What's the story with Little Green Footballs and Metafilter?

September 4, 2005 7:24 PM

If you go to LittleGreenFootballs.com, you'll see at times, at the top of your browser "LGF, Banned From Metafilter." Does anyone know what that's about?
posted by ParisParamus to MetaFilter-Related at 7:24 PM (21 comments total)

Charles Johnson thinks he's been banned because he doesn't toe the party line.

Whether that's true or not, only Matt knows.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:30 PM on September 4, 2005

I'm just guessing here, but is this something you would need to go to LittleGreenFootballs.com to know about?
posted by yhbc at 7:47 PM on September 4, 2005

It's about insane paranoia and soul sickness. Poor Charles.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:47 PM on September 4, 2005

LGF is a great site; somehow I think it's a joke, but wasn't sure.
posted by ParisParamus at 7:53 PM on September 4, 2005

It's kinda funny, too. There are so many MeFi people who are exactly like the LGF people, but on the other side of the political seesaw. Same tedious and predictable responses, same kneejerk vitriol for opposing viewpoints. Now everyone calls for bans of people who have some different idea.

So it's funny to see stuff like this when the two sites so often seem to serve as a mirror of one another.
posted by xmutex at 7:55 PM on September 4, 2005

PP is partially right. LGF is a great site... for causing high blood pressure in people that actually have consciences and the (apparently) recessive gene for empathy.

Otherwise, it's not worth a damn in hell.
posted by psmealey at 7:58 PM on September 4, 2005

xmutex, true, although LGF isn't much of a community blog. The articles are great; the banter is chatroom-ish. The banter on Metafilter is much more sophisticated.
posted by ParisParamus at 7:58 PM on September 4, 2005

psmealey: Is a damn in hell worth two on Earth? Or what?
posted by xmutex at 8:00 PM on September 4, 2005

Just divide it by zero.
posted by psmealey at 8:02 PM on September 4, 2005

Isn't there a moratorium against linking to comments in lgf? Is that what he's whining about?
posted by substrate at 8:03 PM on September 4, 2005

No moratorium... just check out this random sampling from just this evening.

Ok. Sean Penn decides to take matters into his own hands to help victims of Katrina. And only LGF, it's greeted with 100+ comments of schadenfreude and derision. LGF pretty much equals heartless motherfucker. If you think MeFi is the same, that kind of sucks, and I guess we have to do better. But everytime I go to LGF, I go looking for examples of how poor humanity can really be.
posted by psmealey at 8:08 PM on September 4, 2005

No, I'm pretty sure there is (was?) a moratorium, because of the last time there was cross-linking and there was a nasty crossblog flamewar or something. Wasn't that years ago? Is LGF's tagline that old, or is it a new thing?
posted by furiousthought at 8:16 PM on September 4, 2005

... and that's pretty much what I get. In that sense... well done, I suppose. It does not disappoint.
posted by psmealey at 8:16 PM on September 4, 2005

"Moonbat liberal." Heh. Glad the conservative think-tanks are spending their time well.
posted by chasing at 8:20 PM on September 4, 2005

Sorry, but I think LGF is decidely more moderate than Metafilter.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:43 PM on September 4, 2005

Sorry, but I think LGF is decidely more moderate than Metafilter.

Seriously, Paris, that is a crock. I have personally had a user account banned and locked on LGF for posting some challenging, though by no means obscene of even impolite, remarks on LGF. I have friends that have had that same experience. This does not even come close to the same neighborhood as MeFi. The likes of 111 were abe to inflame and troll for years on MeFi without any official reprisal whatsoever.
posted by psmealey at 8:51 PM on September 4, 2005

psmealy, let me clarify. Charles' articles are more moderate. The comments are less moderate and more sophomoric. What I love about Metafilter is the quality of the comments...
posted by ParisParamus at 9:06 PM on September 4, 2005

And here we have another ParisParamus MetaTalk vanity post, do we ?
posted by y2karl at 9:08 PM on September 4, 2005

I've rarely seen so many people having so much fun hating other people as the LGFers do. Politics aside, LGF is just a sad display of humanity.
posted by 517 at 9:10 PM on September 4, 2005

psmealey, ever since the federal government came under the control of Republicans, the political spectrum has been relabeled. There are now right wing fundamentalists, moderate Republicans and Republicans who don't tow the party line. Anyone who doesn't fit into this category either hates America, hates Bush, is French, is liberal, is homosexual or all of the above.

Haven't you been paying attention?
posted by sequential at 9:10 PM on September 4, 2005

I graduated in French Lit. from the University of Chicago in 1989, so, I used to like to think of myself as right in the middle of all that. I knew (and drank with) some of the Straussians, I thought a few were intelligent, most were ignorant academic types, but they all could be managed.

However, in the paradigm you describe (and in the actual world as well, sadly), I guess I'm a man without a country or ideology. As you describe it, I'm probably French, liberal and gay. Only thing is, I love von Hayek, a ripe Pont l'Eveque and a fine Cotes de Beaune... I just don't like dick. Not that there's anything etc...
posted by psmealey at 9:27 PM on September 4, 2005