This whole thread is meant to stir the hornet's nest, so kudos to Jase.
As you say aristo, you weren't involved in the original thread by Chickenguy, I was and I found his demeaner to be nasty and self congratulating, unless you are 100% sure the member didn't lose a close friend don't go trampling on people's emotions and grief.
Whether a faction hated Chickenguy or not, the questioning was valid, but became subsumed as the thread became a referendum on attacking Chickenguy rather than an honest addressing of the question of how JUB treats members' deaths. When the site's inconsistency was obvious, the recourse of those in that thread reverted to simply attacking the questioner.
JUB has not been consistent with how it accepted the deaths of others like Andreus, Palbert, Jayhew, Scrubs, or others.
Many have riotously decried the alleged hoax that was Andreus, while rallying round to mourn someone like Palbert or Jayhew that multiple members had met in person.
Contrary to the alleged anonymity of the site, many of the prolific posters in Hot Topics have indeed been more than verified by multiple members of the site. On the other side, there is an equally constant presence of those who are wholly closeted in terms of their online JUB personas existing without any tangent to their real worlds. Both factions have existed alongside one another since the very beginning of LMAO.
There is enough going on the in world right now that is sad and depressing. What is the point of bringing this up again, especially now? Just drop it. It serves no productive purpose.
If that is your emotional response to questioning the "truth" we find on the forum, then you have the ability to not read the thread. It is BECAUSE of the Iran assassination and the administration's response, suppressing the questioning of the real situation that this issue is all the more relevant.
Questioning truth, asking for a shred of evidence, even behind the scenes, is perfectly valid. In our case, a simple verification to any mod, and a response stating that it was proven, would have sufficed. Instead, there was only drama and acrimony. And the mods didn't seem to do anything when they had been all very quick to post Garden of Memories threads for others who were reported dead on the site.
It's about a member, ballcaphair that was fighting the forest fires in California. He was an avid mountain climber, who was reported to have died in a climbing accident by another member that was his friend. Whether he died, or whether he wanted to move on from the site in dramatic fashion, some People can't let it die. They've searched and searched records to prove he didn't die. Apparently for a year now.
More correctly, members searched to prove it WAS true. When searching for the news of the loss of an online friend, it became evident that no obituary could be found anywhere in the US in January 2019 for a climbing death. Accidental deaths are reported at least generically by the governments in counties, in state parks, national parks, states, and yes, on Indian reservations. None ever appeared.
However, the climbing community is a very tight one. Industry publications, notably the one in the link, view their passion very seriously, and it became evident that the next time they would be published again would be after 2019 was over. So, a saved link in a browser was revisited to again look for the homage to a very active and involved member of that community. If he wasn't remembered there, all the greater tragedy, as it was core to the person we "knew" here on the forums. How much more he should have been recognized as giving his life for the passion he held most highly. Yet, oblivion.
If the doubters were wrong, then we all could take a page out of the lesson book to realize how much more quickly our very existence can fall beneath the waves of indifference or fickle legacy.
If the doubters were not, then the lesson is again to remember that words have meaning, and asking for credulity is justified by rational minds.
Ballcaphair was a friend to a lot of us, whether he died in real life or as a fictional member I think it's time to move on.
Whether his story was true or a lie doesn't really matter a year later. I can guarantee everyone has lied on here at least once. Some more than that. It's the internet, if you come here expecting 100% truth from everyone, maybe you're not cut out to be using community boards.
Some people can't give up the chase to prove him and his friend wrong. To me that's just bizarre.
But it's not simply a case of whether all have sinned. Be an old man pretending to be a young one. Be a pencil dick pretending to be a porn star. Be a live-at home basement dweller and pretend to be an EMT or hero. Be a mod who toys with members by pretending to be a moron or a shitstirrer to fan slow forums into heavier posting and traffic. Those are online fictions.
Posting a death is a different matter, and people have consistently treated it so. It crosses a line.
The difference between laughing about Andreus' alleged fabrication versus the more recent possibility seems to be little more than a turnover in membership or activity levels. It's simply true that most of the eldergays who interacted with Andreus' posts are largely inactive today, replaced by those who "knew" BCH or Will in more recent years.
And no, it's not a question of proving another wrong. It's a question of Hot Topics. The whole issue of when and where online fake posting is acceptable is a hot topic if there ever were hot topics. On this very site we constantly have some of our most prolific posters constantly accuse conservative political posts of being Russian shills. This happens routinely while the site mods quickly censure any equal criticism of Canadian posts about US politics.
Somehow it is OK for members to allege Russian sock puppets are posting conservative views, yet it is allegedly illegitimate to question the motives of other nationals posting attacks about American culture.
What is the standard? We are led to accept that hating or decrying Russian "interference" is permissible but that another cold region just a spin around the globe is unacceptable to question? Why?
And, as I said then and now, there were several longtime members who said the same questions Chickenguy did behind the scenes, but were intimidated from publicly speaking them by the furor gathered to drum out Chickenguy.
I have been on the forum a very long time, and have never suffered from popularity. My posts can be liked or not, but I've been consistent since I first joined. And I've met well over a dozen members in person and more via other media. You keep your internet persona as you wish, and the rest of us will keep ours as we wish. What you don't want to know or tell, you don't ask or tell. Others of us do mix the two worlds.
