(Note from www.hoboes.com Proprietor: I realize that Tyg probably
doesn't think this funny, but I can't think of anywhere else to put it,
and the damn topic comes up on racm everytime I've forgotten about it.)

From: [t--g] at [quip.eecs.umich.edu] (Tom Galloway)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: tyg vs. OM take lots (was Re: CBG vs. Groth, take two)
Date: 11 Aug 1994 03:21:35 GMT

In article <32btk1$[63 k] at [nntp.interaccess.com]>,
 <[t--na--s] at [interaccess.com]> wrote:
>Yeah, I can see that, but then again, we have our own special breed of 
>pettiness with TYG and OM.  I lost a lot of respect for tyg because of 
>his inability to simply ignore what was obviously flame bait.  This 

Sorry to hear that, but I'm afraid that I've just lost a lot of respect for
you due to this decision. See this post for why I feel the way I do.

I'd been thinking of doing this anyway, since the "what is this tyg/OM
thing" question never really got answered. Mike Kelly's song was hysterical,
but not exactly accurate. Before I start, two points; first, this is all I
plan to say about the matter for a while (it seems I have to do these every
couple of years, much to my regret) unless factual inaccuracies are made
in a response to it. Those I'll correct. Second, in order to avoid making
this into a huge thread, I suggest the following; if you want to make it
publically known that you agree with what I write here, email me. If you 
want to know who agrees with it, also email me. In a week or so, I'll mail
a list of the former, with email addresses, to the latter.

OK, here are the basics of the "tyg/OM" thing. Or, as I prefer to think of it,
the "OM thing". Bob got on the net circa 1987. He came on with a style that
involved massive flaming at anyone who disagreed with him; whether the 
disagreement was about facts or about opinion, whether the disagreement was
polite or flaming made no difference. Among other things, Bob claimed 
knowledge of upcoming events and unnamed contacts in the industry (yes, this
predates the High by a number of years). This information was wrong, more
often than not, as were some of his response to questions about comics trivia.
Some of these I corrected him on, and in what seems to have been my damning
offense against Bob, was correct in my corrections. After a bit, Chuq von
Rospach, then a frequent poster here, announced he was putting OM in his kill
file and urged others to do the same. I'll note that OM actually has improved
over seven years; his initial posting style was *much* more severe than his
current one.

For whatever reason, Bob fixated on Chuq and myself as net.gods out to, as
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes once put it "rule the bwahahaha net and do dirt to him".
This was intensified by the two infamous omega.non.grata posts. These were
very funny pastiches of Bob's posting style posted via forging headers so
the writer was anonymous. My reaction on finally reading them was to hope
whoever did them would one day do the same to my posts as I thought they
were hysterical. Similar to my sending Mike Kelly a complimentary message
about his tyg/OM song, which I thought was very funny.

Bob's reaction was a bit different. With no evidence he has ever stated other
than repetition of accusation, he immediately declared that Chuq and I had
done the o.n.g. posts, thus truly starting his seven year vendetta gainst
Chuq and I. As a side note, it was particularly ironic that he accused Chuq
and I as at the time of the posts Chuq was in England and I was driving across
country and neither of us had net access for several days around the post
time (no, I didn't have a modem then, nor was access easy from Brighton,
England).

As mentioned, this started Bob's vendetta against Chuq and I. He cut down
his more general insults to focus on us. For several *years*, it was an
article of faith that any post by Bob would contain a gratuitous insult
towards Chuq and/or myself, whether either of us was even posting in the
thread in question. Many of these insults included insinuations of Chuq and
I being in a homosexual relationship. This was particularly amusing given
that neither Chuq nor I consider being gay or bi something that's an insult,
that Chuq was recently married, that for a while Chuq was in California while
I was in Switzerland making a physical relationship somewhat problematical,
and why the two of us would have let Bob know about this when no one else
was apparently knowledgeable about it (note: Bob was and is in Austin, TX).

