Saturday, November 7, 2015

"Open Letter to Chris Bores" by Chico Edge

No videos again this week. Back to old habits huh Chris? Once again, I am left without content.
However, Chico Edge has provided something he wanted Chris to see.
Chico, I know I promised I would get this out earlier in the week, but Chris' big plea for attention, plus real life matters, delayed it a bit. Hopefully you understand.

To everyone else, enjoy.

I bring greetings to all of the readers of this blog. I have been a lurker for quite a while but I was not active in the comments section until recently. The catalyst was Chris publishing a book- Ghost Hunting 2.0. You may not know it from my errors in the comment section but I write a lot. I wouldn’t call myself a great writer but I get paid to write and my clients keep coming back with more work for me so I suppose somebody likes my content. If Chris had simply published his book and collected the revenues from whatever sales he makes then I would likely have forgotten about Ghost Hunting 2.0 by now. However, recent events have compelled me to write something in the hope that Chris sees it. He will likely ignore it but I feel I should not use that as an excuse to do nothing. I hope you will bear with me.

Dear Chris Bores,

You do not know me. If you did you will probably disregard whatever I try to tell you because you have shown a tendency to disregard practical advice even when it could be very helpful to you. I may never have had the 55th most subscribed channel on all of YouTube but I know something about writing, editing and publishing. I sincerely hope you will consider my words.

I installed my first broadband Internet connection in 2007, signed up for a YouTube account that same day and searching for one of my favorite hobbies- video games- lead me to James Rolfe. I discovered your channel soon after and I was aware of the controversy around your videos but I did not get involved in the drama. I think some of the things you did were deplorable but I bit my tongue as you deleted other peoples’ videos, had channels taken down, encouraged people to use that horrible Deal Dash website and somehow I managed to refrain from speaking out against your incredibly childish “shout out” and “parody” videos. I simply do not like Internet drama.

Things are different now. By publishing a book you have become a part of something that is very near and dear to me. I am a gamer but that is a hobby. Writing is a livelihood for me. You are now in my playground, so to speak.

I will give you some credit first. Writing a book is incredibly difficult; much harder than most people realize. You managed to become a scheduled guest on  Coast to Coast and your book at one point reached respectable levels on Amazons sales lists. That was largely due to Kindle Unlimited but hey, relatively few people accomplish these things so kudos to you.

With that out of the way, something else needs to be made clear. You have no respect for writers or what it takes to write a book. I read the entirety of Ghost Hunting 2.0 and it is clear to me you have no interest in developing a great book.

You see, Chris, some people want to be seen as a successful and published author while others simply want to write. You are part of the former group. You want the fame and recognition. You want to be seen as some kind of visionary who came up with a unique approach to solving mysteries that have stumped others for ages. You want to be credited for developing a new branch of psychology and you want to be acknowledged as the creator of the Bores Spirit Classification system. You want all of the accolades but you don’t want to work hard for it and you don’t want to go through the process of having your work peer reviewed or any of the other steps required to actually move science forward. I personally think ghost hunting is ridiculous but I am respecting the fact you consider it to be valid and worthy of peer review.

The final slap in the face came when you resorted to having fake reviews for your book posted on Amazon. It is evident that you are very unethical; how is it that you don’t even care that you are misleading people into buying your product? Can you honestly tell me you do not feel bad about this at all?

For many writers publishing on Amazon’s Kindle platform is their sole source of income. When I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree I lived on the money made from my writing until I found a job suited to my skills and experience. We may not always like getting unfavorable reviews but we accept them, learn from them and try to be better next time. For your own sake I suggest you have those fake reviews removed. They are so blatantly obvious and while they may provide you with a better star rating now in the end the fake reviews will only work against you and your efforts to establish credibility.

