by Joe Gandolfo- jgand@pcfootball.net
07-24-02

I have noticed a growing trend in the Madden community as of late. I have started to notice parallels between a situation that has recently occurred on the web, and a situation that I have been involved with over the past couple of years.

See there is this political action group known as the Parents Television Council. They have advertised themselves as a resource for parents for the content of the television shows that their children might be watching. The PTC records every show each week, day or night and then rates it for how “family friendly” it is. If they see a program with content they object to, such as language, sexual situations, or violence they will not give it a good rating. Whether it is real or implied doesn’t matter to the PTC, it is all bad.

A couple of years ago the WWF debuted there new Thursday night program “WWF Smackdown”. The PTC immediately jumped on the program calling it the most vile, offensive piece of filth they had ever seen on TV. They then engaged in a campaign to get the program taken off of the air, and they did that by trying to cost the WWF advertising dollars. The PTC contacted their advertisers and told them about the content of the show, and asked them to no longer advertise with the WWF. Did that work? Not at first, so the PTC decided to go to the next step, which was bullying.

The PTC went to those same advertisers and told them that if they didn’t stop advertising, they would go to the media and tells them that those companies shared the sexist, racist and pornographic values that the WWF stood for. They said that no one in America would want to do business with them and that they would organize a boycott of their products, which could put them out of business. Well, that worked with some of those companies, because they stopped working with Vince McMahon. It worked so well that the PTC wanted to brag about which companies were on their side and backing them in their righteous fight. So they posted those company’s on their website for the entire world to see.

The PTC went even further by claiming to the media that professional wrestling was responsible for the deaths of several young children. It seems that there were some children who were being left unsupervised by their parents and were given free reign to do and watch what they wanted. There was a famous case of 12-year-old Lionel Tate who had allegedly killed his little cousin by imitating wrestling moves he had seen on TV. After his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to blame wrestling’s influence on him as a defense for his actions, young Master Tate was convicted and sentenced to a long life in the Florida Penitentiary system.

So the PTC is exposing the poison that Vince McMahon is forcing upon our defenseless children. That means that all is good in the world, right?

Not so fast.

It turns out that many of the company’s that the PTC said were no longer advertising with the WWF never worked with them in the first place! Not only that, but the PTC put those names up on their website without obtaining the permission of those companies to do so! We wrestling fans were able to find this out through investigating the companies that the PTC had mentioned, and we sought out to set the record straight. We contacted the past, current and potential advertisers of the WWF and we told them what we had found out about the PTC. We also found that the PTC’s founder, L. Brent Bozell III, had some skeletons in his own closet that he didn’t want made public. Such as his involvement with the founder of the Unification Church, Rev. Sun Yung Moon, and the fact that most of the PTC’s funding came through the Church by way of The Media Research Center, the PTC’s parent company, a Unification Church subsidiary.

Recently the PTC was forced to settle a lawsuit that the WWF(E) had brought against them claiming libel and interference with their business practices. The cost was $3.5 million of the PTC’s money, and a public retraction and apology from L. Brent Bozell III and Lionel Tate’s lawyer.

So what does any of this have to do with a computer game?

Well in the past few months I have been made aware of a similar situation over at MaddenMania.com. The chief moderator of this site is a gentleman who goes by the handle of BlyGilmore, who goes by the real name of David Branda. Now by using his real name in this column I am not giving away any state secrets. Selecting the MaddenMania Staff link on their front page can access the identities of the moderators at MaddenMania. As moderator, David has the right to ban anyone he sees fit if it has been proven that they have engaged in inappropriate behavior. Behavior such as spamming, flaming fellow board members, posting porn, posting material that is racist, sexist or homophobic in nature could get you banned from that site.

Okay, that I don’t have a problem with.

But I do have a problem with other things that David has apparently done.

At this point I would like to put out a disclaimer. This column contains the thoughts and opinions of one person and one person alone – Joe Gandolfo, aka BigDaddyCool. These are not necessarily the opinions of any other moderator on this board, nor is it necessarily the opinion of our webmaster Bret Bednarz. These are my opinions and mine alone.

That said, here goes.

A few months ago, I and a number of other posters on the MaddenMania boards went to another forum site to communicate unencumbered by the politics involved with that site. We all had the opportunity to vent about our feelings on the atmosphere at MM and some of the membership thereof. Some of those people had been banned from posting at MM, and they were none too happy about it. Now like I said, I understand that David has to protect the integrity of his site, and that he may have to kick a few people out. At the same time I understand that those people are not going to like it and feel that they have been unjustly treated.

A couple of weeks after we gathered at Soapbox-Tech.com, we all received a private message on our new forums. Apparently a certain administrator of another unnamed larger site contacted the web host of our new forum. He demanded the removal of certain threads on our forum that he deemed to be slanderous in nature. The web host then contacted the administrator who then contacted us. He said that we could still talk about this other site and this individual as long as we didn’t name names. That way we could protect ourselves from any slander charges that might occur.

So in other words, this “unnamed individual” was able to censor an opinion about him that he didn’t like by threatening an organization connected with another organization. In this way he was able to silence his critics and make them afraid of him.

Sound familiar? If not see the above story on the PTC.

It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and come up with David Branda as the “unnamed individual”. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize that he went to Soapbox-Tech.com’s web host to complain about what was being said about him. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that the web host got intimidated by his threat and came down on the Soapbox moderators, and told them not to cause anymore trouble.

