Not OK Now

A bomb was dropped on the Tennessee blogosphere this afternoon as blogger SouthKnox Bubba suddenly upped and quit. His old site was here, but it's been completely taken down and replaced with a "Game Over" graphic. No idea if the old site will come back in some form or not at this time.

There is some email from a few folks who were able to contact SKB. Try the Say Uncle link above, or go to Newsrack Blog for what little is known tonight. Both link to a lot of other folks who are talking about his. It appears to boil down to blogging becoming a hassle for Bubba and him wanting to spend more time with his family. But the fact that the entire blog and all its archives, and everything to do with the Rocky Top Brigade, are all gone argues for something more. He didn't just stop, but completely obliterated all traces. That's odd.

From Knoxville, SouthKnox Bubba, or SKB or Bubba, is Tennessee's premier liberal ("progressive" became his word of choice about mid-way through last year) blog, and the number two or three blog in the state, after internet legend Instapundit and maybe tying with Tennessee's premier conservative blogger online newsmagazine Bill Hobbs. SKB argues his Democratic politics passionately, fiercely and well. It drew a lot of other liberals and progressives to his blog. He was also a loud critic of Knoxville's "good ol' boy" network that ran the civic and development front. It was this criticism that may have led to his quitting.

From the beginning, SKB has been pseudonymous. He occasionally leaked small bits of information about himself: that he was a private business owner; carefully obscured photos of his head in a cap (looking a bit like Dale Gribble); nature photos of his neighborhood. He was known in real life to only a few people, who kept his pseudonymity. SKB said that it was necessary because he worked in a very conservative field and if his very liberal views were known to his customers, it might cause financial problems.

Well, you can see what's coming.

Brian Conley is the publisher of the Knoxville alt-weekly, Metropulse, and is also a developer of downtown properties. SKB was often a harsh critic of his plans and actions. When Conley shut down the Metropulse message forum, SKB resurrected it as BubbaBlabon his own website. Conley allegedly had an employee who recognised Bubba's neighborhood in one of the photos and was able to guess the address from the angles in the pictures. Conley may (he initially said he did, but later denied it) have used his access to credit histories (as an employer, via Metropulse) to discover SKB's real name and all kinds of other personal information.

Conley then began playing childish games with SKB, such as dropping his wife's name in one email and sending a package to his address to see if it was accepted. This went on for several months.

Then, an SKB criticism of an article in the Metropulse and some intemperate remarks by others in comments led Conley to send vaguely threatening and intimidating emails to SKB. Fearing an outing by Conley, SKB reacted by outing himself: as Randy Neal, a banking software designer. Neal then posted the entire email exchange on his own blog for readers to ponder. It was damning to Conley. This led to a huge hubbub in the East Tennessee blogosphere and a tremendous backlash against Conley.

But it seems the damage was done. SKB continued blogging as though it was all the same, but some readers have noted that lately his tone has changed. Some are speculating that being outed did in fact affect his software business negatively, and SKB has been forced to close his blog to protect his income. Again, no one knows yet as Neal hasn't said much.

Why didn't I blog on this? Well, I had a run-in with SKB myself. One that led me to resign from the Rocky Top Brigade. I chose (and regret it now) to keep the whole thing quiet, mostly to avoid starting any kind of flame war or inter-blog ugliness that might drag in the RTB. None of the link stuff on my blog changed, but that's only because I'm lazy and dread having to update hundreds of links.

A couple of months ago, SKB sent around a "new" set of "guidelines" for the Rocky Top Brigade (RTB). It was mostly the imposition of a speech code on RTB bloggers. The way it was set up for people who might be interested in joining the RTB, you had to agree to the "new" "guidelines" first, before you went to the sign-up page where you pledge to bleed orange, have some connection to Tennessee and join the search for an good under-$20 single malt scotch whiskey (among other fun things). In other words, you had to agree to the speech code to become a member. In those "guidelines" SKB let his animosity against Bill Hobbs get the better of him.

Now to explain that! Bill and Neal are polar political opposites. Hobbs can keep it impersonal, but SKB didn't. Hobbs can hit hard, but Neal hit with invective and characterisations. He got where he deleted comments from Hobbs and set a re-direct so that any incoming links from Hobbs' blog were sent instead to FreeRepublic.com. He ended with effectively banning Hobbs from his site. It was all pretty childish, but since it was confined to SKB's blog, it wasn't much of a problem for others.

With the "new" "guidlelines," that changed, in my opinion. Neal wrote, in his official capacity as the organiser and maintainer of the RTB:

You should not attack another Rocky Top Brigade member's politics or ideology on your blog except in self defense if they attacked you first (which under this rule should not occur) or unless the other blogger is Bill Hobbs. Opposing points of view and civil debate are, of course, encouraged. Unless you are Bill Hobbs.

It's one thing to rag someone on your own blog, but to use the RTB this way, to me, crossed a serious line, since Bubba was the organiser, leader, maintainer and final authority of the RTB.

This was posted to SKB's blog along with some greetings to new RTB members. I posted a comment to SKB and expressed my concerns:

I'm rather deeply troubled by this change in the RTB Guidelines....

