FcNext is not the answer to TFN trouble
Our text below is too long to post as a comment on the blog post titled “The freecycle controversy” at:
http://sunnydale47.livejournal.com/880220.html
… so instead we will only post there a link to THIS blog entry.
FcNext is not the answer to TFN trouble.
In it’s group home page description, FcNext (formerly FreecycleNext) calls itself “the next generation of freecycling” and says that they are about “the future of freecycling.” Anyone examining their activity (they have a publicly accessible message archive) will find that it’s more about the past, about their hatred of The Freecycle Network, Inc. (TFN) and its founder and chief, Deron Beal, and about sniping and cultish rage against anyone who speaks seriously against FcNext hate-baiting practices, including slanderous character assassinations and other kinds of violations of the Yahoo! Groups Guidelines and Terms of Service (TOS). Recently about half a dozen FcNexters were slapped with TOS violation notices by Yahoo! and Yahoo deleted a bunch of their posts because of it … most notably recent three-time-TOS-violator foul-mouthed money-grubbing ”Deacon of the Erisian Way“ Eric Burke, who can’t keep a civil tongue in his head. (For a good laugh, take a look at his razmear.us Erisian Deacon web site, where, like other places you find him on the web, he’s begging for personal financial support, this time in, “Buy some cool Erisian Stuff and help me pay my bills, take a look at my shop for an assortment of Sacred Chao merchandise.” There IS no such thing as cool Erisian stuff, because it’s an idiotic pseudo-philosophy. But it’s not surprising that Deacon Burke, like other FcNexters, goes by a self-ordained spiritual title, such things being common among cultists.)
There is nothing new in the behavior of FcNext. They’ve been doing it in multiple online venues for about four years, coalesced into FcNext as their favorite cult cave.
Exploring FcNext one will also find that it’s only a dozen or so vocal snipers doing most of the trash-talking in FcNext, sometimes up to about two dozen, yet they deign to represent themselves as speaking for the truth held by a majority that does not exist. FcNext membership is a miniscule minority of worldwide (or even just U.S.) freecycling group moderators. And it’s always the same intent and tone: taking down TFN (as if there will ever be any chance of their ever accomplishing any bit of that). If they were honest, they’d rename their group “Death to TFN,” which is all they are really about, under the cloaks and masks they put over that mission.
Realistically, FcNext has accomplished nothing to stop the hegemony of TFN in the freecycling world it created. Now, FcNexters face Yahoo!’s active promotion of TFN’s freecycle groups, even to the extent of Yahoo!’s seeding free gifts into TFN groups for the purpose of recruiting new members … talk about consumerism … freecycling for dollars, really, in that Yahoo! is taking commercialization of freecycling to a new level it never knew before. FcNext is absolutely helpless and hopeless in fighting that. Not that they shouldn’t. They simply cannot, because they don’t have the means or the minds for such an undertaking. They have not a gram of the wherewithal needed to begin such a campaign. All they can do is rant about it, and Yahoo! and TFN will laugh at them all the way to the bank.
I call FcNext the “Lost Generation of Freecycling.” They are TFN rejects who can’t get over it and move on, like some of the best of former TFN activists did in the creation of ReUseItNetwork.org, the best real alternative to TFN in the U.S., aside from some completely independent groups and maybe RealCycle.co.uk in the U.K. , possibly FullCircles.org in Canada.
FcNext brags about being big on free speech and welcoming cogent expression of dissent, in response to their experience of being censored and squelched in the Freecycle ModSquad and OIDG groups when they objected to certain things about TFN corporate behavior. But when someone comes along and offers any serious dissent to FcNext ways, or seriously opposes the behavior of a core FcNext insider or cult leader, after allowing their cult followers to harass and attack the dissenter on a personal level (blatantly ignoring the FcNext home page policy statement, “No personal attacks,” in lip-servicing hypocrisy to the extent of being slapped with Yahoo! TOS violations for it) with no cogent response to the actual content of the opposition’s writings, they then invoke censorship just like OIDG and MS, preventing the dissenter from answering the FcNext rabid wolf pack postings, and worse, with the hypocrisy of saying that they stand for freedom to speak in dissent. So they have become the thing they hate in TFN’s OIDG and MS groups: using censorship (and worse, personal attacks) to shut down posting by people who raise objections to the group’s behavior, even from non-TFN-affiliated people who don’t like TFN any better than FcNexters do.
This is not a defense of TFN’s policies, practices or behaviors. However, one must consider that as a corporate entity TFN has a duty to protect its proprietary interests and reputation from attacks from its own insiders. What they are protecting may be corrupt in some ways (and, in at least the constitution of its “not-for-profit” board of directors built on cronyism and nepotism, it is corrupt), but no corporation is going to sit still for its own staff, volunteers, and members ripping it apart from the inside, corrupt or not.
FcNext, on the other hand, has no such proprietary duty. On the contrary, they claim (deceptively and hypocritically) to be all about free speech and the right to dissent. They lie in that. I’ve caught Deron Beal in lies, too (most notably about the former freecyclefinder.org activity shut down indirectly because of Yahoo! declaring its behavior a TOS violation), but that does not justify or warrant deception, rampant hypocrisy, and cultic hate-baiting among Beal’s opponents.
Lately, FcNext moderators (chieftains among the hate-baiting cult) have gone so far as to squelch even their own loyal cultists from posting about writings of people taking a stand against FcNext outside of FcNext. No surprise there, really. This is the only answer they can offer to dissent against their ways; hiding from it like children holding hands over ears and yelling “La la la la la la la la la – I can’t hear you! – La la la la la la la!” But they had not ears, hearts or minds to hear cogent criticism against their own corruption and moral hazard anyway.
