Inside TSL: Unhinged

By: Will Stewart | Founder

Unhinged

Gather round Virginia Tech fans, and I’ll tell you three tales of Hokies who came unhinged.

We’ve all seen that guy on Facebook or Twitter or really, anywhere around the Internet. That guy who spews discontent and unhappiness and criticism and who isn’t satisfied, no matter what.

You know, guys like this:

https://twitter.com/starmaxprez/status/1225128696790560768

Some guys like to wallow in the misery, to rile people up, to be “that guy.” From the early Hokie Central days of J.R. Hokie and Hokierama, we’ve had our problems with guys like that on the message boards. (If you recognize those usernames as way-back troublemakers, then get your official Old-School button here.)

When you work in the public eye like we do, some people just lose their sh … enanigans in your realm and become unhinged.

Here are three such stories. This article will contain no pictures, no videos, no ads, and no sponsor promos. It’s not that kind of article.

What the … ?

Once upon a time, we had a message board poster named WTFHokies. He registered on August 31st, 2013, and since “WTF” is an acronym for a vulgarity, our radar went up from the time he first posted. He was a troll from the get-go, and he lasted all of 59 posts before we banned him. It appears that we deleted all of his posts when we banned him, so you can’t actually see the content of them, but a look at his profile verifies his troll status, just from the subject lines of his posts.

Some basic detective work in our system shows that he originally registered in 2011 and trolled the boards as “SECRules!”, and when we banned that account in January 2012, he re-registered as “NotAgain” in September 2012. We banned that one, and then he registered as “VtHope” (LOL) in November 2012. He didn’t last longer than a day either time on those last two.

It’s important to note that he didn’t post much as WTFHokies, so even though he first registered in 2013, we didn’t ban him until his 59th post in September of 2015. He then re-registered as various iterations of WTFHokies seven more times in 2015 and 2016, only to be banned immediately each time.

He took all of 2017 and most of 2018 and 2019 off, registering just four more times and getting banned each time. Not a big deal. We had dealt with stuff like this before, guys who chipped around the edges and tried over and over, only to be sniffed out quickly and banned. It’s part of the job.

Then came August 31, 2019.

You might remember that day. Virginia Tech lost to Boston College in the opening game of the 2019 football season. WTFHokies re-registered as “HokieFan1990” and got off 54 posts during the game that day, and we got complaints. We did the research, figured out who he was, and banned him.

We got an email from (name redacted) that said, “You guys are ridiculous – unless we all drink the Fuente kool aide you get banned – come on.”

The email came from a guy with the same name as the original WTFHokies’ registration. Real clever. He registered as HokieFan1990 with the name “Jim Snith” (um, okay), but when he emailed us to complain about being banned, his email came from the same name listed in the WTFHokies account.

I couldn’t help myself. I usually take the high road. I have a 24-year history of taking the high road. But the stupidity of it was so enormous that I emailed him back and said, “Why, whatever could you be talking about? We haven’t banned anyone named (name redacted) today.”

Oh, my goodness. He read that and became unhinged.

At this point, we had been doing this dance for exactly eight years over 18 different accounts, but when I mocked him, he completely lost it.

Those of you who spend time on the boards know what came next: the many lives of message board poster “BeatODU.”

Over the course of the next 33 days, he registered for our site and got banned from the boards 49 times, as various iterations of “BeatODU” and other usernames too numerous and time-consuming to list here.

Timeout. You’re thinking: “49 times? You couldn’t just block his IP address or something?”

Here’s where it gets interesting. Why yes, we can do that. We’ve done it in the past.

However … at some point last spring or summer (I don’t remember when), we started getting a huge amount of invalid traffic (bots) to our web site, and one of our major ad networks dropped us. To solve the problem, our IP/hosting team decided to start running our content through a service called Cloudflare, which filters out a lot of invalid traffic, blocks known bot farms, etc.

The only problem? Every user’s IP address in our system now resolves to a Cloudflare server cluster. Block an IP address, and you’re blocking an entire Cloudflare cluster, and thus a lot of users, not just one.

So, that very important weapon was removed from our arsenal. We have other tools we can use to investigate users, but IP address is one of the big ones.

Our “friend” also attacked when we were most vulnerable: during football games. That’s when we’re working and tweeting and doing all sorts of things, and it’s hard to pick up on the re-registrations because we’re getting so much posting traffic. Home games are the worst, because (don’t tell me you don’t see this next part coming) when we’re in Lane Stadium, we’re unable to access the site on our phones, and thus we not only can’t see the boards, we can’t ban accounts either. We’re dead in the water. (Cory Van Dyke covered games for us, but he doesn’t have access to the board admin account, and we don’t burden him with that. It’s all up to me and Chris Coleman.)

Irony of ironies: the stadium emptied out so early during the Dukebacle on September 27th that I was actually able to access the site on my phone from my seat in the stands, and I was able to sniff out and ban all 15 of his registrations that night.

Yep. I said 15. In a three-and-a-half-hour span of time.

The last time our friend WTFHokies-cum-BeatODU registered for our site was January 4th, 2020, and it was his 116th registration in our system. That is not a typo, and it’s a record, by far. Hokierama and J.R. Hokie were huge pains in the butt back in the day, but if you add them together and multiply them by ten, they don’t add up to that.

Here’s the final twist to the story: I know exactly who this person is. Many of his original registrations – as well as the August 31st, 2019 email that I mocked – included his real name. One of the registrations even included an email address that you can find in his LinkedIn profile.

