Our buddy has a MELTDOWN...

[Darth Stateworker]

Our buddy and one of the former NYUF trolls on this blog (We'll call her by her troll name she used, "Lynn Grey") has had a meltdown on her "PEF Employees Uncensored" Facebook page.

Someone from Tax going by the name of PEF Taxsteward got her panties in a bunch reporting on her dealings as a steward at Tax. The comments were unflattering to say the least. She went on to delete the comments of this guy/gal repeatedly, and claimed it wasn't her, but Facebook that did it, who also reported to HER via email that the guy was a harassing troll.

I challenged her on this, stating that FB does not email other parties about offending accounts, instead, it simply deletes them. I told her if what she said was true, she should forward us the email from FB to prove she wasn't censoring the guy. She refused, and preceded to lay into me via typical ad hom about me being a retard born to alcoholic, drug addicted parents or some other such nonsense, after which she had the balls to report ME to FB as harassing HER.

Now she's on a rant about sending DCJS after this "PEF Taxsteward" guy and me for "harassing and threatening" her. Apparently, she needs to re-read some of the posts she made HERE a few months back, if not just her own posts on her damn FB page.

Is THIS the kind of person we want involved with the running of our union in ANY way, shape, or form? An infantile egomaniac that makes ridiculous ad hom attacks on people while at the same time crying because they think everyone else is doing it to them?

Thank goodness her page isn't all that popular.

[Darth Stateworker]

Conversation begins with me butting in to a conversation about "PEF Taxsteward" and his comments about Linda being all about... Linda:


Linda claiming she does't delete anything on her "Uncensored" page, and that she was contacted by FB to say that "PEF Taxsteward" was a troll:



Me pointing out that she has in fact deleted posts (of mine, that had NOTHING to do with her), and that Facebook does not email end users to warn them of a troll:


Linda saying I have "no credibility" in response to another post I didn't get a screenie of - one where I tell her to simply send us a copy of the email to prove she's being honest. Apparently, calling into question her assertion is "trolling". Clearly, she needs a dictionary:


To which I point out she's busted, and calling her out on a blatant lie is NOT trolling:


Uh-OH! The guy/gal she said Facebook contacted her about still has an account! I guess she DID delete his/her posts after all! Caught in a lie, just as I accused her of.


I happily point out she's busted:


To which she responds with a shitload of ad-hom, saying I grew up in an abusive home with an alcoholic bigot as a parent or something...


Now I ask - was I harassing her? Or merely pointing out that she was lying and she got caught?

As I said Linda - it's going to take a bit more than your bullshit posts on your page where you act like a poor, defenseless, innocent martyr to try to slander me. You got busted lying. You didn't like it. TOO FUCKING BAD.

[NYS Techie]

Why are you interacting with these people? They're IDIOTS. It's a complete waste of your time and talents.

It's like wandering into a bar full of stooooopid, drunken hillbillies complete with the missing teeth and the confederate flag tattoos and the deformed weirdo with the banjo in the corner. You look around, you shudder, you cross yourself twice, and you leave. You don't hang around and try to explain philosophy to them!

You know the old saying, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig"?

[Darth Stateworker]

True that she's nuts, but there are a few there that have been worth having discussions with (like Sunrunner/TruTalkTV and Joe... Not all of them are so rabid and bitter as she is. Some of them actually discuss union related issues and don't simply bitch and moan about losing the election like she and the KMFers there do.

[NYS Techie]

So invite them here, where the others can be hit with the banhammer if they don't behave themselves.

Put it this way: would you rather chat with your friends over a cool beer in a quiet bar with a bouncer who doesn't allow anyone to pick fights?

Or would you do it in a hillbilly bar, where fights are considered part of the evening's entertainment?

Hint: In one of these, you might actually have a decent conversation.

[Darth Stateworker]

I have invited them. Sunrunner is already a member, and I expect Joe may swing by from time to time on issues he wants to throw his opinion in on.

Shit, even Linda could post here. It's not like I banned her before, even as annoying, pouty, and belligerant she was. I've used the banhammer here once and only once - on Tom Giorgio, and only after his physical threats. And even that I rescinded on Weekendgirls request, because she had a thing or two she wanted to say to them.

However, I really do find Lindas rants, empty threats, lies, and personal martyrdom to be pretty entertaining. It's like watching a local version of a train-wreck reality show.

[NYS Techie]

Well, actually that's a compelling argument. I'd love to check it out, but you can't see anything unless you're logged in, and currently I have only one Facebook account -- under my real name.

I could set up a Facebook throwaway account just to check them out, but it's like, "Halo 4 is out, and I'm on my second playthrough on Dishonored... Meh, maybe later".

Thanks for posting these, it lets me read them.

Besides, honestly, she reminds me of a less-cool Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. At least Mimi was dastardly and smart, she kept it interesting. Linda's just so... I think "base" is the word I'm looking for, but it doesn't capture the whole feeling I get from her and her friends.

Crass doesn't capture it either; crass can be fun. I suppose "tiresome" works.

[Darth Stateworker]

I look under my real account all the time. She can't see who visits the page, only who posts. And I thought you were only on G+?

[NYS Techie]

No, I have a parked Facebook account. I call it "parking my identity" -- it prevents people from making fake Facebook pages about me. If an employer checks Facebook for me, all they'll see is a very boring page with a single head shot and some blurbs about where I went to school (and a link to my home page).