In addition to this kind of folly, they actively support and praise the perpetuation of so-called alternative networks or directories of supposed freecycling groups. The two most popular ones among FcNexters are Eric Burke’s freesharing.org and FcNext moderator “Pastor” (a.k.a.: PK) Ken Hedden’s SharingIsGiving.org (SIG). BOTH are loaded with garbage “freecycling group” links (and they don’t even bother to try to deny it, knowing they have no defense to offer for it). Freesharing.org directory links are at least 60% garbage, proved through documented research published at:
http://nexteritis.wordpress.com/freesharing-survey-march-2008/
Pastor, indeed; cult-style, that is.
Hedden fattens the SIG directory by going around the country via cyberspace from his desk in Schroon Lake, NY, creating zombie groups — groups that are dead or inactive and never were and never will be active (proved by the fact that many of them are now dead two and three years since he created them) — “groups” that he puts up apparently only to fatten his directory and increase his silly empire of links — all in the hypocritical and deceptive name of providing an alternative to TFN. Three quarters of Hedden’s SIG-brand-name groups are zombies, never truly operational freecycling groups. The rest are largely just duplicates of links from Burke’s
directory, proved 60% junk. The true nature of the SIG “network” has been carefully researched and documented at:
http://nexteritis.wordpress.com/sig-survey-overview/
Freesharing and SIG are no alternative at all to TFN except in a deceptive, illegitimate, corrupt way. This is “the future of freecycling” by FcNext standards.
If any person stumbling upon freesharing or SIG uses them to look for a local group to join, more likely than not they will not find a legitimate, viable, real freecycling group there, but they can find groups that promote buying and selling, the antithesis of freecycling, and they can find Eric Burke’s personal profit generating ads.
For several months, Burke used freesharing.org to promote his favorite partisan political campaign (Ron Paul) in addition to always using the site to raise a personal profit for himself (and for his partisan political cause during the also-ran campaign of Ron Paul). I call freesharing.org “Freecycling for Dollars.” He also refused to remove groups that asked to be removed from his directory of links for sites that his FAQ says is for “sites that wish to be listed,” a statement we expect him to eventually remove so that he can no longer be held accountable for it, just as he recently removed his “No Politics” rule for groups listed in his “directory.”
After being publicly exposed and condemned for using freesharing.org for partisan political activism on the backs of apolitical freecycling groups, he removed the freesharing FAQ policy statement about “no politics,” a policy almost universally accepted as standard throughout the freecycling world, but no longer in freesharing.org or in the conscience of vocal FcNexters who praise, support and defend Burke (thus we say “almost” universally accepted). FcNextercultists will never stand on principle against one of their own core cult insiders. The few wimpy mentions among them about defects in Burke’s behavior amount to nothing more than feigned shots at empty self-righteousness, painting pictures on their own mirrors to hide what they would otherwise see if viewed with open and honest eyes.
If they had any guts at all, those Nexters who recognize the errors in Burke’s ways would firmly and resolutely take a stand against them, and publicly divest themselves of involvement and support of freesharing.org unless and until he makes amends. But in a cultish environment like FcNext, that would only earn them the ire of the dominant FcNextercult rabid wolf pack, where all thrive on mindless fear, not just of outsiders, but of themselves, having become what they most hate as a group and unable to see it, much less admit it or do anything about it. Even the smarter ones among them like moderator (and former Deron Beal right-hand-woman) Nancy Castleman and FcNext founder Tim Oey won’t do it, probably because they know it would be the end of their idiot brainchild FcNext.
After waiting three and half months for Burke to live up to his promises to accommodate their requests to be removed from his directory, when a group undertook a membership letter-writing civil campaign to him about it, he responded to some of them with foul-mouthed (including the usual proverbial drunken sailor type expletives) abusive emails, and undertook a raging personal attack (calling it a declaration of “war”) on the group’s owner in FcNext posts (posts that were subsequently deleted by Yahoo! for TOS violations). He accused the group’s members of sending him abusive emails, but when challenged on that lie, he never produced a copy of a single one.
Burke was also caught red-handed adding groups to his directory that never asked to be there, despite his site’s FAQ stated policy that the directory is for “sites that wish to be listed.” Freesharing.org (not an org at all, but just the personal profiteering activity of Eric Burke) is more corrupt than the TFN he hates.
What did FcNexters have to say about this? Most of them who said anything, especially the usually most vocal ones, defended Burke, and even praised his corrupt
behaviors. They joined in the personal attacks against Burke’s opponents, without any cogent defense offering any reasoning for their hateful behavior. They cheered him on and encouraged him to continue his foul-mouthed personal attacks and abuses, adding their own slanderous rhetoric to the fray, and rallied for Burke to continue his corrupt activity at freesharing.org.
FcNext, if it had any conscience as a group, or even if just one of its leading members had an active conscience, would take a stand against the kind of “future of freecycling” represented by Burke’s and Hedden’s garbage directories. Instead, FcNexters defend their right to practice deception in the creation and publicizing of junk directory entries, politicizing of the freecycling movement, and profiteering on it. This is the future of freecycling in the hands and small minds of leading, core FcNext cultists and their most vocal trash-talking blindly brainwashed minions energized by hatred.
For more about this, including carefully documented research into the true nature of freesharing.org and sharingisgiving.org (which always was a silly name), and for a cogently expressed dissenting perspective (something not allowed in FcNext) on the cultic mindset of FcNext, see the Nexteritis blog at:
http://nexteritis.wordpress.com
Nexteritis is NOT associated, affiliated, or allied with The Freecycle Network or any other freecycling network or directory service in any manner whatsoever. The purpose of Nexteritis is to expose the corrupt nature of FcNext and its minions.
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Copyright 2008 by Nexteritis. All rights reserved. For permission to use, write to:
