10. The Nehor is Booed Off of MDB. After racking up well over 10 thousand posts, the space-cadet TBM poster dubbed "The Nehor" finally called it quits. His career, as several noted, was marked by a very slow decline: from earnestly naïve perpetual missionary, to increasingly cynical uber-nerd, to fist-shaking lunatic. By the end, The Nehor was probably irredeemable as a poster. In a "farewell" thread launched by Liz, Mr. Stakhanovite perhaps summed up The Nehor's MDB posting career succinctly:
Mr. Stak wrote:I was holding back, given how much Nehor sucked both as a person and as a poster, I could say a lot more. I’d rather have Nehor waste his brain cells huffing glue than rolling that pallid face across the keyboard to share his version of “the gospel” here.
But hey, don’t let me stop you from talking about Nehor like he was some estranged co-worker who hung himself last night in the garage, because God knows, deleting a message board account calls for a wake and a round of anecdotes about the deceased.
9. Kerry Shirts is "Absent" from the FAIR Conference. The 9th most significant "happening" in the world of Mopologetics in 2011 was actually a non-event: Kerry Shirts failed to cinematically document that all-important Mopologetic gathering, and thus we were deprived of all the goofiness, back-slapping, consumption of high-sugar beverages, and general bloviation that we've all come to love so much. Indeed, the absence of a new entry in the Shirts oeuvre led some to wonder if the image-conscious FAIR board had actually barred him from attending, which would make this at least the second time that FAIR has gone out of its way to make an enthusiastic TBM defender feel unwelcome. (The other being jskains.)
8. Droopy Shows Even More Signs of Insanity. Well, there you have it. That and the fact that, per him, he seems to have been "welcomed" into one corner of Mopologetics' "Inner Circle." In a staggering post, he suggested that he has been receiving emails and/or PMs from Will Schryver, which speaks volumes about the state of amateur Mopologetics in 2011.
7. Leonard Arrington is Given the "Frankenstein" Treatment on MST. The Daniel Peterson vanity project known as "Mormon Scholars Testify" reached its nadir position when the Administrator in Chief cobbled together a plagiarized/manipulated version of LDS scholar Leonard Arrington's published works in order to make it seem as if the late, revered and venerable Arrington had given his endorsement to the Website. This signified an important change in policy at MST: whereas earlier deceased "testimonies" featured clear indication that permission to reprint materials had been gotten from the deceased scholars' significant others, there was no such indication for Arrington. Furthermore, given the propagandistic nature of the site, along with the deeply problematic nature of the reputations of the people involved, there is extremely good reason to suspect that Arrington would have had major problems with seeing his name associated with this endeavor. Nonetheless, Daniel Peterson continued to stubbornly insist that he'd done nothing wrong (this despite the fact that he and his editorial team swiftly went in to make edits to the entry). Indeed, his locked-out profile here at MormonDiscussions still contains a pithy dismissal from him that's a direct reference to this incident.
6. SeattleGhostWriter Issues a DMCA Takedown Notice . MormonDiscussions.com--the beacon at the center of online Mormon discussion boards--was briefly shut down in June of 2011 after a TBM called "SeattleGhostWriter" went ballistic. The normally very low-key and congenial Chris Smith posted a thread inquiring about SGW's odd Mopologetic Website, and he (i.e., Chris Smith) wondered how and to what extent the Website/blog constituted a legitimate "academic" endeavor. What ensued in the wake of this OP were a series of astonishing events, the most notable of which, perhaps, was the discovery of SGW's purple-prose-laden erotica. Seething with rage over the notion that anyone would dare mock his epistolary efforts, SGW flew off the handle and began plotting a kind of legal revenge. Rather than contacting Dr. Shades, or calling for level heads, SGW immediately hit the Lawyer Button, and before anyone knew it, MDB had gone dark. Key posters were forced to regroup at The Foyer and The Ex-Mormon Forums while Dr. Shades ascertained what had happened. Before long, the board was restored, but the SGW Incident remains notable as a case where an angry TBM used legal threats to stifle discussion.
5. The Birth and Death of "The Cafeteria". Some time in July, the well-liked MDB moderator Liz3564 launched her own, "private" messageboard dubbed "The Cafeteria." The purpose of the board, as Liz later explained, was to provide New-Order Mormons with a place to discuss Church-related issues "in peace." Her board ran quietly up until The Nehor packed up his things and left, at which time Liz launched her "Nehor Has Left the Building" thread, and the existence of The Cafeteria was revealed on a wider scale. This immediately led to Liz utterly locking down her messageboard so as to prevent the public from seeing what was discussed there. Suspicions swirled about Liz's motives: Did she really support Shades' vision of a free-speech environment? Was her board merely an invite-only means of gossiping about MDB? Was The Cafeteria really for NOMs, and if so, why had DCP and ttribe been invited? In spite of some strong words that were exchanged, every thing was smoothed over, and Liz continued to run her board under the cover of darkness.
