It’s Sunday afternoon, I am at the desk, and reading this person Vea. Who wrote some really nasty stuff. So I emailed them, to see if there was a way to find a middle ground for productive communication. You will never guess what I got back.
I am leaving the comments up because, well frankly, some of my best work today was responding to them, and some of yours, too. But I won’t leave any further up unless they are backed up with a real email address. Anonymity here is COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD, but a fake email address suggests a lack of authenticity. I’m not going to spam you. How many emails have you gotten from me so far? Right?
xoxo – JB
I believe VEA used to post under the name AEV and give CC the same headaches. Long time followers know to ignore him/her(?) – but maybe it’s good to let new readers know that there are some bad-faith commenters who routinely create chaos in the comments.
That said, the normal crop of readers don’t exactly need help creating chaos by themselves.
Yikes. Is there no way to block these folks, at least if they are regularly posting under the same name? Seems like this fella is probably worth excommunicating at this point.
It’s unfortunate that people such as the referenced VEA are out there only to cause damage and to sabotage our site by sending harmful e-mails on fake e-mail addresses to our site. We’re discussing traditional men’s fashions! How upset can one get?
Trolls gonna troll. I forgot about the earlier mean-spiritedness from VEA/AEV that I now recall having seen in the past. The comments here are always interesting reads and this is still one of the few mostly-civil corners of the Internet left, in spite of the occasional whatever-that-was.
What about those of us who use a fake name and fake mail address not because we’re trolling,but because we want to remain completely anonymous?. We enjoy reading this blog, and try to make comments that we believe will be of interest to other fans, but value our anonymity. Keep up the great work, JB. Maybe you could just delete anything that you find destructive, offensive, idiotic, but allow us to remain incognito.
AEV-VEA name is Andrew Van Ostrand. He is/was a lobbyist for some diaper manufacturer. He revealed himself many years ago on a profile piece for Fred’s old preppy blog. I only remember the name, because I had a wicked step-mother who was also a “Van Ostrand”.
@ATC, you assume that they are one and the same, and not another person taking over the VEA moniker, as I could easily do with ATC (or you with Rake, for that matter).
Assuming that you are correct, the “reveal” on Fred’s blog showcased someone with an innate sense of style equal to, and often superior than, his detractors – FEC and CC chief examples of the latter.
Nothing much to add, but would like to say that the vulgarity of the comment(s) from AEV was a bit much. Worse, it was directed at a young woman who had done nothing to merit such contempt, and on her birthday no less. He is a troll and I hope that JB will consider deleting any future contributions from that source.
I come here for the clothes and related topics, centering on the traditional style called Ivy League, as practiced in the past and today. I do not come for politics or ethical/religious instruction, as interesting as those topics may be in their own right, and about which I generally have my own strongly held views. And I most definitely do not come for ad hominem attacks, snarky comments and gratuitous insults. When the site goes down those rabbit holes, I tend to shake my head, bite my tongue and move on until it returns to its central theme, which it eventually does.
I hope that other long-time readers, posters and commenters will try to stick around with me, and add their two cents to the Ivy conversation on occasion. That is really what keeps me coming back.
I liked elder prep’s referring to this site as “our site”.
IVY-STYLE.COM KICKS ASS.
Hang in there, JB. And keep up the good work– because, well, “it’s not…
… the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— T.R.
A fake email address can provide additional security again spammers and scammers. There are millions bots scouring the net to harvest email addresses for criminals who operate in the dark web.
I never use my private email address for newsletters, blogs or forums. Instead, I use another account which (unsurprisingly) is regularly targeted by scammers and spammers, especially disgusting pornographers, mainly from the USA. I also avoid anti-social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which are run by authoritarian and censorious leftists.
To put our minds at rest, our host should provide full details of the measures that he has taken to protect commenters from spam bots. In the meantime, I will continue to protect myself from online criminals and trolls.
Hi Kenny, sorry you are stressed out. I dunno about full details, I don’t run the internet. – JB
Hi, Kenny.
When I see “authoritarian and censorious leftists” being used to describe the people who run Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it makes me understand why some people use terms like fascist to describe those who do not share their viewpoint.