When Friends Betray You
This is quite possibly one of the only times I will ever show a deep down sensitive side of myself on a blog post ever. So read it and take it to heart, and maybe you’ll understand what I am feeling about it. I would also really appreciate any advice anyone can give on the matter. I’ve been reaching out to friends in the industry and peers alike. This isn’t a cry for help or a pity post, this is more like a “what the hell is going on and what should I do about it?!” thing.
Over this last week or so, some shit has hit the fan on WickedFire. Without getting into all of the drama and details, the gist of it is that I banned a few key people who were doing nothing but harassing the shit out of me and other members, and just overall bitching about everything. Apparently their friends didn’t take it too well, and a sort of online lynch mob was started. Trying to neutralize the situation, I complied with many of their requests to answer a list of questions. Some of them were just plain stupid, like asking my height. This is the list of “serious questions” I requested from them. At first I wasn’t going to answer any of them, but after some deliberating and asking the advice of some friends, I decided to go ahead and try to do anything within my power to defuse the situation and come to an agreement.
Well, needless to say, even after answering their questions, and drafting up some big changes with the staff of WickedFire to increase the quality of the posts and threads, these “friends” of mine decided to go off and start their own forum. Which I’m not against one bit, but the betrayal started when I came to learn that they were deleting their posts on WF that were of quality from months ago, and used WickedFire to contact other members to get them over to their new forum. This is where I draw the line of diplomacy. I called one of them, and his childish response to it was “I was bored, and you deserve it”, then hung up on me.
I now hear that they are also stealing a lot of the original WF ideas I had, and confided in some of them with, for their new forum. I still don’t know WHY they are doing this, aside for the excuse that they are saying “WF sucks” and “you suck”.
So what should I do about this? When someone wants to go visit other blogs or forums, and start their own thing, I have no issues with it. But when you start to fuck with my business, and all of the time, and money I’ve spent building my forum, only to undermine everything with no real reason, except that maybe he is jealous or seeking the spotlight too by doing a lot of this screwed up stuff to generate that lynch mob effect again, what am I supposed to do? Sit by and watch? Or get up and do something about it?
So I call on everyone who reads this blog and is a fan of WickedFire to give me advice. Either by posting here, or IM’ing or emailing me, and tell me what you think should be the next course of action. Because right now I feel as if a friend of mine has deliberately backstabbed me for his own gain/benefit for reasons he won’t even tell me, or doesn’t even have! I should probably also stop listening to Metallica - Seek & Destroy and Master of Puppets too, as they make me want to do some very not nice things in retailiation. But at this point, I really don’t know how to handle this correctly, and I definitely do not want to make any longterm mistakes that would ultimately effect any potential peace talks with them.
Here’s your chance to be heard and to give me expert advice or just regular advice on what you think I should do. I appreicate all advice too, even if it’s constructive criticism.
PS - I’ve been in bed with the flu for the last few days, and although I’m feeling much better, I may not be on for a long period of time, so be patient if you’re expecting a quick answer back from me. Thanks in advance to everyone!
Jon,
First, I sympathize with your plight. It’s no fun to lose friends in such an evil way. But as I’m sure you know–if they act this way, they were not truly your friends.
Second, surely you must realize that Wicked Fire has been getting a terrible reputation lately because of these fucknuts. Whenever I read Syndik8 and they mention WF, the main theme is about all these juvenile fucknuts who keep slamming on each other and poisoning the discussion. Look toward Syndik8 at a model. Even though this is a purely blackhat forum, you find a very mature level of discussion. Not that everyone is always kind & gentle, but Earl and other moderators manage to keep things well in line.
This is a painful transition for WF that can only help WF grow and become better. “Trial by fire” right? You’ve got a good thing going here. Good luck.
P.S. And start an Arbitrage section! Arbitrage doesn’t belong in Affiliate Marketing.
Hey Jon,
Just do what the title of the metallica album says (the one with Seek & Destroy on it)
Funnily enough, our old band recorded a cover of Seek & Destroy many years back
Regarding WickedFire, let the idiots leave. Just turn off the ability to edit old posts.
When I first found WickedFire, I was impressed, because I thought it could finally be a hangout for real affiliate marketers etc etc. But then all i started seeing was childish abuse, swearing and flaming. Basically, alot of the members on the board have no RESPECT for anyone, and that makes the forum worthless.
If you want WickedFire to be the real deal you need to have the real money makers as members. Who wants to hang around a forum with a flame or some other crap in every single thread?
I still believe WickedFire has plenty of potential, and I would like to become active over there, but it needs to be cleaned up. I just recommended a friend to it a couple weeks back and his only comment was, “that place is full of idiots”
Anyway, I’ve got some ideas that might help (I used to run a very well known forum), so I might email them through some time.
Cheers!