As you might guess from his “HokieFan1990” registration, he is a 1990 graduate of Virginia Tech, specifically from the Pamplin College of Business. He has an MBA (not from VT). He has been a vice president for three different companies, has held three jobs that include the word “global” in the title, and has also held a few positions that require extensive customer relations. He is quite accomplished professionally.

But when it comes to TSL, he is completely unhinged.

hokie80 and His Hater

If you’ve been on the boards, then you recognize the username “hokie80.” If you sort our message board user list by number of posts, you see that he is the all-time king, with 152,206 posts (which includes a break of at least several years from his original registration in Nov. 1999).

He has never subscribed to TechSideline.com, not for a hot minute. That doesn’t matter, per se, but I thought I would throw it out there.

He has always been snarky and confrontational. Or rather, used to be. As of Dec. 31, 2019, he is banned from posting on our boards.

That’s actually not the point of the story I’m about to tell, however. The important point is that he was a high-volume, often snarky, often confrontational poster. As such, he was going to have his run-ins with other board patrons.

Within each message board post is a Report Abuse button that, if clicked, sends an email to TSL staff reporting a post as a potential violation of our board terms of use. We get the email and go check the post out.

In calendar year 2019, hokie80 generated far more abuse report emails than any other user (except for the nutjob described in the previous section). To be more precise, of our regular posters, hokie80 generated more abuse reports than anyone else, by far.

But I started to notice something at the beginning of football season: the vast majority of reports were coming from unknown (not logged in) users. In the 33 days from August 31 to October 2, we received 76 reports about hokie80 (2.38 reports per day), and 65 of them, over 85 percent, came from “Unknown.”

Not only did a lot of the reports come from “Unknown,” but the style of reporting, and the language used, was similar. Pardon me, but the word “asshole” was used nine times to describe hokie80 in the reports, and I personally was told to “grow a pair” or “grow some balls” five times. I was also told that hokie80 was my daddy. The reports were not only highly critical of hokie80 but abusive of TSL staff, me in particular.

So I asked myself the logical question: are a lot of not-logged-in users reporting him … or just one user, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity?

I got our programmer to change the Report Abuse button and add one simple piece of code to it: to use it, you had to be registered and logged in to the site. We did this on October 2.

You know what happened next: reports on hokie80 dropped dramatically. From October 4 to December 20, we received just 18 abuse reports on hokie80. That’s 0.315 reports per day, down from the figure of 2.38 per day cited above.

Now we’re talking. To continue to report hokie80, his hater was going to have to show himself. He was going to have to log in.

It didn’t take long. Eight times in two days, on October 4 and October 5, I received abuse reports on hokie80 from OceanCityHokie. Mystery solved. I had found his “unknown” hater.

OceanCityHokie was banned from posting on our boards back in 2017. He was banned because (1) he deserved it; and (2) he was a re-registrant many times (at least eight times) on the boards dating back to the mid-2000s, when he first registered as “radfordhokie08.” Yes, my detective game is strong, and our message board histories go way back, in case you didn’t figure that out from the previous section.

radfordhokie08 originally registered back in October of 2004 using his real name, so it was easy to do the sleuthing and learn more about him. I looked him up on LinkedIn, etc.

Despite being banned from posting on the boards as OceanCityHokie for over two years, he was still able to log into his old OceanCityHokie account and use it to report hokie80 and pelt us with Report Abuse emails. So to prevent that, I changed the OceanCityHokie username by adding a character to it, thus making it an invalid login name and unusable.

Then I sat back and waited for him to re-register and start using a new account to report hokie80.

It didn’t take long, of course. He registered one account to mock me personally (“Wills Abuse Button”), then when I locked that account, he registered as “OrangeWrangler85” under the completely made-up name “Octavian Smith” (eye roll).

OrangeWrangler85 produced five abuse reports about hokie80 in the span of four days. I ignored them.

Then “Octavian Smith” started emailing me directly to complain about hokie80, and his emails were mocking, included some mild profanity, and he once again told me to “grow some balls.”

After receiving six of these emails, I finally emailed Octavian Smith back. I called him by his real name – the name on his original radfordhokie08 registration, not the made-up name Octavian Smith – and asked him what the deal was with his deep hatred for hokie80.

He ignored that I called him by his real name and sent me a cheery email explaining his deep-seated dislike for how people like hokie80 (he also listed a bunch of other users he can’t stand) were allowed to run roughshod on the boards.

I emailed this back to “Octavian Smith”:

————————————

(real name redacted):

  • Twitter (thousands of fans talking VT athletics — not monitored)
  • Facebook (numerous VT sports groups containing thousands of VT fans — not monitored)
  • Instagram — not monitored
  • SnapChat — not monitored
  • VTScoop.com (very active message board)
  • TheKeyPlay.com (very active message board)
  • TechLunchPail.com

I could go on and on.  Sooooo many places to read about and discuss Virginia Tech Athletics. If you don’t like TSL or how we run it, just … go somewhere else. Seriously. Why pelt me with dozens of message board abuse reports, and scores of emails, including abusive language like “get some balls” and such?  Just … go somewhere else.

You’re (real name redacted), not “Octavian Smith” or “John Slavin” or any of the other anonymous accounts you’ve taken out with us. You’re opening up multiple email accounts under fake names, just to flood me with angry emails. It’s disturbing, and you need to stop and think about your behavior. Leave me alone. I’ve got a business to run and a family to raise.

