What is the purpose of this site?
This is a massive Internet archive containing selected excerpts of many hilarious, ignorant, bigoted, bizarre, and terrifying posts written by fundies on online message boards.
Wait, so you aren't here just to bash christians?
Nope, in fact the quotes that stick out the most in the mind of the administrator where actually a Pagan fundie and a few free market fundies.
What's a 'Fundie'?
Fundie
- A usually religious person or entity characterized by one or more of
the following: an extreme lack of rationality, fondness of logical
fallacies, repeated use of emotional appeals, rigid adherence to
Bronze Age mythology, endorsement of pseudoscientific nonsense,
opposition to the First Amendment, bigotry and discriminatory
attitudes towards minority groups, belief that certain children's
media is the work of Satan, and propensity to post Bible verses
instead of valid argument.
It should be noted that one can be religious--even a fundamentalist--but not actually attain the vaunted status of "fundie," which needs that special touch only people fitting stereotypical caricatures can provide. Additionally, religion is technically not even a pre-requisite for this, although blind adherence to its ideologies (and those of politics) is perhaps the #1 source of fundies in the universe. Rigid, arrogant, "know-it-all-and-confidently-force-it-on-everyone-else" authoritarian strains of both amplify the propensity to fundyism, while more moderate, "this-seems-like-a-good-idea-but-might-be-wrong, so-let's-not-be-total-jackasses-about-it" varieties can keep it in check or even undermine it.
People don't actually believe this do they?
Reply straight from Distind:
Having dealt with a good number of these folks, yes, they do. That said they aren't representative of everyone who shares their beliefs, they're just the worst case senario of those beliefs. Many religious, cultural or even economic ideals if taken too literally have the ability to seperate people from reality. If you don't believe me, I can personally toss you a few references to people who regularly defend statements along the same lines as the quotes we display here.
Original Reply from WinAce:
Unfortunately, the author is not privy to the thought processes responsible for much of the content of this archive. However, if one doubts that people like this exist, one need only look at some of the names of the websites quoted here. 'PayableOnDeath' and 'RaptureReady'... does one really need to comment further?
Distind? WinAce? Who are you people?
Let's go in order answering this:
WinAce is the original creator of FSTDT(originally Christians Says the Darndest things, quickly altered to it's current form). However WinAce passed away from Cystic Fibrosis in 2005.
Yahweh picked up the site after that, creating the first automated archive while teaching himself the technologies involved. Currently Yahweh's efforts can be found on FSTDT.com.
Due to the nature of programs written while teaching yourself programing technologies, the site was competely re-written four times, and still had enough issues to cause Yahweh unending grief. Eventually Yahweh decided to throw in the towel of administrating and writing the site due to the sheer pain it was.
Distind, your current savior!(I kid, I should have had this site up months before the change over occured, I just had no money to do it) Is the current administrator of FSTDT.net which is the active FSTDT archive. Having a few years of asp.net web development under his belt, he has been able to ressurect a good deal of the functionality of the old site with considerably fewer bugs. It's still a bit of a beast to handle, but a good team of moderators helps with that.
Ok, so you all hate X
No, not really. WinAce looked on it with amusement, Yahweh much the same, and Distind can't help but try to figure out what makes these people tick.
In fact Distind has maintained an account on a rather often quoted site as long as he's been on FSTDT, long before he was an admin. And he's still no closer to understanding SuperSport.
Is this legal?
In short, yes. For the long version here is WinAce's repsonse:
First, let's make one thing
clear. Yes, any material a person composes is copyrighted, whether they
apply for an official document stating so or not.
With that out of the way, Section
107 of the United States Copyright Law, titled 'Limitations on
exclusive rights: Fair use', outlines available exceptions to
copyright. When trying to determine whether something fits under Fair Use
exemptions to reproduction, these criteria are employed:
- What is this being used for? Non-profit, educational,
satire, etc. use of copyrighted material is treated less stringently
than the commercial equivalent.