Then, in late October, the board imploded after Dr. Peterson began a series of threads complaining yet again about his various obsessions. This irritated a number of the members of The Cafeteria community, who began "leaking" word of DCP's "Meltdown of Epic Proportions." Unsure of what to do, Liz first re-opened her board for public viewing (after deleting several key threads), and then deleted the board entirely, apparently in order to put out the fires of a "board war" (which are wholeheartedly encouraged per Dr. Shades's Doctrine).
Several posters noted in the wake of all this that Liz's intentions were noble: it's admirable and understandable that one would want a messageboard "safe haven" to discuss Mormon-related issues. On the other hand, near-unanimous opinion indicated that the biggest mistake Liz made was in inviting DCP to the party.
4. DCP is Caught Mis-Using Quotes In a stunning thread entitled, "Questions for Dan Peterson," Mr. Stakhanovite very carefully and clearly demonstrated that Daniel Peterson had totally and completely mis-used a quote from Camus. Mr. Stak posted scans of the Camus text in question, and DCP was shown to have completely warped the quote in order to score a rhetorical point. After he was repeatedly confronted with this gross and unprofessional misrepresentation, DCP shut down his MDB account and skulked off into the shadows. To this day, Dr. Peterson remains effectively "hidden" from the public eye, so shamed was he by Mr. Stak's devastating critique. Further, it remains unclear just why, exactly, DCP made this "error": Was it simple carelessness? Deliberate misappropriation of the quote? Or, perhaps even more disturbingly, did he simply assume that his TBM audience would be too dumb to notice?
3. Gee and Roper Verbally Assault Mike Reed . Over the summer, Mike Reed gave a powerful presentation at the Gold Plates Seminar, which was headed up by Richard Bushman. During his talk, several Maxwell Institute "scholars" showed up with the apparent intention of heckling him. They could be heard whispering and sniggering as he spoke. During the Q & A session, the lobbed a series of increasingly aggressive and mean-spirited questions at him. John Gee, in particular, raised his voice in apparent frustration and anger, while Matt Roper insisted that he had a text that would seriously undermine/challenge/disprove Reed's central argument. When pressed on this, however, Roper went completely silent. Speculation swirled over the motivation behind these MI Senior Mopologists' behavior, with many wondering whether this "attack" had been staged in advanced, behind the drawn curtains of FARMS's inner sanctum.
2. The Rise of Mr. Stakhanovite. No person defined the world of online discussion of Mopologetics better than the irrepressible, brilliant, pipe-smoking, Rat-Pack-loving, Socratic gadfly known as Mr. Stakhanovite. 2011 saw him fully emerge and blossom into a formidable messageboard participant, with his deft philosophical evisceration of everyone from Bill Hamblin to poor, hapless mfbukowski. Mr. Stak, in 2011, demonstrated more than any other poster how vibrant, exciting, illuminating, and entertaining the world of online Mopologetics can be. In some respects, 2011 was The Year of the Stak.
1. Schryvergate. Really, what more can be said about this? The key Mopologetic event of 2011 was the "defeat" of erstwhile Mopologetic here, William Schryver. After the unfortunate failure of his KEP FAIR Presentation, Schryver was continuing to lick his wounds until MsJack delivered a series of hydrogen bombs which blew his credibility to smithereens. In post after withering post, MsJack demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that Schryver is a terrible liability for any publishing venue that wants to maintain a shred of respectability. The thread left no doubt as to Schryver's deep-seated misogyny, vulgarity, and duplicity. So profound and thorough was MsJack's critique that it led two concerned, Melchezidek priesthood-holder MI apologists to voice their issues to the Maxwell Institute "powers-that-be," and as a consequence, Schryver's supposedly upcoming MI publication was "canceled," due to fears of negative publicity.
While Will Schryver continues to try and rescue his tainted reputation, and while he continues to insist that his KEP work (now allegedly in the 500-page range) will one day see publication, the fact remains that MsJack dealt what may very well turn out to be the most devastating blow of the decade. If Schryver does indeed wind up convincing a venue to accept its work, it will spell certain shame and doom for whoever takes the bait.
And with that, another exciting year of Mopologetics comes to a close! Who knows what 2012 will bring...
[MODERATOR NOTE by Dr. Shades:
As a public service for those who enjoy reading Doctor Scratch's annual Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics lists, here are the ones from previous years:]