I’ve been silent for months — YEARS — while you engaged in this abusive behavior towards me. Leave me alone.

— Will

————————————

You might say I became a little unhinged myself.

That was on January 1, 2020, and remarkably, that ended it. He never emailed me back and has done as I requested: left me alone.

The irony? hokie80 himself became unhinged during the Belk Bowl on December 31 and earned a final, permanent ban. radfordhokie08/OceanCityHokie and his many registrations over the years finally got what he wanted, after all.

One Last Story: Yikes

This last story doesn’t take long to tell at all, and it might be the most disturbing.

If you were on the boards between midnight and 6 AM the nights of Thursday-Saturday, February 13-15, you got a show from someone who is definitely unhinged.

Three registrations were taken out on those three nights, one per night. I will not print here what each of those accounts posted, but if you’re not on some sort of monitored computer and are not offended by foul language, you can take a look at some unsettling posts directed at yours truly. Just click the usernames – again, Not Safe For Work (NSFW):

All three accounts were banned, of course, and no new registrations have occurred since then.

This guy is a little tricky. None of my sleuthing tools can tell me who he is, and he wasn’t dumb enough to register with a legit name or email address. Who is he? So far, it’s a mystery.

Here’s the twist to this story. Remember when I told you above that because we run our traffic through Cloudflare, no one has a unique IP address anymore? After the first two nights of this behavior, I emailed our site programmer. He was disturbed, as anyone would be, and put his prodigious brain to work and came up with a solution. Now, when people register for the site and/or log into it, their true IP address is sniffed out and recorded, just like it used to be.

So when he registered the third time, in the early morning or February 16, I got his real IP address.

I bounced the IP address off an IP lookup web site, and not only did it tell me what city he was posting from, it gave me very specific lat/long coordinates. I dumped those into an address finder, and it resolved down to a specific address on a street in Jonesboro, Georgia.

It doesn’t resolve to a house address, however, just a street address. In front of a school. A school with a slightly different address.

That’s not enough to go on. So I’m waiting for more registrations and more data, so I can do more sleuthing.

Those are My Tales of Unhinged Behavior

The first two stories that involved scores of registrations and abuse report emails occurred throughout the football season, as I was dealing with this:

Add in the Dukebacle and the narrative from the first month of the season, before Virginia Tech started winning, and it all added up to one of the most personally challenging football seasons I’ve ever experienced.

Stories of sports fans coming unhinged are common, and these stories are no different. Fandom can bring out the worst in people whose emotional moorings are not sturdy.

Probably the most disturbing element of all three stories is the venom that is directed at me personally. I’d like to tell you that all three stories are tales of fans losing their minds over their favorite team, but really, now that I’ve told them, I see that they are stories of people losing their minds at me. It’s the Virginia Tech Hokies that pulled us all into the same space, but once here, it turned into something darker, and in all three cases to varying degrees, it was I who wound up being the target of their anger and derision. I can’t help but take this personally, because it is personal.

Oh, well, that’s why I get paid the big bucks, right? Hey, wait a minute …

By the way, Hokierama? Good dude. We’ve traded emails over the years. He posts on the boards these days under a new username and is a model poster. I sat in front of his parents the night of the Wake Forest game last fall. I’ve never met Hokierama personally, but we get along fine now, and his parents were nice people.

So sometimes these things end happily.

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130 Responses You are logged in as Test

  2. Will, an incredibly interesting article, and deeply unsettling. In this social media world the internet allows people that are just plain mean, disturbed, or even evil, to express their views without having to show their cowardly faces or names. I now know the vermin (apologizes to rats and mice) that pursed the parents of the Sandy Hook victims with such evil harassment evidently are even among us to a lesser degree, even in our TechSideline world.

    I can relate to your situation to in a degree. I think you know that I work in the public sector in Southern Virginia. We have a disturbed family that harassed my employees for years and then me, for reasons none of us know. We barely know them and have done nothing to them. It finally came to a head and we went to the Commonwealth Attorney and eventually got restraining orders on them. That seemed to bring them back to reality. We could do that in our situation but you cannot. The only thing we can do is to thank you for all you do and ask you to hang in there despite these low life scums.

  3. I used to love Hokie Central. Back when the internet was still an exciting place to post thoughts and comments in a public forum without having to type it up and send to a newspaper lol. Used to love the back and forth. Go Hokies.

  4. Gosh Will, sorry for all the trouble you have endured from this kind of thing. Many years ago, when my commentary here was a bit more “colorful”, I hope I didn’t generate too much complaint and that overall my contribution was and still is positive. Let me know if anyone complains, there is always room for improvement.

  5. I still have a Hokie Central magnet on my freezer door that greets me every time I exit my car. Sorry you have to endure trolls but hopefully they aren’t trying to shut down your sponsors like some TDR characters do to Conservative programs.

  6. I’ve got nothing to say that hasn’t already been said, just to give you a little love for all you do and hope that helps you to maintain a good emotional balance.

