WACCOE – not exactly a thing of beauty
Ever since I was silenced – gagged – on what used to be one of the better Leeds United forums, I’ve kept an eye on the way things are going at WACCOE.com. This, remember, used to be one of the more obvious stopping-off points on the net, for anyone who wanted to hear the latest Leeds United gossip, or who hoped that they might thus become privy to some truly ITK inside knowledge. From those heady days, WACCOE plummeted to become a joke of a site, full of loud and gobby student types, right-wing boneheads, look-at-me merchants determined to present themselves as high-flyers and the most tragically desperate variety of attention-seekers.
At this point, I presumed to raise my voice in protest and, admittedly, some mild derision. Before very long, the policy switched from arguing with me or insulting me, to simply censoring my input. This was allegedly for abusing “fellow WACCOE-ers” – though as you can see from the screenshot above, if your eyesight is keen enough, there seems to be plenty of abuse flying about to this day. You might notice I’ve had to do some pretty hefty censoring of my own, due to the gutter language used.
My comment at the foot of the appalling example above was, of course, not published – after all, they gave up trying to deal with my point of view and style of expression long ago. But the point I was trying to make is a valid one – because the fact is that, on WACCOE, you can still seemingly get away with murder, or at least with vicious personal abuse – as long as the overly-hormonal moderators don’t take against you. And it’s really such a shame that what used to be an invaluable resource has sunk so very low.
That’s very much the way it is, though, quite evidently to anyone with the time and patience to trawl through all the rubbish. Plenty of regular contributors are now raising peeps of protest at the kind of thing I was complaining about way back: potentially interesting threads degenerating into childish quarrels and pitiful attempts to gain approval through puerile ‘humour’; the prevalence of right-wing, knee-jerk political views, with any more civilised opinions shouted down or ignored, etc etc etc. There’s no need for me to intervene on WACCOE now, even if they had the guts to let me; their own regulars are starting to realise how the whole thing has gone right round the U-bend.
I’ll still keep an eye on WACCOE, and I hope they’ll know that. They’ll pretend not to, of course – they affect not to notice when I refer to them these days, and they’re paranoid about the possibility of generating hits for Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything by acknowledging its existence. I do still get WACCOE individuals trying to post their abusive stuff on my blog comments – but naturally, they never see the light of day. Sauce for the goose, chaps. It’s all typically insecure, juvenile angst, anyway – and very funny on the face of it. But still, it’s tragic what’s happened to WACCOE.
There are, however, some very decent alternatives if you wish some adult, non-hypocritical coverage of all things Leeds. There’s the excellent We All Love Leeds, for instance, and even the hardly reconstructed Service Crew Forum is many a mile better than poor old WACCOE. And, of course – you’re always welcome here!
Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything 