Opinion of the Dropouts: MT Treasurer

[Thunder98 🇮🇱 🤝 🇵🇸]

He is "leaving" atlas for good apparently.

As a poster, he is an HP imo due to his over the top 💩 posting and making the Congressional boards quite unreadable and deleting his pre-election prediction posts when he is wrong.

-snip-

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

FF

[S019]

Obvious FF and the people who drove him away are hypocritical losers given they literally worship virulently bigoted s--tposters like olawakandi, because he's funny nice guy FF, yet they hate memes and IndyRep was not virulently bigoted or a s---poster and many times did provide quality analysis (don't let the hypocritical losers know that though). What happened to him is no different than what happened to Calthrina, this forum very clearly has a bullying problem. Also the people who drove him off are now HPs in my book, they've now driven off two posters, so I hope they're happy with themselves.

[If my soul was made of stone]

He could be very insightful when he wanted to be, but spent far too much time mocking foolhardy strawmen that hardly existed and acting like he was the only one with worthwhile takes.

[Donerail]

they hate memes

No one hates memes, they hate IndyRep's memes. Which were mostly never funny, and he took the time to bash the few that were into the ground until they weren't funny either. There's a place for funny content on this website — lord knows not every post I make is "serious" — but if you want to do that you have to actually be funny sometimes. Spamming the same stale, unfunny posts is the opposite of that.

[Esteemed Jimmy]

FF

[PSOL]

Meh

[Former President tack50]

they hate memes

No one hates memes, they hate IndyRep's memes. Which were mostly never funny, and he took the time to bash the few that were into the ground until they weren't funny either. There's a place for funny content on this website — lord knows not every post I make is "serious" — but if you want to do that you have to actually be funny sometimes. Spamming the same stale, unfunny posts is the opposite of that.

It is always worth noting that humor is subjective. One man's funny meme is another man's cringe and horrible post. What you may find funny others will find annoying (Olawakandi is a decent-ish example of this, enjoying probably majority support on the site, but there is a sizeable minority who find him dumb and annoying)

In any case MT Treasurer's fault wasn't the humor per se but rather not knowing when to stop in time and driving the joke to the ground.

[Illiniwek]

This is how the angry NH women win.

RIP FF

[Mr. Smith]

Oh yeah, him

~shrugs~

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

they hate memes

No one hates memes, they hate IndyRep's memes. Which were mostly never funny, and he took the time to bash the few that were into the ground until they weren't funny either. There's a place for funny content on this website — lord knows not every post I make is "serious" — but if you want to do that you have to actually be funny sometimes. Spamming the same stale, unfunny posts is the opposite of that.

Also his memes had a tendency to derail actually serious threads and drown good discussion. You can probably blame the copycats more than him, but a couple threads with serious intent became unreadable due to this.

[Virginiá]

Did anyone really drive him away? I took it as people getting more annoyed with the constant memeing and he decided to leave instead of dialing it back. I don't know that I would characterize it as being "driven away," but then again maybe there have been some tense discussions I've missed.

He's an alright user and I'm sad to see him go.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is how the angry NH women win.

RIP FF

Climbing Maggie

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Forgot that he was responsible for "angry NH women". I liked him overall, but I'll admit that was not very funny.

[TDAS04]

FF on balance.

[7,052,770]

A better than average predictor of elections here - he deserves credit for that.

[AGA]

FF, but he'll probably come back eventually.

[TML]

He does have a somewhat right-leaning bias, but he does have a good grasp of politics in his home state of Montana. For example, his post on key county benchmarks for Election Night returns allowed me to sense which candidates were on track to win the state as soon as the first few counties reported early returns, long before the races were officially called by most media outlets. That’s the part I’ll miss the most from him.

[Utah Neolib]

FF. Great memes, and has interesting takes. Obviously can be over the top, but FF. Sad to hear he’s leaving the site

[Chips]

FF.

[Skunk]

I've certainly made my feelings about his posts known and in retrospect I may have been a little too harsh on him. If he decides to come back and chills on the strawman arguments disguised as memes then he'd probably be an above average poster.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To elaborate on what was so annoying about his memeing: He posted in his farewell post defending that it wasn't a strawman, but even per his own explanation it wasn't an accurate summary of anyone's actual takes. The pattern would usually go like this: Someone makes a fairly out there or fairly uninformed take, him and the other crew who did so would seize on it and make a meme mocking it, and then for the sake of irony and supposed humor greatly exaggerate it, and then start mocking that exaggerated version. Maybe not exactly a strawman, but not very intellectually honest either. It's actually kind of like how when QAnoners would cite some obscure federal law as proof that Trump was going to overturn the election results or return to the White House and then you read it what it's referring to and there's a kernel of truth at its core but their interpretation and everything else surrounding is complete laughable bullsh!t.

