[fatneck]

Some harsh crap on this thread IMHO

As above I think's Dan's contribution has been original, entertaining and stimulating - none of which means you have to enjoy it or get it (whatever that means). I am now an avid collector of all things UFCK and hope Dan feels able, and indeed I would encourage him to continue kicking the ever droopier ballbag of bouldering well into the future!

#slartyrules

[Yossarian]

I've lurked on this forum for years, the only thing left of interest is when Jon posts new problem lists. The people whinging about Dan's attempt to do something a bit out of the box seem as dry as a nuns chuff IMO.
I liked what Dan was trying to do even if it was a bit confusing, I felt it still had relevance.
It was more enjoyable than most of the the mundane drivel in here.
 

Ok...

UKB is rather like a well-established but not-quite-what-it-once-was swingers club. It has been somewhat slow to move with the times, and the new management have tried to stamp out some of the old ways. Wife of the week, etc. Some of the original members have moved on to pastures new - private pr0n cams, etc, whilst others have been booted out for rule breaking / acts of depravity.

Dan has been waving his cock around for the past couple of months in the hope that everyone would take notice. Nothing wrong with that in essence, and it’s quite a funny cock, but smacking it down on the kitchen table every night gets a bit much. And, when anyone complains, he launches into a spurious pseudo-intellectual argument about why everyone should engage with his cock, rather than backing down and calling it a night.

Then he disguises himself as a new member and creeps around the house, interrupting the proceedings and asking silly questions. When his identity is uncovered, he goes on the offensive again - rather than admit he was out for a bit of fun, he attempts to dress it up as an intellectual exercise.

And you are someone peering in through the window, who seems to be upset that it’s not that club in Irréversible...

[tomtom]

As a result of all of this I now treat any first time posters (and there have been some since) with great suspicion.

That’s a shame - as aside from not enjoying feeling like that it’s not great for any new people.

[Davo]

Agree with Fatneck here. Some extremely harsh and undeserved opinions about Dan's posts.

Yes, some have been lost on me but some have been really good and thought provoking. His UKFC stuff isn't my cup of tea but it's clearly interesting and well done.

A bit of variety and different expressions of thought in the forum  is a good thing in my opinion.

Dave

[Will Hunt]

Dan's stuff has been a bit hit and miss for me. I found the philosophical threads a bit boring, but could see that Dave T and Fiend etc were enjoying them. It's not that those threads were wrong, they just weren't for me. I think they started well and the basic questions they're asking are interesting, but think they quickly became too deep, arcane, and esoteric for me quite quickly.

Quite a bit of the UFCK stuff is funny. I bought the print version and enjoyed it. Some of it isn't as good. But it's hard to put something that you've created out there and to have it shot down in flames. I think Instagram and print is a better home for it than UKB. I can only assume that the hostility of the UKB reaction has been so strong because Dan is questioning and mocking a lot of what climbing has become. Maybe we're all snowflakes on here? Maybe we should be a bit more resilient in the face of having our quirks and foibles held up to the light?

NSFW  kind of on topic, kind of not. Sorry. It's probably a bit of a cry for help and belongs in the Black Dog thread:

In my personal life, I have had 4 people in the last few weeks react badly to comments that I've made on social media which, in my view, were not offensive and were no departure from the playfully teasing oeuvre that is a part of how I generally interact with people. Having people who I've known and liked for sometimes as long as 10+ years take things completely at face value and get offended has led me to wonder whether I'm going off the rails and losing the plot. Who's being unreasonable here? It must be me if I'm the common factor, and yet I don't feel that I've changed from the person who has laughed and joked with these people in the past. My sleep pattern is completely off at the moment so maybe this has something to do with it.

I care what people think of me and fundamentally want to be liked so to have alienated so many people in such a short space of time who I thought liked and "got" me has led to a general feeling of anxiety and depression. I went out and did some easy pottering on the rock last night to try and process it. It's nothing too drastic and nothing that I can't process in time and deal with and move on from - so no need for anyone to get concerned. Maybe I should be less of a snowflake about it...? The reason I'm sharing this is to try and illustrate the point that the sort of things that have been said about Dan on this thread can be very cutting and will be having an impact on the feelings of a real person who is not a bad man.

People can obviously choose to disagree with or ignore Dan, but please do try to be civil about it.

