Of Mice and Men

Off Topic
1

“You know, its really too bad.”

That’s what I say to myself about 50% of the time that I log onto T-Nation these days. Why? Because it sucks, thats why. It doesn’t suck because of Biotest. Biotest makes great products. It doesn’t suck because of the articles. The writers are top notch. It certainly doesn’t suck because they give away a bunch of free stuff, so amen to T-Jack, and all the recent contests (Grip God) and giveaways (Grow! Bars).

You know why it sucks? It sucks because of us. We as a collective forum have completely forgotten what it is to be hardcore, much less “Dangerously Hardcore”.

Dangerously Hardcore is not making fun of defenseless people. The “Jared from Subway is a Loser” thread? Get real. The same for whichever thread that guy’s younger brother was calling everyone names on.

Dangerously Hardcore is not David fucking D’angelo.

Dangerously Hardcore is not the powerful image, or the direction the forums have been taking lately. Give me a break. I understand what testosterone is all about. Some girl with giant tits in a skirt doesn’t exactly scream of test to me. I saw the “Best Ass Ever” thread. I saw the Vegita + Xen + Whoever else, T&A battle thread. Maybe one of you can tell me what’s so hardcore about a couple guys posting pictures where we can allllllmost see some twat, or maybe a little nipple, and then 15 other guys patting them on the back. Yea boy, there sure isn’t anything more hardcore than traipsing around T-Nation with your cock at half mast from looking at scantily clad babes. Run for cover, because I’ve almost got a little bit of a boner.

We’ve successfully scared off most of the serious people who used to frequent this site. Goldberg? Haven’t heard from him in a while. Jackass? Rarely, very rarely. Patricia? Probably gone for good.

And we’re in danger of scaring off many more. Do you think that any amateur or semipro woman bodybuilder is going to post pictures on here? Doubtful. Any women powerlifters? Also doubtul… unless they post in their lingere, and then it’s okay. Or maybe even then they’d be accused of having “gross veins” or a humongous clitoris.

So maybe we could bring back a little of that old T-Mag grit, back from when the articles came out on fridays, and when it was cool to have muscles whether you’re a boy or a girl.

2

Sorry you feel this way. But look over here…
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Is that not a woman with muscles? And the “mindless” threads you’re bitching about… big deal. Some threads, especially in the “Get a Life” and “Sex and the Male Animal” forums are going to be goofy. So there’s threads with over 500 pictures of scantily clad women. So what? Relax. You wanna be dangerously hardcore? Okay. Howsabout we start by not whining about how different things used to be. Things change, life sucks, get a fuckin’ helmet.

P.S. I honestly respect you, RIT, but it saddens me when a stand-up guy like you has an estro-fit like this. Smile, buddy!

So anyway, a guy’s working in the “adult” store when a girl comes in looking to buy a dildo. She says “Ohhh, I gotta have that black one!” So he sells it to her. Another girl comes in a little while later, and says “Ohhh, I gotta have that white one!” So he sells it to her. A little while later, a blonde walks in and says “Ohhh, I gotta have that silver one!” The guy looks at her sideways and says “Sorry lady, that one ain’t for sale.” The blonde replies “I love that one! Please please please, you gotta sell it to me! I’ll pay you a hundred bucks!” So the guy shakes his head in amazement, and sells it to her.

An hour later, the dude working the next shift comes in and says “Well buddy, time for you to go home. How was it today?” The guy says “Pretty good. I sold the black dildo, the white dildo, and some blonde gave me a hundred bucks for my thermos.”

3

[quote]RIT Jared wrote:
“You know, its really too bad.”

That’s what I say to myself about 50% of the time that I log onto T-Nation these days. Why? Because it sucks, thats why. It doesn’t suck because of Biotest. Biotest makes great products. It doesn’t suck because of the articles. The writers are top notch. It certainly doesn’t suck because they give away a bunch of free stuff, so amen to T-Jack, and all the recent contests (Grip God) and giveaways (Grow! Bars).

You know why it sucks? It sucks because of us. We as a collective forum have completely forgotten what it is to be hardcore, much less “Dangerously Hardcore”.

Dangerously Hardcore is not making fun of defenseless people. The “Jared from Subway is a Loser” thread? Get real. The same for whichever thread that guy’s younger brother was calling everyone names on.

