For a while (he seems to have slacked off of late), Robert had a nasty habit of reposting Oleg Volk’s pictures and launching into wholly unwarranted, vicious tirades against Mr. Volk, his photography, his style, and whatever else was getting Robert’s underoos in a wad. While this is within the realm of “fair use” for once – Robert was discussing the photographs in question, rather than simply using them as props around his posts – it struck more than a few of us as particularly reprehensible, and a few of us expressed that opinion to Robert.

One such vocal individual was Bob S., who approached the situation from the wholly understandable position of, “if you feel so comfortable incisively criticizing someone else’s photography, I am sure you will not mind us subjecting your posts to the same level of scrutiny.”

Unsurprisingly, Robert cannot take what he dishes out, and, for his trouble, not only were Bob S.’ comments edited without any public acknowledgement of that the editing took place, all of those comments were eventually deleted and Bob S. banned from TTAG once Robert finally lost his temper:

Apparently Robert Farago aka “The Can’t Handle the Truth About Guns” thought I was “flaming” his site or himself. Apparently, flaming means anything critical of him. He first edited my comment to remove the critique of him. Let me repeat that Robert Farago aka “The Can’t Handle the Truth About Guns” edited another person’s comment to remove a critique about him. And worse in my opinion, did not note that he edited the comment. Several emails went back and forth while I was answering other comments on the site. Then apparently when he realized I wasn’t going to go away and let him criticize others without saying something about it; he deleted all my comments.

(Emphasis in the original.)

Now, allow us to take this a step at a time. The internet largely exists and revolves around a certain level of shared trust – any time you see a firearm-related post or comment somewhere with a person’s username and appropriate icon off to the side, you trust that is, in fact, that person behind the keyboard who wrote that post or comment.

But have you ever thought about how easy it would be to spoof that? Save the icon to your desktop, generate up your own them-sounding email address, and start posting your way around the intertubes with their name and picture. Who would be able to tell the difference?

We trust that people do not do that, simply because the internet would, at least on the social level, unravel if everyone started faking being everyone else. Now, on the same level, we bloggers are entrusted with a certain degree of faith, as well; after all, once someone leaves a comment on our sites, we could open up our handy-dandy admin control panels, load up their comment, and edit it to say anything and everything we wanted.

But we do not. Because you trust us not to, because that would be misleading, and because we know it would be wrong.

Unfortunately, Robert does not seem to be limited by any of those niggling little interpersonal relationship details. More the pity, for him, at least.

“But there are exceptions! A lot of sites edit content based on X, Y, Z or Q!” And this is absolutely true; however, in the cases where those administrators choose to edit comments based on the commenting policies at their sites, they generally leave some kind of note or indication that yes, the comment was, indeed, edited by them, because of a violation of X, Y, Z, or Q. That way, everyone knows some aspect of the original comment is gone/missing, and no one thinks the author of the comment did say something he did not, or did not say something he did.

Unfortunately, Robert does not seem to find that common courtesy all that necessary either.

Make no mistake – by editing Bob S.’ comments and not disclosing that he did so, Robert lied. He indicated that Bob S. only said X and Z, when, in reality, Bob S. actually said X, Y, and Z; it may not be much of a lie, and he unquestionably does not care that it is a lie, but it is a lie nonetheless.

I know you all are not surprised but, as Bob S. indicates, that was not the end of Robert’s lies:

At no point did I say that he should ” I should proactively contact the subject of critical posts to get their comments” — which by the way is another revision without notification — it originally said “each and every”. I said -repeatedly — that if he had a problem with the images, why didn’t he address it with the originators?

He is exactly right – nowhere did Bob S. say Robert “should” do anything; Bob S. simply asked why Robert did not do something. But, now, aside from Bob S.’ own words on on his site and the screen caps he took (I strongly recommend you read his whole post – it gives you a glimpse into the fetid corners of Robert’s mind), no one knows that Robert is lying, thanks to his Memory Hole-ing Bob S.’ actual comments.

We gunbloggers are more than familiar with this tactic, which is generally referred to as Reasoned Discourse; in fact, Joan Peterson is a known repeat offender when one of us says something borderline confrontational in her comments, she deletes the comment, and then proceeds to play the martyr for the next umpteen posts claiming we evil “gun nuts” are picking on her and abusing her and calling her mean names. Well, that is all good and well, and her fellow anti-rights advocate compatriots lap it up because it fits neatly into their preconceived bigotry, but the simple fact is we did no such thing… only we have absolutely no way of proving it any more, since she deleted the comment. In our “modern” world, though, the “victim” gets priority, even if she is a victim in her own mind, and it becomes the word of a “victim” against the word of a person who has already been castigated as a “bully” or worse; guess who wins.

In the end, this is an extension of the “Poisoning the Well” logical fallacy, and it appears to be a favorite of Robert’s as much as it is of the “gun control” supporters’.