Quote from: GnosticGoblin on December 16, 2024, 03:25:42 PMI see a human being who has done more good for the rpg industry by creating amazing products for it, winning awards for that, being absolutely shat on by a huge number of people who are apparently motivated by jealousy and by their appeasement to a toxic echo-chamber. Sock-puppets who are repeating the same stale claims which have long ago been debunked with evidence. Those same people ignoring the evidence and continue to shit on him.

He is responsible for his behaviour, you are responsible for yours. The toxicity is self-evident.

Meanwhile, it is Zaks books which are selling for $1000 each and not yours. That is how much value and respect people outside of the toxic hate mob have for him. Earlier on this thread you had people effectively funding the RPG industry at media and promotions level come in here to defend him by explaining that despite the allegations, what Zak was saying is actually true.

The sock puppets continue repeating the same debunked hatred regardless of that. It's not worth repeating the same cycle of the same words if trolls are simply ignoring it.

What debunked hatred is being repeated and where has it been debunked? You are just spouting whatever programming has been hastily poured into your tiny plastic mind before you are sent out to function as a human spam bot, and you have been told to repeat that everything has been debunked already in lieu of dealing with it. Your price for this wretched servitude is an rpg book.

I repeat, page 37 to 38, 11 of Zaks statements were found to be false.

Quote"The Court's Finding that Smith's February 13 facebook post contains False Statements, as identified above, does not end the inquiry. To qualify as libel, the statement must "expose [] [the plaintiff] [] to hatred, contempt, ridicule ,obliquy, or...cause [] [plaintiff] to be shunned or avoided, or...ha[ve] a tendency to injure plaintiff in his occupation."   

By the standards of the Superior Court of California, Zak has made false claims and the rest of these thread dwellers have not. Now there might be reasons for those false claims, but conveniently, these can be ignored, as Zak himself has stated repeatedly that spreading misinformation is the same as lying and liars should not be believed.

If you abide by Zaks moral code, you have to act according to it and hold him and yourselves accountable. If not it is fake nonsense, rules for thee but not for me, and we should treat you as an invasive species.   

Here is the lawsuit again, just so that it is crystal clear what I am quoting, and what I am saying. The lawsuit concerns defamation, it is clear that in one instance out of 8, Vivka Grey did indeed commit defamation. But something is not automatically true because it is not defamation, as the paragraph indicates.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mnjjavkgiyken3wfu8vui/1936638092-1-43.pdf?rlkey=em24q9sa0tnhvhuuh2o2qyfgp&e=1&dl=0

Quote from: BlueWave on December 18, 2024, 01:11:30 PMalotta gibberish

Look, if whatever you think you found when your uninformed ass cherry-picked out of that case that I won, nobody who had any skin in the game found anything because here's the next result:

Quote from: adrianthebard on December 18, 2024, 12:12:13 PMi am new here, came here following Zak's instructions and did so externally motivated, book nice. i didn't want to, if i did i would have been here already as well as on all the other platforms. but in the following weeks i found that some of those i like, i will stay there. for how long i can't say and neither if active or not, i tend to lurk by inclination. but i want to engage more than before, now. i also got something back, e.g. i am reading lankhmar: city of adventure for propping up my game and would NEVER have i somebody didn't suggest me to in the process of following zak's instructions. and that's one thing among many, i benefited from this thing and maybe somebody else also has by the contributions i have made. i spent so much time just reading blogs and DIYing rpg stuff i might have something to give back. i didn't think that before. i do now.
i am no sock, no bot, no cultist, no nothing. Just a Guy, and i'm here specifically thanks to Zak's push.
what's his (real) motive i don't know. nobody else does. maybe not even Zak himself. what's sure to me is what he wrote, and the effect it had on me. idk about the others, they might all be a vicious troll army, who knows? i don't. you don't.
so let's kindly stop making stuff up, we do that enough for playing rpgs.

This is a convincingly human statement but Zak should have spent more time programming you with basic language formatting rules like capitolization and use of paragraphs.

Explanation. The reason you are correctly triggering the community immuno-response is that A) all these accounts are totally obsessed with Great Leader and consider him to be the greatest thing in the universe and B) anyone who does not think so is either woefully ignorant or a bad-faith actor that must be driven from the hobby and C) you are intending to energetically promulgate that belief, which is extremely rare outside of your creepy community. Even if you were utterly correct in your assumptions (and I hope I have illustrated the problem with a simple example above), you would still be disruptive and difficult to deal with. The question whether creative contribution can mitigate for this sort of behavior is best answered by regarding Zaks toothless pariah-caste status.   

