What happened to Frenchyd?

z31maniac said:

ShawnG said:

I don't even remember the argument that got him the chop but I'm sure it was EV related. 

I think at one point a GRM employee, maybe Tom, even started a thread about if the forum members were tired of him constantly derailing threads and spreading incorrect information. I think that was the final straw that brought down the ban hammer. 

I know someone said in here said correcting incorrect info with correct info makes you part of the problem, but I disagree. That's been one of my pet peeves ever since I joined z31.com back in like 1998-1999. Having tons of incorrect info posted all over the multiple threads on multiple topics brings the quality of the entire forum down. 

It's also part of the reason Facebook groups replacing forums is terrible. The FB groups are filled with young guys that CONFIDENTLY answer questions with completely incorrect information and then get all pissed off when you show them the correct info. Part of why I spend less and less time on car-related forms and car-related social media. 

 

#getoffmylawn

Forums like GRM are a place to air your opinion. Even though one firmly believes ones opinion is deeply rooted in fact, one should always lay it out in the public sphere as opinion. Because as firm as one is in ones factual opinion, someone else will just as firmly believe it is not a factual opinion. So the adult reader can browse various posts and glean for himself what to take away as fact and what to take away as misinformation. Trying to correct someone else's non factual opinion with ones own factual opinion is what makes threads ultimately unreadable, and also gets people banned. No one of any user name should have the right or feel the right to teach some one else the correct opinion.

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

While opinions are subjective, there are also things like blatant OBjective things that can and should be called out.  

I gave up on reading a certain UK car magazine when I realized they seemed to make a sport out of being wrong.  As if knowing factual things about mechanical items was something only lower class people knew.  I think what did it was the third time they did an article about what to know about X car that "you need to uprate the clutch or you'll split the trans case".  That is not just wrong for any vehicle but also fractally wrong: the more you examine it, the more wrong you see.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to z31maniac :

Freshalloy was kinda bad too.  I recall asking a question about the transmission in my B12 Sentra, and the only reply was some guy saying "u shouldn't shift an automatic manually thats bad for it"

I've seen that same nonsense repeated in the BRZ/GR/GT86 groups. As if the computer isn't still controlling the shifts. 

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

ShawnG said:

I don't even remember the argument that got him the chop but I'm sure it was EV related. 

I think at one point a GRM employee, maybe Tom, even started a thread about if the forum members were tired of him constantly derailing threads and spreading incorrect information. I think that was the final straw that brought down the ban hammer. 

I know someone said in here said correcting incorrect info with correct info makes you part of the problem, but I disagree. That's been one of my pet peeves ever since I joined z31.com back in like 1998-1999. Having tons of incorrect info posted all over the multiple threads on multiple topics brings the quality of the entire forum down. 

It's also part of the reason Facebook groups replacing forums is terrible. The FB groups are filled with young guys that CONFIDENTLY answer questions with completely incorrect information and then get all pissed off when you show them the correct info. Part of why I spend less and less time on car-related forms and car-related social media. 

 

#getoffmylawn

Forums like GRM are a place to air your opinion. Even though one firmly believes ones opinion is deeply rooted in fact, one should always lay it out in the public sphere as opinion. Because as firm as one is in ones factual opinion, someone else will just as firmly believe it is not a factual opinion. So the adult reader can browse various posts and glean for himself what to take away as fact and what to take away as misinformation. Trying to correct someone else's non factual opinion with ones own factual opinion is what makes threads ultimately unreadable, and also gets people banned. No one of any user name should have the right or feel the right to teach some one else the correct opinion.

That's just like, umm, your opinion man.  

z31maniac said:

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to z31maniac :

Freshalloy was kinda bad too.  I recall asking a question about the transmission in my B12 Sentra, and the only reply was some guy saying "u shouldn't shift an automatic manually thats bad for it"

I've seen that same nonsense repeated in the BRZ/GR/GT86 groups. As if the computer isn't still controlling the shifts. 

This was a purely mechanical/hydraulic trans, which was the problem.  The governor was on an 8" long shaft and driven with a plastic gear.  Any time you had wheelspin, or locked up a front brake, it would damage the plastic gear, leaving you stuck in 1st.  I bodged a way to lock the governor open (on the side of the road, the 4th or 5th time that happened to me) so I could at least shift manually and go faster than 20mph, but I think I was asking if anyone made a metal gear for the governor.

You had to change the trans filter every two gears, incidentally 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

While opinions are subjective, there are also things like blatant OBjective things that can and should be called out.  

I gave up on reading a certain UK car magazine when I realized they seemed to make a sport out of being wrong.  As if knowing factual things about mechanical items was something only lower class people knew.  I think what did it was the third time they did an article about what to know about X car that "you need to uprate the clutch or you'll split the trans case".  That is not just wrong for any vehicle but also fractally wrong: the more you examine it, the more wrong you see.

