Separating Signal from Noise

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I thought it might better to start a different thread for this. I suspect other feel as I do. Hope so anyway.

Apart from the specific personalities involved it’s hard not to feel bad about The Paracast. I found it years ago when podcasts in general weren’t very polished. I used to burn up service trucks with mileage and daily pounding under difficult circumstances and it has been a companion through rough times. I always sort of wondered if I would be the guy to have a Roy Neary type encounter – always found myself in the damnedest places at the damnedest times when other people were indulging in the personal weaknesses of relaxation and sleep. I made a point to use my friggin’ $30 Paracast coffee mug only on Sundays when I downloaded the show – and I might keep the episode a while before listening to it. When I had to leave to go who knows where I’d hit ‘play’ and listen to that intro … and liked it. Sort of steeled me for what I had to do. I am a creature of habit and ritual.

I finally joined the forum over there because I wanted to participate and much more recently subscribed (since ended) to P+ because I thought that free entertainment ought to have some grassroots support. To be fair, by not checking the box to receive the newsletter also meant I didn’t get all the damned begging emails. I am impervious to that sort of thing anyway, period – but they did strike me as poor taste if nothing else.

So here’s the thing. Only once did I find myself edited and as a result found myself on a ‘discourage’ list. But, like a horse**** in the…. ear … it was enough. I knew full well exactly why. GS didn’t like a comment I made in a political forum and it happened virtually instantly afterward. My interface was so slow as to be virtually useless. Not banned, just f****d with. After some (to me) clearly disingenuous back and forth I was restored and as recently as today I am free to participate. Problem is that during the several days I was stuck on the virtual glue trap it gave me time to look around and that’s how I saw all the other stuff about GS and the past and found AE entirely at random. And found just about everyone else in the pool here already.

To be crystal clear, the product over there had soured for several reasons and I probably would have just stuck with it had I not been handed the opportunity to look around.

I have not been poached as was suggested over there. Their own damned fault, IMO.

If it were still doing its part I’d still be doing mine. Hell, I loved that recent episode with Richard Doty. But after seeing the forums dry up and finding that this one has a much more amenable atmosphere I prefer it here. Administrators with interesting input and a light touch make a fun a creative outlet. Vindictive, defensive ones peddling old crap do not.

As for the old schemes, personalities and monetary shit – which have nothing to do with my base interest and desire for a little social interaction well, the fat's in the fire now. I say release the hounds.

But to be fair, tomorrow when I use that mug and NOT download the product that has made its way through the paracolon I will feel a bit odd and a bit sad.
 

Standingstones

Celestial
The date I joined the Paracast was Dec. 26, 2007. I looked right before I was banned. The program was like a breath of fresh air. David Biedny was asking tough questions of the guests. No more coming on the program to simply shill a book or dvd.

I enjoyed that brief couple of years. After Biedny left the show made a slow decent into mediocrity. Steinberg didn't help matters. He was the commercial timekeeper who added his two cents about references to 1950s science fiction and incessant talk about super hero tv shows like Supergirl.

The begging for money got to be more prevalent and all was lost after that. If only someone would have bought the website, but that would never be allowed to happen. Those web shows were Steinberg's main means of drawing in money. He was never going to relinquish that cash cow. Too bad actually.
 

Ron67

Ignorance isn’t bliss!
Think I started listening around 2010.Like the farmer i still feel a bit nostalgic about the good old days.The show used to be really good on a regular basis,despite Gene!.As Chris O'Brien lost interest the show declined and became a shadow of its former self.Gene became even more of a dictator,he would never admit to being wrong or concede a point in any debate.
The atmosphere on here and the personnel make for a pleasant environment and I look forward to these forums blossoming onwards and upwards.
 
I first joined some time in '07, but there was some sort of glitch in the forum owned by the frequently hacked Super Tech Hero and most everybody's accounts got blasted into oblivion, or something like that. I joined up again, and it was a good place. As I recall, Gene wasn't very active in the threads I was interested in. DB was a lot of fun when he got on a roll. As others have noted, it was very refreshing to hear some serious questions being asked of guests. Most podcasts of the paranormal persuasion were more like George Noory going "Uh-huh. Wow. Well that's interesting."

Seems like Chris O'brien made his first appearance as a guest just before Biedny got disgusted and left. Chris did okay as co-host for a while, and got some top shelf guests to do the show, but as Ron said he slowly lost interest and got pretty cranky a lot of the time. That's when we started getting more and more Supergirl. I just looked, and there was apparently one (surviving) post at the forum today. I can't imagine those ads are doing much for the people who paid for them. Looks like the place is history.

I need to move on. Gene and his enterprises (legitimate and otherwise) are energy sucks. He'll be living in his fancy car soon enough, until the owner finds it and repossess it. Pretty much anyone else could figure out how to live on $33,000 a year, tax free.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
The date I joined the Paracast was Dec. 26, 2007. I looked right before I was banned. The program was like a breath of fresh air. David Biedny was asking tough questions of the guests. No more coming on the program to simply shill a book or dvd.

I enjoyed that brief couple of years. After Biedny left the show made a slow decent into mediocrity. Steinberg didn't help matters. He was the commercial timekeeper who added his two cents about references to 1950s science fiction and incessant talk about super hero tv shows like Supergirl.

The begging for money got to be more prevalent and all was lost after that. If only someone would have bought the website, but that would never be allowed to happen. Those web shows were Steinberg's main means of drawing in money. He was never going to relinquish that cash cow. Too bad actually.

Yup. Sometimes he almost sounds good but then he keeps speaking and realize ..... oh .......
 
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