Below is what I emailed.
Dear Site Administrator or Similar Associate,
I am a poster on a sports website, spurstalk.com. It's a very diverse site and includes one of the most nefarious locales on the internet: a lightly moderated political forum. I post as under the username FuzzyLumpkins.
On said forum, there is a thread en led Why I think Climate Change Denial is Little More than Pseudoscience. It's original thread went up to 4002 posts and has recently started its second iteration. the previous incarnation can be found HERE and its current form will most certainly be on the front page. For most of you, this will have an obvious link and for the rest it will become more clear shortly.
To cut to the chase, about a month and a half ago a member of the forum posted a link to the <large number>+ Skeptical Science Papers from a site many of you are probably familiar with: populartechnology.net. I did a bit of research and found blogs and the like about the contents regarding the relatively small collaborative scientists who wrote the papers, contradictions within the works, umbrage from included scientists, etc. I am sure most if not all of you are familiar with the list. It seems like its been getting a lot of play lately. I made a post about it.
I think you can guess what happened next: Poptech shows up. He began posting his litany of rehearsed answers and began his megalomaniac claims of being irrefutable. Anyone who disagreed with him were liars and he has now gone to the point recently of claiming that skeptics that disagree with him are drug addicts mostly because I have said that I smoke pot and I know how to push his buttons. More on that in a second.
Anyway I quickly tired of having him rehash his canned answers and decided to go a different tact. Anyone that has dealt with him or had any discourse with him quickly realizes that he is not 100% right upstairs. He is singularly obsessive and completely inflexible and puritanical about anything that deviates from his worldview. Anything that he deems socialist precludes something as being capitalist. Any link justifies conflation and is absolute. His views on your stereotypical US 'right' agenda are absolute. His forums are really his database for his political views and canned answers. You can read as his sophistry is cataloged and evolves. If you go there and read them they are the stereotypical rightist views. Stuff like drugs are bad, alcohol is good, AGW is false, unions are bad, laissez faire is the way to go, flat tax is good, socialized medicine is bad, etc. Any deviation from that is irrefutably wrong. From what I understand he goes across the interwebs to spread his gospel.
I began to get him to go through his canned responses. It started off with me trying to figure out his method but quickly became me trying to get his obsessiveness rolling. I was going to see what I could get him to do. I worked out his puritanical approach to economics but then I came upon the 'Truth' series on his site. Most of you are probably familiar with it because with each of you he considers his political enemies he has one on you. He labels people as communists, terrorists, criminals, or posts pictures of your homes and tries to demean your professions. It's really s my stuff. So, I decided to have him go through that. Some of the lengths that he went through to dig up stuff on you guys is pretty alarming. Pun intended.
At the end after arguing with him for quite some time, I conceded a point. Sorry greenfyre, it had to do with you indeed being associated with those he labeled as terrorists. Its asinine, I know. Why this was important will be clear in a moment. The next day I log on to find that he had started a thread which boiled down to Laissez Faire is great. It consisted of a bunch of youtube advertisements from the Heritage Foundation, Koch Brothers, and the Cato Ins ute. After discussing the particular industries that the board members of the Heritage Foundation worked for I decided to see what we could get him to do. I had his obsession rolling and I had given him the narcissistic feedback he needed to feel comfortable. I put a checklist about a particular Axis 2 mental disorder in front of him. The link for it is from the NIH and can be found HERE. He criticized my first posting which I conceded by correcting, put it back in front of him and lo and behold he filled it out. Below is what he wrote.
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Take advantage of other people to achieve his or her own goals Fail - I have not taken advantage of anyone. That is just absurd.
Have excessive feelings of self-importance Fail - I have no such feelings
Exaggerate achievements and talents Fail - I have exaggerated nothing
Be preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence, or ideal love Fail - on all counts, I am already successful, I do not seek "power", I am not vain, I have no fantasies about my intelligence, I am in a fullfilling relationship with a beautiful women
Have unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment True - You got me there, I do not expect to be dishonestly lied about and now smeared as you and RG have done.
Need constant attention and admiration Fail - Absolute fail, You have no idea how I do not care for attention or admiration.
Disregard the feelings of others, and have little ability to feel empathy Check - I could careless about yours or anyone else's feelings online. All I care about is what is true.
Have obsessive self-interest - Check - This is true but it has nothing to with this disorder but actually something else. I believe I have a mild form of aspergers syndrome similar to Michael Burry that allows me to relentlessly concentrate on a topic if I choose. This is actually a strength as I effectively never tire.
Pursue mainly selfish goals - Absolutely False - My whole point for doing this is I do not like liars like you and other alarmists. If you never stated any lies I would not even be here.
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Now the link to his original post is HERE, but despite it being written on 5/4/2012 you can see that he edited it to ridicule me and conflate me with psychotics nearly three weeks later on 5/24/2012. I guess it took him awhile but I think he finally realized or someone he knows realized what he had written. But not to worry my response immediately following the original post where I quote what he wrote is HERE. Also there are HERE and HERE where there are other posters talk about or link his admission which as you can see none of which have been edited. If you want read the postings that lead up to and follow the linked posts and it becomes pretty clear what went on.
I will leave it to the individual to judge what they consider true or flase from what he wrote but one thing is clear: he claims he thinks he has a Axis 1 Mental Disorder. Now if you look a bit into aspergers and NPD, you will quickly find that they are often misdiagnosed for each other. A simple google search of 'aspergers narcissist misdiagnosis' will pull reams of articles and studies on the particular misdiagnosis. The main difference between sociopathic personality disorders like NPD and and autism spectrum mental disorders likeaspergers is that the latter is unaware of what his action are doing to the people he interacts with while the former is aware but just doesn't care.
I have thought about this and concluded he is probably the former. One of the things that narcissists do is devalue or dehumanize people that they consider threats or critics so they can dismiss them. Most of us have been labeled as what he considers undesirables. In my case, he has taken an admission of having smoked pot to label me as a psychotic drug addict. Others have been labeled as communists, criminals, terrorists or otherwise ridiculed so he can dismiss you out of hand. He has done this with every major AGW site on the internet. Every one. That and as you can see he says 'I could careless about yours or anyone else's feelings online.'
Now I am not above some introspection. If you read that site, it demonstrates that I can be a hothead who does not suffer fools and I wrestle with the ethic and moral implications of manipulating mentally ill people. I worry may be antisocial behavior of my own. At the same time I have tried to point out what he is susceptible to and that there are people out there that can help him. He is to the point where I am such a threat in his mind though that he just repeats the litany of how he devalues me and completely denies ever to admitting having the disorder. He is nothing if not disconcerting.
Regardless, I also think that given what he has done to you guys with his 'Truth' series, perhaps some of you will appreciate this context of this particular individual. That is my hope anyway. I also hope that somehow he can get the help that he really does need.
Finally, I would like to mention that I appreciate the empirical approach that you guys take towards your blogging and reporting and I believe you are fighting the good fight. I hope for the best in your endeavors.
Fuzzy