Rest In Peace, Sokar

Wow. Shocked.

Sokar seemed like the kind of person who would get a kick out of his enemies rejoicing over his death in a memorial thread. Or at least that seems like how he would want people to think of him.

My condolences to his family, and 43 is way too young to go

Many of us have lost loved ones to cancer. It's an awfulness. Condolences to his family and friends.

RIP

having read only the first page...

There's nothing I can say that would be a meaningful expression of "that sucks" that hasn't already been said multiple times.

I will say rather only this:

I have come to appreciate that the Blue Room is the most valuable part of this board by far, as we have matured. Obviously we had to be board-mates first, often antagonistic ones, in order for those blogs to have any emotional meaning.

And frankly I do not always read those threads as faithfully as I'd like due to the sheer investment in time that would be necessary...but still it's those blogs which flesh out the REAL people here for me. Posters that I might otherwise view with contempt, I count as friends because I get the chance to see beyond the personas.

I mourn Sokar's passing because I know he must have had people who loved him and admired him in his everyday life, but i also mourn that he felt such a need to stay "in character" here. Even if he didn't want to be the center of attention regarding the illness, I'd have liked to have known more about the guy behind the mask.

Knowing that all the masks have real faces behind them is the reason you never see me go hard after anyone personally. I may disagree strongly with Dayton, or Flashlight, or Liet, or whoever...but for my part, there's a real person behind that name and I'm not going to forget that.


one slightly off topic notion:

Isn't it time that we had, perhaps stickied in the Blue Room, a memorial thread dedicated to all the members we've had decease? I, for one, fear I'm in danger of forgetting a name every time the subject comes up. And those who wished could take note of the anniversary of any or all.

I'm not sure if this is the distinction that he's trying to make but let me play the "devil's advocate"

"Sokar" is not and never was a real person, much as many of the other names you see on the member list here are. for whatever reason, according to what Tamar implied, the real person behind the keyboard chose to put on his Sokar mask when he visited Wordforge.

what anc is saying, I believe, is that while anyone with a heart feels very badly that the man behind the keyboard passed away...the fact that no one will be wearing the "Sokar mask" is not something he's going to mourn

It's analogous to a poster saying "Fuck all yall, I'm out!" and going away (think Phantom of the Net for instance) - a lot of people would say of such an exit "why should i give a fuck?"

Likewise, Anc is only saying the persona will not be missed, not that he has no heart for a real death.

..rest well..

What the fuck? For real?



Damn. I still remember him from way back in the TBBS days, when we both regularly posted in the DS9 forum.

He would love to troll the Voyager fans. I'll never forget the sig he used over there...

"Voyager makes baby Jesus cry"

Even though we disagreed on a LOT of stuff, we were always cool... he would even encourage me to post here more often.

With him, I never got the sense that the trolling was all that important to him. He just liked to fuck around and not take things too seriously. Although I would never emulate his posting style, I did admire his 'I don't give a fuck' attitude. Now I understand why he was like that on here.

He was one of those WFers I really thought I'd get to meet one day...

Like him or hate him, he was definitely one of the more interesting, amusing characters around here.

RIP Sokar

Think he'd appreciate 14th's comments, but Liet and Anc? C'mon.

Was never a poster I either really liked/disliked, but the reactions he could bring out were fun, and he'll be missed.

Died too young, and thoughts to his close friends and family.

On the bright side, he'll be reunited with his hair now

Yep, deader than a doornail. Easy to find a funeral notification. I can see why the 'tough guy' persona was adopted - growing up with that name in the South was probably pretty hard as a kid.

He was an asshole, and that's the only side he showed here. If he was more than that, he didn't let it get in the way of his 'fun.' If his family sees this, they either already know what he was like or deserve the truth. Personally I've always felt that the way we go through life should be more important than social conventions. Your character counts. And while it might not have been all of him, the character he displayed here was lacking.

But I wouldn't wish pancreatic cancer on my worst enemy, and I'm sorry he died in such a painful manner. I hope he was surrounded by family and friends, and had a chance to make peace with himself and his loved ones before he passed.

I'm personally going to take this opportunity to reflect on myself and my actions. Mortality stalks us all, and that sure knowledge is a good example of why we should consider our actions carefully, not because of any sense of life after death and enternal glory or damnation, but because who we are impacts so many other people right here, right now.

From the sound of it the hospice gave him good care at the end. I guess there's that.

Hope everyone here is well and gives their loved ones an extra smooch today.

Well...that sucks. This has just ruined my morning, at the very least.

I'm not going to pretend that I liked his posting style, but there are worse crimes than being a bit of a dick on a forum that prides itself in being a free-for-all.

