Part of Stan's staying power is his ability to get email accounts from domains that couldn't kick him off, even when he violated their Terms Of Service (which was an everyday occurence). For 7 months on amw-a, his email domain was AOL, much to our dismay, for many of our regular posters at the time were AOLers and thus had no killfile.
Happily for the whole newsgroup, in March of 1999, AOL updated many of its features and added new ones, including a killfile! It also appeared that all of our 100s of abuse reports and dozens of phone calls were finally beginning to show results, for AOL cancelled Stan's then-current account. However, it wasn't enough and Stan came back, with back-up! It's unknown if Stan actually enticed a Newbie, named Conrad Dobler, to side with Stan on many of the 'issues' he was trying to convey to us; this included a large debate about the Freedom Of Speech Amendement.
Stan may have hoped that Conrad's presence would've helped him win, since his presence was forcing many regs -some who'd been there for years- to leave, but any efforts on his part were in vain. AOL finally booted him completely: lock, stock, and barrel!
However, Stan was not phased in the slightest and went on a 'shopping spree' for new emailers. He found many, posted from many and was booted from many. After being booted from *those* 4 additional accounts, Stan went thru *another* round of different emails. He'd even post from *all* of them in the *same day*!
This particular round of emails started completely disappearing from amw-a around Labor Day. He returned 'in time for the holidays' 1999. I personally didn't keep *that* close a watch on amwa during the Spring of 2000 so I cannot tell you what went on then.
Sometime in late summer/early fall, Stan re-appeared on AOL. So did another companion troll named Free Thinker. This troll seems more content to counter Stan almost post-for-post. Free Thinker's battle is with Stan and I *personally* have never seen Free Thinker attack another amwa participant (but I could be wrong). Because Free Thinker wages his (or her?) war with Stan *on* the newsgroup (and because of his/her use of suggestive language), Free Thinker is often considered a troll. Free Thinker mysteriously stopped posting at some point during the late summer/early fall and so did Stan.
Then in late November 2000 (in time for elections), Stan returned and was booted from AOL once again. Stan now uses 2 emails (one is another AOL account) and is up to his usual shtick. Free Thinker has returned as well.
In Early January, Free Thinker left and Stan got himself a new account. A long (read: nearly 2 weeks) cross-posting flame war ensued shortly thereafter. All throughout January 2001, Stan kept changing his nickname while maintaining the same current email addy/account. This name-switching is due to the fact that not all killfiles kill the email address itself, but rather the onscreen name.
By summer 2001 Stan was aggrivating rec.music.country.western, alt.music.who, alt.music.red-hot-chili-peppers, alt.fan.backstreet.boys, alt.music.nsync, alt.fan.britney-spears and cross-posting to us. He still aggrivates rec.music.dementia on occaision since many amwa posters post there as well. For a few weeks it had gotten very political again.
After those few weeks of political stuff, Stan actually cooled down a bit on amwa. Apparently this is because he started wreaking more havoc in other newsgroups. We could only see them when he cross-posted them to us. It had gotten *so* bad by last week of September, that a couple of members of alt.fan.backstreet.boys actually came over to amwa to ask for our help.
Update 12/07/02: After a few more crossposting wars, it appears from these other posts that other newsgroups are just as adamant as we are in trying to get rid of him, tho some posters are a little more extreme. A few people even started posting Stan's home address, did a whois, and then posted the whole thing. Meanwhile, the crossposts still continue (tho with fewer threads) and Stan has finally been kicked from his airnews and teranews servers after a long time with them. Stan's back on AOL again.
For the extra gory details, go to "The Stan-dom Menace" for for all of this and more.
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