Frequently Asked Questions about Mike Vandeman
1. Why does Vandeman hate mountain bikers?
a. He is passionately committed to the wilderness, which is damaged by
all forms of human activity. One of these forms is recreational
access. But Mike likes to hike, so feels torn.
b. While hiking he sees mountain bikers out enjoying themselves.
Since he feels wracked with guilt, their evident pleasure in their
chosen activity causes him to hate them. Thus he chooses to project
his guilt onto this group.
c. He is bolstered in his vendetta by the fact that he has been able
to find some data which suggest that some specific types of damage
mountain biking causes are worse than the same types of damage caused
by hiking. He has not looked for equivalent data for other
activities, or an overall assessment of the damage any human activity
causes, so unlike the major wilderness conservation bodies he
concludes that mountain biking is uniquely threatening to wilderness.
d. Having taken it upon himself to stop mountain biking, a popular
activity, he took the course of spamming and trolling mountain bike
newsgroups. This had the predictable result of making him very
unpopular with mountain bikers, some of whom emailed him to let him
know.
e. Being already disposed to dislike mountain bikers because of his
own feelings of guilt, Vandeman blew these messages out of all
proportion and is now convinced that all mail disputing his world view
is hate mail, and that hate mail in response to sustained trolling is
the unique preserve of mountain bikers. He is not prepared to
consider that this may be a universal response to aggressive and
sustained trolling.
f. He will say that he doesn't hate mountain bikers, only mountain
biking. Take away the bikes and he's quite happy. Hating an
inanimate object? How sterile is that? Quite how mountain bikers can
be separated from mountain bikes, the definition of the former being
those who ride the latter, is left as an exercise for the reader.
g. To bolster his preconceptions he has written some "studies", such
as a literature review documenting the impact of mountain biking.
Since this has no inclusion criteria by which to judge the
completeness or bias of the selected papers, it is of course
worthless. But that's not going to stop him posting it.
2. What is driving Vandeman's trolling?
Bigotry. He has never demonstrated that the activity he chooses to
single out is any more damaging than many comparable activities. He
portrays himself as a world expert on the damage caused by mountain
biking, in the same way that Don Black is a world expert on the Jewish
conspiracy in America. He has decided to hate mountain biking because
it's safer than hating himself.
3. What harm does Mike Vandeman do?
a. Most obvious is the damage he does to the cause of
environmentalists. By pissing off a group who are users of the great
outdoors, use zero-emission vehicles and would normally be
well-disposed towards environmental concerns, Mike makes
environmentalism and concern over wilderness threats look like the
preserve of zealots.
b. A poster must also be very careful not to fall into Mike's traps:
any exaggeration will be called a LIE, any attempt to discuss damage
caused by other activities is "irrelevant" (unless Vandeman initiates
it), poking fun at Mike is "abuse" and "hate mail", especially if it
is responding in kind to one of his more aggressive posts. Mike is
very adept at bringing out the worst in people and then holding this
up as an example of how terrible mountain bikers are. It is futile to
point out that any group subjected to relentless trolling will react
in the same way; Mike is not interested.
c. It causes mountain bikers to believe that any damage they might
cause is only in the mind of a lone bigot. This is untrue: every user
of the wilderness has an obligation to take care and minimise their
impact.
d. It raises the false perception that all mountain biking is done in
wilderness. This is, of course, [censored]. Mountain bike courses can be
set up anywhere, including the buffer zones on the edges of wilderness
areas, in managed forestry plantations, in urban parkland, all sorts.
Probably most of the mountain bikers in the USA never go into any
wilderness worthy of the name.
4. Vandeman says mountain bikers claim that their sport has no greater
environmental impact than hiking. Is that true?
No, this argument is largely an invention of his own. Hikers
typically don't travel far in a day, but as a result they are more
likely to camp in the wilderness (which brings fire risk, a specific
threat identified by several agencies) - the overall impact is
different, and not directly comparable. The truth is that all human
activity impinges on the wilderness, but that recreational activity is
generally much less of a threat than commercial exploitation and
species introduction.
Although mountain bikers have an obligation, as everyone does, to
"tread lightly", the major wilderness agencies do not identify
mountain biking as a particular threat over and above hiking.
5. Where should Mike Vandeman be allowed?
al.troll would be a good place, or his own little group,
alt.vandeman.so.far.up.his.own.[censored].he.has.not.seen.daylight.for.years.
Locally, you can find a great home for him using your newsreader's
killfile. Alternatively, play along, but don't expect better than to
argue him into the ground - he never concedes defeat, never admits he
is wrong and never apologises. The more in the wrong he is, the more
this holds.
6. What should the policy be on trolls?
Normally? Killfile and ignore. But some people like to play with
Vandeman because, with care, he can be made to reveal the shallowness
of his position.
7. Isn't it discriminatory to troll mountain biking groups and not
hiking or equestrian ones?
Hell yes. Vandeman makes some pathetic justifications, like bikes not
being natural, or only the bikes being banned - of course this is the
equivalent of allowing hiking but banning hiking boots. Can you
mountain bike without a bike? It's kind of hard. What does Mike
care? He's a bigot.
8. Don't I have a right to troll-free public newsgroups?
Apparently not. Vandeman's posts are notionally on-topic, even though
many of them are gross misrepresentations such as proclaiming death
threats where none exist (all so-called "abusive" emails are posted
with full headers for extra effect). Complaints to his ISP come to
nothing. If you don't want to hear his [censored], the killfile is your
friend.
9. Doesn't Vandeman do some good things, like advocating wilderness
protection?
He says he does, but you begin to wonder. He was chucked out of the
Sierra Club for giving environmentalists a bad name, so you begin to
wonder if maybe he's an agent provocateur placed by some oil and gas
exploration company somewhere. His style is so antagonistic that it
rarely prompts rational debate and any it does prompt will be ignored
by a lot of knowledgeable posters simply because he is involved in the
thread and they have better things to do with their time than argue
with trolls.
10. But don't all wilderness users provide added safety for the
wilderness by advocating its protection?
Of course, but you'd never believe it from Vandeman's postings.
According to him mountain bikers are destructive and nothing else.
Vandeman would rather people drove into the heart of the wilderness
along blacktop in their cars and hiked, like he does.
11. Can't any physical activity help get our overweight kids off the
couch?
Absolutely. But Vandeman doesn't like mountain biking (he's a bigot,
see). So, you can hike or ride a horse or kayak or camp in the
wilderness or drive your offroad motor vehicle or chain-drag the
undergrowth for your livestock or drill an oil well or cut down trees
for profit and he'll say nothing to you. Get on your bike and you're
the enemy. The protester on his mountain bike is Vandeman's enemy,
the bulldozers against which he protests are of no concern to Mike.
Take a chainsaw to a fallen tree to make a jump? Criminal!
Commercial logging? Move along there, nothing to see, nothing to
see...
12. Doesn't Vandeman fight auto dependence?
He says so, but he works so hard to discredit mountain biking, without
saying a word about offroad motor vehicle use, that you have to
wonder. Thus far his 8-year fight against auto dependence seems to
have borne very little fruit - and if he pursued it the way he pursues
his campaign against mountain biking, that's hardly a surprise.
Vandeman is working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
sense ("pure [censored]"😉. Want to help? (He spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction equally
ineffectually.)
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound