Sneakster: A Lecture on Accuracy, Hypocrisy, and Your Sudden Interest in My Posting History
Sneakster seems to have appointed himself the official guardian of accuracy whenever the subject of Sky Daily and the rape allegations comes up. His repeated insistence that Sky Daily hasn’t been criminally charged is technically correct. But apparently, he believes that repeating this fact often enough somehow makes the underlying allegations disappear.
Let’s establish something right from the beginning.
Nobody is saying that Sky Daily has been criminally charged with rape. Nobody is claiming that the allegations have been proven in a criminal court. And nobody is suggesting that an allegation automatically establishes guilt.
But there is a rather important distinction Sneakster seems determined to ignore: reporting allegations of rape is not the same thing as claiming someone has been criminally charged with rape.
There have been civil lawsuits involving allegations of sexual assault, and multiple news organizations have reported on the matter. The word RAPE has appeared prominently in the headlines of several of those reports.
This isn’t something Lee invented. It isn’t an imaginary story. And it certainly isn’t something that becomes unworthy of discussion simply because criminal charges haven’t been filed.
Lee acknowledged that his original thread title could have been worded more carefully. He even apologized and invited it to be changed. That’s a perfectly reasonable response.
But Sneakster wasn’t satisfied with correcting a potentially misleading headline. He went considerably further, accusing Lee of deliberately spreading defamatory lies and comparing his behavior to Scientology’s OSA PR tactics.
That’s quite an escalation.
If accuracy was genuinely his only concern, a simple clarification would have accomplished the objective. Instead, he seemed much more interested in questioning Lee’s motives and portraying the discussion itself as some kind of malicious campaign.
And that’s where his argument starts to become rather questionable.
The allegations are newsworthy. The civil litigation is newsworthy. The involvement of people connected to Scientology is newsworthy. The circumstances described in the reporting are newsworthy.
Nobody is obligated to ignore a serious news story until a prosecutor decides whether to pursue criminal charges.
Now let’s talk about Sneakster’s conduct toward me.
Apparently, his obsession with this disagreement wasn’t confined to Lee’s thread.
On an entirely unrelated thread, Sneakster decided to go digging through my posting history, pulled out a post from nearly five years ago, and started leaving negative reactions and hostile comments.
When I told him to fuck off with a middle-finger emoji … he then proceeded to construct an elaborate explanation about how my response was supposedly retaliation for his criticism of me on the Sky Daily thread.
He even added further commentary about my posting history, questioning how I could supposedly have thousands of messages that weren’t appearing in the XenForo search index.
Really?
For someone who repeatedly lectures others about accuracy, Sneakster seems remarkably comfortable speculating about other people’s motives and drawing conclusions from information he apparently doesn’t fully understand.
Let’s look at the double standard here.
Sneakster can pursue someone into unrelated discussions, dig through years-old posts, leave hostile reactions, question their motives, and scrutinize their posting history.
But when that person responds negatively, suddenly it’s a calculated personal attack and an act of retaliation.
Apparently, the rules of civility only apply when someone disagrees with Sneakster.
And here’s the irony: he accuses others of behaving like Scientology’s OSA while displaying the very sort of aggressive, personal, and distracting behavior that does absolutely nothing to advance an intelligent discussion.
I don’t need to prove Sneakster has some hidden agenda, nor am I claiming he has any particular affiliation. His behavior speaks for itself.
So here’s my position, without any ambiguity:
I am not declaring Sky Daily guilty of anything. I am not claiming criminal charges have been filed. I am not presenting allegations as established facts.
I am saying that serious allegations have been reported, civil litigation exists, and people have every right to discuss the matter.
The absence of criminal charges does not erase the allegations, invalidate the civil lawsuits, or make the news coverage illegitimate.
And Sneakster’s repeated attempts to turn a discussion about those allegations into an attack on the credibility and motives of the people discussing them are not particularly convincing.
If he wants to champion accuracy, that’s fine. We should all welcome accuracy.
But accuracy works both ways. So do fairness, consistency, and basic standards of conduct.
You cannot demand that everyone else be precise, civil, and accountable while giving yourself a free pass to engage in personal attacks and speculation whenever someone challenges you.
Perhaps before appointing himself the forum’s moral and factual authority, Sneakster should take a moment to apply his own standards to his own behavior.
Because at this point, his reaction has become almost as interesting as the original discussion.
