TL;DR
I joined a forum. Followed rules of forum. I want to let members know about a raffle, benefitting cancer research, with prizes that would fit their interests; unable to get a reply from the owner, the moderators give me the runaround. I never break the rules and let members know what prizes are available. I log into the forum today, and find another company is advertizing a prize contest, with a single $100 prize to anybody who can identify a knife to their liking. They refuse to divulge who they are, or why this identification would help them. The moderators consider this to be permissible.
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I have, for better or worse, been "hanging out" on Blade Forums; I discovered it one day, and, given my rekindled interest in knives, I thought to join. That was, as it turns out, a mistake.
I had been, for some time, struggling with how to raise money for the MPN Foundation. I had originally thought to do a strongman competition, but there is no way that I can be in decent enough physical condition to do so. I eliminated most possibilities, until I came across one in my mind that seemed to make sense: a raffle. A raffle required no physical conditioning. A raffle could still raise significant money.
I also had the idea that I could raffle off a knife or knives; I was a member of the Blade Forums; I was also a member of Spyderco's online forum. This was a unique opportunity, I thought; if I put the numbers together properly, it could make money and give somebody a nice prize.
Well, this ended up with 5 prize packages, t-shirts for everbody, and the prize packages vary in value from $800 down to $200. In fact, the knife that I was working on reviewing, and which was mentioned in my notes, was one of the prizes. This seemed like a good path to take for me.
The knives range from the extremely popular Spyderco Gayle Bradley - heavily modified by two tradesmen active on the BF forum -, to a lightly modified Spyderco Manix (again, a highly popular blade) to a WE 617F, an Emerson CQC 8, and a Kershaw Dash. Engraved flashlights might be offered as well.
I have been working closely with the director of development at MPN. I also thought to essentially call Blade Forums my home, and run the raffle through the forum - at least, post updates, links, etc to the forum. I searched through the forum, and found that other people had run raffles with the blessing of the moderators.
I also read the rules, which stated I had to get explicit permission from the moderators. I reached out to one mod; he told me I had to contact the owner of the site; and it was best to use private messaging.
I did that; after a week, I told the moderator I had not heard back. He suggested that I open technical support request in the appropriate forum, and that the owner would see it, and reply. Of course, nothing. I let the moderator know this; he suggested then that he was not really the moderator to be contacting, that another moderator was the man, and to contact him.
So, I did that. I received an answer promptly, and was told that I should only contact the owner via email. I told the moderator I didn't have that address; he gave that to me. Great - but at least it sounds like headway.
I never heard anything. I let the moderator know this; he told me that he would contact the owner via super-secret email, and that I could not have address. Again, I heard nothing; in a couple weeks, I contacted the moderator, and let him know this.
He said that the owner would want to see a plan; that there many details in something like this; and he closed by saying "let's work on all the details so that we're ready wnen the owner contacts you."
I took this to mean, as I think any native speaker of English would, that I should at least keep this moderator in the loop on things I was doing. What else could "let's work on all the details" mean? So, as a week or two went by and I heard nothing, I kept updating the moderator, with no reply from him.
Which did not bother me. Contra the opinion of my ability apparently held by the people at BF, I have slightly more than "Ignorant Ape" as a life summary. I reached a point where I needed to know if BF wanted to have their names listed as a sponsor; I reached out to the moderator, and told him that I had a deadline to meet with the t-shirts.
I received a nice nastygram in reply. The nastygram, in essence, accused me of spamming the moderator; threatened me that if I was spamming the owner (the phrase used was "blowing up Spark's inbox"), I would never be permitted to hold the raffle. I was told I had two choices: either put the raffle on hold, or proceed without BF. I was half-assed accused of copyright / trademark infringement; I was explicitly told that "Kevin has the exclusive rights to the BF logo."
I wrote a note back assuring the mod that I was not doing anything with the logo - why would I, after all, I'm not going to break trademark law to give somebody free publicity - and that I was sorry for burdening him with updates, but I thought that was precisely what he had requested. I told him they would stop immediately, and that I had not contacted the owner for weeks, per his request.
I heard nothing back. At that point, I didn't really care.
Today, 2/10, I logged into the forum, and there was a thread - see the attached PDF. Apparently, it's OK to offer a $100 prize in the form of a giveaway to a cause that...well, nobody is sure what the cause is, and the poster has explicitly said he won't divulge that. The moderator kiddies at BladeForum think that kind of raffle / post is fine, but even though their mothers permit them to play with knives (probably a mistake), they haven't figured out how to do a cranio-opticotomy: you know, that DIY operation where you cut the nerve that runs from your asshole to your eyes and brain and gives you such a shitty outlook on life.
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Update: 4/4 (Late)
Ah well. It's late, I'm tired. I've been working on the raffle I mentioned earlier, and trying to get things under control there. It's going so-so: more work than I wanted, but a chance to help some other folks rather terribly affected by the cancer.
It's leading me to other opportunities, at least in my little dysfunctioning brain; the only thing smaller with more dysfunction than my brain is my dick.
I've learned that I strongly, much more strongly than ever before, hate my body. If I still had testicles - they shrunk to nothing from years of opioid use - I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror downstairs, legs spread, and back propped up against the wall.
I would tie off my testicles with some paracord, and include a nice split down the middle to separate them, and also to tighten the tie so that it was tight enough to make me feel nauseous from the pain. I'd then dump some lube on them, lace my fingers together, and grab them between my palms.
Watch my face in the mirror, I would...later, in the ER, I would explain to the nurse that I hate my body, I hate my body so much that given two options - either crush my testicles between my palms or go to bed and take a nap, I chose to crush my testicles. I found it was interesting that I threw up so violently from the pain.
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I think that we often get confused about boundaries in the online world. I've seen this happen again in my case; a "friend" decided that I should live my life making major decisions the way he told me to, and only that way. If I made a major life decision exercising my own terms, I would be wrong. He informed me that he would "do this for any friend" and that I asked him to do it.
When I pointed out that I never asked him to do this, of course he moved to anger, claiming I did. He also claimed that he knows how all women think, and that he is telling me that my wife is doing nothing but taking advantage of me, and I have to sell the house out from under her, and move into a retirement home.
I told him to stop contacting me.
It seems as though I get many instances of people telling me how to live my life; when I don't, they get quite angry with me, and desert me. Of course, my refusal to live my life according to their terms gives them an excuse to desert me, so that they are not confronted by their own mortality.
It's an easy way out.
I realized, this evening, that I feel very much like I am dying. By that I mean if you consider how I felt in Jan-FeB-Mar 2016, it is very much the same as I'm feeling daily now.
