side of humanity, and after a while, instead of being left with a feeling of "job well done", all I felt was the desire to throw my computer in the river. One day I disconnected my machines from the internet, shut them off, and left them off. I was finished. To hell with computers.

Some time later though, my same old friend told me about a cool video game he'd just picked up called "Tribes", saying I HAD to play it. It was so fun! I told him I wasnt interested and that I didnt even like those kinds of games to begin with. He swore up and down how much I would like it, but I still didnt take the bait. To my surprise though, the next morning at about 7:30 a.m., my friend was knocking on my door. I blearily got out of bed and answered it, and my friend marched into my room, sat down at my desk, and installed the game on my machine. Then he told me to meet him and the other guys in IRC later on and we would all play it. Grumbling, I crawled back into bed with an obligatory "Fine..."

Well he was right. The game was great, and we all began to meet on IRC to coordinate our playing. We played alot, almost every night after work, and in my usual inquisitive way, I began to figure out what made things work. I really got into hardware, learning what made computers faster, what ran the game better, what video cards were better, what in the end made me a better player. I used to laugh. I went from being a hot-rod car hobbyist to hot-rodding computers. All in the name of making Tribes run faster and smoother. As I got more into the game, I wound up competing on online gaming ladders and approaching it all like a "sport", wearing the war-ready mo****r of "SuicideTaxi". My team, like many others, would spend hours going over strats, practicing, writing scripts, doing all sorts of things to make us compete better. All in our spare time and in good fun, of course.

Eventually - on a pure whim - I said to myself, "Man, wouldnt it be cool to be able to watch the top games like we do on Monday Night Football? That would be fun." With that simple idea, I wound up putting together an internet radio organization called the Web Sports Broadcast Network, or WSBN. The organization put a "caster" inside the game servers observing a game in progress and announcing it play-by-play style to anyone listening. Also, through the use of IRC, it gave hundreds of people a common meeting ground where they could hang out, read the latest news on WSBN, boast and brag to each other, compare war stories, and generally have fun. With all the members of WSBN being scattered across the internet, we also needed a way to tie us all together and keep us on the same page. I brushed off my old scripting skills and fired up mIRC, and began to put together a "staff script" which interacted with our website, interacted with our central IRC bot, checked our staff emails, listed technical help, managed broadcast information, provided IRC security, stored & retrieved transient information like passwords, and generally became the main tool to run our organization.

WSBN gew into a fairly popular organization that eventually expanded into internet videocasting, live LAN event coverage, developer interviews, and all kinds of fun stuff. I wound up actually quitting my "real" job and working on WSBN full time, and through the 2 years I did it, I wound up travelling the country, meeting thousands of people, meeting a great girl, and moving to a different state. Through all of that was mIRC. It tied everything together and - through its basic communication ability and its advanced scripting capabilites - it kept everything from falling apart. Out of all of the software tools I've used through the years, none have been nearly as helpful as mIRC has. The dexterity of the program is just mind boggling. It's allowed me to do so much I never would have imagined was possible when I first saw it on my IBM ThinkPad all those years ago and asked, "What the hell is Ping? Pong! ?"


Thanks Khaled.
 
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hyung
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Old
50 - 06-22-2008, 07:49
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
I noticed something about myself lately that I just don't like.

Somewhere along the way I got sucked into this ****ty TW mentality where it's "fun" and acceptable to just run around pissing on each other all day long. (I mean let's face it... this ****ing forum is like being in a special-ed class, or a ****in "reformatory" for troubled kids or something.) And what's ****ed up is... even though I never got off on that whole TW insult festival and don't do it anywhere else, and even though my "real life" is like polar opposite of what occurs in the TW mental asylum... I've found myself sort of adopting this whole "e-persona" thing here on TribalWar where I'm this scathing, insulting, malicious cocksucker like 90 percent of the time.

And ya know what I realized?

It's ****in bull****.

This whole "e-persona" thing is nothing like me in my real life, and I don't carry on like this anywhere else on the Internet, and really, just like I said, what... 8 years ago?, sitting around insulting each other all day is just ****ing lame.

I don't know where I got sucked into that whole mentality exactly, but it's ****in dumb and I'm not doing it anymore.

So I guess what I'm gonna do is like... stick to normal, sane conversations... maybe put a bunch of people on ignore BadCRC-style... or else just not post at all.

Cuz ya know what I realize?

Life is too ****in short to be meanspirited to a bunch of idiots on the Internet that you don't even know.


----

Original post ^^

----

Edited post, because some people are so thick they need every detail spelled out for them:



Uhm

You missed the point completely, pookie

The point is - I don't give a ****

But somewhere along the way I started to waste my time even just responding to these goofs, (like around mid last year), and suddenly I realized hey, nice going idiot, you're doing the same dumb **** they do - acting like an idiot on an internet forum.

So... now I'm not.

Done deal. Not complicated.
 
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hyung
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Old
51 - 06-22-2008, 07:50
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
Nigga please


More like:


INGREDIENTS

1 tongue, planted in cheek
1 Taxi, uninterested in bantering with retards
1000 morons, trained to blow things out of proportion



Example - look at opgayo, bumping this thread from 2 weeks ago, following me around like a yelping puppy, begging me to pay attention to him, and going insane because I can't read a single thing he writes.

15 pages this thread made, all because I put half a dozen yelping puppies on ignore.

 
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hyung
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Old
52 - 06-22-2008, 07:51
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
I can almost understand gravity, but what blows my understanding is when I think of things orbiting each other. If masses attract each other via gravity, why doesnt the moon slam into the earth, or the earth slam into the Sun.

I totally don't grasp is why objects circle each other.
 
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LadYofDarknesS
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Old
53 - 06-22-2008, 07:52
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yeah that was pretty much pointless
 
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hyung
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Old
54 - 06-22-2008, 07:55
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
This thread is about MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE


ME ME ME ME ME ME ME


Please everyone, make yourself comfortable and talk all about me.


Thank you for coming, and thank you for your participation.



(This thread is officially endorsed by SuicideTaxi***8482;, all rights reserved)
 
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hyung
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Old
55 - 06-22-2008, 07:56
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
I think someone should quote everything I have ever written on TW in this thread so there will be a visual record of my greatness, quickly available for future generations of TWers.


Go.
 
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hyung
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Old
56 - 06-22-2008, 07:58
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi
Alot of people know me as the guy who runs WSBN. I've been a fairly "high profile" person for a few years now as the result of heading WSBN, and during those few years I've rolled through controversy after controversy, innovation after innovation, I've seen every change, growth, patch, event, and contest that's occurred in the T2 community and elsewhere. Along the way I've also gotten points of view from every direction imaginable, from the "casual gamer", the game developer, the hardcore competition player, older people, younger people, businessmen, and damned near everyone in between. Hell, I've even spoken to the non-gaming girlfriends, wives, moms and dads, and even a few husbands thrown in. Being "high profile" I guess invites people to talk to me in IRC and emails...

From the moment I got the idea to plug in a microphone and cast a Tribes 1 game to the public, I've been a "public figure", open to scrutiny, criticism, praise, and everything that goes along with it. What's funny to me is that I started all of this rather innocently. While I knew I was doing something in front of the public, it just seemed like something fun to do - something that would add to the competition scene and allow everyone to take part in the high-end competitive games. What I didn't expect, and what I don't think I was really prepared to handle, was being that "high profile" person and a public figure. That sounds pretty stupid I guess - here I was throwing myself at center stage but not expecting to become a "public figure" - but I really didn't expect everyone to look at me like that.