As an aside, I will note in passing that the hated OSR discord has begun purging sock puppets and other places have followed suit. This is looking to be another wash, a battle of the bulge. If you had infiltrated over a longer period and operated more faithfully, you would have had long-standing members in place in various communities, ready to enact a night of long knives, deplatforming problematic bad faith actors, a raising of the scarlet Z. Instead we get another amusing garbage fire. 

What sock puppets?

Quote from: Zak S on December 18, 2024, 01:18:21 PM

Quote from: BlueWave on December 18, 2024, 01:11:30 PMalotta gibberish

Look, if whatever you think you found when your uninformed ass cherry-picked out of that case that I won, nobody who had any skin in the game found anything because here's the next result:

Still not seeing any engagement with the actual content there. Maybe you can bring up you won the lawsuit next time? Maybe that will fool the audience just a tad longer?

This is very 2019 facebook post false claims making behavior.

Quote from: BlueWave on December 18, 2024, 01:26:53 PM

Quote from: Zak S on December 18, 2024, 01:18:21 PM

Quote from: BlueWave on December 18, 2024, 01:11:30 PMalotta gibberish

Look, if whatever you think you found when your uninformed ass cherry-picked out of that case that I won, nobody who had any skin in the game found anything because here's the next result:

Still not seeing any engagement with the actual content there. Maybe you can bring up you won the lawsuit next time? Maybe that will fool the audience just a tad longer?

This is very 2019 facebook post false claims making behavior.

Actual content?
There is no actual content. You (well, Skerples) cherry-picked something you claim is true that I did that was bad buried in the decision in the case that I won. It is not true--it is spin. If it were true I would be in jail or at least charged with something--even just perjury.

Anybody need clarity on whether it was real? There is clarity, because there was another case afterward, and the result was:

So that bats cleanup on however important you thought your bullshit was.

Quote from: BuddyscottEntertainment on December 18, 2024, 10:21:13 AMImagine if instead of hiring the goon squad to say hollow niceties, Zak actually just went out and acted like a decent human being for once

He does. I'm one of the many people he has acted like a decent human being with.

A lot of the people on this thread are not. People being personally offensive but attempting to persuade others that the people being nice and talking sense are the ones who are offensive.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 18, 2024, 05:02:57 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 17, 2024, 12:32:39 PMZak just proves that EVERYBODY that uses the term "Community" is searching to get power and control of the hobby.

This is true regardless of the hobby.

There's no "RPG Communiteh", period.

For me, it's a massive red flag when someone comes into a hobby space or subculture talking about the community.  In pretty much every case, there is no such thing as the, singular community.  There are many smaller communities with some contact between them.  People who talk about the community want to create the appearance of a single community composed of everyone in the hobby or subculture.  Referring to it as the community also removes ownership from it.  It's not your community.  It's the community.  They create this imaginary community so that they can then try to assert power over it.  The community does not tolerate blah blah blah.  The dead giveaway is that, if they manage to get any power, they will quickly stop talking about the community and start talking about our community and then their community.  Then the people who built the community are out on their ass wondering how this happened.   

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages

noun

1.
a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
"Montreal's Italian community"

2.
the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.
"the sense of community that organized religion can provide"


Of course, it is a maxim of law that the correct interpretation of any word is that which the original speaker intended.


Use of the word 'community' in this sense is suggested by the dictionary to mean;

1 users of this forum
2 people who play and buy d&d/rpg games in general

Quote from: BlueWave on December 18, 2024, 01:11:30 PM

Quote from: GnosticGoblin on December 16, 2024, 03:25:42 PMI see a human being who has done more good for the rpg industry by creating amazing products for it, winning awards for that, being absolutely shat on by a huge number of people who are apparently motivated by jealousy and by their appeasement to a toxic echo-chamber. Sock-puppets who are repeating the same stale claims which have long ago been debunked with evidence. Those same people ignoring the evidence and continue to shit on him.

He is responsible for his behaviour, you are responsible for yours. The toxicity is self-evident.

Meanwhile, it is Zaks books which are selling for $1000 each and not yours. That is how much value and respect people outside of the toxic hate mob have for him. Earlier on this thread you had people effectively funding the RPG industry at media and promotions level come in here to defend him by explaining that despite the allegations, what Zak was saying is actually true.

The sock puppets continue repeating the same debunked hatred regardless of that. It's not worth repeating the same cycle of the same words if trolls are simply ignoring it.

What debunked hatred is being repeated and where has it been debunked? You are just spouting whatever programming has been hastily poured into your tiny plastic mind before you are sent out to function as a human spam bot, and you have been told to repeat that everything has been debunked already in lieu of dealing with it. Your price for this wretched servitude is an rpg book.

I repeat, page 37 to 38, 11 of Zaks statements were found to be false.

