Jericho

As I eluded to in my other post, it seems like this community has kept up with the times and has evolved as we've learned more as a society. When I was at my peak as a member here between 2010-2015 we definitely had a culture that wouldn't stand up to today's standards. We weren't blatantly sexist by any means but the culture was very unwelcoming to women and we saw more than one come and go fairly quickly based on the kind of culture we'd developed. It seems like one of our bigger strengths is the staying power of some of our older members. Back in those days it was a core membership group of guys in their teens and early 20s, most of whom didn't have regular exposure to women in social settings. As we got older though and we learned to be better between the ever changing social landscape that has been the last 5 years as well as our own exposure to people outside of our own little micro-cultures it's really clear how the longer standing members are doing a better job of leading by example for the newer members. A decade ago we had a bunch of angsty teenagers who all had some variety of insecurities or self worth issues who lashed out when we were challenged, and a lot of us have grown into 30 year olds who have learned how to treat people who grew up experiencing different conditions. I may not be around as an active member of this community anymore, but I can say this definitively. I regret a lot of the aspects of who I was over the last decade or so, but being a member of this community still holds up. We had flaws the way I had flaws, but we've grown and become better people. We learned from our mistakes, and that's the first step. Btw none of the growing up stuff applies to @Kesler. In my mind he;s still 14 and nothing anyone says will convince me otherwise.

You were Red 2. Noah was Red 6. Chris wasn't in the OG but we only had 6 so he's red 7

Considering the conversations have already shifted to doing this regularly to some extent, I'm glad to know I came to the right place and to the right people. I honestly thought this was going to be a huge struggle and a lot of arguing but the people here have clearly grown a lot. Stay classy VHL

Transaction ID: 22E14379938384503 Apply that for whoever's player you guys deem fit. Confirmed. -sterling and open for a volunteer in need.

Props to you guys for making a difference. Noah and I were talking and we figured it would be appropriate to bring an old movement out of retirement for this. Sorry @sterling @.sniffuM@Advantage @diamond_ace @Devise @probably not noah ALL WINGS REPORT IN!

It means a lot that the Blue Team responded so quickly and decisively. I'll be tossing in some money as well soon, you can apply it to someone's player who's a little less financially able. I'm going to have to wait a bit, I didn't work for the last two months and have just started a new job, where I'm in a hotel for the week as I'm training out of town. They're covering expenses, but I'm paying upfront and I don't have the extra money until the reimbursement comes in. I'll absolutely be putting my money where my mouth it though. I'm proud of how far this community has come in the last 13 years. The age of toxic internet trolls seems to be over and this is a community that cares. Keep being excellent guys.

@Quik @Beaviss You guys need to use your positions to do something good. The VHL has done a lot of good for the people inside of its community over the last 13 years. It's time for it to do some good for the rest of the world. Donate the excess money to good causes. Be a benchmark other communities should strive to emulate. Make a difference.

I'm going to start this out with a very quick introduction for those of you who aren't familiar with me. My name is Kyle and I was a fairly prominent member here from 2010-2015ish (Season 22-42ish). During that time I was in my late teens and early 20s, and was fairly abrasive to people I disagreed with ranging from things like team rivalries to league policies to biased oversight. As I got older I've mellowed out quite a bit on less important issues and usually try and stick to things that matter. I've made several life long friends including @Devise and @Advantage that I wouldn't have met without the VHL. It is safe to say that the era I was here was very formative on the man I came to be. One of the reasons I stopped coming around as much is because I met the woman who eventually became my wife. We originally dated long distance so there was a fairly big time commitment and I decided that putting time into making sure our relationship worked was a bigger priority. She is one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know and she opened my eyes to how unfair the world can be to a variety of different groups. She's a woman who lives in nerd culture/the gaming sphere who constantly gets tested by people who think they have the right to gatekeep her from their communities based on gender. She's also bisexual and feels the need to hide it from her family because of existing bigotry and homophobia out of her certain members of her extended family. Hearing her talk about this and seeing it for myself on a day to day basis really opened my eyes up to how unfair the world can treat you based on external factors you have no control over. Now what does this have to do with today? Unless you've been living under a rock you may have noticed that the United States is entering what is by all accounts a civil war between it's people and it's government. Western culture has always had an issue with systemic racism, but this time enough people have started moving forward and speaking up and are demanding a change. Organizations are stepping up and taking a stance as well, because this issue isn't political as so many people seem to think. It's societal. The way the United States government treats it's citizens is unacceptable on a human level. You can't put more of a fight into battling peaceful protesters than you do into battling a deadly virus in the span of the same 2 months. We have to stand up and force the people responsible to do something and hold them accountable. Silence as individuals and as a group is still taking a side, and its siding with the status quo. For anyone who still thinks they need to stay in the middle because some of the protests have gotten violent, or because there are good cops taking heat, you're missing the point. You can dislike rioting and looting while still standing for a movement who's core value is built around giving equality to everyone. You can still condemn a broken police system while still understanding that there are still good individuals in that system. You can still stand for a movement while acknowledging that you haven't always been the best ally in the past and do your best to fix it now. If you feel the need to come out for cops in this time you're missing the point. Everyone knows that there are good cops who have lost their lives in the line of duty. For context, my father is a retired RCMP officer, and almost 6 years ago to the day we had a domestic terrorist in our city who was running around murdering cops with an assault rifle. We lost 3 officers and had 2 others who were heavily injured. At the time my father was not yet retired, and that was one of the scariest nights of my life, because at any given moment I had no idea if he was still alive. As a community we honour their memories and we thank those who jumped in to save us at great personal risk. The thing is though, that right now there is a group of people who need our help more, and that group is disenfranchised based off the colour of their skin. You may be aware that it's Gay Pride month, and you may have also noticed that it's been largely absent from the news or from your twitter feeds. That is because the LGBTQ community recognizes that there is a group that needs our support right now, and they remember a time when that group was them. They aren't sulking about how nobody is paying attention to them on "their" month. They recognize that, while they are still struggling, there is a group that needs the resources and the help more right now, and they're extending that hand to them. The point I'm getting at is that I hope each and every one of you are doing as much as you can to help with the fight individually, but the VHL as a community can do more. You've been taking in member donations for almost a decade now on a monthly basis to pay for league overhead, but you've also been running at a surplus that entire time. It wouldn't kill you to use some of that money to make a few donations. Try making a statement, and use the resources at your disposal to make a change and do some good. You might lose some members' donations because they don't want to contribute, but that's honestly a good thing. A community that is afraid of losing its member base at the cost of doing the right thing has its priorities in the dirt. If you come here for escapism and you don't want the real world creeping in to your escape, recognize that there are people who don't have the ability to do that (and haven't ever had the ability to do that). It's been a rough week for a lot of us, but that only highlights how rough of a lifetime it's been for the black community and people of colour. I'm going to leave you with a message from another prominent member from my time. His name is Noah, but these days he runs a youtube channel with 724k subscribers. He risks his lively hood to use his platform to try and do some good, and has since the inception of his channel. He has a lot more to lose than the VHL does if his audience implodes, and he also has access to a lot more people. Follow in his footsteps. Ask yourself what kind of person you want to be. Black Lives Matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUhAzkwM6aI