I really didn't expect the response that WSBN received either, it was amazing. People went bananas. I got so many PM's in IRC during my first cast that it crashed my mIRC. The #WSBN channel went from 4 people to over a hundred in less than 20 minutes, and it stayed that way ever since. I don't really think it was the actual cast itself that people liked so much, it was the fact that the T1 competition scene was hard core with a lot of really good gamers involved, and the concept of WSBN let everyone in on the big game. So in little under an hour, I went from being a regular gaming enthusiast to being one of the most well known people on the T1 scene, and in my naive stupidity I completely didn't expect that to happen. My intention and my focus was to put together the ability to internet cast big Tribes 1 games, and not to be some attention whore that everyone thinks is great cuz I stood in the spotlight and casted the competition. My motivation was the simple fact that I admired good players and good captains and good teams. That was it.

When I came up with the idea of "WSBN", I didnt have much resources or know-how to really get it done. I knew next to nothing about constructing a website, and whatever I did know about Internet casting I simply taught myself. I figured it out. Most of it was a mighty pain in the ass that took hours to figure out - everything was new back then, I had no guidebook to consult. But WSBN got a break after I wound up talking to Killa666 and Rasta from the vaunted T1 team, S3, the South Side Stoners. Rasta thought it was a great idea and offered up bandwidth and webspace for it, and the Triple 6 Killa offered to construct a website for it. WSBN was really born at that point, only as the "Worldwide Stoner Broadcast Network".

My intention all along was to keep the WSBN doors open to the public and allow other people the opportunity to do what I was doing. I put alot of effort into my casts, making sure all my equipment was tip-top, making sure all my MP3's were good and complete, basically putting the extra time to cover about a hundred little details that made WSBN something worth listening to. I figured anyone looking to get involved with WSBN was willing to go to the same lengths that I did to put on something good, and there was a LOT of people asking to join WSBN. Unfortunately though, most people who asked to join WSBN didn't know jack about computers, or else were really boring or annoying when you put a mic in front of them. Others who asked to join were great on the mic, but didn't have much technical know-how and often needed help. What wound up happening - much to my dismay and often frustration! - was that I found myself spending more and more time helping other people set up their equipment, or add things to the website, or teach myself how to configure one thing or another, it got to the point where I thought my head was going to explode. Between working a full time job, having a social life, playing T1, casting, and helping everyone else in WSBN, things began to feel like a litttttle too much effort was needed to do what I wanted to do. I shouldered the vast majority of the responsibility of WSBN. It showed.

I knew I had hit on a good thing with WSBN though. The public response was great, although most people sorta sat there with their hand out, wanting something for nothing, and not really stepping forward to help the fledgling organization. Those that did step forward to contribute oftentimes simply lacked the knowledge or skill needed to really shoulder the burden placed on me - the main dude, the technician, the manager, the coordinator. At one point I had to stop and look at WSBN and go, "Where the hell is all this going???" WSBN began to eat up more and more of my time, it was a tremendous effort to get it all to work right, and I had to question why the hell I was even bothering in the first place. Around this time people began to toy with the idea of "professional gaming", and with professional gaming you would of course need professional game casting. Many people were saying that WSBN was the first step in the evolution of professional gaming - that we were pioneers and so forth. I agreed to some extent, but I stopped short of agreeing when people thought that anyone talking into a cheap headset on a Winamp stream would ever wind up being anything "professional". I thought that what we were doing was certainly "cool", and I thought that eventually there would be a professional gamecasting organization somewhere, but I thought it was ridiculous to think that anyone at our level would even be alive when competition gaming reached the point of becoming a spectator sport. So I looked at WSBN as something nifty, and as a learning experience for myself technically, but other than that, I didn't think much more about it.

A while after WSBN started up we were approached by TribalWar.com and they expressed an interest in hosting WSBN's website. I was a fan of TribalWar before it was cool to be one, before anyone even knew who TribalWar was. At the time, the OGL forums was the place where teams conversed, compared, taunted, and talked, and the OGL ladder itself was the most popular gaming ladder - if anything for the simple reason that it was the only ladder around. It had somewhat of a monopoly on gaming, so of course it was the most popular. From the very beginning though, I hated the OGL ladder with a passion. My contempt for the ladder started with its crappy, crappy interface which often confused the hell out of my feeble brain, and my contempt grew as I began to compete in Tribes 1 and learned of really lame rules, really lame admin decisions, and the overall complete indifference that the admins appeared to have towards the teams playing on their ladder. But as much as I hated the OGL, I stayed there playing just like everybody else because it was the only real game in town. I was into competition, that's where the competition was, and that's where everybody stayed. But almost every week was a new dose of unmitigated lameness by either the OGL admins, or their lame malfunctioning software, or else their consistently down web server. The OGL forums eventually began to fill up with complaints againt the ladder itself - against the malfunctioning software, bonehead admins, crashing webserver, etc etc. Apparently the OGL admins - with typical arrogance - decided that free speech didn't meet their website criteria, so they initiated an outrageous censor-filter that edited out every curse word imaginable, deleted posts, and banned many users who were speaking their mind. Many of the banned users were simply criticizing the OGL in a non-profane way, but were still banned regardless of the words they chose. At this point my disdain for the OGL was beyond constraint, and I said so on their forums, and of course I got banned from there as well.

Around this time TribalWar appeared on the scene, really from out of nowhere. There wasn't much to TribalWar back in those days, but they had a pretty slick website and this guy, Imposter, who really dug up great news on the Tribes scene. There was always news on TribalWar, something new every day, and the Imposter guy was all over it. Plus they also had a forum in place, and best of all, it was unmoderated. You could go there and speak your mind. Along with some other guys from the T1 scene, we began to spread the word about TW, and we also began to carry on our conversations there - conversations that we couldn't have on the OGL forum any longer. Gradually the entire T1 competition scene from the OGL began to flock away from the OGL forums and to talk on the new TribalWar forums. Thanks to the OGL, TribalWar.com had a ready-made audience for their website, and I was one of the earliest and biggest proponents of Rayn, Ratorasniki, and Imposter.

So when I was approached to be hosted by TribalWar, I really had to mull over the decision. I liked the guys, I liked the site, and liked the idea, but at the same time I knew that I was playing with something completely new and different and something that might have alot of web potential on its own. Although I liked the idea, I got the feeling that I might be painting myself into a corner by joining forces with TribalWar. For starters, I didn't want WSBN to get locked into one game, it was always my intention to cover other games as well. That posed a goofy problem also because if WSBN was hosted by TribalWar.com - which was 100 percent a Tribes-related website - then what happened when we wanted to do other games? Would the OtherGame.com sites turn their nose up at us for being part of TribalWar? Would other gamers look upon us as just "stupid Tribes players" or something? What about creative control? Would someone from TribalWar try to step into WSBN and throw his weight around, simply because TW provided the bandwidth for us? There were alot of questions that I had to ask myself, and in the end, regretably, I had to decline their offer to host us. It seemed like a potential Pandora's Box of problems, and as much as I appreciated the offer, I had to say no.

That decision was one of the very few that I made for WSBN that I came to regret immensely.

Not long after I declined TW's offer they announced the "Tribes Shoutcast Network", which was basically a carbon copy of WSBN hosted by TribalWar. At this time, WSBN's main exposure to the Tribes scene was through TribalWar (TW being the center of the competition scene) and I saw bad, bad things on the horizon. With a competing network part of TribalWar, and with people in the competition scene being part of both WSBN and TW/TSN, I knew that eventually there would be a conflict. But, as I've always intended to do from the start, I kept WSBN completely impartial to things concerning teams and the new competing gamecast organization. From my point of view, it was an interwined gaming community, and it was our obligation to the community to be completely and totally impartial to everything that happens and to simply cast games in a completely impartial and non-problematic way. WSBN wasn't a competition team, and while it's easy for a competition team to be partial to one thing or another, as a casting organization I didn't see WSBN having that luxury. We were there simply as a portal of the community and our "opinions" didn't mean dick in the long run.