I know that you and Bill have had a terrible row going for a while now. How or why or whom doesn't matter since it has been between you and him and has been kept separate from the RTB itself. I've also noted how you have used your own blogrolls to push the progressive agenda you favor at the expense of slighting others in the RTB. All that's been fine because this is your blog.

You have, until now, been admirable in your efforts to keep explicit politics and the personal out of the RTB umbrella itself. But I think this latest change has crossed a line and finally commingled the two.

The "it's only a joke" excuse does not work. That's merely cover. You have still made the point and codified something. Saying "ha ha" afterwards only implies cowardice on your part.

I would seriously ask you to reconsider this passage, with an eye to deleting it or rewording it with no mention of Bill. If you believe it right and proper as is, then I must reconsider my membership in the RTB. And believe me please when I tell you that I say that with the heaviest of hearts.

He replied rather snarkily and I commented back. After a short exchange, in which I officially resigned the RTB, all of these comments were deleted! Gone, except for a single, cryptic post by someone else in the now different comment thread:

How "Nixonian" of him. :-)

This isn't the first or only time Bubba has deleted comments, or whole posts. He does it regularly, as well as editing some words or comments to help defeat search engines, as he did on the main discussion thread about he Conley outing on BubaBlab.

Michael Silence, a reporter and blogger for the Knoxville News-Sentinel became a second front (Sorry Mike!) in the squabble, where SKB and I exchanged comments:

136 [members of the RTB]. Mike Hollihan just resigned because he doesn't like the new membership guidelines.
Posted by: skb at April 11, 2005 03:18 PM

I didn't like SKB allowing his animus for Bill Hobbs to invade "official" RTB stuff. He has been pretty scrupulous up to today. I posted my reasons in SKB's comments, where we briefly discussed it. SKB has since deleted all of this from his comments, adding a new reason to withdraw. What a Stalinist, rewriting history on the fly. I felt bad about withdrawing earlier, but much less so now.
Posted by: mike hollihan at April 11, 2005 08:07 PM

Stalinist! Hahahahaha. Yes, we will crush you under the iron boot of blog authoritarianism. Dude, way too much drama.
Posted by: skb at April 12, 2005 12:19 AM

P.S. Mike, I was doing you (really both of us) a favor by deleting the over-the-top comments. They were quite embarassing.
Posted by: skb at April 12, 2005 12:20 AM

No. I stand by what I wrote, which is why I posted it. *You* are the one who has something to hide, which is why *you* deleted it. Dude.
Posted by: mike hollihan at April 12, 2005 12:20 PM

Everybody's got something to hide 'cept me and my monkey.
Posted by: skb at April 12, 2005 07:37 PM

Why do I always get the image in my head of SKB dancing around the house in a little Shirley Temple dress, going "la la la la la, I'm not listening... oooh you make me so mad I could pout.."
Posted by: Barry at April 13, 2005 09:48 AM

I don't know, Barry. You seem awfully fixated on dancing around in little dresses.

FYI, Mike's comment was totally off topic and totally inappropriate for the blog post, which was about new RTB members. Not exactly a pleasant way to welcome new blogs, besides being utterly ridiculous, similar to your Shirley Temple remarks.

You two should get together and start a drama club.
Posted by: skb at April 13, 2005 11:07 AM

Nope. Unless you modify the post too, in tiny type at the bottom it says:

"Also, existing members please review the new and improved and consolidated-in-one-place Membership Guidelines."

That is what I was addressing. Right on topic. Again, post the comments and let readers decide for themselves.

What's your obsession with drama anyway? You've used that phrase repeatedly. Given your posts during the 2004 Presidential elections, I'm thinking pot-kettle here....

Ugliness all around. I dropped the whole thing there and let it lie.

I hate when any prolific, intelligent and passionate blogger who writes as well as SouthKnox Bubba quits blogging, but you can see why that sadness might be mixed for me. (I am, according to Bubba, the only person to resign officially from the Rocky Top Brigade.) Of course, this only happened earlier today and, based on how he handled the Conley outing, it wouldn't be a surprise for him to change his mind tomorrow. Or he might get back to blogging after a short break, a la yours truly. We won't know for a while yet.

The loss of Tennessee's top liberal/progressive blogger -- if it sticks -- will have devastating impact on Tennessee blog-politics in the coming 2006 elections. Left Wing Cracker, a Memphis blogger and Democratic activist, sounded pretty upset when he broke the news in the comments in the post down below. We don't yet know if anyone can step into, much less fill, SKB's shoes or if anyone will even try, maybe hoping SKB will come back instead. It's disarray when already-reeling Democrats in Tennessee least need it.

Then there's the whole issue of the Rocky Top Brigade, whether it will continue or have to be reconstituted from scratch. I'm no longer on the RTB Yahoo mailing list, so I'm not privy to those discussions. If some who is wants to share with Memphis readers, please feel free. Will Neal share the old RTB files, or not? Will folks have to figure it all out and try again? Or will the RTB disappear? Maybe break down into political wings? Again, who knows at this point?

Au revoir, SouthKnox Bubba. Vive Randy Neal. OK, then.