We're live motherfuckers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjcYPrdejw

LET'S GO!

You're alright!

Well that was about the level of comeback I was expecting. I missed some of you

Happy Rusev Day!

We're still going boys! Yesterday was out one year anniversary! Come check out some of our shit!

Yeah I just figured I'd recap for anyone who wasn't around in fucking 2011 You can do the semantics thing back, but I really enjoy letting him spin his wheels and freak the fuck out. If you play his game he always claims he wins even when he doesn't make any good points. If you bring him back to axiomatic arguments he gets confused and scared and acts like a puppy. It's adorable. Yeah we did the same. Proposed in May of last year and the wedding is going to be Sept 2019. Nothing wrong with a longer engagement when you're still dealing with school debt (which I'm sure your country will have you doing until you're 78 :P). Weddings are expensive though, and trying to make enough for regular savings and a retirement/investment account spreads it pretty thin.

To be fair, that's kind of a shit representation of my arguments back in the day, I just didn't put weight them the same vs offensive stats as you did. Obvs they were still considered. But you get what I'm saying. Both of us had retentively self-consistent logic, and while we wouldn't agree with each other's conclusions we could say that they were sound in the systems we'd created. I've also never felt someone argues in bad faith quite as much as boubs. He's not interested in finding out what is true, he just wants to win the argument, even when he has to be deceitful to do it. How many times did he strawman people in this thread? Re-frame their statements in a way that completely strips their meaning away. Catching someone on a misused word is not how you argue when you want to find out what someone thinks. You should be defeating the best possible version of their argument. Anytime I've ever argued with someone in the BoG or a GM back in the day it seemed like the other guy was interested in that. With boubs it feels like he tries to play semantics, which is hilarious because his lack of a grasp of the English language makes it work very poorly for him. Obviously I give a lot of leeway to the guys who speak English as a second/third language with the nuances of English, but he chooses to try and play that game with people without having a mastery of it himself. Really poor choices. Also yeah, that shit's the best. Planning a wedding has been a HUGE pain in the ass, but the engagement part is great!

I live to serve. All jokes aside though, Boubs is a little lacking in the mental faculties department. He makes the most ham-fisted arguments for players and has no problem showing bias. I dunno if Cornerstone was the better candidate here or not, back back in the BoG voting days he'd change his criteria for how an award should be voted from year to year based on which argument suited the player he wanted to win. I have no issues with someone having a different logic line than I do, and thus reaching a different conclusion, but they need to be consistent. @diamond_ace and I used to disagree on half of the awards back in the day, but both of us had sound logic and we maintained consistency from year to year. People can evolve their opinions over time but Boubs literally goes "Ok, which argument makes it so I can pick my own player/my teammate, that's what matters most this year." And if you vever call him on it, he just fires back with ad-hominem because his debate skills are shit-tier. Also Jason, heard you got engaged recently. Congrats dude!

I regret NOTHING!

Brah I've been out of this place for weeks. That shit can't hurt me. You definitely have the moral high ground, but you guys let this turd do SOOO much worse than that. Let's see some consistency ya? You really can't let all that hate speech go and then get uppity over some mean spirited trolling.

I voted for DeGrath because @boubabi is incredibly intellectually dishonest and I want to fuck with him. Best part is that whether he rejects my logic or not my vote is equal to his. Welcome to democracy bitch! I have the high ground.

Chris, Ryan and I each do a run on the most recent Hitman Elusive Target. First two episodes are released!

The time I sent a fake banner submission to David of a penis and he opened it in class and everyone thought he was gay. Best ban I've ever gotten.

Oh let me get some ice for that burn. Is that the best you have? Can't think of anything with any sort of point or fact to back it up? Just your useless opinion that's founded off nothing? Dope.

Are you familiar with the term "anecdotal evidence"? Your life experiences are completely useless for data finding.

PART 3!!!!!!!!!