Herein lies the story of CHOP.
CHOP (an acronym for the username Combat Hero Optimus Prime), also known as BBC (Black Battle Convoy), had long been known as the village idiot of Bottalk. And believe me, given all of the stupidity that went on over there (Renaud's moderators didn't seem to work to hard to stop actual trolls, preferring instead to spend most of their time banning dissidents and harassing the Allspark and other boards), that is quite an achievement. In addition to posting threads that attempted to turn the bulletin board into a chat room, CHOP also posted lengthy diatribes about women's rights, attempted to claim that he had been contracted by Hasbro to produce an official Transformers Generation 3 movie script (which he quickly amended to mean his fanfic), then (after a backlash over his attempt to jump start a feminist movement on a board with a 90% male demographic) he posted a thread stating that women should be raped (he later claimed to be misquoted). The Allspark watched CHOP's various antics with amusement throughout most of the spring of 2000 and chronicled them all together in a thread Human Microbe entitled CHOP Watch 2000 (feel free to read it, as it's quite hilarious and much of it consists of actual quotes). One Council member, Brainstorm, even came up with the phrase WTCHOP (no relation to the online expression WTF, of course) after he posted a thread asking whether or not the Robert Skir listed in the credits of Beast Machines was Bob Skir's brother.
Repeated displays of stupidity rarely come without retaliation, even on Bottalk. One poster, Deszaras, finally got sick and tired of CHOP's antics and decided to form the ACL (Anti-CHOP League), which began as more of a joke than anything else. Basically, the idea was to stop CHOP's seemingly endless supply of spam by driving him off the board. Later on, however, when the ACL got organized against Renaud, it became increasingly frightening to those members of the Council who had reluctantly agreed to support the ACL in its proxy campaign against Renaud more out of habit than anything else. My ties with Deszaras's strongman Dinobot, however, prevented the ACL from spreading its campaign onto the Allspark. For over a year, there was a nice understanding between the Allspark and the ACL that they would maintain their agenda on their board and keep the seedier aspects of their organization off of ours.
CHOP's antics on Bottalk were, at best, a source of amusement at the Allspark, rather like that crazy drunk who lives down the street or that paranoid militia member across the river who is convinced that the US government staged 9/11 in order to begin the next stage of the NWO. While such individuals may be fairly amusing to watch from a distance, they are not the kind of people you would want to have over for dinner. As a result, when CHOP arrived at the Allspark following a failed attempt to spread his somewhat ' interesting personality and views over at Benson Yee's BWTF board (an event he later claimed was part of a coordinated effort between Brainstorm, who had actually been an opponent of Council support for the ACL, and Deszaras) the Council was less than happy to see him.
Personally, if I had had my way, I would have banned him from Day 1. His endless spamming, whining, and other drivel he posted were a complete public disturbance, as were his continual harassment of Council members (including arguably stalking Lady Demona) to take action against his critics. When he was finally banned two weeks after he arrived on the Allspark, I know I wasn't sorry to see him go. Do you really feel bad for the guy who is beat up while wearing a KKK hood into a Black Panthers' meeting? He had some supporters, true, but the vast majority of the board breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Council gave CHOP the collective boot.
It didn't end there, of course, as CHOP later returned on his own Ezboard, Cybertron Net, posing as BBC and claiming to have recreated the ATT. After diplomatic overtures by myself and Vindicator failed, the Council gave SPAT a green light to take action against CHOP. The result was the first of several coups over on Cybertron Net engineered by a triumvirate of SPAT, Optimus Pyre (formerly Human Microbe), and Spectre. In addition to being incredibly humorous to witness (Optimus Pyre on one occasion changed the board's language to Spanish and its time settings to Middle Eastern Standard), they served to keep CHOP too busy at home to plan mischief abroad.
Not everyone with the Allspark leadership, however, was happy of our patronage of the ACL. Pessimist Prime continually railed against the potential dangers of allowing Deszaras to build a power base on the Allspark in the event he moved against us. In addition, he took the opportunity provided by his newfound popularity to take a number of personal shots at Proudwolf, who had been the most vocal proponent of the UTA at the point and who had announced his intention to retire in early September to begin supporting the UTA full-time with his own network of supporters (many of whom would eventually join him at Iacon Harbor). Nevertheless, the attacks on Proudwolf put Deszaras in the category of "trolls" (essentially anyone who criticized the UTA or Proudwolf in particular, though Deszaras's shots were over the top by any standard) by his supporters in the Council and the Cyber Corps (Aerin, Demona, Swoop, Bluestreak, Teletran, ect.), who were determined to stand by Proudwolf against any possible attacks that might undermine the success of the UTA. In the end, Deszaras backed down, and for a little while there was hope that the peace the Allspark had known for last six months might endure for a little while longer.