RIP.

Sokar was a polarizing yet entertaining poster. My condolences go out to his family.

This.

Whatever he was in real life, he was a complete asshole on this board and contributed absolutely nothing to Wordforge, other than providing entertainment for other assholes. If anything, he reveled in tormenting and running posters off the board.

I'm sorry he died in such a way and I truly hope he was loved by someone in real life, but I'm not going to be hypocrite (like many other in this thread) and mourn his permanent departure from Wordforge.

And this.

Mourning an irredeemable ass who had nothing to offer the world beyond being a loathsome bully just because he died is an act of extreme moral cowardice.

Sokar was not just some schmuck with whom you might have disagreed; he wasn't even just a run-of-the-mill asshole. Sokar was a person whose only apparent goal in life was to make the world a worse place for other people to be in and the world is definitively a better place for not having him in it any more.

He should have died quickly and painlessly rather than how he did, but we're all better off for him being dead and pretending otherwise is a disservice to truth, honesty, and moral well being.

I'm not sure how you could possibly know this. Does anyone's posting on Wordforge reflect the totality of their character?

Should we notify his family to check his buttcrack for a "Property of Wordforge" tag? We each get to show only as much of ourselves, or even an entirely invented version of ourselves, as we choose to here. None of us is entitled to the softer side of any of us.

I see nothing hypocritical about displaying the basic level of decency required to acknowledge that a person valuable to someone has ceased to exist, and that their death has caused pain to people who loved them. Even if you're not one of those people, recognizing that basic truth about life is in no way misplaced.

And, frankly, those who can't muster that basic level of human feeling aren't comporting themselves any better than Sokar did at his very worst.

Seconded.

Absolutely. In particular, being a bully isn't being a troll. Recognizing the difference between a troll and a bully is hugely important to a well functioning social system and a lot of wordforge's problems can be traced to the failure of management to do so.

Even during our recent animosity, I always assumed that Sokar was a perfectly fine person if you were sitting across from him at a Starbucks.

What that says about his behavior here, who knows.

The death of any forger is most unfortunate.
RIP Sokar.

it's always sad to lose a poster and most of a, a human being. can't say that we ever agreed on something or simply had a civil conversation, but what tamar said casts a different light on him. RIP.

Hard to know what to say. He went out of his way to be a complete and total asshole here in the worst possible ways. So, I'm with Ancalagon, I won't miss his presence. But as I've observed in the past, for many WF is performance art, I never assume that the online persona equates to the real-life personality.

Condolences to his family.

Man,

How many of us does this make now?

Perhaps we need a permanently stickied memorial thread at the top of the forum for all the regulars that have passed away.

I feel too damn old right now. But I also feel too young to have people younger than me in my community dying.

Nothing Tamar says can change the fact that Sokar was a person who found the Sokar persona amusing. Whether or not his real world persona matched, his real world persona was that of a truly horrible human being who found racist, sexist, anti-semitic etc. bullying to be the height of wit. If he didn't do those things off of wordforge he still found great enjoyment in doing them on wordforge.

Tolerating the Sokars of the world is a moral failing, albeit a redeemable one. Actually finding the Sokars of the world amusing marks a person as the lowest sort of filth.

Uh, no. But we could move those threads to another room, like the Archive and sticky them there once they're done with their initial run.

"Personas" are stupid.

At the risk of mucking up this thread more than you already have, how about you get your happy ass up and take a fucking walk outside. This forum is not the "world," and if someone had a problem they had a million other sites including this one called reality to partake in.

The fact that you let him get to you so bad that you can go on a his memorial thread and talk bad about a person you never met makes you one of the most deplorable people I've ever had the displeasure of associating with.

BLUF: Grow the Fuck Up.

RIP Sokar.

Man....why does this place have to be old enough that this crap keeps happening. I didn't like Sokar at all, but there is nothing gained in anger or animosity at the dead. Some kids lost a father and despite what kind of person Sokar was on here, no child should bury their parent so soon. RIP.

Sorry to hear you've decided to retire your dual, Tamar.

And what the fuck do you offer to the board exactly again?

Have you looked at the thousands of your posts?

Your posting isn't exactly what would be called "schmuck free" or "asshole free" or "irredeemable ass free" either.

You and Sokar had a lot in common when it comes to being posters on this board. It's just your politics that differed.

I rarely do duals..they bore me and it's too much work to be someone else consistantly and well. I have only done it maybe three times and always for a specific purpose.

I wouldn't have the patience for a decade of "Sokar". But I am flattered you think I have the ability to convince tons of people to post comments about my dual and get a funeral home in another state to stage a funeral for it.

.