Dangerously Hardcore is not David fucking D’angelo.

Dangerously Hardcore is not the powerful image, or the direction the forums have been taking lately. Give me a break. I understand what testosterone is all about. Some girl with giant tits in a skirt doesn’t exactly scream of test to me. I saw the “Best Ass Ever” thread. I saw the Vegita + Xen + Whoever else, T&A battle thread. Maybe one of you can tell me what’s so hardcore about a couple guys posting pictures where we can allllllmost see some twat, or maybe a little nipple, and then 15 other guys patting them on the back. Yea boy, there sure isn’t anything more hardcore than traipsing around T-Nation with your cock at half mast from looking at scantily clad babes. Run for cover, because I’ve almost got a little bit of a boner.

We’ve successfully scared off most of the serious people who used to frequent this site. Goldberg? Haven’t heard from him in a while. Jackass? Rarely, very rarely. Patricia? Probably gone for good.

And we’re in danger of scaring off many more. Do you think that any amateur or semipro woman bodybuilder is going to post pictures on here? Doubtful. Any women powerlifters? Also doubtul… unless they post in their lingere, and then it’s okay. Or maybe even then they’d be accused of having “gross veins” or a humongous clitoris.

So maybe we could bring back a little of that old T-Mag grit, back from when the articles came out on fridays, and when it was cool to have muscles whether you’re a boy or a girl.[/quote]

RIT Jared,

Allow me to start off first by saying that I respect you. Your posts are very well thought out and you have offered great advice and guidance every time that I’ve come to notice.

Your opinion is a strong one, and I recongnize errors that I myself have made in the area of straying from the original theme that attracted me to this site when it was still T-Mag, and I was wondering what the hell Myostat was…

Go to off topic forum and do a little count for me. How many threads are dedicated to “scantily clad babes”?

A hand full, 4-5 tops out of 15-20 threads and thats without back tracking.

The appreciation of the female body is something else that was part of the creedo that I assimilated in those late nights reading all the past issues two, three, and four times over.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. I think that your vehemence may burn hotter than neccessary. And even you would have to find truth in the fact that it’s a nice distraction.

But that IS the problem isn’t it?

It has become a distraction.

So, I am inclined to agree with you.
Our concept of “A powerful image” has started to turn more towards the Brad Pitt body type and Porn stars.

Originally T-Mag wanted to get away from the Men’s Fitness look, and the softcore porn they threw in on every other page.

I personally enjoy female bodybuilder’s and fitness model’s for all their attributes (attractiveness is a definite benefit). I like seeing a woman that can show aggressiveness and power through the medium of iron, like an artist sharing a feeling of pain through a paint brush. Likewise, I don’t want to look like brad pit, I want to look like mariuz pudzianowski. Hearing, “I don’t want to get too big” grates at the back of my eyes.

That being the case, I will take the first move, I’m not going to post anymore pictures of “scandily clad females” unless it is pertinent to the discussion at hand. It’s taken up too much time which could have been dedicated to more substantial discussions.

Thanks for the kick in the ass,

XenNova

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By the way,

Thou Shalt Not Use My Name In Vain.

-Xen

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yep.

dangerously hardcore seems almost out of sight now a days. i have been a member since about conception and have seen all the changes for the good and bad.

my business mind says it has the reasons. let me expound for a bit.

demographics. pure and simple. dangerously hardcore has a dangerously small demographic. considering T-Mags (sorry T-Nation) strong technoligical base and the nature of those deemed hardcore and you may find a strong correlation between technoligically unsavy and being hardcore. just a hunch. but going with demographics we can say that…

if you are truly hardcore you are probably not on this site 24/7 talking about bitchs/blunts/forties. anyways. something that i had to come to terms with recently was “shut up and lift.” i was way too wrapped up in the whole what i know rather than getting it done. i think they should post one article a week that says only “shut up and lift.”

 on a side note: maybe the past members got what they came here for and will return when they need more.  most parents eventually want their kids to go out on their own and succeed.  occasionally coming back for advice or large loans to buy supps from Biotest.

the opportunity cost in trying to attract more hardcore people is just not worth the monetary units. there is just not that many of us out there. so instead they just change their strategy so that their demographics will shift to appeal to a slightly less hardcore, albeit larger, group of people. this costs less. opportunity cost is a real bitch and some of us are not going to like the changes but much can come from Biotest having more dough-ray-me to work with. namely better products through r&d funding.

