hey - it was a great way to go out......

"Better to burn out than to fade away."

There was definitely some of that. TMF gets a lot of criticism for their moderation being arbitrary. I don't think that's the case at all. They've always been pretty consistent. Whenever I've seen a post that has been pulled or had one of my own pulled the reason is always apparent. People complain about getting their posts pulled all the time, but I'd say in 98% of the cases they knew or should have known exactly where the red line was.

In this case I was 100% sure :) I get why TMF wants a family friendly environment. But the audience is a group of adults who have known each other in a virtual sense for basically ever and mostly quality for Social Security. If we can't talk about "Moby Dick" and "sperm whales" the nanny filter just might be set a notch too high.

So I wrote out a post channeling my inner Auntie Lydia explaining why the rules are important, not just because they are rules. It is because the rules teach discipline. Something along those lines. Then I signed it TMFMints. But I thought about it for a few minutes before I posted it. If I didn't sign it, it might have skated under the radar. If I did sign it, I was 100% they were going to pull it. But I thought it was way funnier signed. I thought couple of people might get a laugh before it was pulled. And no one reads old posts anyway, so why not? And hey, turnabout is fair play. So I said "screw it." The TMF nanny filter is absurd, so using absurdity to point that out should be within the rules. After all, TMF was founded on the idea of the jester using absurdity to tell the truth. And if someone gets a laugh out of it, then it is a win-win.

This line of reasoning did not resonate with TMF.

They pulled my post along with a few others which I expected. I did not expect the ban hammer. But I crossed the red line on purpose. I messed around and found out.