I'm writing this for absolutely no reasons of self-interest, but because I care about this forum. I was formerly known here under the username Transcix, but I was recently banned after participating in this thread. In this thread and on various other instances over the last few weeks I've spoken out critically about the ANUS/DLA metal organization. I think this thread is something of a culmination of various loud, insistent dissenting voices, mine having been a prominent one, and I think moreover this thread is a great success, finally breaking out the topic of ANUS/DLA's current and future evolution to a point where lots of people are getting involved in the conversation and recognizing that things could stand to be improved.
My criticism was harsh. I said:
Metal reviews are useless. Political and ideological causes are wastes of time with no hope of success. The majority of metal music will always suck. And at the end of the day I really have no fucking clue what DLA or ANUS stand for. I'm often sarcastic, but on these four points I'm very serious. Thoughts, comments?
Truly I was saying this to play the devil's advocate, to ilicite precisely the kind of response that ensued. For a website that takes pride in practicing philosphical rebellion and that even engages in trolling on other websites, you don't seem to take it well when it's directed at you. If life is like art which, as Marshall McLuhan puts it is anything you can get away with, then I'd say my criticism was successful in the thread it produced, it just happened to cost me my forum membership. It didn't destroy this website or (hopefully) give its owners and administrators pangs of emotional hurt, rather it engendered constructive discussion.
I thought forum members here should know the way I was banned. I was never informed of my ban via any channel of communication. I can still log on to the forum but when I try to use it I receive funny little messages, like when I try to see others' profiles I get "Many apologies, but you can't view just any profile" and when I try to view my own profile I get "Many apologies, but you can't view your own profile ", and of course I don't have permission to make new posts. Furthermore, I was never given any warning or instructed to adjust the way I behave on the forum. I seem to recall Scourge may have said something to me one time, but he didn't identify any specific areas of my behavior I needed to change and I took it to have been an insult more than anything else, and more recently I was actually encouraged to keep up the thoughtful posts in my PM correspondences with Conservationist.
The reason I liked posting on this forum was because you could be bold, you could be deviant, you could be smart, and others would be the same. What happened? The way I was banned was so unprofessional - to think of the time it took the admins to enter the forum settings that banned members would find silly messages, to think what was going through the admins' heads as they were configuring those settings. If any of you think this thread is going to yield fruit, recognize that you may have to try a little harder, because apparently the admins aren't very receptive to the ideas presented there. I'm not writing this to get a fucking apology, it's all business as far as I'm concerned--I'm writing this as a whistle blower.
I was also banned from the DLA chat room, which is funny because I was one of the only bright spots it seems in that chat room, in fact a member thanked me for getting him to think in chat about spiritual and occult things in a profound way that he hadn't considered since a very long time ago. I woud put the DLA chat room on almost the same level as the black metal chat room on Soulseek. What the fuck kind of culture is at DLA where people have enough time and energy to waste to talk about sodomy and fucking anal sex bullshit in the chat? Stop the fucking spam, I was really shocked because I was expecting much higher-level discourse there.
In many ways, I'm one of you. I value strength, honesty, aggressiveness, seriousness and dedication. I'm not a fucking whimp, but I do disagree with you on certain subjects, the difference is I've just been more vocal about it than other members have. From the ashes of this thread can rise many things, you said it yourself destruction is construction and make no mistake about it I mean by this thread to construct. You truly have nothing to fear from me, but you have much to fear from banning me and others like me in the manner that you do. I'm writing this to point out these things, which are symptoms, so that other members can hopefully work to fix the underlying problems. Of course feel free to give me back my account under the username 'Transcix', but that's not why I'm writing this.
It makes me rather incredulous that the admins think they have anything to fear from me, in terms of the integrity of this forum. On a purely logical level of logistics the fact that the admins failed to identify to me areas in which I should change my behavior, that they failed to engage in communication at all, this signals to me not some secret plot or secret agenda at work, but plain incompetence.
PS Don't delete this message admins I'll just post it back again, and it will waste both our time.