Things at the Allspark, however, were about to be changed for the worse. In September of 2000, a fundamentalist Protestant poster named Deathcon (to be distinguished from Beast Machines Season 3 coordinator Defcon) posted a now-infamous thread entitled "The Pope is an Idiot!" in which he criticized the Vatican's affirmation of the ancient Catholic doctrine that the Catholic Church is the original Christian church established by Jesus Christ, as well as the atypical fundamentalist objections to Catholicism (creates unbiblical doctrines, became corrupt after 313 AD, worships Mary, made up Purgatory to make money, ad infinitum). I could have torn the general thesis of the thread apart on my own in less than fifteen minutes. But I wasn't reading through the General at that time, and whoever was moderating that evening (I've heard alternating reports that it was Aerin or Optimus Pyre) thought the thread sufficiently inflammatory to warrant deleting it.
That was what provoked the firestorm. Kalidor, whom I still believe was spoiling for one last fight against Proudwolf, came on moments later, with a thread aptly entitled "How DARE you censor a poster for his religious opinions?!!" that declared that the Council of Elders was evil and stated that we had a moral equivalence with Renaud. As I said before, I honestly believe that this was intended for Proudwolf to read, so that the two of them could get in one last good fight before his retirement. Petty? Perhaps, but Proudwolf himself was no saint in his time, nor was any other member who has ever served on the Council. Interestingly, the Allspark FAQ as it now stands on Kalidor's website provides warnings about sanctions against posters who making defamatory threads about another religion, no doubt to deal with the rampant Islamophobia that has appeared since 9/11. It seems that the one-time civil libertarian has learned several things about administration since his days as Proudwolf's nemesis. My personal opinion remains that deleting the thread was an incredibly stupid move because of the response that if would provoke over a topic that was easily dealt with, though I do find it rather ironic that Deathcon never once protested the Council's decision.
Within minutes of Kalidor's postings, there was already heated discussion in the Cyber Corps forum about whether or not to ban him and if so, for how long. After jumping into the heart of the storm to debate the right of the Council to delete the thread (a debate I believe he had intended for Proudwolf), I got off the Internet, mainly because I was too hot to think rationally. Even though, now that I think back on it, I wonder how long a thread entitled "Islam is Evil" would last on either Allspark's forums. It would be an interesting experiment to say the least, to see which religions one could get away with defaming and which ones one would be censored for. I strongly suspect, however, that bashing on the Islamic leadership would provoke severe response from any board's administration following the post-9/11 bout of political correctness, whereas a demonization of the Catholic hierarchy at the Vatican (who, by the way, have very little to do with the actual day-to-day running of the Church in America) would be left alone due to the recent open season most major media outlets have had on secular anti-Catholicism in light of the recent sex scandals (which, according to Time magazine, only concern about 3-5% of the 50,000 American Catholic clergy). The Allspark had long retained a pluralistic sensitivity towards religion and religious discussion (in part due to the excellent work of our General moderators) during the Swoop-Strafe, Vindicator-Kalidor, and Vindicator leadership days of the Allspark, and I would be very interested to see how much of that pluralism remains.
But back to September 2000. While I was off-line, the remaining members ofthe Council and the Cyber Corps met over Yahoo! chat and decided to ban Kalidor for his actions. Whereas in previous bannings (yes, even that of CHOP) the Council had tried to maintain a hint of impartiality, this time there was no mistaking that this was part of a coordinated effort on the part of Proudwolf's supporters to avenge him against Kalidor (they viewed his retirement as a quiet concession that he couldn't beat Kalidor and wanted very much to change that). Deszaras was likewise banned, a fact no doubt completely unrelated to the cheap shots he took at Proudwolf earlier that same evening. I'm not exactly certain what happened during the interregnum, but when I came back online the next morning the Allspark had splintered into two camps, one led by Swoop and based out of the Allspark and the other by a triumvirate of Deszaras, Kalidor, and Optimus Pyre and based off of the ACL board. Pessimist Prime had been made an administrator and instituted an autocratic policy designed to break down the protests that had rocked the board in a demand that Optimus87 speak either in favor of or against the bannings. Once again, the man who hadn’t given a care in the world about the Allspark was being elevated to a quasi-divine status now that there was a crisis. I really don't understand the logic of those who can passionately argue that there is no rational reason for believing in even a bare-bones Deist-style God and yet simultaneously attribute omniscient and omnibenevolent qualities to someone like Optimus87. He's a good man, fair enough, but he was also uninformed and had done nothing to even suggest that he still cared about the board for months except hop in and rake in praise every few weeks, as well as pat the Council on the back and say, "Good job, guys. Keep it up."
