I am offering no opinion what so ever because A. unfortunately there is zero chance I'm attending and B. I have absolutely no idea what the back story is (other than the generic comments about a meet-up gone wrong that have been made recently) but can I just say something real quick..?
I'm relatively new to this forum, but to forums in general I have been around since 1997. I've always thought it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to talk to people from all over the world about whatever and have been/still am a member of MANY different forums. I've seen more than a few people be vilified on boards for behavior at "real life get togethers" or their posting history that is VERY deserved (three summers ago at a gun/shooting forum get together a dude got drunk and started bump firing his AR into the air at midnight, I have never been more nervous and sure SOMEBODY was getting shot than I was at that point), and Gnu may very well deserve what he is getting (again, I have no clue)...but from an outsiders perspective it sure seems like Gnu has been getting massively trashed and is doing his best not to retaliate (either because he's "grown up" or knows it won't do any good, maybe both?) lately. '
Like I say, I know zero about the actual situation (and allegations of racism are concerning to me for sure), and these things don't usually stem form nothing, but is it possible that things he is being said to have posted as "trolling" are only looked at that way because of who he is? Take for instance the shooting thread he posted. Now you can say many things about how distasteful and what bad judgment was used when he posted/linked the video (like I said in that thread, I didn't watch it and I personally wouldn't post it), but I also responded to him in the thread and I don't think I would have if I considered him trolling. He's being blamed for "trolling" when I think he just used some bad judgement about whether to post the video or not, this is a discussion board and he brought up a topic for discussion that was relevant because it had just happened...
Again, not taking ANYBODY'S side, I have no right to and no idea who is "right" or "wrong", but when personal insults are being used in threads regarding everything from his judgement to his height it starts to feel like a witch hunt from the outside. I feel like I have to keep saying it because I don't want to sound like I'm defending somebody if they don't deserve to be defended, but to me it feels like these last few days have been a "pile on" mentality that is out of the ordinary for how this board usually responds to people.
Who knows though, maybe because I haven't seen it happen to a bunch of other people that should tell me there is more to the story here.