Hey Jon,
I really believe it’s a byproduct of the WickedFire culture. Yes I lurk there on occassion and I often get a laugh out of the worseless asshat dissing going on, as well as some good info. I think it’s a great resource, but it has a kind of a shark tank sensibility. I think it’s inherent in the fast and loose nature of WF, and this is just my casual observance but WF seems a little more cliquish than other forums and regulars seem to pile on when they smell blood in the water. Poor AdsenseLoser, haha. Anyway, you might not agree, but it’s my view from outside the tank.
I just wanted to drop in to say that I feel sorry for you.
People make mistakes -maybe they´ll realize one day that this wasn´t such a clever thing to do. So if I were you, I wouldn´t start doing any revenge bs.
Maybe you should see it strictly from a business view at first and after that you can think about whether these guys can be your friends one day again.
I would laugh at you if i could but remember this little simple fact, no matter how good someone else is they cannot implement your idea better than you can. They can copy you(copy !!!) but your execution will truly surpass theirs
*cough* ipod *cough dont worry about some lil bitch that decideds to go off and start their own forum the truth is i am a total newbie but who would i rather listen to, who has the industry connections to run contests on their forum that no other forum can offer, who has blogged in 8 months and offered more information than i have got from over 8 ebooks that are considered the shit.Dont underestimate your value to this community, thats why we hang out in wicked fire. Its not just a forum, its a forum started by a super successful marketer willing to share his knowledge and before i go over to some other forum i will need to see some fucking credibility and before they even get there you will have started blogging more frequently
Been there with my own forum, too. After the 5th heavy fight and the 5th forum founded based on former members of a forum you look at it differently. The copies never reached the success of the original.
1) Don’t worry about what somebody says about you in those forums. There is hate and there is more hate against you. Nothing you can do.
2) Change your vbulletin settings so that users can only modify their postings for X hours. 500 hours is a good value.
3) Use the vbulletin function that replaces words with other words (I think it is the phrase manager or so). This is a beautiful trick. Take the new forum name of these people and have vbulletin replace it with the domain name for a different site whenever somebody writes it in a posting or PM. PM’s with the Domain Name in it, will cause a lot of confusion and it is fun.
4) Don’t try to make things right for everyone. You can’t. Don’t try to stretch yourself and bend over into too many directions. Just does not work. A clear set of rules and a vision statement (similiar to your 2.0 posting) are helpful.
Chris
Christoph has mentioned some good points but I don’t agree with some of them but maybe I’m mis-interpeting some like the one that says exchange some words with others or confuse people with the domain names.
I don’t think this would be a good move because it won’t stop people from being dicks and it won’t stop the current problems wicked fire has right now, it would only give them something else to bitch about, but don’t get me wrong I’m not bashing your ideas I do like the other ones just not those two in particular.
So onto the point Jon if you are truly reading this then you should know that I too agree you cannot please everyone in every situation and you should just sit back on this one and keep those individuals banned, it will blow over, I don’t think they have enough power to convert that many wicked fire members.
I’ll be staying with wicked fire for a long time but one thing I’ve noticed is that you have to be careful what you talk about.
For instance maybe you’ve seen my post about AllAdvantage and Agloco, when I first put that up to get an honest discussion going about them I was hammered, being called a fucking spammer, I should be banned, fucking newbie, and a wack load of other shit but I’ve dealt with things like this before and at least one person had enough sense to say I’ll talk if you remove your signature (I had my agloco blog and agloco sign-up for my sig).
I understood that people thought I was pulling some stupid link gain shit but I removed my signature and we talked, when the thread reached another page I put my signature back on and still get a bad rep whenever someone digs up that old post.
The point in all this is not to wine and complain about being harrased, the point of it is if there are valuable other members coming into the forum they might not know how to take a lot of this and that valuable information will run away, leaving wicked fire with a bad name.
The members with a higher post count have to remember that there not always right, who cares if someone has 300 posts when I’ve got 60, it doesn’t mean they’ve got more information then me it just means they’ve found the forum before me or talk about useless shit all day long.
My overall point let them go, try not to retaliate right now, enjoy yourself, get over that cold, lock your door from any more men in trench coats, and if they somehow steal your ideas make a public company (Traded on the stock exchange) I’ll help you do a hostile take over of them.
But I really don’t think anything will come of it, you might loose the mob you were talking about but I think the quality members who are working towards a good income online and the ones who are already making a good income online will stay to contribute valuable information to the community.
I hope this helps and sorry for the length.
nmwando’s comments are spot on. The forum is successful and is held in high regard because of your expertise and leadership. That can’t be bought or stolen, it needs to be earned.
I’ve had so-called friends bone me like this before. Usually it was over money, but other times also because of ego and misplaced pride. I say fuck ‘em.
They just did you a favor by showing you their true colors. Wouldn’t you rather know they were dicks than not know?
I think it will be a waste of energy to go after them, but for sure: don’t make it easy for them to dick you over. I think you should do what others have recommended. Turn off the ability to delete old posts.
And above all, keep it in mind that every lame little move they pull just reaffirms that they feel inferior. If they didn’t consider you better at what they are trying to do, they would ignore you.
