Ok, it's time.

Sam's been holding me on a short leash ever since this hit the fan last night, if anyone has wondered why I've been so unusually quiet about such a controversial situation in which I played a major role. He wanted to make sure his post got honest and complete responses before anyone was put on the defensive by my strong and unwavering opinion on the matter. You see, *I* respect Sam and agreed to hold my tongue until he felt he had gotten the responses he desired.

Well, the verdict is in, and the chain has been released. And you will all now listen to every damn word I have to say.

First, let me start with my general impression of RinkChat. Let me state right up front that all of the following is my OPINION. For the most part, RinkChat SUCKS. In that respect, it's not at all unlike 98% of all other chatrooms on the Internet. It hasn't always sucked, though. There was a time, back about 8 to 10 months ago, when it absolutely ruled.

Why does RinkChat suck? Because of all the ANNOYING and DISRUPTIVE CRAP that goes on in there. About 98% of what passes for "funny" in RinkChat ISN'T. Not even REMOTELY. There are very FEW people in RinkChat who can even approach the comic's dream of being consistently funny. There are just as few people who can even be consistently INTERESTING. Heck, some of you can't even manage to be consistently COHERENT.

Do you know how I feel just about every single time I log into RinkChat? I feel ANNOYED. I feel this way because I feel DISRUPTED by all the inane crud that passes for "chatting" most of the time in RinkChat. Sometimes it seems like half of you couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation to save your own lives.

You know what I do about it? Generally, NOTHING. Do I get irrationally upset? Do I say "I'm leaving for good, bye."? No. For the most part, I do NOTHING. Sure, I freely admit to losing my patience occaisionally and screaming out that everyone in the room is a "retard". Do I mean it? No. I've never once really meant it when calling someone a "retard". I'm just expressing MY annoyance at what I see as the BORING and or INANE and or STUPID state of the chatroom currently.

But you know why I generally do nothing about my annoyance? Because, as I said before, everything above is my OPINION. It is NOT fact. RinkChat does *NOT* suck in any objective way. In fact, many, if not most of you, seem to LOVE it. And you know what I think of that?

I think that's GREAT.

I think it's wonderful that most of you still seem to love RinkChat, still love coming and chatting with your friends, having conversations, being silly, and generally just wasting time in a fun way. Maybe I can't for the life of me understand why you find a lot of the stuff that goes on in there interesting or funny, but I can respect that you DO find it interesting or funny. And at the very least, you're all making my friend Sam a little bit of money just by coming, and *that* pleases me as well--heck, sometimes I like to just sit in chat even when I'm not paying the remotest bit of attention to what's going on just because I get a slightly perverse pleasure out of making Sam money by doing nothing more than giving up some bandwidth and some clock cycles. Heck, my computer searches for aliens and Mersenne primes all day, why shouldn't it also make my buddy a little cash?

Bottom line is this: I feel annoyed and disrupted almost CONSTANTLY when I am in RinkChat. I do next to nothing about it. But then one night Sam and I turn the tables and annoy and disrupt YOU and YOU think YOU have the right to be OFFENDED by that? No way, I don't THINK so. I extend you the courtesy of understanding that not everything you think is funny I will think is funny, and yet you can't bring yourself to do the same for ME?

Some of you apparnetly feel offended about having the "crime" pinned on you. Grow up. This is RinkChat. We do this ALL THE TIME. Generally, people play along with it. NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY, ever gets blackballed because of any pranks that they get "blamed" for. Always, ALWAYS, the person who was made to look guilty is vindicated in the end. The fact that any of you could honestly think that Sam and I would let you take the fall for this prank and then continue to do nothing about any persecution that might happen because of that OFFENDS me and DISGUSTS me.

For those of you who were merely "upset" at being disrupted, I apologize. I still remember the days when I could say I truly loved RinkChat. I can remember not being able to wait to log in at night so I could have some great conversation with my friends. If someone had done this to me back then, I would have been upset to. Not nearly to the level some of you are, but still, upset. So I can relate. It was a joke that failed. I'm not perfect. Neither is Sam. And anyway, it was Sam's idea. ;-)

-- Dave

The above post does not in anyway reflect the official position or opinion of RinkWorks Online Entertainment. It's all the opinion of one David J. Parker.