It would be great if you would answer the question that McGurk suggested in that post though - Is it somehow more right/polite to call someone a stalker than it is to post that they were called a stalker?
I have been around this board for a long time, Manni, people have been called stalkers more times than I can remember.
You jumping up and down insisting that this was all about you and not able to be about any of those other many times the word stalker has been tossed out on this forum is quite interesting and as posted above, brings us back to the point made above.
And thank you to McGurk to admitting that I was right…
Not that I’m not open to the possibility, but where exactly did I say you were right?
As for with the whole “Proud stalker” thing; as soon as I was aware that it was not taken as the joke I intended, I changed it. But it seems to me there was some sort of mod ruling calling people stalkers being being name calling, along the lines with calling people trolls?
Today, I briefly considered changed my title to “COTH Illuminati” but I figured that would not be taken in the spirit
meant either.
Well its amazing how many people are clueless and nice and polite
I’m not even sure what this means. I’m guessing it’s sarcastic? Are you saying someone is not nice and polite? Me? Other posters?
THAT is what people are upset about? really? How about the disrespect we were shown? or does no one care about how we feel here? I am probably one of the older members on this forum, but that doesn’t seem to mean much (ie- as of date joined, not age)
I don’t remember the mods being involved.
Geez, after 6 people were called stalkers by Manni, we just had to laugh about it,. I mean really!
Well I wrote that you researched me and you admitted that it was me. (and see I don’t even call it stalking now) and I totally accept your apology!!
As for with the whole “Proud stalker” thing; as soon as I was aware that it was not taken as the joke I intended, I changed it. But it seems to me there was some sort of mod ruling calling people stalkers being being name calling, along the lines with calling people trolls?
Thank you and I think we can now stop talking about it… For me its a finished thing anyhow.
I’m not even sure what this means. I’m guessing it’s sarcastic? Are you saying someone is not nice and polite? Me? Other posters?
I would never say people on COTH are not nice and polite!! All of them are amazing people!!!
I wonder why you keep posting that I am not that important and that it was not about me… Is this maybe a little bit of bullying because you want to show me that I am all wrong which might make me feel bad??? Its is totally clear by now that Mc Gurk was talking about me. So maybe you are wrong.
Society has become hyper sensitive to the perception of bullying, especially in the the cyberspace age. I think some of what is being defined a bullying is people expressing differing opinions. Sometimes things may get a tad personal but bullying?:ambivalence: Some posters may need to take a course in it. It is very very serious, especially among teens which results in suicide and I really have my hackles up that some of what goes on COTH is being compared to bullying.
Poster A posts something controversial. Poster B and C respond and so on and so on and so on.
In reference to COTH meeting to gang up on someone/something- has the world lost its every bloody mind??? Some of us are friends IRL. :eek: Goodness a topic may come up but it is hardly a clandestine meeting (Illuminati made me laaaugggghhhhh).
Honestly- a lot of the interactions I see are more Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and Coyote - esque… :applause: You know it’s coming, I know it is coming, the OP or poster knows it is coming… and yet it gets posted anyway (hey- that’s free speech).
Jeez, not sure how to explain it in smaller words or something…
I AM NOT BULLYING YOU…I am pointing out that if you would not keep holding an arrow above your head saying “I think I am a victim” I, and Trub, and I guess many more would not of connected you to anything…
Well I wrote that you researched me and you admitted that it was me. (and see I don’t even call it stalking now) and I totally accept your apology!!
Where did I admit to researching you? You called me, and several other posters, “stalkers” because we referenced your previous post history. I remembered your previous post history because it’s outrageous; I didn’t have to research it!
So let me get this straight: You think a joke title of “Proud Stalker” is more offensive than calling someone a stalker in the first place? (which has criminal overtones, by the way) Whose “research” and “crime” is remembering stuff you posted before?
Please refer back to my initial poster where I discuss how perspective can influence your view of who is bullying and who is being bullied.
No. She’s just pointing out that the vast majority of us would never have had the slightest clue that McGurk’s post alluded to some prior incident that involved you until you started us down the road toward rehashing it. Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about you until you show up – that’s a fun fact about other people’s brains, not an insult.
For all of the concern about bullying that has been expressed in this thread, there seems to be zero recognition that bandying the term about to band-aid every hurt feeling simply trivializes the truly reprehensible things that it is intended to describe.
I can’t believe this is a topic of 5 full pages of interest among rich, white, full-grown, adult, riding-1000#-ers women.
Just sayin’. The bullying thing doesn’t affect me so I’m a bit “meh,” about it. I can see how it would be real and pernicious among badly-raised school children who can hide behind the anonymity of the internet and are truly plagued by the lack of empathy that takes time to develop in people. But surely we aren’t a similar demographic here?
Some genuine questions: How come y’all care? If you don’t like what folks are saying about you, can’t you leave the situation? I do appreciate that bullying involves a power differential. But who among equals here on the internet lacks sufficient power?
I’m a bit ‘meh’ about the assumption that everyone on this board is rich, white, an adult, and a woman.
The tendency to conflate that pernicious thing that can harm children with the sensitivities of adults is a) relevant to current/recent events in dressage, b) potentially damaging to efforts to protect those at risk, and c) something that arises frequently in this forum and tends to devolve threads into unpleasant and uninteresting whinge-fests.