However, not everyone thought the same as I did. What started as a great new thing with the launch of WSBN slowly turned into something close to a nightmare with the launch of TSN. Not only were the TSN people proving to be rather unscrupulous in how they dealt with teams and people, but they were also officially part of TribalWar, the focal point of the competition scene. Problems with TSN started from the very beginning, when "MegaBoris" chose to remain in the WSBN staff channel under the pretense that he was part of WSBN, when his entire intention was to glean as much information from me as possible so he could take it to his friends Wonderdog and Beatstick, the originators of "TSN". To make matters worse, the long-standing grudges between top teams began to creep into WSBN as well.

What started off as a completely innocent and well-intentioned comment from me started one of the biggest and longest-running problems that affected WSBN. While on the air with Warwitch during a dual-cast of S3 vs Team 5150, (yes, WSBN was the first station to ever dual-cast a game), I was asked by Warwitch who I thought would be the victor. I was well-aware of 5150's playing skill, they had rocketed up the ladder undefeated and were considered a serious team, one to be reckoned with. However, S3 was a grizzled squad and the current #1 champions, a team who had "popped the cherry" of many contender teams. As honestly as I could say it, I said both teams were powerhouses and I really didn't know who was going to win, and then I added the critical line, "I dunno... I'm gonna have to root for the boys on the west coast and hope S3 pulls it out." (Or something very very close to that.) The game commenced, and a knock-down drag-out battle ensued with S3 eventually winning.

About a day or so later, all hell broke loose. I got a most curious email from "SmokingMan" from Team 5150, lamenting on how "biased" I was, blasting WSBN for what I said during my cast. Bewidlered, I immediately went to the WSBN staff channel and asked if anyone heard anything that could be construed as biased or innapropriate. Every single member of the staff said no, and agreed with me that SmokingMan's email was not only wrong, but almost insane. There was a huge discussion in the WSBN staff channel because Warwitch and I were bewildered that 5150 would be offended by something so petty. Everyone in the staff channel scratched their heads wondering, quite simply, what they hell are they tripping on? After a few hours of everyone talking amongst themselves and talking with 5150 and so forth, eventually it just boiled down to SmokingMan himself, who seemed to have taken offense for no reason whatsoever. At this point I passed the comment in the staff channel, "It's just SmokingMan, he's the main fruitypants." Not 30 seconds later I got a private IRC message from SmokingMan, and in the ensuing conversation he repasted me my exact comment, quoted from IRC: "It's just SmokingMan, he's the main fruitypants."

I was livid. The standing rule in WSBN was "what is said in the staff channel stays in the staff channel." Not only did someone break a cardinal organization rule, but whoever the idiot was probably just made the situation with 5150 a hundred times worse that it was 30 seconds before. With this in mind I went back to the staff channel and asked point blank who was repasting conversations to 5150. I knew that it was one of two people, either MegaBoris or Maelstrom, both of whom were familiar with 5150 and who I didn't know all that well. It turns out that it was MegaBoris, and being the spineless weasel that he is, he didn't admit to it like a man and instead denied it. At the time I couldn't prove it was either one, so I once again asked the guilty part to step forward and own up to it. Nobody did, both professed their innocence. SmokingMan was no help on the matter either, he wouldn't tell me who pasted him the info. So now, faced without much of an alternative, I gave the guilty party one last chance to own up to it, telling them both that unless the guilty party steps up and takes it like a man, I'm going to have to fire both Maelstrom and MegaBoris - and in the process fire an innocent guy. Again MegaBoris denied it. So after apologizing to both, (at the time I really didnt know which one of them did it, and I also didnt know just what a douchebag MegaBoris really was) after apologizing for having to do so, I kicked them both from WSBN. I simply was not going to have such a breech of trust and security involved in WSBN.

So now WSBN was slightly at odds with its friends TribalWar, and was at odds with 5150 for reasons that nobody really knew, and at odds with two of 5150's friends as well. I tried yet again to find out exactly what the problem was with 5150, but I was met with the strangest of silences, they wouldn't tell me anything. But it was difficult for me to be angry with 5150 because I knew that it was a misunderstanding of some sort, because I knew what I said on the air, I knew how many times I drilled it into the WSBN casters that they were no longer players and that they were casters, so therefore to cast impartially. What 5150 was accusing me of was the very opposite of what WSBN stood for, it had to be a misunderstanding... right?

But I couldn't get it resolved. Then it finally dawned on me that 5150 probably thought - due to the WSBN website being hosted by S3 - they probably thought that S3 had WSBN in their pocket. They may have even thought that me or anyone else in WSBN would help S3 cheat in some form or fashion when we observed their games. It finally occurred to me that it probably wasn't even about me, or WSBN, it was about 5150 and S3. That brought things into focus a little more, and also made me lose a ton of respect for Team 5150. In my opinion, they sure were being shortsighted, paranoid, and petty for such a "serious" team.

With TSN being a viable alternative to WSBN, Team 5150 chose to deny WSBN future game casts and granted only TSN permission. My opinion of the team lowered even further at this point, but it was so silly to begin with - and so unfounded - that I think I felt more amazement and bewilderment at this point more than actual anger. I decided against instigating the problem any further and simply asked my friends in NuTz and S3 to back WSBN up when the time came, and to tell 5150 to stop being such cocks about nothing. I asked my friends to either stand up for WSBN and tell 5150 to give equal time to the two networks, or else to deny TSN the right to cast the match. Fortunately, my friends in S3 and Nutz agreed, not so much as pro-WSBN I don't think but more as "****-5150". 5150 chose the "no cast" option, and the gaming public sat there wondering "Why isn't this being casted????" to which I had the simple answer, "File your complaints with 5150, we wanted to cast the match but they declined." This ridiculous pattern of network battling over matches would continue in a hundred different ways for over a year.

When it was discovered that it was in fact MegaBoris who had supplied the confidental (but flippant) remark I made, "It's SmokingMan, he's the main fruitypants", and thus making the ridiculous situation worse, the matter was compounded further when MegaBoris joined TSN immediately after my firing of him. Then it was learned that he was part of setting up TSN from the start, and - unlike what an honorable person would do - he chose to stay in the WSBN staff channel under the pretense of working with WSBN. The intention was to get as much information as possible since he didnt know how to do a dammned thing on his own, technically. So I personally felt like my pocket had been picked, although it was a very good lesson on honor and the Internet.

Combined with this there was also splitting camps dividing down the center - those who liked S3 and didnt like 5150, and those who liked 5150 and hated S3. Since WSBN had started with the help of S3, WSBN was thrown into the middle also, an unwitting victim of gamer egos. By this point, all of my good intentions with WSBN were being pissed on by people who had no interests outside of their own ridiculous egos, and I had a choice to make. Do I fight? It was an option - I can run a battle as well as anyone. Do I suck it up, turn the other cheek, and stick to my original goal of an impartial organization giving something positive to the scene? I chose the latter. When TSN began their ongoing shenanigans of pressuring teams to be "TSN only", I forbade anyone in WSBN from doing the same. If WSBN casted a team one week, we didn't put up a squawk when TSN wanted to cast them the next week. Although the TSN staff was ruthless when pressuring teams to be "TSN only", seemingly against all reason I forbade anyone in WSBN from doing the same. "Fight fire with fire!" was their rational reasoning, while "Two wrong don't make a right" was mine. My belief was that, eventually, the teams would tire of the nightmarish hassle of having a match casted every week, and that WSBN will be remembered as the organization that tried to keep things COOL and un-problematic. I reasoned that it wasn't worth trading our integrity for it, and to keep the WSBN influence positive, not ego-centric.

However, although the staff of WSBN knew that my intention was to keep WSBN's dignity intact, it was difficult to let the public know exactly what was going on behind the scenes. When I did speak out against the unscrupulous tactics used by TSN to pressure and harass teams, I was branded as a "troublemaker" and "instigator" by the TSN lackeys looking for acceptance. I fought quite a few forum battles with the TSN crowd and TSN staff, and it was usually over their outright lousy way of conducting business. My reasoning was that competition was competition, business was business, but even businesses have codes of conduct they adhere to. You dont stick a Macdonald's sign on Wendy's lawn, and Wendy's doesnt try to burn down Burger King's kitchen. I never tried to burn down TSN, but I damned sure would sit up on my roof with a shotgun late at night. A few times I had to put buckshot into a TSN llama...