UPDATE: 10:45PM Over at one of the successor forums to BubbaBlab, there is some talk that "high stakes threads" and provocative agitation by an allegedly pseudonymous Brian Conley had something to do with the SKB shutdown.

UPDATE: 11:15PM Hmmm.... That's interesting. When I try some old SKB site URLs I have in saved emails I'm getting 404 errors (file not found). But when I try some old RTB URLs, I'm finding this and this still there. If I had to guess, I'd say he renamed the main SKB directory but not some others. If you want to save the RTB stuff, better hurry before he closes that off too.

UPDATE: 11:45PM Still getting a 403 (access forbidden) error trying to get to the main page, but SKB has now added a short message to the blog page under the graphic:

So long, and thanks for all the fish!
For those of you who are wondering, yes, this
blog and this website are no more.

It was fun,but lately it has become too much
like work and not so much fun. Contrary to wild
speculation around the internets, that's pretty
much all there is to it. It's a personal decision,
and that's all.

Thanks to everyone for reading and for your
participation over the years. With that, I bid
you adieu.

Trying to force errors to see where I end up, I notice that I'm getting 404 errors on the "Error Page" document. Did he have a custom error page that's maybe in the main directory?

MIDNIGHT UPDATE Thomas over at Newsrack blog is scouring the blogosphere for posts mentioning the SKB shutdown. Quite a few now. No more new information than earlier, just a lot of sad goodbyes and some speculation.

POST-MIDNIGHT UPDATE For those of you who want to know what South Knox Bubba's blog looked like, or want to stir the ashes to see what you can divine as to why he quit, you can try this cached Google page, from this week or this cached page from the end of June. The caches even list the number of comments and the last commenter, but since they are part of the deleted or renamed /skblog/ directory they are not viewable.

You can learn more about the Conley/Neal kerfuffle from the Goggle search page here.

UPDATE 12:45AM I'll try to check the situation one more time in the morning, but in the event I can't I'll be away from the keyboard all day, so maybe no updates until late Wednesday, if events warrant.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE No change at SKB as of 8:30AM. Memphis' LeftWing Cracker has thoughts.

Thanks for the link from Say Uncle this morning. He is cautioning a "wait and see" attitude on making decisions about the RTB, partly in the hope SKB changes his mind and partly out of respect. He also corrects me, in comments, about where various blogs stand in terms of traffic.

As noted in the last update, I will be away from the keyboard today, so no updates or posts until I return this evening. If there's anything you want to note, or a link you think needs mentioning, please leave word in the comments. Thanks.

And thank you for stopping by. Please feel free visit the rest of the blog (on Memphis media and poltics, and science geekery). Maybe hit the PayPal tipjar, if you'd like to help.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 11PM It seems that Google has been scrubbed of anything SouthKnox Bubba. I saved a file copy of the Google cache for the last time it spidered his blog: July 19th. You can read it here. There's nothing in terms of explaining his disappearance, just the last posts before he shut down.

If you want more discussion and speculation of the shutdown, go to the new Blab site. A new theory is being discussed, where a Conley downtown development deal worth millions that was criticised by Bubba was the impetus for a behind-the-scenes prod to Bubba to quit.

Thomas of Newsrack blog continues to collect SKB-related posts. He also posts a link to a mirror of the RTB webpage.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 11:30PM It was bound to happen. Someone snapped up all the main variants of rockytopbrigade.org (com/net/info/biz....). So far, he's posted just the Constitution of the RTB and the main membership list, saying he's "holding it" until Bubba gives the word.

UPDATE THURSDAY NOON Well, this post is now getting visitors from the Knoville 2000 Yahoo discussion list. I know little to nothing about Knoxville, but this was an "insider's" discussion list Bubba would occasionally mention as the "K2K." Welcome! I don't know what's being said, since I'm not a member, but if someone wants to pass that information along or summarise it, I'd like to know.

There has also been a strong dissenting voice about Bubba's sudden disappearance. Mountain Girl takes Bubba to task for leaving without warning, and leaving a mess behind for others to clean up.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. Bubba did a wonderful job for the grassroots movement and he provided a "home" to us Rocky Toppers. I do, however, think it was quite rude to throw us away without a word of warning. We have supported SKB in situations where his credibility was attacked.

One more mention of Newsrack blog, where Thomas is continuing to collect blog posts on the Bubba-bye. (Oooh! That's my "newspaper name" for this: the Bubba-Bye. Copyright 2005, Half-Bakered and Mike Hollihan.)

Things seem to be petering out at this point, so I'm going to stop updating this post. In the event more news comes, or Bubba himself speaks, I'll start a new post and put the link here.

Thanks to everyone for stopping here. It's more than a little ironic that a Tennessean who isn't a Rocky Top member anymore has become the chronicler of the Bubba-bye; that's not lost on me. I must repeat, if it wasn't clear in the main post, that I do regret Bubba's leaving and hope that he will return, as full of spit and vinegar as ever.

If nefarious agendas were responsible for his departing, and not just personal despair, I hope that too comes to light. If powerful, monied interests squashed Bubba to protect their profits, we need to know. As a friend of mine always said, "What's done in the dark will come to the light."

Thanks and take care.