So I can understand why people would want to discuss bullying in terms of a) discussion about its occurrence in equestrian sports, b) establishing a shared notion of what it is and isn’t, and c) a self-contained discussion here to clear the air so that it doesn’t continue to be the jumping-off point for a thousand other thread derailments.
Perhaps these things are doomed to be unsuccessful, but I also don’t see why bullying conversations should be the exclusive domain of teenage victims.
Okay, I’ve seen this little factoid passed around and since I know something about it, I’m going to give lie to that creation, originated by Nick by the way.
Many years ago, when NIck was starting threads about himself here on COTH in guises of other people who called him Maestro, (I know, he’s never really stopped) another horse board picked up on the hilarity of the threads and had their own discussion about it. Nick came onto that horse board too, under some odd pretend name of someone who worshiped him, and then, very oddly, several others of his family members seemed to show up. They were bizzare, and may or may not have been real family members, but one who was pretty straight forward was his oldest daughter, a step daughter, and in her 20’s. She used some pretty foul language and ranted about coming across these kinds of threads once a month on her facebook page. Some of the people on that board went to her facebook page to see what she was talking about, found nothing on her facebook page about Nick, and some of them tried to talk to her, either privately on that horse board or on facebook, and it became clear that she wanted no contact with people about the matter, wanted to sound off, did, and ought to be left alone.
I did not attempt to speak with her. I was contacted by one of his other adult family members, who was frustrated with Nick and did not have anything falttering to say about him, herself. I did not feel comfortable with contact with a family member of his, no matter who it was, and politely disuaded her from a facebook connection with me. All I have ever felt inclined to do was to criticize Nick’s unsafe training methods and hate speech. I have a right to, and will always feel I have a right to.
That’s it. Nobody contacted his family. No child of his has ever been contacted. Nobody to my knowlege anywhere has ever even tolerated discussion about his children. Nobody I know would. His adult step daughter contacted people discussing his training abilities on a horseboard, but that’s not people stalking or bothering him or his family.
Nick, on the other hand, has contacted people’s children. Minors. He’s called them on the phone, threatening them, and grandmothers, called new mothers late at night, threatening them, people who have had nothing to do with him except been horse professionals who have voiced their opinion about the unsafe training he promotes; he’s threatened to take the photos of children and put them on porn sites, and he actually has put sex for hire ads on craigslist using phone numbers of people who have criticized his claims. He’s actively recruited people on facebook to spam Robert Dover’s facebook page because he’s gay and of different political persuasion than Nick. He’s threatened people who are gay with physical harm. These aren’t rumors. There is concrete proof of him doing all of this, and its is all in the hands of police. Its what he does.
Nobody ever has initiated contact with one of his family members. Nick SAYS people have bullied his children, but none ever have. It would be a reprehensible thing to do. I am sure if it had happened, he would crow about it with screenshots and “proof” and he never has. I assume that when his step daughter contacted people criticizing Nick and people attempted to continue a conversation with her about it, he has turned that around to be harrassment of his family. Nobody in that horse forum or any other has ever harrassed his step daughter.
What makes a coach/trainer/instructor a bully? Because they are strict with you does not equal bully to me. But having read a ton of George Morris threads on this forum to some people that is enough.
I agree about strict. Some riders thrive with a shouty taskmaster and aren’t motivated by back-patting cheerleader types. I suspect that actual bullying in dressage instructor-client relationships is quite rare.
I think the thing that causes GM to get lumped into the bully category is his reputation for commenting on physical attributes of riders (including weight) and to make blunt and specific comments about the appearance of the horse and tack (things like the saddle leather being too orange, or the horse’s head being unrefined). I haven’t ever ventured seriously into hunter land so I have no idea how this jibes with the goals of that discipline. But given how widely this reputation is known, it strikes me that riding in his clinics is more like choosing to eat at one of those novelty restaurants where the waiters are intentionally rude, rather than innocently wandering into the crosshairs of the schoolyard bully.
I always took George Morris as being a no bullshit kind of person. His comments are usually factual. When he says “NOBODY did it right! NOBODY was the best! You all sucked!” He’s not lying, and he’s not bullying. He’s correct, when I’ve seen it, and he isn’t going to let people stand around thinking they did well when they didn’t do what he asked correctly or well. Then he makes them do it again. I personally thrive under that kind of instructor. If they are correct, and I’m there to learn, not have my ego stroked. He also responds very encouragingly when he is listened to and people try their best. When people call GM a bully, or its all his ego talking, they are missing the instruction and the point. I’ve always taken that kind of response to him pretty much the same way I respond to NP when he calls people who criticize him “jealous”. They aren’t jealous, they know things Nick doesn’t and see the fallicies in his statement. GM isn’t being sarcastic and yelling because he has an ego, well, he probably does, but he’s not wasting his time or the student’s being polite and getting the impediments out of the way so the rider can really attempt what he is trying to teach. That’s how I see it. Good for him. He calls it like he sees. And I respect what he can see.
This…the man is a legend, you choose to go to share his knowledge, and I don’t imagine anyone would be shocked by what he says…As you say all part of the ‘show’
Some of us are friends IRL. :eek: Goodness a topic may come up but it is hardly a clandestine meeting (Illuminati made me laaaugggghhhhh).