This is not the first instance when David has handled a situation very badly. Some of you may remember when Bret was banned from the MM boards. The banning was made unnecessarily public, which gave license for those posters who did not like Bret to come out and celebrate his banishment. What possible purpose would that have served if not to embarrass and humiliate Bret? Is that what a responsible moderator does? No, it is not.

But there is one other instance of David’s inability to handle a situation with tact. Recently it has been made public that anyone who has anything to do with pcfootball.net will not be able to send private messages at MM. How do I know this? From a post that Greg Croydon made detailing an IM conversation he had with Mr. David Branda, aka BlyGilmore:

Croydo(21:58 PM) : Hi Bly
BlyGilmore(21:58 PM) : sup
Croydo(21:59 PM) : did you get my email?
BlyGilmore(21:59 PM) : not sure
Croydo(21:59 PM) : about the private messages
BlyGilmore(21:59 PM) : things have been crazy - what was it about
BlyGilmore(21:59 PM) : I don't think so but it might be buried
Croydo(21:59 PM) : I can't sent private messages
Croydo(21:59 PM) : or view mine
BlyGilmore(22:00 PM) : yep - you had it turned off
Croydo(22:00 PM) : why?
BlyGilmore(22:00 PM) : because some people were using PM to send people to Bret's bullshit site
BlyGilmore(22:00 PM) : so anybody involved with him got it turned off
Croydo(22:01 PM) : okay. I will delete my post in the soapbox then
BlyGilmore(22:01 PM) : k
Croydo(22:02 PM) : I just wondered if it was me, or the site. so at least I got an answer now
Croydo(22:02 PM) : will it be reinstated ?
Croydo(22:03 PM) : it won't let me delete it, can you do it for me
BlyGilmore(22:05 PM) : as long as you're involved with Bret - never
BlyGilmore(22:05 PM) : its deleted

I said this to Bret this in a phone conversation with him not too long ago:  

When something happens one time it is usually a one-shot deal. That would be Bret’s banning and how it was handled.

When something happens two times, it’s a coincidence. That would be David contacting the host of Soapbox-Tech to complain about how he was being spoken about.

When something happens three times, it is a pattern.

David has taken away the ability of anyone involved with this site to send private messages at MM.

That’s three. That establishes a pattern of behavior against Bret and against this site. Bret has said all along that David regards this site as a threat to him. I didn’t completely believe that he would be so intimidated by a start-up site that he would try to discourage people on his own site from coming here. Until now that is. You can’t even post a link to this site at MM as it has been entered into the swear filter over there.

It has also been revealed elsewhere in these forums that David Branda has been reading private messages at MM for their content, and that he has admonished people not to spread the word about this site through PM’s hence the action he took. Besides, how would he know that people were sending PM’s advertising this site unless he were reading the messages himself?

David - get out a dictionary and look up the word "private". By reading people’s PM’s you have violated their rights to a private conversation. You may call it being a responsible moderator and looking out for the interests of your site. But some people would call it eavesdropping, and in some states it might be considered a form of wiretapping. If I were you I would check with the laws in the State of Massachusetts to make sure you haven’t committed a felony. I am not saying this as a threat, I am saying this as one moderator to another – protect yourself, and for the love of God man shake yourself! If you don’t think that someone can twist your actions around and then use them against you later, see the PTC story above.

Now lately I have been noticing that a number of regulars at the MM boards have been registering here to post on our forums. Not just any other posters either, guys who have previously stated that they had no interest in this site because of their feelings about Bret.

Well I’m happy to say that apparently some of their feelings have mellowed, they got tired of the negative politics going on at MM, or both.

That is why this site is so unique among the major Madden/Football sites found on the web. You are free to say what you wish here as long as it is in good taste, and you are free to express whatever opinion you wish to express. That is the beauty of having a web owner who believes so strongly in the First Amendment as I do.

The right to free expression and free exchange of ideas is very important to a lot of people. Just ask anybody from the ACLU. But the situation brewing at MaddenMania, and I imagine at other sites, is troubling. If it keeps up then the very thing that they are afraid of will come true; a mass exodus to this site where people are free to post what they wish as long as it isn’t racist or pornographic in nature. David Branda’s actions are damaging to only one person and that is David Branda himself. The attempt to hold onto the control he has now by tightening his grip he instead speeds up the possibility of a very messy downfall. I can understand that David would like to retain his PC gaming base, and contrary to what he says and/or believes we are not a “bullshit site”.

David, just because we happen to be owned by someone you may not like personally does not mean that we are in any way inferior. The Madden series is not our only concern, we talk about FBPro, Season Ticket Football, Football Mogul, NFL PrimeTime, NFL Fever, and so on. That’s why we are called pcfootball.net instead of pcfootballbutmostlywetalkaboutmadden.net.

Like it says on the banner “All football gaming titles, all versions, but only one platform...the best platform...THE PC!!!” If people from MaddenMania or Planet Madden or all-madden or easports.com or fbpro.net want to come here then they are welcome. We are a place for gamers to come to where they might not ordinarily have a place to gather and exchange information. We will continue to build our community on cooperation instead of competition that other sites seem to thrive on. We will continue to do so despite mistreatment of our posters at other sites and we will not be intimidated into stopping our efforts.

However, if anyone seeks to damage us or this site through lies and half-truths, then they might have bitten off more than they can chew. Because the great thing about America is that you can say what you want about someone – but it had better be the truth.

Don’t believe me? Ask the PTC.

Until next time….