Old heads



  • Just curious why a select few have disappeared. @Statmachine was entertaining. @KUSTEVE was a funny guy. @jaybate-1-0 made the site what it was then croaked when the new wave showed up. It’s just been a less interesting and more one sided evolution. There are many that have prevailed some that only talk in private chat as they are tired of the ridicule. Its just evolved into something more contentious, less introspective. Dumbed down if you will.



  • @approxinfinity said in Old heads:

    @NotHim well i am curious what perspective you think is missing here.

    Optimism.



  • Yeah, Im not sure where those guys went to. I think its jumping to conclusions to consider those guys run off. I enjoy all of their voices and would love to see them hop back on. Maybe life took them in a different direction. I dont think of those guys as conservative primarily, so much as unique people with different voices to add.

    Have we become more homogenous? Maybe.

    Interesting that you think we lack optimism. I dont know if thats the word i would choose.

    Flair maybe? Thatd be fair. Sustained Effort? My contributions wax and wane quite a bit. Life stuff.

    Maybe we have talked about a lot of things and now we are just comfortable knowing that if we say something there will be a reply from old friends?

    I dont know. The board has certainly evolved. Maybe regarding the last thing i said, if those old friends are the ones that left, then that impacts your optimism.

    But hey, we can have a fresh start. Stick around a while and talk. Maybe you’ll enjoy the voices that remain more than you thought you would. If you have ideas that you think arent explored, why not throw them into the mix and let us chew on them? I think we are pretty respectful and welcoming to different voices.

    Older, wiser, more appreciative, imo.



  • @approxinfinity I’m not going to trash your board. Was just hoping some of the original posters would reach out in private, I doubt they’re going to reappear in the current environment.



  • As far as the sports perspective i feel like theres a good number of people who push back against unwarranted pessimism.

    Also, the world I think in general needs more optimism, and thats not political. I 💯 think we need more optimism. The murder death spin hour, aka as the nightly news, is a joke.



  • Well, i dont think youve really indicated something specific to this board that would cause people not to post, but i think there may be more global causes that are at play. I appreciate you being respectful and just wanting to DM with specific people. All good.

    Just makes me sad that you may be one of those guys that I enjoy talking to, if you feel run off. This is a community and running good people off was never the intent



  • We sort of had a no politics rule forever ago. Ironically, JB was one who repeatedly claimed politics was intertwined with sports and constantly waded into those waters. We tried to move politics into an isolated channel.

    Then, some people didn’t like the pushback or the idea that some people didn’t agree with them. Especially considering the polarization that came with 45. Those people left.

    It sucks. Politics should probably be “rebanned” from the board imo. Also, math would dictate that KU likely has a more liberal fanbase than conservative. It is likely to lean that way on the board, maybe, slightly.

    I do think the board is pretty moderate leaning. But that’s my opinion. Just because you vote one way simply means you’re trying to pick the best of two choices available to you. We’re so quick to judge.

    What is really lost here is someone with the time to post long-winded thought provoking threads. That was really the role JB filled. Off the wall thoughts, and then he would defend them vigorously and keep debate going. And when nobody knew anyone’s politics, and that lens wasn’t there to look at people through, people would just debate the topic.

    Now a major issue is that people know each others politics on here a bit and they can’t help but go there almost immediately.

    Another major thing that happened is college sports has irreversibly shifted with NIL and transfer portal and unfortunately politics are a lens with how people viewed those new changes to the sport. It drove some people out.

    I wonder if there is a way to create some threads that are actually totally anonymous @approxinfinity ? Like usernames hidden.



  • @Kcmatt7 you nailed it. All good thoughts. I dont think politics need to be banned but I feel like we have gotten better as a board and as a society about not being so thin skinned and also not provoking other people, but thats my take. I think we went deep into polarity and we are bouncing back the other way.

    I dont feel like we are overly political on here.

    Not sure about the anonymous threads. I havent upgraded the board in forever. I will check to see if later versions have anonymois threads.



  • @approxinfinity we may not talk about it a lot. But I do wonder if having threads crapping on politicians (deserved or not) on the list of threads currently going is a good way of recruiting new board rats of any political affiliation.



  • Hey in the meantime if anyone wants to post anonymously, they are welcome to create additional accounts.



  • @Kcmatt7 i mean, i’m not really interested in forcing this place to be a bubble, people are free to talk about whatever they want. The one and only rule: just dont be a dick.

    Hopefully thats apparent to anyone who looks at the board with more than a passing glance. Trump deserves to be crapped on, just like the White Sox, just like our OC, just like Texas and Oklahoma for ditching the B12, and the purple kitties and Fizzou. Its just another thing. We should be able to crap on things and people in moderation if we feel like it. Its not a primary thing we talk about, but its football season, and our team has underperformed, and its an election year, pretty reasonable that it comes up.



  • Jaybate may have died. I only say that because his posting stopped rather abruptly. I have no real idea what happened to him but he definitely was a prolific poster, and entertaining. Speaking for myself, I miss him.

    Possibly the most memorable topic that garnered a lot of discussion was about the shoe companies… And recent changes such as NIL have let most of the air out of that balloon on that topic.