another thought. one of the best business decisions i have seen yet was the implementation of the forums and putting T-mag in our hands to make it T-Nation. strictly monetary im talking. with forums brings high levels of interaction and with that will come higher sales for the parent company Biotest. T-Nation has done an amazing job at this. is it not intuitive that all businesses want to make money?

how about a great reason why cut out third party sales… also increases site activity! along with the format change to T-Nation… its no wonder why Surge sales did not enter as rapidly the growth stage of the product life cycle as they hoped. format change + no middle guy = more site activity = more sales. done.

the marketing schemes that go on here are top notch and i really have to hand it to both Biotest and T-nation.

how about ripping on other mags for people (BBers primarily) boasting about how their product will make you massive even though its no better than cigarette ashes?

T-nation does the same. except their product really are top notch and these guys are solid. just find the thread where the contributors talked about how their Spike was arriving and how awesome it was. i was laughing the whole time at how corny that was because i know at least a hundred people read that and bought ten bottles.

in closure… yea this was my first rant. some of us may not like certain things that go on here. maybe we should have a v.i.p. section for the exclusively hardcore people, but once again the business mind is laughing at the though of making that legit. (but with every problem defined i believe that a possible solution should be defined as well.)

in really closing… despite the bullshit that goes on you have the power to edit your homepage and to not click on threads loaded with girls that have the title “ass worshop thread” or whatever it is that erks you the wrong way. i have faith in that the integrity still remains here at Testosterone and whatever their next move will be, will be in our best interest first and their wallets second.

-rob

6

so does this mean I win???

I don’t really know what the big deal is. I came here a long time before I started posting, and the only think that seems different to me is that there used to be much more open talk of steroids and the other strange things we’d do to ourselves.
But Waterbury is busy with college, so he’s not contributing articles nearly as much–bad segue, huh? I miss the old…Branding Iron columns. I don’t know. Yeah, I’d say the “Yo Vegita” thread has gotten way out of hand.
But I’ve been bored the last week.
My fault there.
And don’t forget how everything goes in cycles.

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RIT knows what the hell he is talking about. He damned near always does. To accuse him of having an estro-fit because he has an opinion pisses me off.

Is this site all about sitting on the couch in your underwear, drinking beer, looking at hot chick pictures, celebrating the fact that these things make men happy?

No, it fucking isn’t. It’s about desire, hard work, dedication, discipline and because of all of those, achievement.

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Hell I’ve been reading the site pre-forum days and boy have things changed. I agree with RIT but like with flavored Grow!..there needs to be a market. i would hate to see Testosterone then T-Mag and now T-Nation turn into T-Fitness.

Some would say we have waaaay too many Brad Pitt wannabe’s at T-nation…I do. There’s room for everyone but we seem to lose those with a wealth of experience & knowledge only to replace it with ten or more with inexperience & ignorance.

Just like any other old fogie I “miss the good ole days” of Testosterone…but whacha gonna do. Scantily clad women have their place, the price was losing women like Patricia. However, in reality what else really needs to be said about training. An article here and there but how deep can discussions on training, dieting, & supplementation really get when in the end all that matters is who’s getting under/over that there bar.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same” The content of the articles haven’t changed just the quality of the forum threads. Hang in there RIT…you’ve made it this far don’t go giving up now.

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Hey. See the ‘customize’ button at the top of the page. Go toggle off what you don’t want to see.

And if you want to see high quality dicussion threads, START THEM. I dislike the ass war threads too. Juvenile. So I don’t read them and may end up turning off that section. There you go! T-Nation gives us these tools. Use them instead of whining.

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Appropriate RIT, I as well as xen will no longer contribute to the scantily clad women threads. To tell you the truth it really was more of a winter depression, locked in the house, pent up outburst. Oh well live and learn, guess it’s about time to get the clubs out and start working on my golf game anyways.

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A VIP section? How would the hardcore be decided.

This would be to the detriment of the forum, and even though i have only been on this forum for a little while, i have been a member and read T-Mag for over 4 years.

A community is that, a group of people getting together to discuss, or to abstain.