But what made it extremely annoying is that the memes would then grow so far beyond the original post that they would start to develop "spin-offs" of sorts and mock related things using the same terminology and whatnot, even if not one ever claimed that. Like this whole most recent one of Abby Finkenauer being some sort of populist queen...I don't recall anyone ever saying that, or anything beyond that she was a competent candidate who was able to get a victory in a very favorable year but couldn't replicate that against a strong opponent in a year with heavy coattails against her. But that's a pretty dull take, so they decided to construct this narrative out of existing "populist" memes. It's a lot like that joke about half of discourse on Twitter is coming up with some person in your head that you've never actually encountered anyone like but theoretically could exist, and then getting angry that this hypothetical person might actually exist somewhere without ever meeting someone like that. It's the same exact same thing, except for political takes.

It gets even more annoying when you consider that often the original take wasn't even made by a prominent or regular poster but one of those types who pops up around election time and then vanishes after the election (I know that Young Kim's homophobia meme dates back to a post from a poster that has literally something like 12 posts total), or sometimes not even on the forum at all but a line from an op-ed or blog entry or something (like that "Bipartisan Bills" thing he was absolutely obsessed with for a couple weeks) and often countered with that beyond irritating habit of themed display names/avatars/signatures to represent this totally absurd voter that someone somewhere might actually believe exists (hell we have a very example of this posting in this very thread in the third post), which are especially annoying because then the meme is displayed in every single post that poster makes, and often even targets cases where the mocked take wasn't even exactly wrong, all the Kentucky Governor election memes are the most known and notable example, but for another I remember when him and IceSpear kept jerking each other back and forth about how Jon Tester is some sort of populist hero (I refuse to use the obnoxious hashtags and emojis accompanying this sort of memes even when referencing them), which while probably a pretty shallow take if anyone actually made it is a pretty awful example because Tester won. So what's there to mock?

And his repeated defense of "if the meme is annoying the #analysis is moreso" isn't really a defense at all, even if the things these obsessive memes were mocking were all 100% accurately portrayed and genuine....then why bring them more attention? Why not just laugh at them being dumb, and then maybe bump the thread after they're proven wrong or whatever? Trying to be as annoying as an annoying person to prove how wrong they are really isn't some sort of own.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Also this forum in general (and well before him for that matter) seems to not really understand the very short shelf life of memes. Great example: remember that Bernie Sanders at the inauguration meme? Less than 48 hours after that photo was posted an emo/hardcore Facebook group I post in banned it because about half the posts were just variations of it with in various album covers. The first couple were amusing, but then once everyone had to do it it became basically spam. After less than 48 hours. But here when that sort of thing happens instead of just being like "OK this was kind of fun at first but it's clearly stale now, let's move on" which generally happens on most internet communities the reaction instead is to double, triple and quadruple down on it even when it's about as fresh as Rickrolling and no one is claiming it has any humor value remaining (assuming it ever did to begin with.)

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

To elaborate on what was so annoying about his memeing: He posted in his farewell post defending that it wasn't a strawman, but even per his own explanation it wasn't an accurate summary of anyone's actual takes. The pattern would usually go like this: Someone makes a fairly out there or fairly uninformed take, him and the other crew who did so would seize on it and make a meme mocking it, and then for the sake of irony and supposed humor greatly exaggerate it, and then start mocking that exaggerated version. Maybe not exactly a strawman, but not very intellectually honest either. It's actually kind of like how when QAnoners would cite some obscure federal law as proof that Trump was going to overturn the election results or return to the White House and then you read it what it's referring to and there's a kernel of truth at its core but their interpretation and everything else surrounding is complete laughable bullsh!t.

But what made it extremely annoying is that the memes would then grow so far beyond the original post that they would start to develop "spin-offs" of sorts and mock related things using the same terminology and whatnot, even if not one ever claimed that. Like this whole most recent one of Abby Finkenauer being some sort of populist queen...I don't recall anyone ever saying that, or anything beyond that she was a competent candidate who was able to get a victory in a very favorable year but couldn't replicate that against a strong opponent in a year with heavy coattails against her. But that's a pretty dull take, so they decided to construct this narrative out of existing "populist" memes. It's a lot like that joke about half of discourse on Twitter is coming up with some person in your head that you've never actually encountered anyone like but theoretically could exist, and then getting angry that this hypothetical person might actually exist somewhere without ever meeting someone like that. It's the same exact same thing, except for political takes.