    To say there have been a lot of changes in sports in the past few years would be an understatement.

    I think this board has still has the reactions and pontification about games/teams that it had at the very beginning. I think now, it’s mixed in with updates and tips – newsy stuff and insider gossip.

    There are still rants, but probably less of the diatribes. Sometimes, a poster will get riled up with pessimism, only to have another poster off talk them off the edge.

    But likewise, I can count on the fact that if I put on the crimson-and-blue-tinted glasses and start convincing myself that our football team is going to go 8-3, there are posters who may offer a more measured assessment. Perhaps that’s pessimistic. Perhaps not. But whatever it is, it’s discourse and informative. And I appreciate it every bit as much today as I did when it started.



  • You guys are good with words. Me, not so much. I would sum it up by saying :

    Discuss. Don’t make personal attacks against other posters. Cuss the coaches, the refs, the program, whatever. But not each other. We’re all passionate. We all have our own opinions.



  • I wonder if there is a less polarized more balanced site for KU chat? Any suggestions?



  • Yep its https://kubuckets.com but if you find another, let us know.



  • @approxinfinity said in Old heads:

    Yep its https://kubuckets.com but if you find another, let us know.

    Noted. Message me in chat if there is a good one, I don’t think you would want all this company.



  • @NotHim i know of no other good one, and would be happy for you to post it publicly if you find one. As i said before, I think you have mischaracterized this board as one that isn’t moderate. If you found utopia and all here want to follow, I’d gladly do the same. This board isnt here for any purpose other than to serve its users.



  • I thought someone managed to get in touch with Jaybate after he left, and he’d said he was basically done wasting his time with college basketball. Money/OAD/ShoeCo ruined it for him. He also seemed increasingly pessimistic about geopolitical trends, IIRC.

    That was five or six years ago. It’s certainly possible he’s gone to the big Allen Field House in the sky.



  • I’m all for turning down the temperature. At one point I had to have a silent alarm installed on my desk because of death threats to our staff. Venting is fine, whatever, but don’t say anything your momma would scold you for



  • @NotHim said in Old heads:

    I wonder if there is a less polarized more balanced site for KU chat? Any suggestions?

    Hey, semi new to the board…

    This is by a considerable margin the kindest, most gentle, even-keeled KU board that exists.



  • Not looking for utopia that means there is no dissenting views. I’m not looking for a sing along around the camp fire. Just lively discussion with more than one viewpoint represented without all the piling on that happens. It’s obvious that some people on here have deep seated resentment for each other. I admire you @approxinfinity for not following the common thread in media these days and censoring dissenting viewpoints. I just miss the days when there were lively basketball discussions well represented with differing opinions. I mean there is @kuballin10 but he generally only uses emotional appeal to support his argument and no one will help him in his positions right or wrong. There used to be some awesome support - I cannot remember who but a poster used to collect all the KU basketball headlines and collate them into a weekly (or was it more frequent?) post that folks would comment on - a KUSports hangover I guess. Then another poster used to post pictures about the visiting cities - famous folks, buildings, campus, etc. It’s been replaced by different threads started by us non journalists. The faces have changed and so has the content, I was just hopeful some of the original KUSports/KUBuckets crew was still lurking. Some are it seems (yay!), but not as many seem to be around as I had hoped.



  • Ha, i remember the posts with pictures of our opponent’s campus and surrounding city. those were good ones!



  • That was @wrlumpy



  • @approxinfinity God bless him, heck of a guy!



  • @rockchalkjayhawk said in Old heads:

    Hey, semi new to the board…

    This is by a considerable margin the kindest, most gentle, even-keeled KU board that exists.

    Hell, we even like that codger @jayballer67 despite his Packers and Yankees. 🤮



  • @DanR said in Old heads:

    @rockchalkjayhawk said in Old heads:

    Hey, semi new to the board…

    This is by a considerable margin the kindest, most gentle, even-keeled KU board that exists.

    Hell, we even like that codger @jayballer67 despite his Packers and Yankees. 🤮

    Wait a minute now @DanR We gotta draw the line somewhere! 🙂



  • I’m ok with the packers as long as they aren’t playing the chiefs! Lol



  • @DanR said in Old heads:

    @rockchalkjayhawk said in Old heads:

    Hey, semi new to the board…

    This is by a considerable margin the kindest, most gentle, even-keeled KU board that exists.

    Hell, we even like that codger @jayballer67 despite his Packers and Yankees. 🤮

    LOL gosh , golly , gee dagummit you gonna make me blush , almost make me cry lol - -make’s my heart tingle a little. -Hey we al have down falls–mine just happens to be Packers and Yankees lol



  • Agreed with the consensus here, there is probably a negative trump lean but you don’t have to be a liberal to not like the guy. Even that is fairly isolated in the pol channel which you can mute if you want.

    I don’t post much but have been around since the beginning and it feels mostly the same outside of jaybate who honestly was hit and miss for me anyway. HEM is another notable missing but he became quite antagonistic on his own so it wasn’t sad to see him go in the end.


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