The site is fully moderated by individuals including the directors, and they, if they so wished, could sffect change by varying the topics, posts etc.

It is a great and valid point to state that there has been change, but that may be inevitable. With a wide group of people, with different backgrounds and experiences, they have more to say than BENCH SQUAT PUKE. And will do so.

For the good and bad of it, the bigger the community the better, as those “hardcore” left can influence the less “hardcore”. This is, afterall, a forum for sharing information.

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This was part of the reason, I imagine, that they broke things up into multiple forums.

But let’s get some perspective. Why did Patricia leave? She left not because she couldn’t stand the pics of the day, but because she kept arguing with “dangerously hardcore” people that wanted to use steroids after three months of training (despite having a vagina). I liked Patricia, but in all fairness, she was a bit of a primadonna, and didn’t want to be disagreed with or attacked. So she left.

Goldberg pretty much isolated himself to the strength training forum, as far as I could tell… he was never a fan of the off topic discussions, and he got pissed off from arguing with people all the time.

But every group, every forum, has a pretty high rate of attrition, and ours is no different. Nate Dogg hasn’t posted for a long-assed time… do you think that’s because we’re spiraling into decay? Probably not. It’s probably because he’s got better things to do, or got bored with the forum, or whatever.

I’ve been here a long time, and when I started out here, it was new and fresh and each thread was something I’d never seen before. Eventually, you see the same kinds of things over and over again, or your interests narrow, and you stop paying as much attention. It’s not a big deal… the new people on the site probably feel exactly the same as I did when I first stumbled on T-Mag, back in the day.

If you don’t like the sex threads, stay off of the sex forum. If you don’t like OT, stay off the OT forum. I don’t know what to tell you, Jared; what’s your prescription for making us all more “hardcore” again?

And btw, you really have a hardon for David DeAngelo, don’t you?

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We used to have a VIP section, btw. It was called the Dog Pound. It was cancelled because the “VIPs” (myself included) didn’t post enough.

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I can see both sides of the discussion, but something to consider is the signal to noise ratio.

Sure, everybody can edit everything and limit themselves to certain areas. However, when the only information presented is wrong (newbie conjecture given as fact) or entertainment based, what purpose does the site serve again?

The value comes from having good information in a well organized format. It comes from having access to expertise without needing to waste hours of time wading through tripe.

Of course you can turn off the display of certain forums, or try to avoid them. The only problem, and it has been mentioned, is there is no way to know what type of thread you are clicking on in the top 10 list anymore.

Titles aren’t always a good indicator, so unless you are here 24x7 it is basically a gamble every time you hit a top 10 link.

Finally, I certainly don’t have a problem with there being newbies all over the place. Everyone has to start at some point, with some level of knowledge, after all.

However, there is a culture issue to consider – whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not. New people can either be integrated into a current culture or the culture can change due to a large influx.

Wouldn’t anyone mind if this site turns into a diet based get lean site, full of entertainment value pictures and good supplements?

Maybe if we get enough young folks who don’t know anything yet we can morph into a teen boys site where there is a lot of macho posing while talking about women and sex and how to get those abs showing since women dig abs.

Is there a line to be drawn anywhere? If you control the quality of the posts, people bitch and moan. If you don’t, the quality slowly slides down as you get more participation. What to do?

[edited to refer to “signal to noise ratio” as intended]

15

Lothario, the problem isn’t the pictures specifically, you’re missing the point. The problem is the downward spiraling general demeanor of the site. The problem isn’t the Off Topic forum, or the Sex forum, its the fact that THOSE forums get as much if not more action than the Training and Nutrition forums. That, and they bring in jerkoffs that only like talking about pussy and posting links to funny internet videos.

Not too long ago, there was no Off-Topic forum, and you know what? There were a whole lot more intelligent training/diet threads, and a whole lot less “check out Lindsay Lohan’s boobs in this gallery of 696859404 pictures! Wow she is sooooooo hot!”

There’s no magic method to making this place more hardcore, or as hardcore as it was “back in the day”, or any such thing. We just all have to wake up and realize that if we build it, they will come. So before you post, maybe just think for a split second “What am I contributing, and what kind of people will my contribution appeal to?” If your contribution would be better suited to be written down on a piece of notebook paper and passed in the back of 9th grade math class, then maybe keep it to yourself. Its not censorship, its making a commitment to be a bit more intense and more intelligent than the “Online Warcraft Thugs” or “Super Nintendo” forums.