In a parastate rapidly becoming unfriendly to moderates, I decided to resign my office as administrator, hoping that somebody would do something to stop a full-fledged flame war from breaking out across the Allspark. Instead, Optimus Pyre (who had decided to use his formidable rhetorical skills in Deszaras's service to rally ACL against the Allspark) branded me a coward and I posted a public fairwell to the fandom on the board, as well as a full disclosure about the extent of Renaud's operations in the fandom. Even Aerosurge and Machina, who were highly critical of the Allspark and its leadership, arrived at the board asking for me to stay. That night, I received over 50 E-Mails from friends and admirers from 4 different countries asking me to return and help them solve the problem.
The next day, I returned, and this time I had a plan. After speaking with Swoop (the legitimate leader of the board at this point), I explained to him my plan: in order to stop most of the regular posters from flocking to the four winds for fear of an ACL attack on the Allspark (which was exactly what Pyre and Deszaras had in mind at that point), I would establish an Ezboard where posters could flee to until such time as the conflict was ended, possibly with the help of AUG mediation. Swoop agreed, and soon Garothman was born, named after the Zoroastrian religion's name for heaven mentioned in its holy book, the Avesta.
Within several days, I had enlisted the help of Deszaras in designing graphics for the board and made Kalidor an administrator there alongside several others. While some might question my taking in help from "the enemy," my logic was a fairly simple one. I have always believed that it is far better to have people, even those you aren't fond of (though I myself have never possessed the virulent amount of anti-Kalidor sentiment that ripped through the Council like a plague after his statements about the deletion of Deathcon's thread), on your side. In addition, the more time Kalidor spent helping to reorganize Garothman, the less likely it was that he was going to lead (or at least sanction) a full-scale ACL attack on the Allspark. SPAT likewise proved himself invaluable by helping to moderate the board's forums until permanent moderators could be found.
Overall, for the first few weeks it had been open, Garothman achieved remarkably well in fullfilling its mission statement. However, there were still unresolved issues that needed to be dealt with over on the Allspark, and as nice as Garothman was, it was far too dark to serve as home. The whole banning standoff needed to brought to a final conclusion and, according to the masses, there was only one man who could do it.
Addendum
As I don't want people to get the wrong impression, this history is not intended to be a "slam" on anyone, nor is it designed as propaganda for Vindicator or his Allspark Classic Ezboard. The primary reason it has been posted here is due to the fact that he and Hector were among the first to contact me outside of my informants since my self-imposed exile from the fandom. I would have happily disseminated this at the Ikon Allspark as well if not for the fact that Kalidor has been quite clear in the past that he will have nothing to do with me and I have no wish to upset his position or provoke a flame war by the inevitable demands that I defend the assertions stated in this document. Even in the event I did post it at the Ikon Allspark, the whole thing would likely be construed as a political power play on my part to regain my former position in the Council of Elders. Were I even in the mood to return to Transfan politics, you would see Garothman balkanized and at the very least posts there that aren't six months old in preparation for my return. As a result, I disseminate these memoirs at the Allspark Classic because as of right now, it is the only media avenue I am able to access thus far (though I highly suggest you all keep listening to Radio Free Cybertron over the next several months).
If anyone wants to contact me, my E-Mail address is and always has been anonelbe@hotmail.com for anyone interested in speaking with me. All threats, pleas to return, or flames will be ignored, however. Oh and yes, I am aware that several important events from over the summer leading up to September 2000 were not covered in this installment. They will, however, be mentioned in-depth in the next chapter.
Oh, and Tarantulus, yes that was a copying glitch. The intended thrust of the paragraph was that many of the people who helped me with and supported my Alternate Beast Machines on Bottalk later became the same people who are even now keeping me up to date with what goes on the fandom. Let's just say I'm not impressed with what I'm seeing and can better understand now why Rumble's so bloody cynical.
Dan