  7. Wow. Most of us have no idea what people in the public eye go through in general, and what sort of trolling and scary behavior exists out there behind keyboards and Internet masks. As a late-in-life writer and blogger,I get a glimpse of the spectrum and continuous bots that shower a site with messages, mostly nonsense, but at times scary. Let me say your essay above is magnificent in an ominous way. Congratulations on having the professional acumen and toolkit to follow up with sleuthing and the necessary controls. One really has to wonder about what “ticks” (and that has the dual sort of association you are thinking of) in their skewed sense of importance, with missing links of responsibility and integrity. Thanks for a brilliant article, and thanks for making TSL an integral part of my life, and an ongoing connection to my alma mater. Austin Hokie

  8. Will – thank you for sharing some of the issues you deal with. I remember some of those posters over the years – JR Hokie for one. I have had daily enjoyment coming to your site since 1999. I don’t post much – but do like keeping up to date with all things VT. I realize that social media has changed a lot since then, and I wonder how much “new” blood you get (like recent grads) that join TSL. I usually am open to the negative postings, but when someone dominates it is nice to have a moderator clean up things. I do tend to stay away a little immediately after some tough losses. Like today I don’t really feel like going to the message boards after that loss to Miami. Living far away from VT, it sure has been nice over the years to have your site, a place to enjoy the good times after nice victories, and see the same posters correspond for so many years. Thank you again for all you and Chris do to make my life a little better every day.

  9. Wow, I had no idea you had to deal with all of that. Thanks for pulling back the curtain and explaining how that all works. Man that is a lot of work though. Thanks!

    I never think to report what appears to be abuse. I know the last thing you want out of the article are more reports but I can see there are times when that is helpful.

    And yes, it is hard to forget JR Hokie.

    Sorry again about your finger and car. Do you still use speech to text? And since I moved from Tidewater to The Valley, I have grown more fond of trucks! Good choice.

  10. “Unhinged” is an apt title. Those type of people are unhinged. They have to a little “disturbed” mentally. Those people are a little scary.

  11. I have moderated a community too and recognize the behavior. I don’t understand it, but I recognize it. One of the “unhinged” in that community wrote a letter to a Dean of the College where I was employed to try and have me fired. The dean called me into his office, gave me a weary look, told me he knew the type, and asked me to make it go away. All I can say is “well, bless their hearts.” Anything more is a waste of my and your time.

  12. Where in the world do people find the time to do all the email creating, site registering, and posting?

    1. To answer for Will, he said his wife said no to anymore small sports cars. He has a truck now. Good move on his part.

    2. Finger will probably never be straight again, and it might not grip all the way closed, either. And as Atlee said, I drive a huge black GMC Sierra now. My choice, and the wife endorsed it

      1. Safer, yes but not safe. My sister-in-law has permanent nerve damage from an accident. She was in a F-250. They were hit by a dump truck head on driven by a guy who did not care about safety. You could say he was one of the unhinged.

  14. The use of vulgarity and/or vulgar acronyms is inappropriate and offensive to many that read this and other sites. WS I support your diligent efforts to keep Techsideline a site that we can enjoy without being intimidated by those that choose to degrade our student-athletes, coaches and administrators.

  15. Getting original IP’s of end users is pretty easy. Normally you can just log the X-Forwarded-For header, but Cloudflare has their own header they’ll add to all requests called True-Client-IP which they recommend using instead (see this: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/206776727-What-is-True-Client-IP-).

    You shouldn’t have to change any site code just modify the log_format config in nginx. See this for an example of doing this for X-Forwarded-For https://www.loadbalancer.org/blog/nginx-and-x-forwarded-for-header/

  17. Hokierama, now there’s a blast from the past. I remember way back in 2001 when Tech got blown out at Pitt a week after losing a close one to Syracuse at home, and the boards were shut down due to too many toxic posts or something like that. Good times…

    2. I was having a good day until your reminded me of those two games.

      Syracuse was the first loss I experienced at Lane and I walked away thinking “I didn’t know that was possible…”

  18. Really interesting article, letting us see behind the curtain. Sort of like the back door entrance to any restaurant, it’s not pretty. I think back to Jim Weaver’s day’s and how he did not give press passes to any online site that had a message board where posters could be anonymous. Like him or not, he seemed to know that anonymity and a forum can be a bad thing.

  19. Hang in there Will (and Chris)…I must say when I read the title I was sure it would be “me” in there somewhere – we all lose it sometimes – but these stories go way over the wall!

  20. Will – I used to watch the ‘David Brinkley Hour’ on Sunday afternoons back in the early 1990’s. His weekly guests were Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson and George Will. They were some bright folks.

    The internet was a new invention. There is an episode that I specifically recall and have often reflected upon. Cokie and Sam were discussing this new invention, the internet, and what it may bring about. Cokie’s concern was regarding the anonymity of it all. She used the analogy of talking with your neighbor over the backyard fence.

    We are all beginning to witness the cultural changes born out of the ‘social media.’

    I find what you have experienced to be disgusting! It would only be a natural response to take it personally. I certainly would.

    Please continue the good work. There are a lot of Hokies out here who love their school and want to be kept informed.

  21. Will,

    There is no excuse. The last one made me very angry. I disagree with most official Democrat positions. Yet, I am not attacking those that believe that way. If you are a Bernie supporter, we disagree, but that is ok. There is no call for F this and that and all the other crazy BS.

    I drive a NB Miata. I was certainly sad to see you wreck that beauty. Figures a dang old Dodge did you in!

    You, Chris, and the other contributors do a fabulous job. Keep it up, keep your chin up, and ignore the idiots. The idjits come in all ethnicities, religions, and political stripes.

    I have high hopes for this next year. Something in my gut tells me that this maligned 2020 recruiting class is going to punch well above it’s ranking. I do not begrudge Fuente his conversation with Baylor. I am glad he stayed.

