The End of an Era

Hello Manifestites! I hope this posting finds you in good health and all that crap. There's a matter that has come up that I feel I need to explain in a little further detail, and what better place than the blog to explain it.

As you may or may not know, I've been a member of the usenet group rec.gambling.poker (RGP) for the past 5 years. I lurked for about 6 months before posting and posted for the first time in late 2004. I originally started reading it for the poker theory and eventually became part of the community that is RGP. There was a time when RGP had it all, good poker discussion, good people, a good feeling of community, a regular online home game, etc. However, over the years it's deteriorated to place that is full of people who can't/don't know how to discuss poker, a slew of political discussions that I don't get involved in, and people who literally can't stand each other yet spend all day posting back and forth, bitching at each other like a bunch of old ladies.

Over the past 2-3 years I've turned RGP from a place of knowledge to my own personal sandbox. I love watching idiots frolic in their own stupidity, and there was no better place to do this than RGP. It didn't even take much, a well-timed post here or there, a tangent, threadjack, all out troll, or just nudging certain people in the right direction. It was great to sit back and watch the fireworks for a while, but lately it's become just flat out boring.

Now, let me tell you another story. There was a poster who won't be named, but as a hint, used to be "the voice" of poker back in the day, whatever day that was. He had been in and out of some life trouble, but late 2008 he spent a considerable amount of time on RGP. Several times he posted a woe is me story and actually got people to send him money both in loans and via flat out charity. There were several RGP home games set up on Stars, and he would literally beg for money to play in them, asking either for loans or stakes, promising to pay back 50% if he won, which naturally he never did.

On November 22nd, 2008, he asked to borrow money from a good friend of mine, FellKnight. Fell loaned him $22 to play in 4 $5.50 RGP games, and Mr. Voice told him he would be paid back within a few days, or earlier if he cashed. Naturally, he didn't. Fell decided to let him parlay the money into a few double or nothing football bets, because Mr. Voice assured him that he would pay back, and somehow the sum became $84 (although the nits on RGP have spent considerable time arguing whether it should be $84 or $88. Who cares.) Still, not earth shattering money by any means, but also not an amount that someone would just brush off. After all, there's a reason for betting actual money, and there's a reason there's a term called a gentleman's bet.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Mr. Voice failed to pay Fell back. He made a near record number of excuses, kept promising a date to pay back, and kept falling through. Fell bugged him for a while but knew that it was probably a pointless venture and that based on the ever increasing woe is me messages begging for money that Mr. Voice posted on RGP, it became pretty obvious that the money was lost.

Back in August, Mr. Voice posted a brag post on his facebook account about how he bought a brand new big screen TV and only spent $150 on it. I decided to troll the shit out of him on RGP, so I posted a congrats message to him on the TV and that if he can afford that he must have paid Fell back already. Mr. Voice told me that in no certain terms was I to get involved, and even went to say that Fell never asked me to post anything on RGP. This is true, but on the other hand, Fell at that point would have said nearly anything in email to get Mr. Voice to pay up so he could be done with him.

Sometime after all of this I started thinking of a decent way to leave RGP. I was becoming increasingly bored with the vast number of true idiots there, the ones who refuse to let an argument die unless they get the last word in, no matter how wrong they've been proven, the ones who USE ALL CAPS AND RANDOM !! EXCLAMATION !! MARKS !! and open up dozens of different threads, changing the fucking subject line all over the place to the point where you can't even follow their discussions, to the complete nitfucks who offer such bad poker advice you wonder if they've ever won a session of poker in their lives without having the deck run them over. I still enjoyed trolling the everloving shit out of those idiots, but I knew my days were numbered and it was just a matter of time before I closed it down never to open it again.

Sometime in late October/early November I was on an AIM chat with Fell and in a fit of drunken irritation he tried to post a message calling out Mr. Voice as welching on the bet. He failed miserably in posting, but told me that he would post something on the 1 year anniversary of the original loan, if I reminded him. Bam, plan set in motion. I knew exactly what I was going to do, knew who the targets were, and knew that it would create the perfect moment of chaos for my exit and the big GFY to RGP that it's deserved for so many years.

Naturally I completely forgot on 11/22/09 to remind Fell, but I did remember the next day, so on 11/23, Fell posted the glorious "Mr. Voice is a welch" thread. It took 24 minutes for the fireworks to start flying, and by the time I got to the thread I was so amazed at the completely ridiculous comments that were made that I just sat back and laughed my ass off. Then the fun began. It seems the popular choice by the RGP old guard was to defend their friend and say that because he's fallen on hard times that the debt should be completely forgotten. They then turned on me and that's when it became more fun. I NEVER once posted anything about Mr. Voice's condition, medical, emotional or otherwise, except for the fact that he couldn't pay back a debt of less than $100 in a damn year. Instead I attacked those who attacked me.

The best part was when RGP's own village idiot K9way showed up. He has pissed all over RGP spouting the most ridiculous nonsense anyone has ready for the past 3 years, and just never knows when to quit. The only people who don't think he's a true moron are the true morons themselves, and it seems Mr. doggystyle took it upon himself to start flat out making shit up about what I'd posted in the thread. It didn't take long for the game of fetch to commence, and within about 5 posts I had doggy chasing his tail so fast I'm surprised he could sit up straight. I kept this up, posting little tidbits here and there, and then on 11/25 I stopped posting altogether. The thread took a life of its own, and based on the last count I've been told the thread seems to have finally stalled at 213 messages. Howard Beale, eat your heart out!

However, apparently some of these idiots, Mr. doggystyle being one of them, think that they "ran me out" of RGP. First of all, the thought of someone I've never met running me out of an online newsgroup that anyone can post to from anywhere is completely ridiculous. Apparently the timing on my last post and when Mr. Voice actually showed up in the thread was too coincidental for some. I just happened to stop posting before he showed up.

Anyway, I'll end this by saying that no, none of you idiots on RGP ran me out of anything. I made the decision to leave RGP months before that, but had to wait for the right opportunity. The right opportunity presented itself weeks before that thread even existed, and everything went according to plan.

So what next? Well, I won't completely break ties from RGP. I have friends that I met through RGP and I will still talk to them obviously. I'm still available via email at xaqmorphy@donkeymanifesto.com, still on AIM as XaQ Morphy and I'll probably still post a message there whenever I post a new blog thread, depending on how often I decide to post. I just wanted to clear up this little matter of the morons who think I was run off of anything. That still cracks me up just thinking about it.

I actually made some progress towards the next posting of The List. It's taking a lot longer than I thought because of how many quotes I have for this installment. Maybe by Christmas? Maybe not. We'll see. Until next time.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy