*hugs MoonageDaydream*
*leaves a hug in HumbleDreamer's P.O. box to collect later*
Rant: Bad sinus headache this morning, probably because of the weather. Time for some Sudafed.
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*hugs MoonageDaydream*
*leaves a hug in HumbleDreamer's P.O. box to collect later*
Rant: Bad sinus headache this morning, probably because of the weather. Time for some Sudafed.
Rant: If it's not one of my physical problems, then it's something else that's outside of me. Just feeling frustrated with how some things are going.
Rave edit: With that negative point, I almost forgot, I actually just managed to complete one of my (simpler) new year goals. :P
The more I think about this the more it's bothering me, so I've decided to dive a little deeper into the issue.
One of the biggest issues I can identify is that the moderator's response in this instance (Sivason's) comes across as strangely biased. In Sivason's initial post, he starts with an unusually emotionally charged opener ("Wow, what the hell happened here?"). Almost as if he is personally invested in the matter. As far as I can tell, he's since edited his original post to amend the opening, but it's been preserved in a quote from MoonageDayDream. Sivason for some reason then proceeds to criticise everyone who said anything even remotely in opposition to DanielLove. For some reason DanielLove escapes ANY such criticism, despite he himself having acted at LEAST as equally antagonistic, if not significantly worse.
For context on this, let's take an instance of something MoonageDayDream said during the course of the discussion: "Thing is, it does seem like most of your posts these days (if not all) include a link to subscribe to your channel. As if that's the goal, to get us to subscribe. On my end, it feels like we're a resource of potential subscribers for you to tap, not actual people to get to know. I hope this makes sense.".
Personally, I think this was put very respectfully by MoonageDayDream, and also that her point itself is incredibly valid and does indeed reflect how the vast majority of users feel in regards to DanielLove. By the way, if you think I'm cherry picking examples from the thread to make MoonageDayDream look favourable, I'm absolutely not. You can view the thread where I sourced these quotes from yourself:
https://www.dreamviews.com/general-l...eir-sleep.html and https://www.dreamviews.com/senseless...ml#post2240690
Now, by comparison, let's look at one of the responses made by DanielLove within the same thread:
"I'll say, thanks but no thanks, to you MoonageDaydream, I don't buy into happy-clappy let's all agree with everyone all the time mentality. It's a sure-fire way to sit on the fence so hard that you split yourself in two. It also leads to this kind of bubbling poorly hidden resentment that comes across as passive-aggressive, that is just bubbling under the surface of the "try to be nice to everyone" posts."
For brevity, I won't bother posting multiple quotes by each user, but once again, both threads are linked within this post if you want to have a look for yourself. After viewing the threads in their entirety, I don't think that anyone could reasonably say that MoonageDayDream wasn't respectful while she raised some very valid points. Furthermore, I don't think anyone could reasonably state that DanielLove didn't come off as quite unpleasant and aggressive.
Except, once again, for some baffling reason, Sivason ends up criticising all the users that raised any sort of objection to DanielLove. The biggest issue I have with this is that we are essentially told by Sivason (A moderator) that it's inappropriate for us to demonstrate any sort of opposition to what we consider to be a post that is spam.
I really can't help but feel the underlying bias within this next part. Not only are users criticised for voicing their opinion within a thread, Sivason then goes as far as to personally thank DanielLove for his post and to apologise to him about others 'derailing' his thread
("Daniel Love, Thanks for posting a new thread, sorry I did not realize what was going on to derail it")
Finally, perhaps the biggest injustice of all happens. Sivason then proceeds to move any dissident posts within DanielLove's thread to an alternate thread titled 'Spamming?'
("I am moving the posts about spamming out of Daniel's thread to the lounge.")
This is the most ridiculous part of the entire saga, and I'd find it laughable if it wasn't downright offensive. Why is it ridiculous? Because DanielLove's entire thread is spam!
I mean seriously, even in his original post, he directly links his Youtube Channel while saying 'Come join me!'. This is a complete non sequitur. I mean, what does your Youtube Channel have to do with an article about Lucid Dreaming technology?
But hang on, maybe I'm just being unfair and I'm wrongfully criticising DanielLove for a once-off instance.
Actually, nope. Guess what? I looked through his post history. LITERALLY every single one of his posts is self-promotion. Don't believe me? Take a look.
https://www.dreamviews.com/search.php?searchid=4906651
The worst thing is, not only is DanielLove quite blatantly and shamelessly self-promoting and spamming, he's doing so disingenuously under the implication that he's actually just a hobby Lucid Dreamer without any vested interests.
This alone makes me quite upset, as it's almost insulting to our intelligence that he would expect us to readily buy such a claim.
For example, DanielLove says: "I genuinely wish I had more time to get involved, but I also run a forum and chat community over on thelucidguide website, along with the channel and all the comments that generates. So you can imagine a huge amount of my day is spent talking online about lucid dreaming.". (He can't help himself name dropping his website even when he's writing an argument about how he's not a shameless self-promoter).
I mean come on, DanielLove doesn't care about actually engaging with the community. He just wants to generate as much publicity for his website as possible.
Another mystifying claim on behalf of DanielLove is that he was apparently very active within the DreamViews community back in the day, but simply on an alternate account. Sounds a lot like that kid in your old primary school's girlfriend that used to 'go to a different school.'
His claim for creating another account is that it was "so as to not confuse people with a unrecognisable username". Well, first of all, that doesn't really make sense in general, but here's the closest thing that I can infer he means by that statement.
What he means to say here is "I needed to create a new account with the name DanielLove (If a previous account ever existed in the first place) so that people can associate this account with my brand when I'm self-promoting on dreamviews."
I mean really, what other possible reason could there be, and why would the new account even exist in the first place if his sole purpose wasn't to self-promote?
Finally, let's talk about the actual nature of DanielLove. One pressing question you may have, is: Why does DanielLove spend so much time tirelessly creating these spam threads, and why does he become so aggressive when people call him out on it?
Well, first let's talk about his glowing endorsement on his website. ("I consider Daniel Love to be the most authentic and comprehensive lucid dreaming teacher of our time" - Dr Keith Hearne)
Well, first of all, let's use our general scepticism and ask ourselves why DanielLove, who as he claims is so earnestly and selflessly invested in the lucid dreaming community, needs these strange endorsements? Doesn't this intuitively seem a little fishy to you? I mean, who is Dr Keith Hearne anyway? Well, he's definitely not a real doctor. He's a 'Hypnotherapist' as his own website will happily tell you. (You can simply google 'Dr Keith Hearne' to find his website and see for yourself. I won't link it here in case my post gets flagged for an external link. Basically, the guy is a complete quack. Here's an exert from his website, he offers: 'Hypnotherapy for the 'hypnotic gastric band', 'autism' and 'breast size'. (No, unfortunately I am not making this up).
I won't ramble on about this, but I think we've adequately debunked Daniel Love's glowing endorsement.
Okay, so, what is Daniel Love trying to push exactly, anyway?
Well, for the low price of just 225 pounds (around 400 USD) you can purchase a 'Lucid dream tuition and coaching' plan in a package that comes with 5 lessons. Wow, what a steal.
I mean honestly, all the information required for lucid dreaming is out there and ready to be utilised. There aren't any secrets of reasons to be shelling out 400 USD so you can chat with someone over the web about it.
Don't forget, while DanielLove is attempting to charge hundreds of dollars for a glorified Skype session, he's also falsely endorsing himself with 'doctors'.
I won't go into great depth about his website because it's boring, but it really is just DanielLove trying to push overpriced products (you can also buy a DanielLove Jumper for 50 dollars). The website is in the same format of every other scam website you've ever seen in your life. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself.
By the way, before my closing statement, I just want to say specifically to Sivason. I hope you don't find this post to be a personal attack on you. I did indeed find your handling of the original situation to be inexplicable and misguided, but beyond that I don't have anything against you or any sort of ill-will. I'm not sure what was behind your thought process, whether it was simply a different perspective, or something more complex, but I hope you can see that my post here aims simply to utilise objective fact, rather than any sort of emotionally based or retributive/punitive behaviour. I will also say that from what I can see, your subsequent dealings with the users have been very pleasant, and that you and Moonage had a chat to clear the air, and for that of course I'm glad, and credit where credit is due. I will repeat once more just for clarity, I hope you can view this an investigation of facts and the beginning of a healthy discussion about the events that transpired. I mean it with complete sincerity when I say that I hope you don't take any offense to this, even thought it may naturally be a little confronting as throughout my post I disagree with some of your behaviour.
Now, a summarisation.
Frankly, I think it's preposterous that a moderator (Sivason) would respond in such a negative way towards legitimate DreamViews users that are pillars of the community, whilst simultaneously rushing to the aid of a glorified con-artist. As Sivason pointed out, apparently the owners of this site have some sort of mutual relationship with DanielLove. I don't know whether that involves a verbal agreement, or some sort of compensation, and admittedly, that's none of my business and I acknowledge the owners have the right to run the website as they see fit. However, I do think things went to far considering MoonageDayDream and other users ended up being criticised by a moderator and even having their dissent categorised as 'spam' just for pointing out what everyone was thinking. I mean, the community is comprised of very passionate individuals that have been here for a long time. Hell, I myself have been here for a decade now. It's understandable that we're protective of our community and each other, and above all else that we're protective about the integrity of the state of DreamViews and the general community. I'd like to think that the moderation team were conducting themselves in a way that reflected the values and beliefs of the core community of DreamViews, but unfortunately I don't believe that such behaviour was present within the handling of this incident.
No worries, I appreciate it anyway, time doesn't matter much to me on things like this. :D
It's been good to be checking off some things on my list, although I do have some long-term goals, I think taking a short-term approach to what goals I'd like to complete has felt very helpful, since they feel more realistic for the most part.
yuppie11975, I think you made some good points, and I did think some of those things to myself. I don't like to discuss moderation since it's not really my place and I feel that a) it's hard to leave bias at the doorstep and b) moderation (from my experience of it) always ends up being subjective one way or another, though these reasons are probably why sites usually have multiple active moderators. But that's why I haven't said much about what happened anyway. I communicated with MoonageDaydream with PMs but that was about as far as I went with anything, I think.
I think this is going to become a little generalised rant of my own...
To be honest, it didn't bother me too much that my post got moved, since I did feel I was kind of off-topic anyway. Though, I don't feel I was particularly disruptive to the thread/discussion, as others did continue on about the thread anyway; but I could have just said the same thing via PM, I guess I just wanted to share my thoughts openly. I did feel the move was unnecessary, people wishing to continue discussing the thread could easily do so whilst ignoring the posts that ended up being moved anyway.
Although I had little interest to begin with in the original topic that was posted by DanielLove, you did provide some perspective and context with your digging. People do all sorts of things for money. It's our moral standpoints that determine whether we do such things or not, I think. I have had plenty of ideas over the years where I could take advantage of certain situations or people, but did I go through with those ideas? No, because I wouldn't like them being done to me and I don't like the thought that someone might fall for such things. The irony to me seems to be that there's a lot of work involved in making some of these things work, versus just doing some hard labour, but I guess the point of such things is that it's largely passive over a long-term after the initial effort was put into it.
On the other hand, people also need to really think and do discriminating research for themselves a lot more too, this is not a problem exclusive to things like this. There is mis-information, of course, but from my point of view, people seem obsessed with making quick decisions and so sometimes might not be looking hard enough to find out more about a certain topic.
I can't tell you how many times over the last few years have I heard stories on the radio about how someone got scammed by this or that, in many cases basically because they got panicked or hyped into something and then followed through into a scam, which from the beginning you could tell it was obvious it was a scam... I don't think these people lacked the intelligence to avoid these scams, but they were probably vulnerable in an emotional sense. And that's a lot of it, honestly, in some cases scams are quite complex and I might have had difficulty telling straight away if it was a scam were I in their position; some people are at vulnerable points in their lives and fall for things because they couldn't figure it out in time, I suppose.
I have fallen for scams, mostly when I was younger, though I've been able to identify many from a distance too. I've also basically been "politely" robbed a couple of times by people I was actually acquainted with, but I'd still rather that than being threatened at knife-point, as for instance one of my siblings was a few times. I wish such things didn't have to happen either way but the difference between being robbed like that and being scammed like I was, is that I knew some of these people who robbed me, I knew they lived in quite poor conditions ("illegal housing", for one thing). That doesn't make stealing ethically correct, but at least I could sympathise with them.
The scammers? No idea where they were from, who they were, etc. Scammers can now even scam you from miles away and you won't have any inkling to their personal situations, so I feel completely disconnected from them as human beings. They can often be rude too and you can end up feeling powerless to do anything, when actually you just really want to hit them on the head or something... For me, it makes me end up feeling vengeful, which I don't like but other than accepting the situation, doesn't seem like there's much else to feel. It's a strange world we live in, very unfortunately at times.
Hey, thank you Yuppie for your kind words about me. I really do try hard to be respectful. I'm glad I came across that way, at least to you. :)
No offense taken. What I can say is that there is more going on than you guys know, and many things should not be talked about openly. I will make a couple small statements here. "Spamming" did not mean you guys were spamming, it meant "thread about if Daniel was spamming". Next, I am far from perfect, but as the ONLY volunteer here to spend even one hour a week on this forum, you guys will have to cut me some slack when I mess up. I was responding in a state of emotional duress you are not aware of. That said I am going to address those things that should not be posted in public by PMing each of you a copy of my explanation. This PM will contain sensitive information you must agree not to discuss openly here. If you want a copy explaining things you should PM me and state "please include me in PM and I acknowledge I must not discuss the contents in the public forum." Be careful though. I will be very upset and may infract anyone who acts dishonorably by ignoring the request to keep this stuff private.
Well, that sounds dramatic doesn't it?!
EDIT: offer expires on 02-03-21 to avoid being asked about this in the future. Thanks for understanding.
Although I don't know the other details, just wanted to say you're more than forgiven for not being perfect. I actually think you're a decent moderator, and although I don't always agree (like in this case), there's always some wiggle room for a personal take on the matter. Moderators are people, and have to do the best they can in difficult situations.
Thanks for being here for us, sivason.
Yeah I absolutely agree. I also commend you, Sivason, for responding in a very calm and productive manner. I know I myself would struggle not to feel attacked if someone wrote such an extensive post calling my actions into question.
I think after conducting an investigation and performing research, a lot of my negative feelings towards DanielLove unfortunately spilled over towards you by association, just because it appeared as if you were passively endorsing/encouraging his shady behaviour. I do understand that there may have been mitigating factors as you have now mentioned, and I will wait to receive your PM so I can try to have a more accurate understanding of the bigger picture. I was also of course aware of the possibility of external factors prior to you mentioning them as well, but unfortunately in general we are almost always forced to make at least some assumptions when we're drawing conclusions on events. I did earnestly try the best I could to perform a fair analysis given all the information I had at my disposal at the time. I also think the fact that there was a lack of transparency in the first place was problematic and a a big contributor to the dissatisfaction people ended up feeling about how the matter was handled. This is of course once again not to imply that we as general users have a right to know about all the private decisions that the administration/moderation team makes - but it is a tricky situation when there are mysterious factors at play behind the scenes that are ultimately affecting the end user's experience in a negative way. In this particular instance, I think it would be fair to say that such a set of circumstances left users feeling quite baffled, and with the sense that they were treated unreasonably without any sense of a fair explanation.
Anyway, once again, I'm sure things will be better understood as we are now receiving additional information. I just wanted to make a quick post elaborating a bit more on the nature of the issue, but also just as importantly, to once again say that I respect how you've responded and the steps you're taking to rectify the issue. Finally, to reiterate Moonage's point, I'm sure we can all appreciate that everyone makes mistakes, and we're grateful for your service to us.
Rant: There is a Storm front tonight.. Storm front coming on the radio! :P We are supposed to have about 12 inches! Skiing anyone! :D It's so cold our horse Tara had an icicle mustache.
Rave: Oh, and the cast is off.
Rave: I went to the gym and tried to see how much I could do on leg day. I actually maxed out 4 of the six leg machines and was only one plate shy on the other two. 260 lbs leg extension! Feeling a bit like a super hero.
Work is so hard right now I want to cry. Seriously, though, casually chatting with the other ESE teachers about how we could quit our jobs and do something so much better. It's tempting. Another round of emergency IEPs, an audit on our department from the State (because, that's how messed up things are right now), and we're completely drowning in paperwork. It's hilarious - because if one gen ed teacher complains about anything (you know, like turning in the paperwork they're supposed to do, so we can do our jobs), then we get slammed with scolding emails. Because it's "TOO MUCH" for them..lol. you know what's too much? This job is TOO MUCH.
Edit: I may have had a glass of wine. :)
I've thought about it, I'm certified for gen ed science. It's all right. I really just wanted to vent. I would never abandon my students. :) But, I am under a tremendous amount of stress right now (I wouldn't have had 2 glasses of wine last night if I wasn't ;) ). Good news? No hangover :thumbup:
I saw this Superbowl ad and thought of you guys. Not the beer but, you know what I mean. ;)
Spoiler for SuperBowel ad:
Rant: Anyways, The other day, I was stacking wood when I fell. I tripped over one log, I landed on another log that had a broken piece that nearly impaled my leg. I also landed on another log with my right arm and I had an instant egg on my arm. Right now, I'm a lot of pain.
Rant: I barely remember my dream last night. However, I'm not too worried because I had some lucid dreams the day before.
Rave: I have 1,600th DJ entries. *Shrugs*
Congratulations. That's certainly some dedication, I would say. :D
Rant: Though it was better today, generally still struggling to get up at decent times in the morning. It's starting to become annoying because of how I feel it's affecting daily routine.
Rave: On the other hand, days are finally starting to feel a bit longer so at least I'm more likely to be able to spend some more time each day working on some project, or practising. Decent mood through most of today, even in evening.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
I hope that you feel better soon. Some of my days are like that too. We all need a really a vacation. I swear!
When you say projects, you mean artwork that you are working on? I remember your work, and I enjoyed them! Hope to see more, if that is okay?
Weighted myself as the gym yesterday and weighted 145 lbs. I lost weight without really trying to. Lost about 10 lbs since December. Probable has to do with working out in a warmer climate as well as taking rice out of my diet. I didn't purposely take rice out of my diet. Just that my new furnished place doesn't have a rice pot and i didn't feel like buying one. I probably will eventually though.
I could only do about half that, though i never tried my max. 3 sets 12 reps of 115 lbs on just that exercise. More of a cardio guy myself, but i do feel weight training is essential. The stronger the muscle the faster it recuperates as well as prevents injury from hard cardio training.
Ugh. I need to do better. I think I haven't checked my email in about a month. I need to get my butt to AT&T to see about getting a hotspot or activating a second phone to use in that way.
:clairity: to sivason
:hug: everyone.
Thanks for the welcomes back... though it seems they were a bit premature :laugh:
Rant: Other than internet; allergies. Also sleep and dreams though my dreams seem to be improving thankfully.
Ever since I broke my arm back in 2018 or so, my sleep and dreams have sucked.
I hope everyone has a good day <3
RANT:
The drug seems to be wearing off. The loneliness is setting in. I have survived this season times before- this time, I will try to use the time to look further inside. Think of this space as an oasis, not an island. The plant medicine gave me a good shake and jarred a couple things loose. Perhaps it's time to once again revisit that which started it all; lucid dreaming. But they've eluded me for so long now...
RAVE:
LD 2021... so I return. after many months of few and far between LD's, I experienced one just a couple weeks back. In it, rather than the customary flying and fucking routine- I chose to instead ask a dream character to take me to someone who could explain to me where my happiness lies, what my purpose is. Kind of deep for a DC, but, she complied and took me by the hand to lead me. Of course, at this point I woke up. But, it's a start- and a rave.