#11. To: NeoconsNailed, christine, Pinguinite, 4um (#10)(Edited)
Was laffing at exxon's quirky style
A bit of a 4um history lesson may be in order... If I'm wrong about certain details, feel free to correct them.
Esso
When I caught up to this group of hardcore patriots, it was at a forum called LibertyPost.com. After time, the sight owner, Goldi-Lox (that should be a danger sign), turned for some reason (maybe 911), and a new site was born, FreedomUnderground.com. I think most of the LP folks were a splinter group from FreeRepublic.com when the honcho there lost his mind.
At LP and FU, my screename was Stand Opposed, somewhat clunky and unrefined. Most everybody was abbreviating my name as S.O. or just SO which I found to be kind of annoying.
Something happened at FU and Christine and Pinguinite, formed 4um. I've been here since the git-go, but changed my name to Esso (as in S.O or SO) which is much less burdensome. It has no relation to Exxon/Mobil (XOM), but, full disclosure, I do own 2,000 shares of XOM, half of which was bought with money languishing in a money market account. I got it half price sometime after the scamdemic started a year or so ago. When I bought the last batch, the dividend yield was north of 10%. Try to get that in a money market, now it won't even cover Bidet's inflation.
Let me try to get back on track. The progression as I understand it:
1. FreeRepublic.com. 2. LibertyPost.com, where I got involved as Stand Opposed. 3. FreedomUnderground.com. 4. Freedom4um.com which didn't have a name yet. I changed my name to Esso, which has a really distinctive logo which is handy at ZeroHedge.
The guy who came up with the 4um name, was a guy with the screenname Arator. Last I heard of him, he was travelling the world, stateless, on a sailboat. It was really clever merging forum with the fourth home of all us misfits.
Some other current aliases of mine: PacMan, Cap'n Brandon, Robert...
(Edit) I don't give this shit away for free. You'll get a bill.
(Edit2) The price of XOM has gone up enough that the dividend yield is down to 5.95% today.
FR was formed first in response to the Bill Clinton presidency where bashing the president for any and every reason or non-reason was approved. Bush 2 came into office in early 2001, and then 911 hit, and the rules at FR changed dramatically as there was an R president in office. Some 6-9 months after 911 when all criticism of the R admin was prohibited on FR, Goldi-lox (Sally) contacted me through a common link about building a competitive site for FR that would actually allow free speech.
So I built LP, with her assist and general guidance. Inevitably, as is human nature, disagreement about how LP was being run and moderated arose and FU was formed as an alternative to LP.
After human nature again reared it's ugly head at FU, Christine wanted another forum that she could run, and, in choosing the name, "4um" was selected in humorous recognition that it as the 4th forum in general existence. I remember joking that we should reserve the names "5um", "6um" and "7um" for future expansion as disputes and division continued, which is still funny even now, if I say so myself!
FU folded for lack of participation or what not. I was never active there so don't know details.
LP folded after Sally died, alone in her condo, some years back. The guy doing the tech support on LP is a friend of mine to this day and he received no word of her passing as Sally lived a very solitary life with no family or friends. He asked me if I knew anything about Sally having not heard from her past a domain name renewal, and finally got some advice to call the Sheriff's office in Sally's home town. He did so and learned in short order that she had died. Packages had accumulated outside her condo door and the building manager finally called police to do a welfare check and they found her deceased, but with her cat still there.
I was told the deputies were glad to get a call from my friend a great many weeks after the fact as they had been unable to find anyone with any ties to Sally at all. All sad, of course, regardless of what one thinks of her running LP.
Without any fair method of deciding what veteran LPer should have the right to take over the site, the decision was made to close LP down, though preserved in static read-only for posterity, but also as an on-line notice to anyone that might search for Sally to learn of her fate, and my friend told me her ex-husband and son did learn of her passing that way just within the last 2-3 years or so after making contact.
A bit of a diversion to the topic, perhaps, but still noteworthy in the grand scheme of forum drama, I'd say. The LP site is still up at this time, but I think my friend will not be renewing the domain any more.
Thanks for all that interesting history and kudos on your saga, Neil. Wasn't LP very well known for some time? Was it related to libertycrier.com (Trevor something) in some way? Feel certain I heard of it way before finding 4um.
Very sad about Sally. Her grave writing is very 1990s-computery ;)