- What, exactly, is the copyrighted work? Obviously, The
Matrix Reloaded will be higher up on the rank of copyright
infringement protection than a post by Billy Bob on his Aunt Wanda's
sheep-farming discussion forum.
- How much of the work was actually copied? A short
excerpt from a cookbook for use on a specialized recipe webpage might
fall under fair use law; copying down an entire chapter might be
trickier.
- What effect does the copying have on the market value of
the original? A no-brainer--if people download a hot new video
game off the Internet instead of going to buy it, the company loses
out on legitimate income.
A cursory review of this website will find that it's in compliance with
each of the points above.
- The webmaster is not privy to any profit and invests a
significant bit of his own free time to keep it running; it's
intended as a (somewhat educational) parody of
fundamentalist religion.
- The quality and value of the copyrighted materials involved is
trivial at best and downright laughable at worst. It ranges
from your everyday theological discussion (ho-hum) to assertions
that Noah used Atlantean genetic engineering technology to recreate
the dead animals after the flood (har har).
- With few exceptions, only an excerpt or two out of an
entire discussion is used.
- The original posts have pretty much no market value by
themselves, as they're almost universally viewable by anyone with a
web browser. It could, conceivably, be argued that people who would
otherwise register and participate on various boards to read the
lunacy for themselves are instead content to read this webpage;
but whether that 'loss' comprises a significant 'decrease in
market value' for the original post would be quite difficult to
establish.
But you're defaming me!
Unless the quote is completely without context, or deliberately fake, no we aren't. Quoting something you said, or were stupid enough to say, is not defamation. If you don't believe me when I say this ask Stephen Choate, he and I went through this whole thing a while back. Every time it comes up I consider making a 'wall of idiotic legal challenges' which still technically would not be defamation as the legal challenges I have recieved were all quite idiotic.
I was just joking! I don't actually believe what you quoted me on.
This happens, but to keep the system from being abused I(Distind) handle all of these requests personally. I do some research to find out more about you and your posting habits, if it is truely a isolated incident I'll remove it. If I'm less than convinced I bounce it off my moderators, or even the community to gain additional opinions. Generally such things get removed quickly, but I know there are a few floating around. If you're quoted in one of these please bring it back to my attention, I don't remember the specifics or otherwise they'd be long gone.
I love the site, but why don't you have any specific pages for RSTDT or CSTDT?
Well, technically we do. Once you go into RSTDT or CSTDT you can access an archive specific version of any page, if you'll notice in your address bar the ?achive= portion remains with you. It's not the most noticable or nicest navigation out there, but it beats linkspam.
Why should I register?
Registration is being opened up to help deal with some old problems on the site, nick theft, limited navigation and a distinct lack of recgonition for people who have given quite a bit to the site.
Before the plans for accounts are detailed I will get this out of the way: It is not now, nor will it ever be, required.
For Nick theft, registered accounts which post will have an underline under their name. They also do not need to enter their names for each comment as that is already done for them.
Limited navigation, currently in the planning stages but worth mentioning, is allowing for accounts to select favorite quotes, as well as display which quotes they have submitted. Along with this will come a tool to claim quotes that were made by your username and email, as well as being able to change if your user name is displayed with the quote or not after it has been submitted. There have also been suggestions of personal or community created lists of qutoes, which is certainly possible, but there is no ground work for it yet.
Lack of recognition, with the ability to show which quotes you have submitted there will be some, however there is already the ground work to give people credit for the titles they have come up with, which were then applied by the moderators. Allowing people to show off which quotes they managed to generate awards for.
Since the administration team understands not everyone wants to claim what they have done here, anything beyond the underline to designate a registered account will be completely optional and will default to off unless changed by the user.
Forum Discussion, including questions can be found here.
I need to contact the admin
Feedback is generally appreciated, the best method to contact the admin is to use the Forums, post your concern or comment in the 'FSTDT Disscussion' section. If you wish to condem the site to hell, please use the 'Preaching and Worship' section.
There is also an email available at FSTDT@fstdt.net. There are no promises on how often it is checked.