A curious thing I noticed about the people who I came in contact with was who was vocal and who wasn't. When I did speak out with my observations about the casting situation, I would be called mistaken, or an instigator, or a self-serving liar, or even worse. It was utterly fascinating to me. Here were teams hating TSN for the bull**** they were making everyone go through week after week, and here I was getting reports all day long from everywhere as to just how lame a situation it had become, yet the TSN lackeys would blindly beat their drum and say I was "starting trouble" or lying, while the people who agreed with me the most stayed quiet. The majority of people who supported me and believed me, and knew that what I was saying was very much in fact accurate would rarely speak out in public about it. As much as they applauded my non-problematic approach to casting, they very rarely stepped forward to say "He's right". It's something that still puzzles me to this day. The people who supported me did so because I took a more positive approach to everything, and they, in their positivity, didnt want to get involved in forum fights and arguements and so avoided "getting involved". They would take the intiative to agree with me in emails and IRC, but most wouldn't stand up in public to do so. It's a puzzling Catch22 that I don't think I'll ever understand.

Around this time I began to look at TribalWar in a different light. What started as an open forum centered around competition had degenerated into having too many no-life losers whose only contribution to the world was how often and how inanely they posted to a forum. It took a long time for me to realize it, but I was having a contest of opinions with people who had no idea what they were talking about, but due to the TribalWar policy of "no censorship", whoever posted the loudest and the most insultingly got the most attention. Most of the arguements that I found myself in were devoid of reason and truth. Just like anything I guess, people given free reign to their minds can spin arguement after arguement about any subject whatsoever, while resolving absolutely nothing in the end. If I said the sun is pretty, anyone can come up with a hundred reasons as to why the sun is not, and the arguement could rage on for a week if the participants chose to do so, but in the end it would still be a goddamned nice, sunny day outside. That's how TribalWar began to feel. It was arguing for the sake of arguing it seemed, and I wasn't interested. I was entirely too busy with work and WSBN and this blonde chick I was seeing.

WSBN was eventually approached by GameLoft, an online gaming subsidiary of UbiSoft, the software publisher. GameLoft expressed interest in WSBN, stating that they liked what we were doing and were looking to help further it along. At this time WSBN needed any help it could get. At the risk of sounding egocentric, I'm going to say flat-out that I was pioneering almost every single feature that is now commonplace for gamecasting organizations. I was coaching the casters how to cast well, I was troubleshooting their equipment, I was devising new ways to cast, designing observer HuDs, designing the website, designing the IRC system, advertising, and also casting. And I was doing this all on a daily basis. Besides working a full time job, I would spend hours at night doing a million and one things for WSBN and helping the other people in WSBN. Unfortunately though, I began to cast less and less because I spent so much time doing everything else. To cast well, you need to have a clear head, not a detail-addled head with your finger in 900 pies. This fact began to trouble me because I started all this mess because I liked to cast. I didnt start WSBN to become "SuicideTaxi Station Manager", I started it to be SuicideTaxi, that guy who casts games like they do for the NFL. When GameLoft expressed interest in WSBN, I was at a crossroads, personally. I had put a TON of time and effort into WSBN, I had helped dozens of people learn to cast, I had come up with the majority of ideas for it, and here I was not doing the one thing I liked to do most - casting. GameLoft was of the opinion that WSBN was laying the groundwork for what would eventually become a mainstream, mass-appeal thing, so I had to dwell on it for a while. Was the rag-tag band of freaks that made up WSBN really doing something worthwhile?

It certainly seemed like I was doing the vast majority of the work involved, while everyone else was more interested in just casting. I rationalized that though, because to cast well, you shouldn't be worried about 100 other things, you should be able to pull up to a mic and be interested in the game, not the website, or the audio server, or whether the IRC system was malfunctioning, or why the recording won't upload, etc etc etc. I told GameLoft point blank that there was significant labor overhead to make something like WSBN even remotely "professional", and unless GameLoft was willing to invest in salaries to keep people focused on doing the work involved, I simply didn't see how WSBN could be anything more than what it was - an amatuer gaming organization. GameLoft however had big plans, and they assured me that eventually the time would come to where online gaming was a professional activity. I took this reassurance with a grain of salt - I'd heard it before but I still didn't see it on the horizon. GameLoft picked up on my skepticism and soon revealed to me their plan of partnership with the OGL and Teamplay, their plan of sponsorship for game casts, and of "exclusive broadcast rights to the two biggest gaming ladders on the Internet." It was an ambitious plan, and as much as I wanted to believe in it, it struck me as shortsighted, shallow, and unrealistic. How could they expect to generate sponsorship funds by casting amatuer gamers who are playing with software they purchased, on Internet connections that they were paying for, on game servers that they were providing? I tried not to show it, but I was, at the very best, completely skeptical. Not only did it seem an unrealistic expectation, but it struck me as morally wrong. But at the time GameLoft was the only major company expressing interest in what we were doing, so I decided to ride with it for a while. I agreed to let GameLoft host WSBN, but I declined signing anything and manouvered my way into having a foolproof way to bail out the GameLoft arrangement at any time. I would soon be very thankful for that foresight.

The loose arrangement between WSBN and GameLoft was that WSBN would strive to be as professional as possible in the hopes of furthering our organization. To me, this was a ridiculous expectation to ask since nobody in WSBN was a professional game announcer, or possessed a degree in communications, or were even interested in being any of the above. I certainly wanted professional gaming and professional gamecasting to become a reality, but the people involved in WSBN were simply amatuers involved in a recreational activity. We also had no website crew to speak of, and the little help we did get on the website was from people learning to do it. As such, our website was a mess, coded in five different languages and looking like the south end of a northbound hyena. As much I tried to push the "quality" issue to our casters, I was met with resistance because it was either beyond the person's ability or else beyond their budget. "Buy a new mic? Why?? What's wrong with the headset I've been using for the past two years??"

The stress began to take its toll on me and on the WSBN crew itself. I was pushing quality quality quality on people who had no concept of what professional quality really was. I was running around being the technical go-to guy for everyone, coaching new casters and showing them the ropes, fighting off TSN llamas on one side, and trying to meet GameLoft's expectations on the other. WSBN was struggling badly. I knew I had taken WSBN down the hard road when I declined hosting from TribalWar.com, but all we really needed was some contributing input from the rest of the WSBN staff. That input rarely came, and I thought I would burst at the seams. I have a terrible, terrible habit of, when faced with adversity, I push even harder. At some point you just gotta know when to give, and too often I have a problem reaching that point. At this time in WSBN it was one of those points - I should have just given up, I think. I was working on taking gaming to the "Next Level", but I'm not really sure how many other people were there with me trying to accomplish that. My inspiration, again, was the top-notch players and teams whom I admired. Maybe it's just my personal thing, but players who make the great shot or the wise decision on the field, and the teams that manage to pull together to beat their opponents, I love that stuff. I love to see it, to read about it, and to do it myself. That was my inspiration to keep hacking away at WSBN - I wanted to be the guy shining the spotlight on the people whose skills I respected. But now that I look at it, I was probably taking an unrealistic view of things. It was, after all, a video game, and although some people can do impressive and sometimes incredible things in that digital world, the majority of players are generally approaching it as "a pastime", a hobby. "Playing" rather than competing. (And then there are always the delusional egocentrics who swear that they are hard core and that they COMPETE DAMNIT, but then you see their demos or play them in a server and you have to roll your eyes...)