    By the way, I can sometimes reply strongly to a post that gets under my skin. Is there any way to know if you have been ‘reported’? Also, if I ever cross the line, please PM me quietly. I will correct the issue…or at least we can have a civil discussion. You have no need to sleuth. If you contact me, I will tell you anything you want to know.

    1. Yeah, that anti-democrat stuff was beyond cringy
      That was worst than the twitter rage I’ve seen reminding me to try and take a breath before posting something awful
      Will, Chris I think your leadership on the site transcends this garbage and TSL still represents a great community. Nice work gents

  22. Well, I think Billy Eilish really sucks…. oh wait a minute, rong board…Ah, TSL, I’m on TSL OK…

    Will you’re doing a great job, probably the only internet site that actively comprehensively monitors users. To wit, it would break the business model of most internet based businesses. Good examples are Facebook (Google etc.) dealing with Fake News. There is no way in heck that Zuckerburg is going to spend the money to monitor that activity – heck a lot of it was making him money – and instead will try to find a free way to get that done or at least band-aided eg, enlist non -profit groups to do that for him, it just doesn’t happen. You’re one of the very few.

    Btw, I actually listened to the Eilish’s James Bond cover and I uh…liked it. First thing I actually listened to of hers. I mean, I won’t make it “my” music but she’s pretty good. There, I said it and I feel better.

      1. Will Stewart, just so you know; I appreciate you personally and the service you provide. I am currently dealing with an intruder who has gained control of my computer using Google Chrome posing as an org mgr. So I know a little about frustration. My best to you.

  24. Will

    Makes me want to be a more thoughtful poster- this board got so toxic in late 2019 that I almost left .. I try to expose trolls because nobody makes me angrier – especially if they are a Hoo – but I think I speak for all in saying that we appreciate TSL and I am addicted to it in a big way- candor like this from you means a lot and will ultimately help clean things up here ! Great article!

    1. Same with me, Sacramento. I look back and wonder if some of the messages that were driving me away were from one of these posters. Or at least folks stirred up due to these posters.

  25. Disturbing stuff, I don’t know how you guys do it, I just really appreciate it, more than ever. Maybe a Wall of Shame is in order, name names!

  26. Sir Will , Tom Cruise …Brad Pitt ….Prince Harry ….Justin Bieber …and every NFL Qb deal with this hate mail / tweets on a daily basis ….Remember Coach Beamer getting phone calls at home 🙈…..You are now a celebrity, running a top level website on Va Tech athletics with emotional fanatics …and some people who should be in specific institutions 🤕😬……I wish you great luck and love what you do for us true Hokies ….but you have entered the arena ….and there are wolves all around 🐺

  27. I’m pretty good at living by the rule “never read the comments,” to regular news stories, but have trouble following that rule when it comes to VT. What if you charged extra to be a commenter? That way, the many people who, like me, have been tempted to unsubscribe based on the loud, obnoxious few (and nonetheless can’t help but look at them), have an option to pay for content only, and the jerks have to clear a higher financial hurdle before they shenanigan-post…

  28. Maybe willstewartjr actually IS a certain well-known tweeter who is known for using all caps? Probably not, but…maybe? Y’think?

  29. For a place that has given me so much enjoyment over the years, I hate that you have to go through this, Will (probably Chris, too). I hope you get to an automated place with TSL that lets you enjoy it and kick out those Monday Thoughts type articles that make this site worth paying for.

  30. Wow, I guess you all don’t need reminded that fan is short for fanatic.

    I’ll add that I love the way TSL covers Tech sports – pulling for tech, but objective enough to not be a media “homer” – covering Tech, but not a media muckraker or sensationalist. Thanks.

  31. You guys do a fantastic job. One I could not do w my dark humor, quick tongue, and desire to one up an insult. Great job!

  32. Wow, years ago I used to post on the message boards more, but I never saw anything like that! It does bring out an unattractive side to people. Not sure if it is seeing others respond (getting under their skin) or the anonymity, but both boards and social media enable the kind of trolling that personal interactions (Ahem) discourage. I still very much love reading almost everything you guys post … on the site.

  33. Will,

    Forget the few people that think you’re an a-hole, ball-less and the like. I know you are an upstanding person who has been kind and gracious to me throughout the years. Thank you for being you. We all appreciate your work here and any good thing you get is well deserved.

    Thanks for sharing this nightmare. It is instructive and appalling all at the same time. Thanks for not baninating me. Ever. BTW, we will be waiting for any update to this saga. TIA

    Signed,
    (Name redacted)

  35. I remember the old HokieCentral days and J.R.Hokie in particular. I made a reply to one of his posts that he didn’t like and I think at the time my email was exposed (didn’t know you could hide it or whatever) – he sent an email to me threatening me physically which I did forward to Will. What really astonished me is that J.R.Hokie had a doggone posse on the boards – people that actually looked up to him. I understand how that can happen now. Even though I subscribe to TSL (partly just to support the site and the great work done here), VT athletics don’t mean as much to me as the in the 1990’s or the great basketball days of the ’60s, ’70s all the way to the mid-80s. Oh I still root hard for us but I have more important things to do especially since I am in my 60s. I don’t make my living off of sports so they are considerably down the priority list. Heck, I’m originally from Radford and haven’t been to a VT game of any kind in five or more years (hope to change that).