This is a place where people who know a thing or two about training can bat around ideas and enjoy the internet camaraderie that comes from discussing things with other people that know their shit. Off topic is exactly that, off topic. If you look at your posts and they are 90% in the Off Topic and Sex forums, then maybe you need to re-evaluate why exactly you’re hanging around here in the first place. Or maybe you just need to promise yourself that for every post you make about performing cunnilingus with a football helmet on, or fashioning a slide whistle out of a tampon, you also post once in the Training, Diet, Photos, or Steroid forum.

TC’s recent article defining T-Nation is a noble step in the right direction, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: TC doesn’t define T-Nation. We do.

So am I calling some of you out? No. I’m calling all of you out. Each and every one of you. Quit fucking around. You are a part of something that has the potential to be the most serious, best equipped collection of training and diet minds this world has ever witnessed. If you like titties, thats great, me too, but if you don’t like lifting heavy and eating right, and more importantly DISCUSSING lifting heavy and eating right, then you can get the fuck out.

Tomorrow is Friday, February 25th, 2005. It is the first day of the rest of your life. When you wake up in the morning, take a deep breath and realize that you can be great. You can be powerful. Being hardcore isn’t anything more than giving 100%, all the time. So make a commitment to giving it your all, and motivating others to do the same.

Set a goal for March 25th, whether it be gaining 5lbs, losing 5lbs, benching 400, running a sub 5.0 40m, or just being less of a goddamn fairy. The people here can help you with that goal. Ask questions about it. Think about it. Live it. I’m not going to tell you my cinderella story, because I want you each to make up your own.

“Look, I’ve never had a dream in my life
Because a dream is what you want to do, but still haven’t pursued
I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done
So i’ve been the dream that I wanted to be since day one”

16

[quote]nephorm wrote:
We used to have a VIP section, btw. It was called the Dog Pound. It was cancelled because the “VIPs” (myself included) didn’t post enough.[/quote]

Ya beat me to it. BTW, thanks for the info on the former posters. I got the impression on some of that but at the time I was one who didn’t care for all the threads about the same thing…then all the attacks to those helping out…it was annoying. Then came VIP…then went VIP…

So I guess the good ole days just weren’t…?? Some of the old timers got HUGE heads when they appeared as featured articles on the ezine…just another observation.

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[quote]Lothario, the problem isn’t the pictures specifically, you’re missing the point. The problem is the downward spiraling general demeanor of the site. The problem isn’t the Off Topic forum, or the Sex forum, its the fact that THOSE forums get as much if not more action than the Training and Nutrition forums. That, and they bring in jerkoffs that only like talking about pussy and posting links to funny internet videos.
[/quote]

Correct.

So are we ok now guys?

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I am game, well, for everything expect that remark at warcraft…I love WoW :frowning:

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[quote]vroom wrote:
However, there is a culture issue to consider – whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not. New people can either be integrated into a current culture or the culture can change due to a large influx.

Wouldn’t anyone mind if this site turns into a diet based get lean site, full of entertainment value pictures and good supplements?[/quote]

Whatever you (non-specific you) think of me and/or my goals, I think going down this road would be a big mistake. I came here BECAUSE the information was of a much higher caliber than anywhere else. Because there is a wealth of information here that can’t be found on a more mainstream site.

Just like you should never change to get a woman, this site should not change to become whatever the current influx thinks it should be. It should be what it is, and n00bs should either accept it for what it is, like I have done, or move on.

If this site did not have a hard-core vibe, it would not appeal to me the way it does. I can go read Men’s Health for the rest.

20

I mean…I don’t care, I posted the pictures because Xen had that challenge thing going and I was out of work for a few days and was a little bored, but that’s not the big deal in my life (searching for pictures of half dressed chix, I mean. Real half dressed chix are another matter!). So, like Vegita said, the pix were a function of boredom more than anything.

I’d like to see “Shut Up and Lift” posted on the top of the page where the whole Spike thing is now. At least for a couple of weeks or so.

And I’d like Waterbury to get less busy with his life so he could post more. And I’d like to see more stuff from Dave Tate–or hell, why not any of you guys with tons of experience?