TribalWar was still the center of competition discussion, and growing. Imposter was still in a league by himself finding the best news stories, and they had also added a few more news posters as well. The forum traffic was astronomical, people would use it like most other people use IRC. Eventually GameLoft set their eyes on TribalWar as well, and it seems that Rayn and Co. were looking to break away from Zero-X's Gameshack. Not long after WSBN was hosted by GameLoft, TribalWar came aboard also. Although I was glad for Tribalwar itself, the situation with TSN puzzled me. GameLoft were now hosting two competing organizations, organizations with more bad blood than could ever be expected to disappear. "How did GameLoft plan on dealing with that situation?" I asked, to which I got a variety of unrealistic responses, such as "You two should just work together" and "It's no big deal." Although I tried to realistically explain that although I personally have been compromising and rational from the start, I didn't see anyone from TSN becoming so any time soon. My warnings went unheeded, and the daily wranglings with TSN continued unabated. Daily. Every day was something new, and it was usually problems with teams where Team A wanted WSBN, but Team B wanted TSN only and refused to compromise. Meanwhile, some members of Team B wanted WSBN also, so the team members would even be arguing amongst themselves! Arguing over who would cast their match! It was ridiculous, but it happened daily, spurred on by TSN's pressuring of teams not to compromise. WSBN would very often compromise - if we casted a team one week we would NOT cast them the next week, thus giving TSN the unfettered opportunity to cast them without hassle. However, the same courtesy was never, ever shown, and the cycle would continue.

You would think that I would have thrown my hands up at some point and said "This is too ridiculous for words, Im done with this...", but I only pushed harder. I pushed myself and pushed everyone in WSBN to do a better job. However, things began to happen that made things even more difficult. I began to get the sneaking suspicion that GameLoft was doing things to hamper WSBN. Although I tried everything within my dignity to compromise with TSN and its retarded staff, and although I tried to use GameLoft as mediators of disputes, I could tell that GameLoft really wasnt interested in helping WSBN or ending the long standing feud with TSN. WSBN was simply on its own, with just its website hosted by GameLoft. I can't say I blame GameLoft for that because WSBN was, at this point, quite simply struggling to be at the forefront of online gamecasting. Since Tribalwar got the most exposure to people, they also managed to scoop up most of the contributing members of the community. TSN benefitted from this greatly, because they also got a website out of the deal. WSBN had to do it all on its own, from website to casting to HuDs to IRC code, you name it. The Hard Road, to be sure. So with WSBN struggling like it was, it wouldnt have been surprising to me in the least if GameLoft was no longer interested, so I asked them, many times, to either help us or tell us that they weren't interested. They did neither. It's my suspicion that they knew of my ability to innovate and they either intended on keeping me around to absorb my innovations, or else have me jump ship and join TSN, or else they intended to slowly choke the life out of WSBN and destroy it as a competitor. Maybe even a combination of all three.

A curious incident occurred around this time, an incident that I think justified my previous statements that TSN were run by a bunch of honorless llamas who did nothing but spread misery. It was the pinnacle of competitive Tribes 1. Tribes 2 was slated to be released soon, and teams had been playing T1 for almost three years. Although the competition was fierce on the ladders, mostly everyone knew that the end was coming soon. There weren't many secrets left, all of the play innovations had been discovered, and in one night it all seemed to come to a head. Team 5150 was reigning the top of the ladder and had been so for months, having toppled S3 on their second attempt. S3 now resided at a quiet #2 spot, quietly biding their time until they could challenge 5150 again. When the moment arose, the match was slated to occur on the same day that S3 squared off against another superteam, Imperial Elite, for a final game on the Teamplay ladder. The three fiercest competitors that Tribes 1 had ever seen were going to be playing all on the same night, and I was making every effort to be sure that WSBN was going to be bringing it to the masses. But, of course, there were problems. Team 5150 was being difficult as usual, wanting TSN to cast the match, and Imperial Elite, which TSN co-founder Beatstick was a player for, were being somewhat difficult also. These two games were undoubtably the most hyped-up and looked forward-to Tribes 1 games ever played, and S3's Rasta wasn't buying the "TSN only" routine. Rasta, a long time friend of WSBN and generally rational person in general, agreed in the interest of fairness to allow TSN to cast one of the games, while WSBN was allowed to cast the other. The usual wranglings ensued in the days before the match, and everyone waited tensely to see how it all would be worked out. Eventually the arrangement came to TSN casting the first match against 5150, with WSBN casting the epic second match against Imperial Elite. But the night before the match, Rasta dropped a hydrogen bomb on the TribalWar forums, and in my eyes at least, exposed TSN's morally corrupt leaders.

S3's Rasta had one stipulation to TSN casting their match against 5150, and the stipulation was that since Wonderdog was slated to cast the match, and since Wonderdog lived near his fellow TSN staffer Beatstick, Wonderdog had to give strict assurances "on his honor" that Beatstick was not to observe the match over Wonderdog's shoulder - since Beatstick was scheduled to play against S3 later that evening in the Imperial Elite match. Rasta received all the assurances he needed to agree to the match, and he put his trust in Wonderdog that Beatstick would not be present during the cast. However, not long afterwards, S3 had apparently been tipped off by a TSN staff member that a conversation occurred indicating that Beatstick in fact was going to be present in the room during the cast. Logs were provided to S3, and Rasta was fit to be tied. He messaged me with the entire story, and all I could do was say "See, wtf you think I've been saying all this time..." I asked Rasta what he was going to do, and he said "Wait and see, I'm going to expose these *censored*".

Expose he did. In all of the forum posts I've read in my life, of all the contraversies I've seen come and go, I've never seen someone so hardcore owned on a forum in all my life. Rasta spelled it out from from to back, listing every nuance of detail, and even provided the logs of the exchange between Wonderdog and Beatstick. It was a humiliating post for TSN, but one that was well-deserved. Other people stepped forward to mention other moral wrongdoings done to them by TSN, and the post grew exponentially. TSN appeared to be ignoring the the contraversy, until finally someone stepped in at some point to post a quaint, hardly believable denial - the logged conversation was a joke between Wonderdog and Beatstick and wasn't meant seriously. TSN appeared to be trying to brush the entire situation off like it was meaningless, and at one point they described the affair as "a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing." Apparently it was much ado about a lot because Rasta refused to have TSN cast his team's match, and on this decision he was adamant. This of course brought more wranglings from Team 5150 and Beatstick's Imperial Elite, and Rasta audaciously repasted every log into the TribalWar forums for all to see. Readers were amazed at the pettiness and manipulation shown by TSN's upper management, and even though the entire situation may have very well have been what Wonderdog and Beatstick claimed it was - a joke - the horrible publicity that they received I thought was very well deserved. I felt justified. I wasn't such a drama queen after all! The things I tried to bring to public attention time and again - things I thought that were so, so wrong with the gaming scene - they had substance and Rasta was proving that.

In the end, WSBN wound up casting the 5150-S3 match, and it was an epic one. Hundreds of people tuned in as S3 regained their #1 spot on the OGL, and then an hour later beat Imperial Elite in the long-awaited Teamplay match. Then, suddenly, S3 abrubtly announced it was retiring from Tribes 1 competition and resigned from all of its ladders at the top of its game, coining the legendary phrase, "V-A-B, nothing left to prove."

It was the peak of the Tribes 1 competition scene, and WSBN was still there bringing it to the crowd. However, eventually it reached the point where I knew something was too rotten to continue with GameLoft. I had known that TSN had signed contractual agreements with them, I knew that GameLoft had invested alot of effort and time to hosting TribalWar, I knew that GameLoft had signed contractual agreements with the OGL, and all of that was pointing at one thing - sponsored, advertised gamecasting. Yet WSBN - the originators and innovators of all of it, and me, the guy who trained, set up, and coached most of the casters from obscurity to premier castmanship - we were getting the redhaired stepchild treatment from GameLoft. I knew that our days with them were numbered, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. The only things, and I mean the only things that WSBN had in it's corner was my opinion that their Master Plan would fail, and my diehard belief that WSBN was looking at things maturely and realistically while dealing with teams in a friendly manner - not using mafioso tactics in order to force teams to be casted by WSBN. I was dead certain that the friendly WSBN approach was the right way and I refused to waver from it. I thought that even if WSBN was eventually defeated and failed, that WSBN would go down with its dignity intact. I wanted "professional gamecasting" just as much as anyone else, but I knew it wouldnt happen by forcing it down people's throats. I held my faith that we were doing "the right thing" in the face of all odds.

