two things:
1) there was never any rivalry between me and barty. there is still not to this day. on the web esh thread, i was initially laughing at barty's mumble rap jamaica corellation. you then barged in and made a huge deal out of it, but this was like web esh laughing, aghast at barty proclaiming that Migos were the greatest since Rakim.
I have a lot of love and respect for barty, i value his contributions, i just find them hilarious most of the time. I can't help that. I imagine he likes playing up to that circus clown image a bit. fair play, we all play up to certain images on here, that's part of the charm, I've done my fair share of playing up to wannabe hardman image.
2) Luke I'm getting absolutely fucking sick and fucking tired of you wanting to micromanage the music forum. look some of us didn't have the best relationships with our fathers. it's not fucking amusing, it's not fucking occult, and most importantly of all it's not magical, it's just edgelord posturing. as someone from Stratford this is beneath you. stop it.
I hope I can speak for everyone in saying that we admire all aspects of your personality. your mysticism, you're intelect, your associative thinking, joining dots that other people would never think about. you're truly a postmodern blender incarnate and that's something to take great pride in. you massively stuck to your guns with this forum when it was in the doldrums and really put a huge amount of effort into revitalising it. noone (absolutely noone) can take that away from you, even if they dislike you. that's just objective fact.
However it's gotten to the point where you're focused more on holding onto the gear stick for dear life than driving the car elegantly. let the forum breathe a bit. let the harmless aggression between friends come out a bitt, newcomers will find that far more inocuous than all this conflict resolution stuff. which is not more feminin, in some respects it's far far more masculine than the very male-centred banter we have on here.
So yeah, I'm feeling a bit fucking bitter towards you today, and I'm one who really can indulge your propensities.
Just breathe, chill out a bit, don't try court disciples. that game is getting old now. it's long passed its sell by date. let the game end on a high. it gave us much amusement, opened up new avenues to explore and connected us in ways that weren't so apparent before it. For that you can absolutely take a bow. just don't flog it like a carcass. then it will all end up cringey and the forum will die, no matter how much you try and artificially electrify it.
cheers.