Originally Posted by
cockerpunk
its so interesting .... i find myself in a similar situation as a decade ago with punkworks.
for context. i am me. you guys know how i am. anyway, this racing series starts a new wheel to wheel division, and they post there rulebook. and all these new series keep popping up, with "simplified rulebook" as some kind of benefit. and maybe that is good and all, but car racing is a complex thing. its expensive. its dangerous. none of us in the SCCA are happy the rulebook is so thick. we didnt write those rules cause its more fun with more rules. all those rules are written cause it kinda matters. the rules are complex cause cars are complex machines. and racing them is a complex endeavor. anyway, there "open" rulebook you could drift a school bus through, and me being me, i (and others) point this out to them. they aren't happy about this. they want it to be the good old boys out there, racing what you brung having a fun time. ironically, this is exactly what local club racing is, but more on that later.
all that said, i decide to go to one of there events in the spring. and all in all, had a fun time. the racing wasn't that great, lotta talent and car mismatch, that kind of thing. anyway .... on sunday the race director (who was one of the ones who hated our rule argument the most), approaches me, and tells me there were reports of my car blocking. i say, i have no idea anything about that, but if he wants to watch my video, ive been running it the whole time. he says no. whatever. i run sunday, clean, and leave. its all good.
so, cut to a couple of days ago. here the same guy makes a claim that 1. they knew all along there rulebook was too open, literally "because its like some smart guys started this" and 2. gingerman (event i went to) was contact free.
so me, being me, post up, hey, gingerman wasn't contact free, and i find it a little re-writting the past for you guys to claim you knew your rulebook was flawed.
so he attacks me. accuses me of cheating. blocking. the works. just pure personal attack.
so i ask him for his evidence, he posts none.
i upload every minute of race video i ever had in the gridlife series ... and tell him to tell me where the blocking is. i saw this personal attack coming a mile away, and had driven MEGA clean all weekend.
he straight up says he will not watch my video or tell me where the blocking was.
and from there it gets nuclear. every level of personal attack, every kind of bullshit. i appeal to the guys boss, but even he can't control him.
so some of my friends are like, dude, shut up. your burning bridges and pissing people off. what if you want to race in this series again in 5 years? etc etc
and i felt conflicted about that one.
anyway ....
i can't help but compare this to my time in paintball.
we had this kind of thing happen every few months running punkworks. companies threatening legal action, company owners melting down into unprofessional wrecks on the phone with us, or online. dan colbly, man, that guy. jack rice. rluna and auctionjunkie! bigevil. oh man who was that mod on MCB? drum. yeah drum, what a meltdown. what a bunch of idiots. just some classic fucking meltdowns of insanity. hell, the whole things started with bill gardner thinking he could intimidate me by personally inviting me to living legends 1. 21 year old me wasn't an idiot though, billy was full of shit and i knew it. he owned one of the biggest paintball companies ever, and it was peaking right around then, and i didnt care. as some on these forums have witnessed, i told billy to his face he was wrong repeatedly.
but you know, all we did was stick to the facts. heres what we did. here is what happened. thats what we are gonna tell the court if you sue us. no amount of bullshit changes the physics here. if we can show it doesn't work in my parents backyard, then what is getting legal shit involved gonna do? were just gonna do it again.
and we got the same advice "your burning bridges" "pissing off sponsors" and "what if you want to use/buy/work with this company in the future" but you know, it was the same bullshit then as it is now.
the fallacy of that logic is this one .... people who do not deal in reality are not worth having on your good side.
people who deal in ego, innuendo, snake oil, reputation, and in some cases are just too dumb to understand what they don't know (jack rice) ... they arn't people worth having on your good side.
and we built a reputation in paintball of always shooting straight. like us, hate us, like the results of the tests or not, we put it out there. it was there. for everyone to see. we didn't coddle to politics. we didn't try to appease people. access to the industry never impressed us. "star power" was never something intimidated us.
why?
cause on my parents deck, in front of the camera, thats what happened.
and there just isn't a way around that.
and even if we do seemingly live in a post facts world, that just really means there are even less people worth having on your good side. cuase what happened on that race track, is reality. what happened in my parents back yard is reality. and the people worth having on your side know that. and anyone who doesnt care, isnt worth having on your side.