I think all involved had the best of intentions (aside from maybe one or two).
I would have a less-diminished faith in humanity if that were even close to being accurate.
The amazing thing to me was the snowball effect. The whole thing started with two people, so that part is spot on. But what astonished me was the sheer number of people who wanted to taste blood that decided to pile on and have some fun.
This thing started with one guy, so full of avarice, that he spent hours digging for whatever sort of fabricated dirt he could find. He tried selling this story of his for about a year and person after person told him he was full of $hit. Then we have another person, who got tired of (a) hearing the word no too many times, and (b) not being treated as if he was better than everyone else on the founder's team. Person A's story fit his needs, especially since he had found another group of people anxious to cash in on the phenomenon we had built at that point. Me telling them "No, we're not ready to take advertiser's money yet" made them nuts. I suppose they figured if I didn't want the money, they'd be happy to take it. At any rate, it was a match made in heaven.
The most disturbing part was all the people who piled on. Obviously I have pi$$ed of my share of people over the years. If I don't agree with something, I'll say so. And I do know how to make a point. And yes. I have in the past enjoyed taking the occasional loudmouthed tool out for a spin. I suppose there were a few people out there who enjoyed the opportunity of taking a few shots at me.
It's a simpler story than one might be led to believe. I bounced a check. Neither I nor the hospital that was the beneficiary discovered it for several months. I found out, was horrified, discovered what happened and Fedex'ed a replacement with an apology letter. Case closed. A guy made a mistake and took care of it. But unbeknownst to me, I opened Pandora's Box. This became the perfect opening for this fellow and a couple of what I like to think of as highly self-important guys to make their move. So what we have is one guy who bought his way into the party and three moderators that had convinced themselves the site only existed because of their efforts felt entitled to take control of the site. They convinced themselves that Person A's letter of accusations MUST be true, since, after all, he said so. Plus it suited their needs quite well. So they decided that they would take over. They didn't bother to mention this to the other 30+ active Founder's. They were nice enough to offer to reimburse me for my out-of-pocket startup costs for the site.
At this point, there needs to be a bit of context interjected. At the time that these guys were playing moderator, Paul Rose was sitting in his office, entering hundreds of boat ads into our new classifieds system, one by one. Manually. Keying in all the ad info. Loading pictures. Making sure it was all correct. Hard, tedious work. Hard F'ing work. Now this is a guy who rented a raceboat, not once but twice, and put our logo on the side. Out of his own pocket. Somehow his contributions paled against the others and he was omitted from their group. (my fingers would be raw if I typed out all Paul did). This is just one of many examples of people who put tons of their own efforts into the site purely for their love of the sport. None of them ever having the idea that they would be entitled to take over the site.
Nonetheless, my answer to these guys was no. Fuc& no. That displeased them. So they decided they needed to save the sport from me, so they set about a campaign to sell their story of how I tried to cheat a charity. Conveniently, Mr. A was available to help.
Again, a little context- on the very same weekend I handed over the charity check about a dozen of the Founder's group sat in a room in Key West talking about the future of the site. A few implored me to begin taking the advertiser's money that had been being offered to us over and over again. Once again, I said no, we weren't ready. I wanted to make sure we built enough value in what we were delivering. After the meeting, one of the Founder's who was less-involved told me "that's a man not accustomed to hearing the word no. He's not pleased". In hindsight I should have paid closer attention. Back to my point, on the same weekend I hand over a charity check, i turn down tens of thousands in advertiser dollars. Now why would I do that? Notwithstanding the pure dollars issue, why would I commit a felony over $2600 AND do it in a place I was sure to get caught and obviously jeopardize something I had put many times that much into in the past two years? A bit more context- shortly before that, I was at a poker run with the group of four that tried to take over the site. Sitting at the banquet table for the charity auction, the idea was floated we all kick in and make a $1000 donation to the group. You would have thought we were asking these guys to blow a streetcorner bum. Now this is a group that stayed for free, boated for free and ate for free for a whole weekend. Me and one other split the $1k donation. We did it in the name of our group, not the two of us. Shortly after, one of the guys had a charity he wanted money for. A polar bear jump. I was the first guy in- I thing I gave him $250. This same guy a week or two later decided to accuse me of stealing a coffee can full of one's in a bar where we were having a party. Oh- forgot. That was four months prior. I guess he forgot that he saw me stealing charity donations.
The rest of the story you already know. I'm a lying, thieving scumbag.
What disturbed me the most was what they did to the remaining group. One poor woman was hounded so badly, she had to disappear altogether. I was told she received sixteen phonecalls in one day while at work. Another gentleman was told his business would be destroyed just like they were doing to the site. Or at least that's his story to me. The rest received varying degrees of harassment. One, who I count as a close friend, told me, "I have a wife and kid. I can't afford to have this happen to me". I don't blame him.
Over the course of several months, the group made several additional efforts to gain control of the site. In one instance, they tried to get someone close to me to leverage our friendship and gain control of the site, in exchange for "a big check".
This site had one reason for its creation and two founding principles. The reason was the sale of OSO and the uncertainty of the site's future. Their new owners suffered through months of ineptitude. The principles we set upon were that it would be a fair and open community where everyone was welcome contingent upon a standard of behavior and that the site would never leave the control of the membership- it would never be sold out from underneath them. Those ideals are still intact today.
So now we have this group of people who one one side are trying to save the sport and industry of performance powerboating from the likes of me, while at the same time, trying to take over the website our group had built. Interestingly enough, their "offer" to buy the site included a confidentiality clause. So the way it worked was this- if I left, nothing would be said. I would be free to go on running my myriad of charity scams. But otherwise, the sport would be saved from me by these guys. Maybe someone could explain the purely altruistic nature of this arrangement. I'm a simple guy- that to me sounds something like extortion.
So, the rest is history. Since then we have had a non-stop parade of everyone I ever rubbed the wrong way. It's comical to read " I always knew he was..." from people who participated right next to me on OSO for the ten years prior to this course of events. But my favorites are the handful that have created outright fabrications so that they wouldn't be left off of the boat on this one. It's great to be one of the cool kids, I guess.
I hope that gives you a little more insight into what went on. I'm not as jaded and you might think this would cause a person to be. What I did learn was the difference between "friends" and Friends.
Wanna watch a video that explains how the whole rest of it went?
Start at 0:50 Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ83r886Kyg