Part of me wants to leave you with constructive criticism. Something about developing a cohesive outline, working with an editor or at least a ghost writer and removing those painful bits of ego stroking in your book. I won’t do that because I know you won’t even consider it. As I noted before, you have no respect for writing. However, I will tell you that this endeavor if yours will have the same results of your other failed projects. Whether your ideas are good or not is open for debate but your problem lies in the execution of your projects. You are lazy, have no respect for the work of others and you lash out when offered constructive criticism.

Until you change these things then all of your future projects will be just as mediocre. Your biggest claim to fame will be having the 55th most subscribed YouTube channel several years ago. Is that what you really want?

55 comments:

  1. Daniel, I wonder if you will do an article about Chris Bores' history of sexist and misogynistic comments? I still can't believe he said that he would "jump off a roof", when he found out that "Ghostbusters" was being rebooted with an all-female cast?

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  2. Really solid letter. Hopefully this can pierce through Bores's thick skull. And I think it's fair to say that he has just as much respect for gaming as he does for writing.

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  3. Just curious, do we know what real "professionals" in the paranormal field think of Bores's work (not trusting the book reviews since a lot of those are fake as shit). If he's s joke to the gaming community, is he considered to be a joke to the paranormal too?

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    1. I don't want to do a whole James Randi screed, but the paranormal field is itself a joke field; a wishful-thinking exercise founded on what would be exciting if it were true, and hopelessly far removed from actual science. Nothing permanent is ever proven, established or known. The way to be a joke in ghost hunting is to put on a bad show.

      Bores is something of a success in that regard- he's done a lot of ghost hunts at the Arts Center and gotten on a national radio show. Testament to his perseverance, I think, but I don't trust him to realize that perseverance alone won't go far in the field of historical documentaries or even angry game reviews.

      He does best when he's saying something that can never be verified, challenged or checked. It's a shame he can't separate that from the larger world of people connected to, and dedicated to, facts.

      But to answer Hunter's question, I don't actually know what other paranormalists think about him.

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    2. I would think he's as big a joke in the paranormal field as he is in the gaming field.

      Ghost Hunters has more credibility than Bores, and they're jokes in the field.

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    3. The sadder part is REAL Paranormal Investigators are essentially people debunking scams, more often than not. To them, Bores is exactly probably what we know him as
      A con artist

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    4. Just saw on his Facebook page where he has a picture of him signing something for Grant Wilson, formerly of Ghost Hunters, and someone accused of faking evidence in his past ghost hunts before.

      Seems exactly like the kind of guy Chris would respect.

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  4. Thanks for publishing my letter, BatDan. The delay was perfectly understandable.

    Part of the tragedy of Chris Bores, in my opinion, is he likely could be a productive member of a successful team. Instead he insists on working alone. He acts out of all the characters, writes the scripts, does all of the editing, etc. If he focused on his strengths and learned to accept feedback I would wager he would be in a far better position today.

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  5. Kudos, Chico. Well written stuff.

    But in reality, I'm willing to bet my money that this letter will only fall on deaf ears unfortunately. If Bores ever reads this, it won't phase him in the slightest. He will and probably already has branded you as a troll and therefore assumes everything you say is wrong. Same thing to every past person who's tried to help Bores (ahem, Guru Larry), be it with an open letter or not.

    I'm sure you're already aware of all that though.

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  6. I'd suggest someone PM him this letter, but I know all he'd do is block them. (after insulting them of course)

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  7. Off topic a bit, but anyway, I made some crack on his Kung Fu video about him formerly dating his cousin. His mommie replied that the cousin was an adopted member of the family, no blood relation. Wonder if that is true?

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    1. That's old news. He had a cousin/girlfriend that might seem scandalous, but there's really no meat there because they aren't blood relatives due to adoption. His bad videos remain the primary reason to make fun of him.

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    2. Thanks, I missed that one (obviously). Maybe I should apoligize on that video, or just do some Boresesque deleting

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    3. It's your call. Admitting you were wrong is perhaps the most adult behavior there is. Pity Mr. Bores can't summon the strength.

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  8. This letter is a bit harsh considering how few sales Bores is getting from the book. Come on guys, I'm sure Bores is just trying to earn enough money to eat at this point.

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    1. How is this harsh?

      The book is riddled with spelling, grammar mistakes and lacks research.

      Why are you sympathetic to the same guy who said we're comparable to the Oregon shooter plus other comments that demonstrate he doesn't care about anyone but himself?

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    2. I am sure Bores is eligible for food stamps.

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    3. If Bores isn't making enough money, it's his own fault for wasting his time making shitty videos and hunting down things that aren't real.

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    4. Keith, this isn't about how many sales he makes from his book. It is his lack of respect for writers, the review process and science in general.

      There are many, many writers who publish their books on Kindle. All they want is to make a some money doing something they love and ideally entertain or provide information to their readers. Most of these writers care enough about their product to present it in an appealing matter and they understand do that some people will not like their work and leave a bad review.

      For some reason Chris believes he should be above bad reviews. In the early days of YouTube he simply had unfavorable responses deleted. He doesn't have that power on Amazon so he engages in a down vote bombing campaign to drive down unfavorable reviews and has resorted to a fake review campaign to boost his book's scores on Amazon and Good Reads. This is unbelievably offensive and a slap in the face to all of the writers who endure bad reviews of their own works and try to make a better product next time.

      When I review something I look at it from the perspective of whether or not another person might spend their money on something after reading my review. Chris clearly does not care about the quality of his work but he wants the sales so he is perfectly happy to mislead people into thinking his book is better than it actually is.

      He could have simply put all of this extra effort into improving his book before releasing it...

      Just to show I am not simply picking on Chris, I invite you to read my review of Once Bitten on Amazon. I was quite harsh on that book as well:

      http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1VZ8H5LHKC0NE/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdp?ie=UTF8

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    5. The problem is "considering how few sales". The sales are irrelevant, so why consider it?

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    6. Valiant effort but there is no way this nor anything else is getting through to an almost 40 year old, supposedly educated man who defends his spelling and grammar errors as being "what he wanted" and "not politically-correct".

      It's like seeing a grade school kid fall flat on his face trying to do a skateboard trick and then getting up and telling his friends "I meant to do that".

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    7. Didn't Chris Bores try to say that he deliberately used the same IP address as his Mom to show him, yeah right.

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    8. Yeah Bores was caught using the same IP as his mother. He claimed that he was using some sort of L337 H4xx0R 5k1lz to make people think that they both had the same IP address and he fooled them. Liars who think they’re clever tend to come up with some pretty convoluted shit when they have to cover their ass spontaneously.

      He also has accidentally switched back and forth between his and his mother's account mid-conversation but continued as if he was the same person speaking.

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    9. PFFT, Yeah right
      Bores can barely keep continuity and facts straight
      His Hacker Skills would be about as good as Hugh Jackman's in Swordfish

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  9. I don't buy that Bores earned his college degree. Like I said before, I'm more inclined to believe that he dropped out of high school for whatever retarded reason, be it from super-psycho-mommy Buggin or not, and never graduated. Bores couldn't even pass his SATs with his stupidity.

    Assuming Buggin's real for now, we should thank her for spoiling her "precious angel" son rotten with her over-pampering and (maybe) home-schooling.

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    1. Anyone feel like contacting Ashland University to try to see if he got a degree?

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    2. I really doubt that. Morons graduate from college all the time, especially at 3rd-rate schools.

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    3. PS, Ashland University has a 72% acceptance rate, which is very high in comparison to other colleges in the US.

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    4. Either way, it may be worth finding out from Ashland Uni, just so that we all know for sure.

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    5. I don't think Ashland would be at liberty to divulge that information.
      Even if they were, why fish for someone else to do it? Just contact them yourself.

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    6. Whether he graduated from there or not is irrelevant. Degrees don't mean shit these days other than fulfilling a job requirement.