I eventually came to the realization that I wasn't imagining the "red haired stepchild" treatment from GameLoft either, and I decided to bail out. At the time I had no viable alternative for a web host, but I decided to bite the bullet and hit the eject button on the whole situation anyway. Kind of like Gorbachev when he decided to dissolve the Soviet Union - he knew it was going to suck and bring hardship and chaos on everyone, but he also knew that such drastic change would eventually lead to a better future for his country. Well, I perestroika'd my ass right out of GameLoft despite their threats of "You leave and you're cutting your own throat". I found a temporary web host, and we set up conducting business as usual. It wasn't easy. Our retarded website was a mess and wouldn't function properly, and generally nothing would work right. I also discovered that GameLoft, not content to let sleeping dogs lie, were also putting their corporate pressure wherever they could to get other companies to deny hosting to WSBN. A most promising arrangement with GameSpy was nullified once GameLoft got wind of the deal and subsquently pressured GameSpy into cancelling the arrangement. WSBN actually had the domain nameservers pointed at GameSpy and the FTP accounts enabled when the plug was suddenly pulled. My emails to GameSpy went unanswered, but eventually a "friend on the inside" informed me that GameSpy had to pull the plug in order to appease their business parter, GameLoft.

Some time after all of this I was approached by two modest, straight speaking men, Scott England and Adam Vener, directors of this company called "HomeLAN". Upon first hearing about them, my first question was of course, "What the hell's a home lan?" I'd never heard of them before, what did they want? "Sockpuppet" and "Serpentius" expressed interest in hosting WSBN, and I looked into them. The were primarily a game server host, with news and forums and a giant gamer "Federation" as well. While browsing their website, I hit a dead stop when I saw a section for the "HomeLAN Broadcast Network". No way! - I thought - I ain't doing this again! I told the courteous gentlemen that I was in no way interested in getting involved in such an arrangement again. I'm sure I made quite a caricature of myself when dealing with the two, because - coming so close on the heels of the disasterous GameLoft arrangement and generally dealing with one backstabbing organization after another - I didn't trust these two corporate weasels as far as I could throw them. Funny thing though, they really didn't strike me as corporate weasels, but that's probably exactly why I thought they were corporate weasels - cuz they hid it so well. Okay, GameLoft made me paranoid!

After talking for a considerable amount of time about the future of gamecasting, about WSBN's past, about WSBN's expectations, and about WSBN's limitations, (something that GameLoft's delusions kept them from seeing), I began to realize that HomeLAN held the same principles that WSBN did. They were grounded in reality, but were hopeful and interested in the growth of Internet gamecasting. They also operated with honor and honesty, and although WSBN sure didn't share HomeLAN's puritan view on swear words, both organizations had a positive intent - making gaming better, and more fun.

With a new partnership intact, WSBN then hit the second stage of its life. A new website grew thanks to the tireless work of MadHatter, and new blood came into the crew. It was bright new day, and then all HELL broke loose.

GameLoft, much sooner than expected, made a bold announcement of the launch of the "GameLoft Broadcast Network", stating "exclusive rights" to the OGL ladder and a bold new step in online gaming. The new arrangement not only excluded WSBN - and as such excluded many many members of the competitive Tribes scene - but also put stipulations on players, stating that global chat spam was no longer permissible during casted games, and that no team on the OGL can refuse to be casted under penalty of suspension from the ladder. It also granted the OGL complete rights to team names, player names, and team logos. The news was met with a mixture of awe and horror, mostly horror. Nazi symbols were posted in every forum thread relating to the matter, and the entire community came out in droves to give a collective finger to GameLoft, to TSN, and the OGL. Server admins threatened to ban OGL matches on their servers, and players talked of dropping off the ladder completely. Meanwhile, I just sat back and watched. I knew that it wasn't any kind of pro-WSBN stance anyone was taking, their stance was simple outrage that a company such as GameLoft thought it could make a dollar off the game they bought, off of their playing skill, off of their bandwidth, and off of their time. GameLoft, falling into the usual corporate trap of underestimating the intelligence of their market, thought that the players were so insipidly dumb that they would jump up and down at the chance of being casted. Meanwhile, of course, GameLoft would sit back and run ads for Coca Cola or something while counting up the dollar signs.

Although I knew that most people were simply taking a stand for their own rights, there were also many influential members of WSBN and influential friends of WSBN who spread the word that GameLoft was not only trying to make a buck off the players, but were also causing divisions amongst the teams themselves. Worse than ever before, players who were fans and part of WSBN were deadlocked against their teammates who might be TSN. It was a ridiculous mess who's only cause was GameLoft's, OGL's, and TSN's stupidity and greed. And if the GameLoft/OGL announcement wasn't enough of a contraversy, TribalWar decided to drop a bomb of their own.

Later that evening, TribalWar announced that their long-awaited project "The Tribalwar Ladder" was ready to launch. In reality, the ladder wasn't even finished yet, but Triston and Polaris knew a good opportunity when they saw one, so they launched the ladder a little prematurely. For the first time, Tribes players were offered an alternative to the problem-plauged OGL and this announcement was met with cheers and praise by everyone, except of course GameLoft. GameLoft immediately put a gag order on the TribalWar staff, threatening everything from pulling their hosting to lawsuits, and demanded that the "TribalWar Ladder" be taken down. Triston and Polaris, who not only had been working on the ladder coding for months but also objected to the entire GameLoft arrangement, refused to back down and instead chose to leave TribalWar.com and start a completely independant ladder. They had only one slight problem - they had no webserver or bandwidth. Enter Team 5150's TheRedDread, who ran various webservers and gameservers. TheRedDread offered up a webserver, and the "Team Warfare League" was born.

WSBN helped launch the TWL by giving players the exact same thing they would get on the OGL, only with less headaches, less corruption, and less exploitation. I personally made every effort to preach the TWL gospel, just as I had done for TribalWar when they first started. I was truly elated that - for the first time - a viable alternative to the ineptness and corruption of the OGL was forming. It was like writing out the Declaration of Independence, only in relation to online gaming.

Now I was determined even more to raise the level of quality with WSBN. With two great new opportunities - our great partner HomeLAN and the new ladder TWL - I felt that WSBN could really stretch its wings and see what it could do. We had virtually unlimited bandwidth and almost unconditional support from the community. Plus, Tribes 2 was coming out soon, and Tribes 1 loaned itself so completely to gamecasting that it was assumed that Tribes 2 would do the same. I drove myself and the WSBN staff even harder to put on good casts, to improve our website features, and to generally make things as good as possible.

Once Tribes 2 was released, WSBN really hit its stride. The game, although somewhat of a letdown as a sequel, it loaned itself easily to casting. It also added a much great dimension of teamwork needed to get anything done and it was an interesting departure from the cowboy-like gameplay of most games. WSBN had great casters on the air, I had mastered video-casting, and WSBN even did some road shows during the summer at UVALAN3 and TribesCon3. Hell, we even had our own damned WSBNmobile to cruise around to LANs in. The details to make all this possible were tremendous, and I oftentimes got bogged down with technical details and helping others, but in the back of my head I never forgot the fact that this was all in preparation for the evenuality of the competition gaming scene becoming something more than part-time gamers - of becoming professional. Thanks to a funding paycheck provided by HomeLAN, I spent most of my time learning and investigating one technology after another, figuring out new ways of doing things, consuming knowledge at an incredible rate, getting myself as familiar as possible with online media. I also spent an incredible amount of time managing WSBN. Assigning this project to that guy, helping new casters get situated, writing up How-To's for the staff so I wouldnt have to explain everything in IRC, basically diving head-first into every facet of WSBN. The bar for new casters began to get higher and higher, the average guy with the crappy gaming mic and the one computer just wasn't up to par anymore. Most of the WSBN casters were equipped with real mics, hardware sound mixers, multiple computers, etc, and it showed. WSBN put on the best quality casts and they were fun to listen to.