    BTW, I agree with other posters that anonymity on the ‘net makes bullies out of otherwise urine-stained underwear wearing cowards.

  36. At the ENgineer Officer Course, we were told that in the Army yor spend 90% of your personnel time on 10%of your people,

    Life imitates the Army and vice versa,

    Don’t let it ruin you mission

  37. I am astounded people commit so much time and energy to such a futile effort. Just think what they might be able to accomplish if they directed that energy to something useful/meaningful. I am sorry you have to respond and waste your valuable time and deal with being subjected to such angst. I would have hired the mafia to take care of matters long ago with BigToesTommy down on the docks.

  38. Will
    I appreciate you providing this forum for intelligent discourse and am sorry you are forced to deal with these out-of-control posters.
    Keep up the good work

  39. Wow Just Wow…I’m not a frequent poster but a long time subscriber. In the past I subscribed on a yearly term but to me the boards became so full of venom that I almost left. I did in fact reduce my subscription to a monthly basis while I made my decision. This article was a bit of a wake up about how tough it must be to manage the boards. I’m sticking with TSL….if you can endure the crap you are taking I can stand the negative post…. Thanks Will.

  40. Congratulations, you made my job seem a little less bleak – too bad the 1% whackjobs have so much impact on the rest of us. Thanks for hanging in there – Go Hokies!

  41. I appreciate what you do Will. Sorry I’m not a big fan of the boards because I have enough negativity in my life. That shit is toxic! Especially when I used to occasionally peruse the boards in TheKeyPlay.

  43. Fascinating article. Amazing how people just lose it over VT athletics. Interesting story, I was once thought to be behind an alias that apparently went off on Lounge posters. I can state it clearly was not me, though. There are a few folks (not even sure if they still post here on any board) who probably still think it is me. Anyway, I digress…

    The internet is full of trolls. On FB, I co-manage a couple of groups, both with 6000+ users. Far different tools than here, less effective, but any group that size or larger will have people who get angry at the establishment when they try to maintain order. There are plenty of people out there that feel what they think is always the right answer, and are not open to any discussion. They’re posting to give their opinion, and not to engage and discuss things.

  44. Social media, message boards, and online communities in general should not allow for anonymity. If I were to walk out into the town square and start spouting off about my opinions, popular or not, those actions will impact my reputation. Time to treat the online space like the public forum that it is, the same as a town square.

    You would end up with a lot less participation, but the quality would improve, and the abuses would go down. Although, that might mean your ad revenue would decrease as well. This wasn’t really a suggestion for you, it was more a general comment on society.

    1. Facebook is not anonymous, and people still troll there, and cause trouble. Well, maybe not so much trouble, but it’s still an issue.

      There are websites that allow people to comment on articles, using their Facebook login, using their Facebook credentials. That could work for the free boards, I suppose, but not sure it would work for subscription boards…or maybe it could?

      1. Then you are making it a requirement to be on Facebook to do anything on the web – no thanks.

      2. Teays,

        There are many who prefer not to be on Facebook. No, individual logins are better than everyone going through any sort of central posting registry. Can you imagine the issues it would cause as that kind of power slowly grew malignant?

  45. I can’t even imagine how these people are in real life. It’s like their entire self-worth is tied to bringing down others. I just don’t get these people. Stinks that you guys have to deal with that on a site that caters to adults.

  46. I remember RadfordHokie saying he snooped into his girlfriend’s phone and found out she was texting with some other dude. He came onto the Lounge looking for sympathy and got completely hammered by people because he snooped. One of many stories – that guy is a piece of work. I know who he is as well.

  48. What if…..hokie80 and radfordhokie08/OceanCityHokie……are the SAME GUY? That would be creepy. Like alter egos. I’m conjuring up a Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory type in my head. There are a lot of disturbed people out there. I would not for one instant be surprised if a guy like that really was one and the same through all his identities. Just to get some jollies (?) out of it and take out some kind of unknown personal vendetta against you guys.

    1. Will identified the first two and they were different persons. The third was from another location altogether.

      BTW this was a great read! My wife runs HR for a large company and has some very entertaining stories of her own – could write a great book.

      1. Never mind I see they were part of the same story. Too many nuts to keep track of. Could be.

        1. It would be easy to spoof IP addresses using VPNs you could be a person in Georgia, California, almost anywhere

  49. Will, you and the team are doing a great job! I have been around since the days of HokieCentral, but I don’t really post much (partially due to sudden backlash that people can give). I enjoy the site more for the experts that do post and the stories that you and the team develop. Keep up the great work and don’t let the haters get you down.

  50. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t understand why people care enough to go through all these online gymnastics. Why register and reregister and attack people because of what they post on a message board? We all have actual lives. Why does this online stuff matter so much to some? VT has frustrated me and aggravated me and made me happy, and sometimes I post about it, usually a post or two. I respond to a few other posts. And then I move on.

    I really don’t get it. Are these people disturbed?

    5. They are clearly insecure people and just want to bully. It’s really sad and this is why I don’t read message boards and get into debates. They are likely jealous that Will has built a business that allowed him to earn a living.

      I have subscribed to TechSideline since the beginning or close to it because of the quality of the articles and commentary. Will, you’ve done a great job and don’t let the jealous jerks affect you.

      We are talking about 18-22 kids playing a game. It’s a game. Not life. I’m as passioned as anyone is about all things Virginia Tech. But it’s a game and a hobby to watch them.

