Tale of the worst OP

As you can tell from the name of this blog, I am big into IRC and hoped to devout a litte more time to the subject than I have. Well here is the first post on the subject and it concerns an op and quite disturbing behavior. (Note: I ask anyone who was involved in this to look at it with an open mind, and I also thought about changing the names of people involved but because I will be linking forum posts it would have been useless)

First some background. Chris Pirillo, former techtv host and owner of lockergnome (host of Gnomedex) decided to start live streaming on ustream a little over a year ago, and when he started the live stream he asked some of the regulars in his lockergnome chat if they would care to help with the new live community. One of these people was blaster. When I first started joining the channel blaster was still a halfop, and was a great guy to chat with, friendly, knowledgeable, and fair in his bans, and decision making. As I slowly drifted away from the channel (due to the number of users, and lack of good content), blaster was promoted to op, which was only fair as he had been a good halfop since the start of the channel.

Slowly things began to change in blaster, the power seemed to be going to his head. First he started using a personal "shitlist" to auto kick people out of the channel that he felt weren't good chatters. Next he decided he needed to add a kick counter to all of his kick messages, so the whole world knew how many people he had kicked.

* chrisisawanka was kicked by blaster (|¯| <- there's the exit (500))

In the last few weeks blaster's actions have dipped even lower, lower than any respectable chatter should go. First we have this log of him taking a shot at mentally challenged people (the log was rather long so I removed the parts not needed):

(Tue 07:10:41pm) you know, fighting on the internet is like running in the special olympics: even if you win, your still retarded.
....
(Tue 07:10:58pm) defil3d, dont be rude
....
(Tue 07:11:23pm) <@blaster> Stuzilla that's the funnies thing I've heard in a long time

Instead of telling the person that their "joke" could be offensive, blaster decided it was ok to basically tell someone who did the right thing to shut up (Note: I am the cousin of a handicapped person, regardless the statement was offensive). I decided to email Chris Pirillo and make sure he was aware of the stuff his ops said, and I was simply told he would follow up (chris has the word tard on his kick list, so I figured he would be supportive of my position, and his quote also makes it seem ok to make fun of people). So later that week I posted a thread to the wyldryde forums, and was told it was handled the night it happened, so basically a slap on the wrist.

I can understand a warning for that one, but a few days later a much more troubling tread appeared, showing that blaster ghosted a user who accidentally posted his password to the chatroom.

[22:20:37] /msg NickServ IDENTIFY ****** (Password)
[22:20:40] arrg
[22:20:43] :P
[22:20:45] hahaha
[22:20:48] rof
[22:20:48] Notice from HostServ@IRC.WyldRyde.org; Your vhost of iPhone.vhost is now activated.
[22:20:56] Closing Link: iPhone[pool-privatehost.nwrknj.east.verizon.net] Cylon.WyldRyde.org (NickServ (GHOST command used by blaster))

That one is a little harder to get out of as, I have seen users killed and/or glined for the same offense. Needless to say he was deopped and given halfop instead. I would have been fine with that decision as it removes most of the power outside of kicking and banning a user.

But not anymore, not after what I witnessed today. When asked about why he was deopped today, blaster replied with:

(Thu 07:02:46pm) <+h4|Away> yo blast :) . . . hop??? O_O
...
(Thu 07:02:52pm) <%blaster> yes h4|Away
(Thu 07:02:55pm) ohhh
(Thu 07:02:55pm) <%blaster> :((
...
(Thu 07:03:14pm) <+h4|Away> omg *sob*
...
(Thu 07:03:21pm) <%blaster> it's ok it was worth it
(Thu 07:03:22pm) <%blaster> :D
...
(Thu 07:14:32pm) <%blaster> fyi Stuzilla it was worth it :D
...
(Thu 07:25:02pm) <+Dark-AleX> why hop?
(Thu 07:25:07pm) <%blaster> I was a bad boy
(Thu 07:25:08pm) <%blaster> :D

The conduct of this op is appealing to say the least. I have never seen any op allowed to publicly brag about "stealing" another users nick name. It is disgusting to see #chris continue to sanction behavior of this nature, as it encourages others to "be a bad boy" because an op did it why can't I. There are various other problems with the chatroom's management and what goes on in there but for the sake of a short post I'm going to leave it solely on their choice of blaster as an op. I would hope Chris Pirillo takes a good hard look at the kind of stuff that happens in his chat, and the kind of people he has put in charge of his chat, maybe then I would chat in it