I eventually wanted to put together a studio. My WSBN equipment had doubled and then quadrupled, and it was a far cry from the P166 I first ran shoutcast software from. I needed more space for all the equipment and I wanted the ability to host a permanent audio server with non-stop music and gaming content, plus the ability to video gamecast, plus the ability to do sound and video editing. Rasta eventually talked me into finally moving out west, and I trucked my entire life out to Reno Nevada and set up shop. From there I hit the ground running, and I built a custom studio from the ground up, complete with just about everything. My original intention was to videocast once a week, a gaming show on a Friday or Saturday with news, interviews, previews, and so on. Unfortunately tho, the day-to-day technicals of WSBN just about sapped my will to live and drained almost all my energy, so by the time the evening rolled around I was completely uninterested in casting anything. A caster needs a clear head, period. A caster who has been coding a script all day, or learning to edit video, or designing graphics or websites, a caster whose brain is exhausted at match time is quite simply a boring caster. More often than not I backed out of doing casts cuz I thought my brain would explode if I thought of one more thing.

Eventually I reached the same conclusion that HomeLAN reached about WSBN. There was no way for WSBN to become a financially self-supporting entity. There was entirely too much overhead needed to produce a product that had enough appeal to either get people to pay for, or else to sell advertising space on. It simply wasnt going to happen. I knew it and HomeLAN knew it, and the funding for WSBN stopped. At that point I decided to stop casting altogether. I had taken WSBN from a clueless guy on a P166 and expanded it to a 20+ member team of damned near professional ability gamecasters and staffers, I'd coached dozens of people who initially SUCKED at gamecasting and helped them become proficient, I'd helped spawn an entirely new gaming ladder with thousands of players on it, I'd travelled the country and been the guest of strangers, and I'd pioneered almost every gamecasting feature that people see today and take for granted. With HomeLAN dropping the funding for WSBN, I would never have the time to contiue developing it. So I backed out.

When all the dust had settled and when I looked around with a clear head, it's really really weird to see how things have progressed but really not progessed at all. In fact, online gaming in many ways has regressed. What started off as a pastime, a hobby, a game, for a brief time it accelerated rapidly into something very hardcore competitive, but then gradually simmered back down right where it started to begin with - a competitive pastime. Teams still make strats, players still show up for "practice", but it seems the old days of staying up all night practicing or throwing everything into your game is long gone. During the T1 days and during the first six months of Tribes 2, losing was not acceptable. When you lost, you were pissed. But nowadays, losing is no big deal, nobody seems to care too much. And I don't get that. It puts me at odds with today's players. Nowadays teams lose and they go to forums, shrug their shoulders, say "gg", and talk about something else. During the T1 days, when teams lost, you wouldn't see them for three days cuz they were either bummed or pissed off. If you did see them, their team was in a server practicing everything they did wrong to lose in the first place. I'm not saying it's bad or good, but if the teams are in it mostly "for fun" and really don't care if they lose, then - in my opinion - what's the point of casting them? "For fun"? I guess... but not me, someone else can cast for fun, I'm not interested.

Added to that, a new casting group pops up just about every week it seems, and the vast majority of their casters would never have gotten into WSBN or TSN even on their best day. But nobody seems to mind the poor casting quality though, and this too puts me at odds with everything. If the teams really don't care if they win or lose and the audience doesn't care what they listen to, then my time in this arena is finished. Combined with the release of Classic Tribes 2 - which I think completely ruined the game I loved - it's definitely time to get out of the whole scene. Online gaming is nowhere closer to becoming a mainstream event and the people involved in it are nowhere closer to becoming professional gamers than they were two years ago. It's still made up of people involved in a "pastime", and not made up of committed teams intent on beating the other team at all cost. Unfortunately, most gamers still have papers to write, reports to finish, children to make dinner for, dates to go on, projects to complete, and all the rest of the "real life" distractions that keep the teams at a "hobby" or "pastime" level. Yes, there are a few gamers out there with the budget, the lifestyle, and the ability to throw everything into becoming proficient players and to build proficient teams, but on the whole, teams are made up of average people distracted by a million other things in their lives.

So with all of this in mind, I think there are two ways that WSBN can go. One is to disappear completely and dismantle all of our hard work, or the other is to open up the doors of WSBN to more people and to change our expectations of quality. Although it saddens me (since WSBN really did set the standard of quality for a long time) WSBN needs to become more down-to-earth and realistic, and to lose it's illusions of "professional quality" casting. WSBN needs to return to the grassroots level that it started off as, to be more forgiving of mistakes, and to return to being a part of the gaming communities, and not something sitting on top of the gaming communities, looking down. So with that in mind, the doors to WSBN are now open to everyone. We have a pretty pimp system intact with a lot of bandwidth, and all of the casters who were turned down in the past by WSBN are welcome to re-apply. If you've ever thought about casting, give it a shot, the gaming scenes can definitely use you!

As for me, my computer time is spent more on video editing than gaming lately, and I've been getting more and more into the art of video production. I think that the UVALAN4 video will be my last big contribution to the gaming scene, and after that I'll just become a regular dude again, hanging out in IRC, keeping to myself, and playing SoF2 a couple of times a week. I don't want to manage WSBN anymore at all. "The thrill is gone" and all that stuff. I'm hoping that maybe, if my energy doesn't get zapped by all the crap that goes down in WSBN, I might even start casting some SoF2 CTF. Becoming just a regular caster again! Oh my.

I kind of got a raw deal on this WSBN stuff, really. Initially I just wanted to cast games, but the position of being a popular gamecaster and head of an organization put me at odds with alot of people. Since I spoke to and heard from so many different people, I had a different perspective of things than the average person did because I was privvy to more information, and this put me at odds with some people as well. I didn't see things as a player or a captain or a mapper or a modder anymore, I saw things as a spectator watching it all. An outsider, a fly-on-the-wall. It gave me a different perspective, to be sure.

Plus, I was working to make something professional quality, and that put me even more at odds with some people. My expectations were higher, the level of acceptance higher, the bar of quality higher. I had to knock heads with quite a few people over it, but in the end, the person who benefitted the most from my quality expectations was the audience. I refused to accept mediocre effort from people in WSBN, and more often than not, that's exactly what people were inclined to offer - mediocrity. So instead of being a regular guy who did his own thing and enjoyed his wonderful WSBN creation, I became the guy who was looking over everyone's shoulder saying, "Deliver quality. Exert yourself." Sometimes this didn't make me very popular, but it made WSBN the benchmark for quality casting.

So now it's full circle. The WSBN doors are open to the gaming communities and people are welcome to join up and apply. Nobody really runs WSBN anymore, so if you ever wanted to run an online gamecasting orgnization, step up and do that too! The doors are open, if you ever wanted to be a part of WSBN, now is the time to do so. I'm backing off my hold on WSBN and I'm content to be just the video editing guy.

I hope that this post puts things in perspective for alot of people, especially those people who I've knocked heads with over the years. I just simply didn't have the time or inclination to deal with petty things, I was too busy trying to push the quality and cause of gamecasting.
 
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57 - 06-22-2008, 07:59
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Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
Okay dude, I'll give you my entire theory -


For starters, let's go with the big picture first, then work down to the details.

Anyone with even the most fundamental education in history should know that governments - since the very beginning of civilization - have lied and manipulated their populace to serve their own means. From Egyptian pharaohs to Roman emperors to feudal kings, to presidents, prime ministers, and dictators, they have all at some point or another swayed the populace to do their bidding, with the sole objective of enriching their pockets, expanding their power, and solidifying their position. As case after historical case has been recorded, this fact is absolutely, utterly indisputable.

Secondly, wars have always been profitable. Wars have made rich men richer. Rome built an empire on the concept, all the way back to thousands of years ago. Not much has changed. Using just the United States as an example, war expanded this country's borders. War brought it out of a massive depression and cemented its spot as a world power. And new to this century, the logistics of waging war is extremely ****ing lucrative for those in what is now the arms INDUSTRY. (Yes, "industry". It's a business. A big business. In fact, it's the biggest business on earth.)

So if we mix these simple concepts around a little bit... just sorta let it swirl around in the noggin for a while... then add in the fact (and I mean F-A-C-T, not hearsay, not propaganda, not political slandering, fact) that the current American government has been funded, directly worked in, and stands to benefit greatly from the arms industry... it definitely raises some questions, doesn't it? But if all we had were "questions" though... we'd be doing a lot better than we really are, cuz we're past "questions". Hey go figure, we're actually in a war. A war that so far nobody can comprehensively explain why we're in it. In fact, there was never a comprehensive reason to begin with. First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when that didn't pan out, it was for "freedom". Then when everyone went "hey wait... our sons shouldn't have to die so some other country can be free", it got changed to "to fight terror". Then when it was proven that Iraq had zero to do with terrorism, it was changed to "to fight them over there rather than over here", whoever the **** "they" are, we aren't even sure of that even.

So that's an awfully puzzling and questionable chain of events, no? But it doesn't stop there. Anyone with a little time on their hands and a desire to know the truth can look into the histories behind the men who set us on this course to war - the Bush administration. Ain't it a shocker.... every single last one of them - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc, all of them are mired neck-deep in arms manufacturing, military logistics, and oil. Billions of dollars have been made by the companies closely tied to these people. War is a business.

So all things considered... I think there's enough circumstantial evidence and probable cause for any sensible, rational, and well-read human being to have a justifiable doubt as to the culpability of those who led us down this path. If one looks at the United States in September of 2001 with the eye of a historian, it becomes obvious that there was no reasonable justification for the massive American military anymore. The Cold War was over. Russia was no longer the threat it had been for 50+ years, and instead American money was funneling into Russia looking for massive economic returns. China, although technically a threat, was so co-dependent on the United States that war with China was less likely than war with the Moon. Although there were some "rouge countries" to contend with and minor wars, the United States had no justifiable reason for its massive military anymore. Fleets of submarines, a staggeringly expensive air force, a nuclear arsenal, battle groups of aircraft carriers, thousands of satellites, millions of soldiers.... human nature being what it is, it's no great leap to suspect that men who make billions of dollars off of that military didn't like the fact that they couldn't justify their billions anymore. Something needed to change. America needed an enemy.

Now this is where some people call me "crazy".

In our innocence, in the personification of our own morality, we recoil at the very thought of America or Americans being so diabolical as to intentionally start a war. Surely it couldn't happen here? This is America. We're "the good". We "fight the good fight". One nation under God. Land of the free and home of the brave. We would never support, let alone spawn a system that wages war for profit. Right?

Wrong.

We have.

Every single shred of factual reality points to it. Every action by the American government points to it. Everyone around the world sees it for what it is, and they hate us for it. The arms dealers in power have set this country back on its very lucrative war footing, while muzzling dissension, suspending civil liberties, throttling the press, and outright lying to the American people. And the key to all of that was 9-11.

The American temperament is, on the whole, a good-natured one. Most of us would rather **** than fight. We have fairly simple desires - a good home, some toys, and something flashy we can show off, be it a car, a woman, or a profession. After that, we're cool. We don't generally get into killing each other over principles, or religious beliefs, or ideologies. We'll argue until we're blue in the face, but all in all, the American temperament is a pretty good natured one. Until you piss us off. Once America gets riled up, stand the hell back because we'll rip off your head and **** down your neck.

This fact wasn't lost on those in power. In fact, many government policies revolved around knowing that only a "Pearl Harbor-like event" would be sufficient to rile the American people to arms again. They tried their proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam and the American people wouldn't stand for it. History has taught everyone that Americans will commit their sons and daughters to war, but adversely, Americans have no staying power whatsoever if the cause isn't justifiable. Kind of a ****ed up paradox isn't it? The world's greatest military power supported by a country who generally doesn't like war. Kind of funny if you think about it.

Those in power knew very well the American temperament and said so, plainly, in writing, and in public. But don't take my word for it, read for yourself. And if you think my "tinfoil hat" fear of the military-industrial complex is something new or unique, watch our country's own president warn us against the undue influence of it. Watch it. Think about what he's saying. Then weigh in the fact that he waited until he was leaving office before he addressed the issue. Why would he do that, I wonder? Perhaps the combined might of the arms dealers was so great that he knew that to buck the system while he was in office meant going to war against the very machinations of government. Perhaps he even feared for his life, knowing that for him - a decorated American war hero - to speak out against this new power, they would have no choice but to rally together to not only destroy him politically, but perhaps even physically. Eisenhower was no slouch, no stranger to war, armies, and politics. Yet he waited until he was leaving office to give one of the most hair-raisingly prophetic speeches ever uttered by a president. And not-so-coincidentally, does anyone remember what happened to the guy who came after him? That guy... what's his name... oh yea - Kennedy. The guy who tried to splinter the CIA and make it accountable to Congress. The guy who tried to pull out of Vietnam. The guy who pushed cooperation with the Soviets. The guy who clamped down on CIA-backed covert wars and coup de tats. The guy who got his ****ing brains blown out on national television. Is it any small coincidence that the guy who succeeded him was a Texan, funded by the same oil money and arms interests that fund the current administration, who reversed every one of Kennedy's directives on Vietnam, who awarded Brown & Root - the company that eventually became Haliburton - with lucrative war contracts in southeast Asia... does all of this honestly sound like some big cosmic coincidence? For ****s sake a team of Hollywood writers working around the clock couldn't come up with so many coincidences.

So with all that in mind, how ****ing far-fetched is it to slam a couple of planes into a couple of big buildings to freak everyone out, get everyone pissed off, and "Let's Roll" right into the next war? We've been driving robots on ****ing Mars for God's sake, we fly unmanned missions all over Afghanistan and Iraq every day.... is it really that far-fetched for anyone to fathom that a 767 can't be remotely flown into a building? But wait... "OH!!! THE HUMANITY!! WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING!!!" Jesus Christ.... how come the people who ask questions like that are always the ones who have done the least amount of historical reading? Governments and leaders have committed millions to death without batting an eyelash. That's what rulers do. Be it "enemy" or their own populace, leaders commit people to their deaths. It's a ****ing occupational requirement. Why is it so difficult for people to accept this? Cuz this is "America"? Cuz "we" would never do such a thing?



I'm sick of typing. If people won't clear the **** out of their eyes by now then they never will.

The government did it. Cope.
 
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hyung
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Old
58 - 06-22-2008, 08:02
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Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post
Hiya ayz!

Seeya ayz.




Good group here eh:

0mets0
assfrags
ayz
FuFu
Glare
hubble

Jislan
m00ky
naptown
nigafool
opsayo
Ztir
 
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SuicideTaxi
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Old
59 - 06-22-2008, 08:04
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Hey look, it's the immature, rampaging retard begging for attention again.


Still haven't gotten over your crush on me yet, eh
 
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Old
60 - 06-22-2008, 08:08
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Originally Posted by SuicideTaxi View Post

INGREDIENTS

1 tongue, planted in cheek
1 Taxi, uninterested in bantering with retards
1000 morons, trained to blow things out of proportion
That's actually a funny one. Where did you read that taxi?
 
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