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Nitrateville General Jackassery: Happy Anniversary Silent Comedy Mafia

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 9:22 pm
by Richard M Roberts
What a typical petty and cowardly act ol’ Mike Gebert pulled on nitwitvile today deleting the thread where one Jim Crane congratulated Silent Comedy Mafia on its tenth anniversary, praised my writing, and wished that I would return to nincompoop village to raise the IQ level of the place once again, amazing Gebert kept it up through the weekend, allowing one nameless something called “silents please” to show the true mental instability of the site in his answer that I’m a “miserable, narcissistic prick” then telling Mr. Crane to “troll elsewhere”.

So why did Gebert delete the thread, because somebody said nice things about us, or to hide the behavior of their own nameless one in need of medication, to whom Crane wittily replied, “Oh yes, we see that you’re too civilized for the likes of Richard M. Roberts”? Most likely the first, though he waited for some sort of scuffle to use as an excuse to lock the thread, before anyone else said nice things about me starting even more spit and dribble from the sadder NNN’s.

I mean, it really is getting pathetic and bordering on the pathological, let’s look at Mr. “silents please” just for a “for instance”, even with his nameless non de plume, we can determine from his posts that he lives in the Milwaukee area, and is old enough to have a kid in college at Cornell University. This is not a person I know or have ever met, I have only one fellow I know well in Milwaukee and it definitely isn’t he, yet it is someone of a mature enough age to be beyond this sort of immature, hyper-emotional language to use on a total stranger, he probably wouldn’t even recognize me if I were standing next to him in line at a film festival without a name tag, but the screaming voices in his head so compelled him to respond, even anonymously, with this sort of language and abuse and accuse another total stranger of impropriety in sending praise and congratulations to another site with no sign of malice or troublemaking.

Why say anything at all, what can I have possibly done to this stranger to drive him to this level of nasty nonsense? Reality-check folks, I’m actually very easy to avoid, my internet footprint basically consists of this site, I’m not, nor ever will be on Facebook, do not comment on many other chat groups or blogs, and no one is forcing this fellow to listen to my commentary tracks or read my books or articles, and, as far as I can determine, he has never had any one on one public or private disagreement with me of any kind, yet he feels strongly enough to call me a “miserable narcissistic prick” (and is that even possible? Surely, if one is in love with one’s self, that affection seldom goes unrequited).

Yes, I know, this is the craziness of the internet, but even cynical old me likes to think those who appreciate vintage film should be more well mannered and thoughtful than your average Youtube comments section, but unfortunately mental illness issues seem to pervade too much of this area of interest, much less ALL of the internet these days. I know there are a few, sad, lonely types still harboring grudges from decades ago when they were dropped from a film fest, or I cut off all personal communication with, or even were not allowed to join the mafia who will still try to spread bullshit about me when they think it’s safe and I’m not around to call them on it, but they are also basically such of their own reputations that they end up making me friends with other strangers who know them of old when they try to diss me. Mr. “silents please” is apparently someone who just read my words here on the mafia and gets so worked up that he must be sitting at home in the dark muttering “ Richard M Roberts---I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.”, or he’s one of this other strange small little group that seems to dislike me for just giving them what they want. In any event, my message to him is, he might want to look into getting some help.

Whatever, and so what, thank you Mr. Crane for your nice words and best wishes on Nitrateville, as long as they lasted, and sorry you got grief from the denizens, but it is what one can expect from that pitiful group, I noticed you had posted rarely in the six years or so since you had joined it, those sane enough to use their real names usually do not communicate with the place. More reason to appreciate the sanity we have here in our little clubhouse, even after a decade, where we happily remain, believe me, I wouldn’t return to Nitwitvile even if asked or on a dare, there is nobody who inhabits it really worth talking to, nameless or not.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Re: Nitrateville General Jackassery: Happy Anniversary Silent Comedy Mafia

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:50 pm
by William Ferry
I'm fond of saying that life is too short to be miserable. To Silents Please, I say, sweet macaroons, pick your battles. Time is better spent enjoying and discussing classic films. Everyone may not always agree with you, Richard, but they can certainly learn a lot from you. I know I have.