At some point in here, then frequent poster Karen Williams sent Bob email
asking why he was doing this as she thought both Chuq and I were nice people
who'd not done such to justify such treatment. Bob responded asking if she
knew if Chuq or I would be at San Diego that year as he had a baseball bat
and a gun he wanted to use on us. Bob has since admitted sending this in public
on racm. Karen decided that email confidentiality didn't apply to death threats
and forwarded the email to Chuq and myself. We considered notifying the Austin
police, but after checking out Bob via our own contacts in Austin we 
decided he was unlikely to carry out the threat. We did learn what he looked
like, just in case.

To make a long story short, Chuq eventually left r.a.c. due to Bob's constant
flaming and insults. Keep in mind this was almost daily over *several years*.
It tends to wear one down after a while, and make one wonder what the point
is of putting up with it. Save for two periods, one when I went on 
net.sabbatical for a year and a very anomolous few months late in 1993, Bob
has continued his vendetta against me. It's been over seven years now, and
frankly I'm tired of it. In that time, with the exception of the every few
years need to explain just what the backhistory is for newcomers, I've at
least 95% of the time limited myself to correcting only factual errors Bob
has made or ignored him. Meanwhile, Bob has been the Energizer Bunny; he
keeps going and going and going....

This year I've decided that I've no particular reason to be nice about Bob.
I'm not going out of my way to flame him, but I'm not going to be particularly
nice about correcting his mistakes (still the only posts from him I followup
on). I've no reason to; he's been carrying on a pointless vendetta against
me for seven years. Ignoring him doesn't work; I've tried that for extended
periods over the years. I've done nothing to deserve his treatment of me, and
after seven years have no reason to believe he'll stop short of the reason
he stopped with Chuq and stopped, so I'm told, with me for a year. Namely, 
I leave racm. I see no reason why I should let him deprive me of posting
here. Also, to a degree, I suspect that "living well is the best revenge".
Over the years, based on Squiddy Favorite r.a.c.er results, the votes Bob
got when he ran for Squiddy administrator (quite amazing; out of three people,
he got as many votes amounting to "Cancel the awards rather than let him
run them" as either of the two near tied front runners got in positive votes.
To my knowledge, no other r.a.c. election has ever seen *any* such negative
votes), and the result of the r.a.c. FAQ election it seem pretty clear that
a lot more r.a.c.ers consider me a useful member of the group than do Bob.
And based on his posts over the years, I honestly think that his core reason
for his behavior amounts to jealousy over his lack of respect here. 

Actually, I somewhat pity Bob. The thing is, he could actually be a quite
respected r.a.c.er if he'd stuck to his not inconsiderable trivia knowledge
and occasional accurate news tidbits. But for whatever reason, he hit the
net in such a way that he built up a bad net.rep that'd take anyone years
to overcome...even if he hadn't spent those years further cementing that
rep. He knows his rep is bad, and pretty much all he has left is maintaining
the trap he's set for himself. Still, while I pity him, it doesn't mean that
I feel he's in any way a victim here, nor do I feel any guilt about not
being nice to someone who has engaged in a one sided vendetta, including a
death threat and slams at friends of mine, for seven years. I doubt many
or even any of you would not feel the same way after seven years of such.

Still, the same offer that's stood for at least five years still stands.
If Bob knocks off the insults, I'll not post anything about him or in
response to him save for simple factual corrections of inaccuracies. If
people have a problem with the last, sorry, but I'll do that for anyone
here...and if you think about it, you'll realize that I've never complained
about being corrected when I've made factual errors (most recently, I believe, 
when I mistakenly wrote The Cat was Greer Garson rather than Greer Grant
Nelson; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. :-)).

It's been a one-sided vendetta for years; it's up to the one side to stop it.

"So that's it: you now know how to out-argue anybody.  Do not try to pull any
of this on people who generally carry weapons." --Dave Barry
tyg   [t--g] at [hq.ileaf.com]