Exactly. 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

You had to change the trans filter every two gears, incidentally 

That's pretty berkeleyin' often!

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

While opinions are subjective, there are also things like blatant OBjective things that can and should be called out.  

I gave up on reading a certain UK car magazine when I realized they seemed to make a sport out of being wrong.  As if knowing factual things about mechanical items was something only lower class people knew.  I think what did it was the third time they did an article about what to know about X car that "you need to uprate the clutch or you'll split the trans case".  That is not just wrong for any vehicle but also fractally wrong: the more you examine it, the more wrong you see.

What you are doing is correcting my incorrect opinion with your correct opinion.

What is the protocol here, do we flip tables or something? 

Hand hewn!

In most cases, I sort of enjoyed some of Frenchy's wild tangents, even when I recognized that his logic was clearly flawed... but there were two threads in particular that really upset me.

One was when he asked whether or not it was safe to run ancient, used tires on the old Jaguar that he was setting up as his (very) young granddaughter's daily driver. He asked for guidance, and then steadfastly refused to listen to reason when it was presented to him. He vehemently countered absolutely everyone's advice and insisted that it would perfectly acceptable to do what he wanted to do in the first place. 

No. Maybe I'm old fashioned, and maybe even more so than Frenchy himself, but daughters and granddaughters deserve an extra order of magnitude when it comes to vehicle safety and reliability. This is not an area where you try to teach them hard lessons late at night on dark roads. 

Step up and do it right.

The other time was when he asked for advice about getting his (well earned) Navy flight jacket restored. I think it was Yupididit who made a very generous and qualified offer to restore if for him at no cost. Frenchy's response was vicious and hostile, citing stolen valor and such. He really misinterpreted the gesture, and the whole thing was very hurtful. It really made me uncomfortable, and I wasn't even involved in it in any way. I would think about the way that he handled that one every time I read anything else that he posted after it. At that point, I think I started to see him as a once interesting old guy who was slipping away from us.

I think I miss him, but I'm not really sure.

I suspect that he moved on, and has barely noticed his own absence around here.

In reply to Trent :

I believe this is what you're hoping for

It is inappropriate to do this, but I'm not a doctor so I'm gonna do it anyway: 

I am pretty sure that he is either on the autism spectrum, or some other neurodivergent disorder, or else he is in some stage of dementia. 
 

I don't think he was mean spirited, I think he was socially inept and unable to read between the lines... or accurately comprehend the lines. He would regularly be judgmental without any curiosity when he didn't understand something - the Yuppididit jacket post for instance.

He was truly an expert in a whole lot of things, but digging through to find it - and his insistence on taking ridiculous tangents - got to a point that while I miss him on the forum, it is improved by his absence.

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

I remember that "Jag for granddaughter" thread and the whole time I was thinking 'what kind of jackass thinks an old Jag is what a college aged & attending woman in 2024 needs to deal with?'.  Absolutely nothing he was saying he was going to do made sense to the point that I thought he was making it up.  It smelled like a troll attempt on his part.

I missed the jacket thing.  That sounds pretty bizarre and awful.

A lot of what he did was oddly attention seeking and sometimes quite unrelated to the discuss at hand.

There was the time he offered a free boat.  Agreed to sell it to my SIL, proceeded to stop answering my calls or replying to emails.   Then claimed that I ghosted him.  I suspect his wife or neighbor told him it was worth selling and ghosted me.  I would have been totally cool with him changing his mind and telling me that.  

I argued with him all the time, and I miss him. Didnt want to see the guy banned..

Ill say the same thing I said in the last thread, people trying to diagnose him with alzheimers and autism via the internet is E36 M3ty.

Opti said:

Ill say the same thing I said in the last thread, people trying to diagnose him with alzheimers and autism via the internet is E36 M3ty.

I'll agree with that, but mostly because very few of us here have the qualifications to actually do that.

That being said, there was something off about his insistence on sticking to particular talking points and other things.  What that came from I can't say, but it was berkin weird.

Opti said:

I argued with him all the time, and I miss him. Didnt want to see the guy banned..

Ill say the same thing I said in the last thread, people trying to diagnose him with alzheimers and autism via the internet is E36 M3ty.

I couldn't disagree more. 
 

Bringing attention to concerns when someone is showing symptoms is responsible and caring. It can enable proper diagnosis and treatment. Expressing concerns is not a death warrant or an insult. It's genuine caring.

Keeping to yourself and saying nothing when someone is showing obvious symptoms is selfish and E36 M3ty. 
 

I've lived with close family members with dementia.  Life got a lot better for both them and me when we became willing to deal with it honestly instead of pretending it didn't exist.  
 

Frenchy is absolutely showing symptoms, and I hope he gets the care he needs. I spoke with him about it. That's not a diagnosis. That's an opinion, and a concern which is intended to try to lead him to a proper diagnosis.