Re: Nitrateville General Jackassery: Happy Anniversary Silent Comedy Mafia

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 8:50 pm
by Richard M Roberts
William Ferry wrote:I'm fond of saying that life is too short to be miserable. To Silents Please, I say, sweet macaroons, pick your battles. Time is better spent enjoying and discussing classic films. Everyone may not always agree with you, Richard, but they can certainly learn a lot from you. I know I have.



Thank you William, and believe me, I do not expect anyone to agree with me all the time, nor do I lose sleep when they don't, but it really is getting a bit sad and weird when the obsessives get out of control. We are all doing nothing but arguing and talking movies here, and nothing, even when we are tweaking a video release or making fun of Nitwitvile (and they bring that upon themselves) is anyone saying anything that matters enough to get anyone's blood pressure up.

Even someone like MIke Gebert, upon whom I do admit taking a little bit of pleasure in showing the silliness and pettiness of his and the other nitwitvillains ways in dealing with their silly little newsgroup, but I really have no actual malice towards him, I understand he is a family man, good to his wife and kids, probably gets along with most of the world he runs into face to face every day, as far as I know, not really concerned that much, and I would never try nor want to attack him on any sort of personal level. What would be the point in that? Nothing done here is that important. So how sad is someone like Mr. "silents please", obviously working himself up to such levels of nastiness over someone who he has never met?

Again, whatever, and speaking of Gebert, I see he returned the discussed thread to Nitwitvile this morning:

https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28329

we apparently shamed him into restoring it, with a lame excuse about hiding my virgin eyeballs from an attack (not anything about showing the true maturity level of his own site's denizens, he could have deleted just the slur and left the nice words up with his thought-police scissors, but he deleted the whole thread) as his reason for deleting it (as lame as his reasons for throwing me off the group in the first place). Pretty darn quick for one who claims not to read our stuff over here, heck he's still counting our words, and spouting his disbelief that anyone can read so much verbiage (certainly not many on his own site, whose gnat-sized attention spans seem to veer towards twitter territory. What is the wordcount for that nerdcount? 140 characters?). So maybe we can have our 10th Anniversary in peace now.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Re: Nitrateville General Jackassery: Happy Anniversary Silent Comedy Mafia

Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2019 4:36 pm
by Agnes McFadden
I haven't been visiting any websites as regularly lately. Now that my computer problems are fixed, I can come back . I have had to lurk here for a few years but I am thrilled to be back now and able to comment.

I was waiting for something and flipped nitrateville on very briefly and did see the happy 10th anniversary very briefly.....saw the ugliness & immediately whatever I was waiting for happened and I had to shut the phone off and back to what I was doing. The only upswing for me was that it reminded me that I was still computer glitched shut out from commenting here and it reminded me to go back and make the contacts to try to get back on here so I could come in and be a full-fledged member of our wonderful Mafia.

Regardless of someone's opinion of someone else, calling someone nasty names and not at least standing by it & owning it.' This is despicable and cowardly. Something I love about this site is we don't allow people to use funny names and make nasty comments then Cut and Run. Regardless of someone's opinion of someone else, if one is going to make nasty statements like that about someone else that very least is that he or she should stand up and use his or her real name. To insult from behind a curtain is completely cowardly in my opinion. Sadly the internet makes everyone think they're 10 ft tall and bulletproof and they can say whatever they want and then hide behind some silly fake name and get away with it.. That is truly cowardly and certainly should be beneath the dignity of any adult. It shouldn't happen here because we have to use our real names

With real names nobody makes stupid statements and then runs away. With real name we don't have hurt feelings because we didn't understand what someone really meant because we know who's saying it. The identity requirement here forces everybody to act like decent adults or go somewhere else.

We're not always perfect , but at least here we're all Stand Up Guys. Richard, you absolutely deserve better than to have someone use nasty crude terms on you and hide behind a fake name. I did think two of the rules at nitrateville were that they didn't allow crude talk and neither did they allow character assassination. Given that they allow fake names, they should hold tighter to not allowing the ugliness.

Glad to be fully back in the Mafia.

Agnes McFadden