I would sit back and enjoy the show while you continue to innovate and do what you do best.
Congratulations Jon. You just found out who your real friends are. I agree with what Atomic said. They’ve done you a favor.
First things first. WickedFire is a business. Treat it as one. Yes, it sucks to lose friends. It sucks even more to get a reputation that you’re lackadaisical on enforcing the rules of your board. Letting people harass others and step all over you in the process is not something you want to be associated with. I’ve seen the harassment that a person goes through when they ask a question or post something that the community in general disagrees with. Instead if discussing it that person gets jumped on and hit with negative reputation. That drives new people away.
As for your new competition creating a new board and poaching members. You need to remember that you have a name and reputation to go with yours already. They don’t. You’re established and they’re not. They have a serious amount of work to do and quite frankly by the time they reach the point where you are now you’ll be far and above them.
Success breeds jealousy and contempt. Do nothing but what you have been doing. Your success will be your revenge.
Jon,
You have a lot of good advice in these comments. Most of it seems to say the same thing. Basically, move on.
Friends and business never mix well. I lost a good friend a few years ago when I was in the mortgage business. I worked my ass off for him, but he thought I ripped him off.
Now, just guard everything you can, shut off all their access, and next time be a lot more careful. I agree to some level you had this coming. As Marc said, you have this free-for-all power hungry type of culture. Since you mention Metallica, it reminds me a lot of all the squabbling they do.
I don’t know how you handled it, but banning someone from something they spent a lot of time and energy in is a dangerous move. It’s no wonder they are angry.
Good luck!
Hi jon.
As a member of the board, we’ve had our differences.
Still, I could not understand the harsh actions some of the more prominent members took against you.
But it prompted you to take some time to think about your course and adjust it.
I take that as great move on your part.
As for the current situation:
Thanks to dedicated members, Wickedfire has seen an amazing revival during the last weeks.
There is tons of useful threads, less newbie bashing and even articles written left and right.
I guess it took the leaving of some of the more abusive members so we could notice how rude wickedfire had become.
Members such as Jan have shown their true qualities in pulling the community together.
To chime in with the others:
Forget about those who left, WF is moving in the right direction.
You’ve got a knowledgeable, dedicated and fun userbase that is making WF shine.
As long as you continue to stay off the God-complex (your words), all is and will be good.
::emp::
Hey Jon,
I might not have a lot of experience with forums but I have been building and/or moderating online communities for 6 years now and I want to tell you that “shit happens”
The main point here is that you do not loose your focus, nor your motivation and keep up the good work. WickedFire has been a lot of help to me in the past even though I didn’t actively participate in the discussions. You have quality content, and you will continue to have quality content.
Let me tell you a story about an “uprising” in an online community about 5000 contributors. They were a group of 10-20 people, basically unhappy with the way the community was moderated, so they decided to leave, deleting all their contributions and starting a clone of the site, even with the same layout. What happened was, everyone who was banned from the main site congregated in that new clone site and started to contribute there.
But wait.. These were the people who were *banned* from the site. Why? Because they were not able to contribute in a humanly fashion, they were not providing quality content and all they did was generate junk data all around.
So you can guess what happened to the clone, and the plethora of clones that popped up in time: They became junkyards, the playground of the ‘unwanted’. The ghetto if you want.
In the mean time, the main community continued to grow, continued to attract attention and it is now the most popular web site in Turkey. (its daily hits are competing with the newspapers. think of competing with nytimes.com) I don’t link the site here because it’s irrelevant, and the content is in Turkish anyway
I saw the same pattern in every online community that I became a part of, it happened in every community that became popular and attracted attention: People wanted some part of the attention for themselves so they went off and started their own ‘gang’.
And, most of them failed. Utterly.
So get your metallica mp3s out of your playlist and put in some bach, get analytical.
If you want, get your backups ready, put the content they have deleted back online in a way that they can not delete.
Open up a bottle of Johnnie Walker (even if you don’t like it, just for the occasion) And then, in the words of wisdom of the fire-water, “Keep Walking” my friend
I wish the best of luck to you and to wickedfire.
Best advice- let them do what they do and don’t waste your time worrying about it. Learn from your mistakes and move on. And finally: they don’t make information security products for people, so don’t think it’s ever safe to let them in on your secrets. You’re in the position where most people would want to run their ideas by you to see what you think. So if you think you have a good idea, test it like you test everything else.
Fuck friends. All you need is a dog, a beer, a steak, and some metallica to get you pumped up.
Man, it’s really sad.
Forgive others if you want others to forgive you.
As for trust them again, you may want to wait several years.
It’s life, nothing new!
Coincidentally I’m listening to Metallica at the mo too!
I’m too new to WF to have seen the shit - kinda glad I missed it!
I think it’s a testament to yourself and the rest of the guys at WickedFire that what sounds like a major problem on the site a few months ago is not at evident now.
It’s shit when someone stabs you in the back - but what can ya do? Move on, live and learn, try not to let it make you less trusting in future.
Take it easy,
Si