Quote"The Court's Finding that Smith's February 13 facebook post contains False Statements, as identified above, does not end the inquiry. To qualify as libel, the statement must "expose [] [the plaintiff] [] to hatred, contempt, ridicule ,obliquy, or...cause [] [plaintiff] to be shunned or avoided, or...ha[ve] a tendency to injure plaintiff in his occupation."   

By the standards of the Superior Court of California, Zak has made false claims and the rest of these thread dwellers have not. Now there might be reasons for those false claims, but conveniently, these can be ignored, as Zak himself has stated repeatedly that spreading misinformation is the same as lying and liars should not be believed.

If you abide by Zaks moral code, you have to act according to it and hold him and yourselves accountable. If not it is fake nonsense, rules for thee but not for me, and we should treat you as an invasive species.   

Here is the lawsuit again, just so that it is crystal clear what I am quoting, and what I am saying. The lawsuit concerns defamation, it is clear that in one instance out of 8, Vivka Grey did indeed commit defamation. But something is not automatically true because it is not defamation, as the paragraph indicates.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mnjjavkgiyken3wfu8vui/1936638092-1-43.pdf?rlkey=em24q9sa0tnhvhuuh2o2qyfgp&e=1&dl=0

Many people don't understand how legal language and court processes work, and that can cause confusion. In legal terms, the phrase "false claim" doesn't mean someone is lying. Instead, it means the court has decided that a specific point isn't relevant to the case and won't be considered. The terms "true" and "false" in this context are just tools to decide which facts the court will focus on, not a judgment about whether something is honest or truthful.

Courts don't deal with absolute truth—they operate based on rules and procedures to make decisions. It's frustrating to see people misunderstand these terms and use that misunderstanding to fuel personal agendas. When a court says something is "false," it only means the judge has ruled it doesn't belong in the case. It has nothing to do with whether it's honest or true in the broader sense outside of the courtroom.

The points you cherry-picked are taken out of context and show a misunderstanding of due process. The judge's decision to consider her statements "true" for inclusion in due process was based on the sheer number of such statements she made, not their accuracy in reflecting real events. Fewer statements might have led to a different decision. This reflects how the court system operates. Notably, the same document also acknowledges instances where she was found to be lying. Despite manipulation of the proceedings, Zak still prevailed (see conclusion).

A thoughtful and fair-minded individual would consider all these facts before forming judgments or cherry-picking things out of context.

The actions of those directly involved in the case are their responsibility. However, third parties who engage in harassment or defamation campaigns bear responsibility for their own actions—a separate matter entirely.

Still not seeing any engagement with the actual content there. Maybe you can bring up you won the lawsuit next time? Maybe that will fool the audience just a tad longer?

This is very 2019 facebook post false claims making behavior.
[/quote]

@BlueWave, U are repeatedly highlighting a finding which was non-persuasive upon the final judgment of a civil court (which Zak was the plaintiff btw) and trying to illogically bootstrap that finding up into some sort of criminal culpability or wrong doing. It's an absurd proposition which is probably why you continue to get correctly lambasted every time you bring it up.  There are a reasons it is termed a final judgment... One of them being so the parties don't continue to re-hash the hundreds of nested, sub-issues ad nauseam for eternity, which for some reason you seem to want to do, despite not being party to the trial, nor privy to any of the evidence or witness testimony.

The book does look interesting and I have no doubt I'd find something useful in it. I've found something useful in the two prior Zach books I bought (ages ago).

HOWEVER, it does not look $1000 interesting, nor do I have the time to post what looked like roughly 172 posts or comments on that many platforms in 7 days, unless they were essentially garbage posts and duplicate posts, which does nothing good for anyone.

Eh, that's how books are anyways, some people want it badly enough to pay hundreds and thousands. I remember a rare book that was... I don't know, tens of thousands USD on ebay? We're talking really rare, mind, there was no scan online, no nothing.
Again, I'm not counting other people's money, what they buy for their 1000 bucks is their business.

Quote from: Zak S on December 18, 2024, 01:26:06 PMWhat sock puppets?

You do realize, of course, that your minions flooding in provide excellent screening for you to engage in sock puppetting, right? Not just here, but on all of the sites you've targeted.

Quote from: HappyDaze on December 18, 2024, 03:41:45 PM

Quote from: Zak S on December 18, 2024, 01:26:06 PMWhat sock puppets?

You do realize, of course, that your minions flooding in provide excellent screening for you to engage in sock puppetting, right? Not just here, but on all of the sites you've targeted.

What would I sock puppet to say, genius? What super-special piece of banshee oratory of which only I am capable do you think I must deliver under the cloak of the crowd?

The killing joke?

Power Word, Stun?

Like I can just say shit--and people who've flown across the country to stand up for me in court under oath or who paid 1000$ for a book can say what they want to say and I trust it'll be fine