  51. Will,
    Everyone always thinks the other guy’s job is easy because they don’t understand what you do. I have that situation as a one man architecture office. When things get crappy I just tell myself “If it was so easy they wouldn’t need me!” We need you, so thanks for all you do for this board. I come here many times a day for my Hokie fix. While I consider myself a Hoke fan, I am not a fanatic. My only claim to fame is I secured the Techsideline twitter handle for you guys. Maybe I’ll meet you at a football game someday as I do go to all the home games.

    1. Hey, you da man! I can never remember who it was who did that, so many thanks. Don’t let me forget it was you.

      I just wish we had done @hokiecentral at the same time. That one is taken, but is dead (not used), and now someone is using @hokiecentral_ with a trailing underscore.

  52. I’m starting to think the world would be better off without social media, its seemed to have turned into nothing more than people spewing hateful comments. I’m retired & have better things to do than spend hours making terrible comments about other people who disagree with my views. It seems like everyone hates someone for being different.
    Can’t believe some people have so much time on their hands to spend hours on social media.

    2. I agree 100%. There are good and bad aspects to everything in life but I’m more and more convinced that the bad elements of social media outweigh the good in a significant way. Giving billions of people easy access to spew hatred without accountability is tearing into the moral and ethical core of society and gives “fringe” groups or individuals with nefarious intentions more power than they should have IMHO. It also allows for fake messages and news to creep deep into the minds of people who may not be able to discern between fact and fiction. I have stopped using all of the more we’ll know social media platforms and Facebook is probably next knowing that the election season is going to stir maximum hatred and misinformation to a fevered pitch. It’s a shame. Social media could be so much if a good thing.

    1. One would think so, yes, beginning with a simple cease and desist letter from an attorney’s office, and proceeding from there.

  54. Will, thanks for the insight. I honestly have thought about dropping a couple sights, because of all of the negativity on the boards. I log in to get insight on how things are going, so these type of trolls do hurt the one’s of us who really only want to be made aware of inside knowledge of those in the know. I know there is a big difference between a constant complainer, and a supporter. Maybe doing away with the free board would be a good start to fixing some problems. (Make it read only, but not post).

  55. I had no idea I would favor a board where you use your real name as I think one should be held accountable for what they post

    1. Yeah, but if you look at Facebook and Twitter, there are all kinds of people using their real names (and photos!) and still spewing all kinds of angry, contentious stuff.

      2. Probably one of the reasons I am not on Facebook or Twitter which unfortunately keeps me from Watching TSL podcast live

  56. I was hoping you were going to blow the lid off the Hoos in my theory of Hooville Posting, but alas, just Hokies so far.

    Thanks for the site Will, I enjoy your articles, the message board, the Podcasts, and all the Hokie fun.

    Hopefully being able to work in Blacksburg covering a school you love, gets you through the rough times! I’m envious. Cheers!

    1. Honestly, they’re not Hoos masquerading as Hokies. There are plenty, plenty of VT grads and VT fans unhappy with the athletic department (and, I suppose, certain coaches, players, etc). Some of the trolling mentioned here takes an enormous amount of time, and I don’t see a fan of another school putting in that much effort to troll us. The folks that do put in the time most likely love the school, but have real hate for something inside of that (coach, AD, player, etc).

  57. God, I hope this was therapeutic to write about in some way. Thanks for sharing, it was a great read at least.

  58. Thanks Will, it is easy to figure out who the real Hokies are. I only post a few times, but I am glad that there is a system in place to get the trouble ones off the air. Again, I do appreciate TSL and the hard work that you guys put in.

    1. I agree 100%. There are good and bad aspects to everything in life but I’m more and more convinced that the bad elements of social media outweigh the good in a significant way. Giving billions of people easy access to spew hatred without accountability is tearing into the moral and ethical core of society and gives “fringe” groups or individuals with nefarious intentions more power than they should have IMHO. It also allows for fake messages and news to creep deep into the minds of people who may not be able to discern between fact and fiction. I have stopped using all of the more we’ll know social media platforms and Facebook is probably next knowing that the election season is going to stir maximum hatred and misinformation to a fevered pitch. It’s a shame. Social media could be so much if a good thing.

  59. Will, you can’t satisfy everyone and we live in a grievance culture, interesting read, thanks.

  60. Will so sorry that some fans take their hate out on you! I have been reading your board since I think 1999 and do not post. We have a lot of great posters on here but a few bad apples (rotten ones) that gives VT a bad name and especially you trouble. I will continue to support TSL and I appreciate everything you do!
    Wayne Bailey

  61. What in the world do these people do that they have the time for this sh_ enanigans?

    Stealing a Fuism, I have to steal time away on work breaks just to read TSL…

    “Ain’t got no time for that!”

  62. I’ve moderated a message board before, don’t like doing it, and I completely understand your frustration with trolls. Just a bit of empathy. But as a possible time savings suggestion for a staff short of mods, have you ever explored having a self moderated board? One website I frequent uses one and it seems to work very well. The way it works, the website publishes a set of well defined rules. If a post breaks a particular rule and is reported by any member, it has an automatic function of convening a randomly selected “jury” of 6 members who are signed in. None of the jurors can see each other, nor can they see the name of the OP of the questionable post. They just read the post alongside of the rule, and have voting buttons they push to decide if the post breaks the rule. If the jury decides it breaks the rule, the post automatically gets zapped. No banning, just post zapping, all automated. I assume the admins have visibility to these deleted posts that they can see trends in case they want to go back and ban someone later. I don’t know how feasible that is for this board, just sharing an idea.