It gets even more annoying when you consider that often the original take wasn't even made by a prominent or regular poster but one of those types who pops up around election time and then vanishes after the election (I know that Young Kim's homophobia meme dates back to a post from a poster that has literally something like 12 posts total), or sometimes not even on the forum at all but a line from an op-ed or blog entry or something (like that "Bipartisan Bills" thing he was absolutely obsessed with for a couple weeks) and often countered with that beyond irritating habit of themed display names/avatars/signatures to represent this totally absurd voter that someone somewhere might actually believe exists (hell we have a very example of this posting in this very thread in the third post), which are especially annoying because then the meme is displayed in every single post that poster makes, and often even targets cases where the mocked take wasn't even exactly wrong, all the Kentucky Governor election memes are the most known and notable example, but for another I remember when him and IceSpear kept jerking each other back and forth about how Jon Tester is some sort of populist hero (I refuse to use the obnoxious hashtags and emojis accompanying this sort of memes even when referencing them), which while probably a pretty shallow take if anyone actually made it is a pretty awful example because Tester won. So what's there to mock?

And his repeated defense of "if the meme is annoying the #analysis is moreso" isn't really a defense at all, even if the things these obsessive memes were mocking were all 100% accurately portrayed and genuine....then why bring them more attention? Why not just laugh at them being dumb, and then maybe bump the thread after they're proven wrong or whatever? Trying to be as annoying as an annoying person to prove how wrong they are really isn't some sort of own.

Also this forum in general (and well before him for that matter) seems to not really understand the very short shelf life of memes. Great example: remember that Bernie Sanders at the inauguration meme? Less than 48 hours after that photo was posted an emo/hardcore Facebook group I post in banned it because about half the posts were just variations of it with in various album covers. The first couple were amusing, but then once everyone had to do it it became basically spam. After less than 48 hours. But here when that sort of thing happens instead of just being like "OK this was kind of fun at first but it's clearly stale now, let's move on" which generally happens on most internet communities the reaction instead is to double, triple and quadruple down on it even when it's about as fresh as Rickrolling and no one is claiming it has any humor value remaining (assuming it ever did to begin with.)

I'm not reading War & Peace tonight. Maybe later, I've heard good things about it.

[Nightcore Nationalist]

Damn, I enjoyed his electoral analysis on the midterms.

To elaborate on what was so annoying about his memeing: He posted in his farewell post defending that it wasn't a strawman, but even per his own explanation it wasn't an accurate summary of anyone's actual takes. The pattern would usually go like this: Someone makes a fairly out there or fairly uninformed take, him and the other crew who did so would seize on it and make a meme mocking it, and then for the sake of irony and supposed humor greatly exaggerate it, and then start mocking that exaggerated version. Maybe not exactly a strawman, but not very intellectually honest either. It's actually kind of like how when QAnoners would cite some obscure federal law as proof that Trump was going to overturn the election results or return to the White House and then you read it what it's referring to and there's a kernel of truth at its core but their interpretation and everything else surrounding is complete laughable bullsh!t.

But what made it extremely annoying is that the memes would then grow so far beyond the original post that they would start to develop "spin-offs" of sorts and mock related things using the same terminology and whatnot, even if not one ever claimed that. Like this whole most recent one of Abby Finkenauer being some sort of populist queen...I don't recall anyone ever saying that, or anything beyond that she was a competent candidate who was able to get a victory in a very favorable year but couldn't replicate that against a strong opponent in a year with heavy coattails against her. But that's a pretty dull take, so they decided to construct this narrative out of existing "populist" memes. It's a lot like that joke about half of discourse on Twitter is coming up with some person in your head that you've never actually encountered anyone like but theoretically could exist, and then getting angry that this hypothetical person might actually exist somewhere without ever meeting someone like that. It's the same exact same thing, except for political takes.

It gets even more annoying when you consider that often the original take wasn't even made by a prominent or regular poster but one of those types who pops up around election time and then vanishes after the election (I know that Young Kim's homophobia meme dates back to a post from a poster that has literally something like 12 posts total), or sometimes not even on the forum at all but a line from an op-ed or blog entry or something (like that "Bipartisan Bills" thing he was absolutely obsessed with for a couple weeks) and often countered with that beyond irritating habit of themed display names/avatars/signatures to represent this totally absurd voter that someone somewhere might actually believe exists (hell we have a very example of this posting in this very thread in the third post), which are especially annoying because then the meme is displayed in every single post that poster makes, and often even targets cases where the mocked take wasn't even exactly wrong, all the Kentucky Governor election memes are the most known and notable example, but for another I remember when him and IceSpear kept jerking each other back and forth about how Jon Tester is some sort of populist hero (I refuse to use the obnoxious hashtags and emojis accompanying this sort of memes even when referencing them), which while probably a pretty shallow take if anyone actually made it is a pretty awful example because Tester won. So what's there to mock?

And his repeated defense of "if the meme is annoying the #analysis is moreso" isn't really a defense at all, even if the things these obsessive memes were mocking were all 100% accurately portrayed and genuine....then why bring them more attention? Why not just laugh at them being dumb, and then maybe bump the thread after they're proven wrong or whatever? Trying to be as annoying as an annoying person to prove how wrong they are really isn't some sort of own.

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.