[monkoffunk]

I think we should let ThreeNine come back.

[tomtom]

People can obviously choose to disagree with or ignore Dan, but please do try to be civil about it.

I think a big issue is that it’s hard to ignore - esp when the block user function has disappeared...

Maybe in a day or two this thread should be locked and logpiled... Shark?

[36chambers]

I think we should let ThreeNine come back.

and A Dense Loner.

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Hmm.. thinking.

As ever, great spread of opinion, and for that reason alone, completely ridding the site of what Dan was trying to do/contribute seems disproportionate, irrational. And wrong.

I would very much like to see more of Dan's art and provocative contributions. I think it's really important. However I also agree with much of the other sentiment - in essence, people don't like feeling as though they're forced into being an audience.

If that's not putting it too strongly.

Can we have a board called The Edge? That would be pretty simple, surely.

A board called The Psyche would be good too.

Or maybe one called Pretty Much Exclusively for Magpie Nibile 



In short, what we don't want is people feeling nervous about posting something a bit leftfield.

In my opinion, what should come out of this, is a thorough review of the structure of the site - to keep it more interactive across a broader spread of opinion etc.

On a very simple point - for very many reasons - I don't think that using a false or deliberately misleading "identity" should be accommodated very much, and I think it should be a fairly simple call (Mods) to flag when posts are becoming too disruptive to the general spirit of a thread.

Lastly what I feel very uncomfortable about, is the trend for certain groups of people to simply get rid of what they don't like.

Opinion is a very good thing - as is embracing what it means.

[petejh]

In reply to Will. I don’t think the issue was people not liking the culture of climbing being mocked - I think people on ukb generally appreciate a good pisstake and having the weirdness and shallows ness of climbing culture ripped apart. Rather than snowflakes I’d characterise most people on here as relatively accepting of difference and challenging views. Certainly compared to ‘the norm’.
The issue for me was that Dan’s posts were everywhere! I enjoyed some of his stuff and ignored most of the rest of it. By when 4 of the 6 threads in the current list on the home page are basically all about Dan it becomes a piss-take too far and, as many have said, quite tedious and self-referential.

I certainly hope Dan continues being creative and challenging people’s views. No doubt he will. But people aren’t stupid and they often challenge their own views without needing anyone’s ‘help’ to do it - unless it’s really good quality satire or philosophy it just becomes a bit tiresome.

Edit: What DT said.

[danm]

I found most of Dan's posting tedious guff, and some of it amusing, the trouble as said above was the seeming ubiquitousness of his posting, all of it in a similar style. It felt like every thread was being derailed by an attention seeking teenager. A shame because I don't like the idea of shutting down voices just because I personally don't get much out of listening to them. How about a reporting and traffic light system, to give people a chance to tone it down before a ban/slapdown?

[monkoffunk]

He hasn’t been banned though has he? Just left due to the vitriol of some of the feedback.

Can see it both ways really, I’m one of the many people who found some of it funny, some of it dull and some of it so bizarre that it seemed to miss the mark. And I never understood the end game or what he wanted to achieve.

Having said that I do feel sorry for him, I don’t think he set out to creat as much ill feeling as he ultimately did.

[jwi]

I'm only interested in conversations about climbing and myself. As such, I find a lot of stuff on here uninteresting, but the less clutter the better.

[kingholmesy]

To clarify, I don’t wish Dan any ill will and hope he feels he can still post on UKB.

Some of his stuff was interesting, much of it wasn’t (to me at least). Normally that would be fine, but the issue is that there was just so much of it in a similar vein.

If you’re reading Dan, I’m sorry if this feels like a personal attack - it isn’t meant to be. 

[Duma]

That's a bit rich isn't it?

[lagerstarfish]

Dense told me that he stopped posting here because Slackline made a personal attack and was not punished for it as should be expected under some sort of rule

Slackline has since stopped posting here

maybe Slakers could now be banned under the cold case review system and Dense could return with head held high?


perhaps someone else could return to run the UKB Truth and Justice Commission ?

[andy popp]

Dense told me that he stopped posting here because Slackline made a personal attack and was not punished for it as should be expected under some sort of rule

Slackline has since stopped posting here

maybe Slakers could now be banned under the cold case review system and Dense could return with head held high?


perhaps someone else could return to run the UKB Truth and Justice Commission ?

Sloper, obvs.

[shark]

Dense told me that he stopped posting here because Slackline made a personal attack and was not punished for it as should be expected under some sort of rule

Slackline has since stopped posting here

maybe Slakers could now be banned under the cold case review system and Dense could return with head held high?

Yes uncharacteristically Slackline called Dense a “fucking twat” and he took great umbrage that he wasn’t banned for being abusive. I took the offensive post out and cautioned Slackline but to no avail.

[shark]

I'm only interested in conversations about climbing and myself.

Occasionally you let your hair down and show an interest in economics

[DaveC]

Just my 2c worth (I live in Australia,  no pennies here.)  I have pretty much had to stop climbing due to work/life commitments and bouts of psoriatic arthritis but I still come here to keep up with goings on because it is still a touch irreverent in a way that UKC can't be and long may it continue.  If I don't like somebody's posts I just ignore them.  The book Thread is great because it gives me at least one place I can contribute at least. 

[Motown]

As others have said, Dan’s posts took over a bit. That was the only problem for me, and didn’t detract from the other threads I read, enjoy, and very occasionally add to. Just assumed it would die down at some point so not that bothered by it. Plenty of other stuff to enjoy.

Lots of good stuff here: feels like the best insight to what is happening in climbing in the UK; has knowledge and summaries of events and ideas that are interesting and detailed; great music recommendations at a level I haven’t had since I was a teenager - Fiend’s drum and bass suggestions are a goldmine; helpful book thread; and enjoyable amounts of giving each other shit.

Living in a country with some rock, and climbing regularly for first time in six years. This site is a great source of psyche. Might even set some goals some time.

[moose]

Aye, the books, podcasts, and news threads and other cultural ones (and food and whisky) are continually good reading.  This forum seems to have a good amount of contributors with varied expertise. I remember when I posted a link to an article written by my brother, without telling him, and he was intrigued why he suddenly had a spike in views:

I get an email every week from Medium, with the total views and Likes, and I did notice it had suddenly spiked - more than doubled. Also the Likers had something in common, I couldn’t place my finger on. Very British sounding names, and seemed to Like other articles about highly specialised subjects you’d probably need a PhD to understand (probably the best people to get Likes from). There just seemed some link.. Mystery solved!


Also, if I need some climbing advice (crag or route beta), I always think that there is a high chance of some expert help.  On ukc the same enquiry would result in several pun-based sister threads, a load of harrumphing about how dangerous gri-gris are, and a flame war between contributors triggered by a mispelling. 

Personally, I think any irreverence is a massive plus.  I know that agonising over how to get halfway up a bit of rock by the most contrived route is a pretty silly way to spend my time, and being reminded occassionally is no bad thing. 

I quite liked a lot of Dan's stuff, though it recently had got a bit much.  His contributions used to provide a jolt to a moribund thread - something a bit jarring might take matters in an interesting direction.  But they then became so frequent and seemingly louder and more unfocussed.  When he hijacked a thread it was like being trapped with a drunk who has big ideas but can't express them coherently and will not shut up and let you get on with eating peanuts and playing pool. 

I'd quite like him to return... but perhaps be a bit more mindful that some people on here are sincere and posts that can easily be construed as belittling them is not a good look (satire whould always punch upwards, not down).

[Fiend]

On ukc the same enquiry would result in several pun-based sister threads, a load of harrumphing about how dangerous gri-gris are, and a flame war between contributors triggered by a mispelling. 

Lol, uncannily accurate.

I miss dense and d.piddy too. slackers, less so, but I can see how he contributed.

Forums generally are what contributors make them, in a variety of ways.

[Gritter]

JezC say’s hi and thanks you for your continued support....

He also ask’s ‘are you the collective unconscious of his ex-wife, evil stepfather, the best friend that got off with his missus when he was 16, and Billy ‘The Goat’ Butlin the Uber Christian HeadMasteR Of his youth?’

[Falling Down]

I’m currently in remission from climbing due to other commitments but still check in daily to see what’s up. 

Like others have already said, UKB is a great forum - the culture, news, science and politics threads are a source of inspiration and interest. I like to do my bit by contributing or commenting from time to time.

I’ve met several lifelong friends via the forum and go to know loads of other great people too.

I’d like Dan to come back as Dan and contribute without censoring himself

I just hope he’s OK and hope you are too Will.