    1. I like this idea and have seen something similar on Periscope. Live comments that seem questionable or abusive are sent out to random members to vote on if it is “Abuse”, “Looks Okay”, or “I don’t know” The people in the chat usually get it right every time. There are always more GOOD people out there than idiot trolls.

      1. The most interesting thing, probably about 90% of the posts I review don’t break the rule. It’s usually someone sending the alert who either doesn’t understand the post, the rule, or is just over-reacting. Mods don’t have to spend their time reviewing alerts that don’t break rules.

      2. This is sorta clever in a way although there is a problem with it. The problem is that the site itself is not going to spend much time monitoring the site, what they’ve done is a fairly clever algorithm for getting that approximated, someone reports abuse, that is emailed out to random “judges” I guess and voted on: all automated. Depending on the community that might work pretty well but clearly the business model does not include monitoring, business first, the moral obligation to monitor if we can find a cheap fix. That gets more interesting w/say Facebook and fake news, there is no way in heck Zuck is going to spend money to monitor anything but is trying to enlist non-profit groups for “free” to do the job for him.

  63. Wow – I had no idea the nonsense you have to put up with.
    As a counter point to those ‘posters’ – I’ve had exactly 1 need to interact on a few occasions with Will. I ordered one of the TSL hats and the order / delivery got messed up / didn’t show up. I emailed TSL and Will promptly emailed me back. Within a day or so, he had researched the issue & fixed it. He even offered a free t-shirt for my troubles.
    I believe, like me, 99% of the TSL posters enjoy the insight, humor, and often times historical background, that Will brings. It’s too bad that the 1% have to be the vocal ones and feel the need to attack personally.

  64. It’s the anonymous user names that prompt people to do this. If their true identities were displayed most would not post this vile crap. When they can hide behind a made-up user name, even the most cowardly person suddenly “grows a pair”.

    2. True… perhaps Privlidges to post on message boards should require links to FB pages… or a mailing address. 🙂

  65. So sorry you have to deal with this Will. You must really love the other aspects of your job to put up with this. Otherwise, why do it at all?

    I am probably too emotionally invested in all things VT at times, which is maybe why I don’t post a lot. Remember the old adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” A good rule to follow if the team isn’t doing well. I wish more folks would follow that to be honest.

    Anyway, appreciate everything you and the staff do😊

    1. How about the old adage of “Whatever you do or say online stays around, saved forever”, and “someone in this world is always tracking your comments.”

  67. I must say the third example leaves nothing to doubt regarding his or her political proclivities. He or she also is clearly a logophile with an excellent command of both vocabulary and grammar. I actually burst out laughing reading the titles of some of the shared representative posts (sorry Will). Perhaps TSL should create a new board called “nut jobs” where these individuals can be banished analogous to an electronic Australia when the British used it as a penal colony.

  68. Damn, Will. You have earned the lifetime right to wear a flak jacket. I know it means little, I appreciate what you have built here. 20+ years providing a spot for hokies to gather round and talk sports (mostly) is something to be unabashedly proud of

  69. This reminds of a story I saw a couple (few?) years ago on the news. It was a writer that was constantly getting personally harassing emails and article comments are how awful they were. The writer tracked the guy down and actually did an interview with him. The harasser was a thoughtful, middle class, fairly successful guy. He just enjoyed the “battle” of taunting the writer. He seemed slightly embarrassed about it, but didn’t really apologize. Just saw it as a game.

    1. I believe I read about that too. Its like a mental condition. Makes no sense. Just reminds me of a HS bully that never grew up.

  71. I’m assuming that is the same hokierama on 247. I mostly know of him because he has good wrestling posts. Also I suppose I now understand the joke of your son not liking you.

    1. Interesting tidbit about Hokierama. He went to school just across the state line from me. I didn’t know him in school (I can’t remember, he is something like 1-4 years younger than me), but he and I would correspond by email, and he is actually a pretty nice guy, successful. He just takes his VT athletics really seriously.

  72. Thanks Will for the insight into what you and Chris have to deal with on a daily basis. The snarky and disrespectful posts from people with too much time on their hands is why I have never been a very frequent poster on the message boards. Fortunately there are many others that keep me coming back to read them daily. Thanks for taking out some of the garbage and providing a website where I can get my daily Hokie sports fix. Keep up the great work!

  73. Will, I feel like you should have captured the IPs from CloudFlare the day you switched TSL to CloudFlare. It’s not hard. CloudFlare would literally go out of business in 10 minutes if they don’t forward the IP to their customers. Your programmer should have told you this too even before the move.

    1. To be honest, I didn’t press the programmer (John Donna) very hard on it, so that’s on me. Once I did get his attention on this matter, he solved it quickly. So I take responsibility for that.

      We’re all learning as we go along here.

      1. Will, thanks for sharing. I rarely post but really enjoy reading what my fellow Hokies have to say. (Well not so much after last year’s ODU game and this year’s Duke game.) I occasionally look at other sites, but find them lacking. So thanks for providing a wonderful site where real Hokies can come and share how we feel and to ask questions. I would be lost without TSL.

  75. This was very interesting and I’m frankly sorry you have to go through this. I pay my fee and read the articles and never post in the bulletin boards – I don’t have the time. But apparently, some CEOs do. Imagine what we as a society could accomplish with that gift of time…mind blown.

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