I don't do much on G+ either, but I find G+ more usable.

For anything where I'm going to be talking about something (usually how to program, or how to do something neat with Linux) I put it on my private website, where I control the copyrights. I'll send you a link by private message, let me know what you think.

[Darth Stateworker]

Ah - gotcha.

Got the link. I'll give it a looksie.

[NYS Techie]

Alright, I threw caution to the wind and I checked out the Uncensored folks' site (UPDATE: I've toned this review down a bit; on a second reading, it seemed to me that some of my criticisms were expressed more harshly than necessary).

Here are my criticisms, as a fairly experienced programmer and occasional website designer:

1) the site is WAY TOO BUSY. There's no cohesive message there, only a thousand simultaneous, very short conversations. It resembles a BBS where all chat rooms are active at the same time, and you have to scroll around a gigantic window to find the one you want to join. Websites by necessity must attempt to drive the user towards some sort of unifying message. Here, the site is so busy that nothing catches the eye.

2) There are too many pictures of Linda's pet chihuahua, all of course containing what she thinks the dog is "saying" to her. I am reminded of this article on The Oatmeal, about how a website design goes straight to Hell. Note that the Hellish design features a small dog and its presumed thoughts about toast: theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

(The Oatmeal is an amazing site, anyway -- you should check it out -- theoatmeal.com/).

A good rule of thumb for websites is, ANY pictures of cute little animals with anthropomorphic opinions ascribed to them immediately discredits the site. No professionally produced site would ever display such a thing.

3) The site's entire reason for existence is a sham. They claim they are "PEF Members Uncensored" but they begin censoring conversations almost immediately. In fact, they are absolutely censor-crazy, censoring virtually anything that isn't praise. This makes the conversations on the site look strange and disjointed, with no logical narrative. Not only do they not understand what they're doing to the site's narrative, they BRAG about doing it, using euphemisms like "house cleaning" and "taking out the trash".

Bottom line: it's not "PEF Uncensored" if you're actively censoring the site. This, again, discredits the site.

4) In a similar vein, whenever someone disagrees with the site operator, she threatens to call the police, claiming that there are laws against such "harassment". In her mind, apparently, disagreeing with her and poking fun of her constitutes a crime. She also likes to wave her "attorney daughter" around, as if a lawyer practicing in Washington D.C. would be able to drop everything and return to upstate New York to waste weeks on a groundless lawsuit over an online disagreement.

Just think about what the daughter's conversation with the senior partners of her law firm would be like: "Sirs, I'd like to take several weeks, maybe even months, away from my case load here in DC to return to Albany New York and sue anonymous people on the Internet because they offended my mother in a chatroom. Their ringleader appears to have based his online persona on Darth Vader."

Ask yourself: does this seem like a thing that could happen? If not, why not?

FINALLY:

I believe the best thing for all involved would be to simply close down the site and allow the union to do its job without interference. I believe the site only serves to fragment and confuse the union membership, distracting more foolish members from the actual PEF site, where they SHOULD be going. As such it is doing the union a great disservice.

If the operators of this site are ACTUALLY pro-union, the best thing they can do is shut down the site and throw their support behind the union itself.

Somehow, I doubt they will do so.

[Darth Stateworker]

Well, since the events of a week or two ago, it appears that there has been very little to no actual discussion there about any union issues whatsoever. Which is kind of funny, because she's supposed to be ALL ABOUT union issues. I kind of expected legitimate discussion on real issues would die out once those of us that actually discussed legit issues were either "censored" by her or left in disgust at her behavior - and it appears that's exactly what happened.

Instead, as you noted, it's more pictures of her mutts and one brainless post about chain restaurants firing people over Obamacare where she rattles off a litany of chain restaurants that have supposedly announced that they will be laying people off or cutting hours due to Obamacare. There's one problem with her assertions - many of the restaurants listed are chains that operate on a franchise basis, meaning there are many different owners all across the nation doing many different things. For example, the local BKs are mainly owned by the Carroll Corporation, and not BK Corporate. And unless Carroll stated somewhere that they would be laying people off or cutting hours, telling people to boycott BKs because of what some OTHER franchisee is doing is just moronic.

Just another example of how utterly clueless she is. I really hate it when people make ignorant chain posts on Facebook. Shit, I didn't look, but I'll bet there's even an easy to find entry on Snopes debunking much of that bullshit restaurant post.

[NYS Techie]

What probably happened was, some douchebag "small businessman" who owns a MacDonalds' franchise got his panties in a twist because Obama won the election. So he started hollering about how he's going to go broke, etc (even though there's no evidence whatsoever that anything like that will happen) and he takes it out on his employees, who can't fight back.

The guy gets noisy on conservative websites, and a rumor starts going around that it's MacDonalds, not some twit from podunk, doing the firing. And predictably, eventually, Linda hears about it and flips out.

When I was in school, we knew how to do research, how to "consider the source" and not take anything as gospel unless we fact-checked it.

Sigh...

[Darth Stateworker]

Exactly. I really just don't get the whole "I read it on the internet so it MUST be true!" mentality some people have.

[NYS Techie]

Did you see that commercial with the "French Model"? That cracked me up.