Opti said:

I argued with him all the time, and I miss him. Didnt want to see the guy banned..

Ill say the same thing I said in the last thread, people trying to diagnose him with alzheimers and autism via the internet is E36 M3ty.

I disagree. I think those talking about it actually cared enough to help. They/We were seeing some really off the wall and strange behavior that last 6 months. 

Correcting an opinion with an opinion is one thing, correcting "facts" stated as facts with the ACTUAL facts is a completely different thing. He was making wild claims, clogging thread after thread with factually incorrect posts one after another. The whole point of this forum is to help one another and share factual information amongst each other (and post hundreds of pages of memes). Letting someone flood a thread with wrong info and not pointing it out with the real info is not helpful to anyone. He would ignore the facts, ignore the links that showed where they came from and continue to spout more lies and bs than everyone else combined here. 

So I've stayed out of this after the beginning answer, in part because I almost feel responsible for the ban. Why, when I don't have any powers and am admittedly a bit of an ass myself? Because the last thread that seemed to be the one to break the camels back, Tom asked about a time frame for a ban and I suggested when he was banned as mguar the last time, and an hour later he was gone. So I do feel a bit responsible even though it was a group act/opinion. 

I liked frenchy, even when he was trying to tell me that my driving habits and range needs were completely wrong despite living half the country away and not knowing anything about myself, my life, my finances, or my driving habits. 

But the man couldn't take a hint. When every single post of his in multiple threads were hidden from downvotes, instead of taking a minute to realize maybe it was him, he just doubled down that it was all the rest of us that were wrong. 

I would be happy to sit down and have a beer with him, but at the same time, I think it would last one beer. 

He definitely had an interesting life, at face value, racing with Sterling Moss, landing aircraft on boats in the dark during Nam, cobbling together that lake house. But watching his decline over the last 6 months to a year here was hard to do.

He reminded me a lot of my grandfather actually, who would do things to rile people up just because he was bored or didn't want to take the time to think before answering, then later come around and say "you know, you were right once I stopped and thought about what you said". 

I don't really know what my point was with this post, I just wanted to get it out there.

In reply to RevRico :

Ain't nobody responsible for Frenchy being banned but Frenchy. He'd been warned several times. He'd been documented as being tossed from just about every public forum he'd let himself into. He's old enough to know better. It's not on you to have to police another mans' actions, especially when those actions had gotten him sent to the gallows once already and he'd managed to grow himself another head. 

SV reX said:

Opti said:

I argued with him all the time, and I miss him. Didnt want to see the guy banned..

Ill say the same thing I said in the last thread, people trying to diagnose him with alzheimers and autism via the internet is E36 M3ty.

I couldn't disagree more. 
 

Bringing attention to concerns when someone is showing symptoms is responsible and caring. It can enable proper diagnosis and treatment. Expressing concerns is not a death warrant or an insult. It's genuine caring.

Keeping to yourself and saying nothing when someone is showing obvious symptoms is selfish and E36 M3ty. 
 

I've lived with close family members with dementia.  Life got a lot better for both them and me when we became willing to deal with it honestly instead of pretending it didn't exist.  
 

Frenchy is absolutely showing symptoms, and I hope he gets the care he needs. I spoke with him about it. That's not a diagnosis. That's an opinion, and a concern which is intended to try to lead him to a proper diagnosis.

I never said people should say nothing. You assumed that. Putting the guy on blast on a public forum is E36 M3ty. Send him a PM and leave it at that. Also Im not accusing you specifically of this but multiple times it was obviously done as an insult.

If I happened to see a picture of you, and I thought that blister on your lip looked like herpes, should I get on GRM and say "Hey bud it looks like you have herpes." for everyone to see? No of course not its E36 M3ty, but hey I was genuinely worried about you, so its okay, right?

In reply to Opti :

yes because herpes and dementia are so alike. You really do like to find ways that people are terrible in your mind. 

bobzilla said:

In reply to Opti :

yes because herpes and dementia are so alike. You really do like to find ways that people are terrible in your mind. 

The funny thing is a recent study found that untreated HSV shows an increased risk of dementia. You can rationalize it all you want, when you have the avenue to do it in private and you chose to do it in public, its E36 M3ty. Im sure there are things about yourself you'd prefer not be shared or accusations you wouldnt want hurled at you on a public forum, think about that before you do it to others

In reply to Opti :

The one thing we can say factually is that you and I have different opinions. I strongly disagree with you. Don't try to argue me into agreeing with you. That's a Frenchy thing. 
 

I never saw anyone "put the guy on blast" about dementia. I saw a couple people express concern cautiously. 

You are welcome to your opinion. I was one of the ones who spoke up publicly. You said that was E36 M3ty. We disagree. I have no regrets, and would do it again if it happened again.