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  10. I think Chris publicly admitted to not graduating. I think James Rolfe has a Bachelors in film of some kind. James Rolfe had a lot of luck with the timing of his field of study because he got done with school right before the advent of online video streaming. He was one of the earliest people to start uploading retro videogame reviews. If he would have been born just a little bit later he might have missed out on the AVGN idea and the character would have gone to someone else. That is just my opinion, I doubt though that anyone else would have come up with the idea if James dind' t. I think James is in a class of his own when it comes to work ethic. He really defies the boundaries of human capabilities with the sheer number and frequency of films he makes including the quality.

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    1. Didn't Chris go to college for film and broadcasting? I remember him talking about it in his 200th video special where he showed some footage of his early works (even though it was only for 8 seconds). But yeah James, Mike, Bootsy, pretty much the cinemassacre gang all went and graduated at University of the Arts in Pennsylvania.

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  11. Kinda cool you've been putting up fanstuff, Batdan. Maybe you should put up some of this blog's fan letters up every week or something? Dunno if the Bores will ever get this, but consistent fan interaction like this keeps everything fresh. Or so I think, anyway.

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  12. Off topic: There's apparently going to be a Skylanders show. Who's gonna bet Bores will build it up like hell and milk it for all its worth?

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    1. Hard to say.
      There's a Skylanders comic book and the only time he's mentioned that was on his site when it was announced. No videos about it or anything.

      Same might happen for the show. He'll mention it on his site, then never do anything with it.

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    2. Just like he does nothing with even the most helpful, most inoffensive piece of constructive criticism.

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    3. I wonder if he'll ever do a video on Beanie Babies. After all, he was obsessed with them back when they were popular the way he is obsessed with Skylanders now.

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    4. Correction: He was a fan of Meanies, which was a Garbage Pail Kid-like parody line of Beanie Babies. Copying and pasting the post from almost two years ago:

      Uatu the WatcherDecember 9, 2013 at 4:04 PM
      CHRIS BORES AND THE MEANIES

      TL;DR: He was using sockpuppets and being an ass 14+ years ago!

      In 1999, Chris was into Meanies: "A Meanie is a type of bean bag in the form of a stuffed animal toy. Unlike Beanie Babies, the Meanies line is humorous in nature, and were made to target a younger audience than Beanie Babies, usually by relying on bodily function and gross-out humor."[1]

      If you were a Meanies fan, the place to go for online discussion was the Official Meanies Meanie Club (OMMC) Yahoo group.[2] The creators of the Meanies knew about the OMMC, participated in live chats with its members[3,4] and sometimes sent them special notes[5], cards[6] and other gifts[7].

      Amazingly, the OMMC still exists. About a quarter of the messages are under one large thread --- only the first 160 or so characters of those messages are visible. But the rest are still complete.

      At the bottom of Bores' old Geocities page discovered by Shaolin Dave[8] appears the email address bixler23@yahoo.com. Well, the OMMC is Yahoo, and only used Yahoo accounts at that time, and bixler23 is there!

      On January 12, 1999, in one of the aforementioned Yahoo chats, Meanies creator Lance Kushner had this pleasant exchange with a 20-year-old Chris:[9]

      topdog_if says, "Hey - what were your least favorite characters?"
      bixler23 says, "boris the mucosaurus was dumb, i hope you shot the designer of him, hahaha"

      He also spent most of the chat session saying "hahaha" over and over again. Some of the other members didn't appreciate it:[10]

      "I agree with you Roadkill...
      oadkill, you are exactly right it shouldn't be a big deal. Bixler, you did sound rude... I even thought so. You may not have meant it to be but, it did sound"

      One more bixler23 gem:[11]

      "FREE MEANIE?? OW!!! Meanie world is sending out free meanies??? I want one!!! GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE!!!"

      The name "Chris Bores" then appears in this post by meanielover on February 23, 1999:[12]

      "Please read
      t has been brought to my attention that some of the members of this group for some reason or another, associate me with Chris Bores and therefore partially..."

      User meanienut, one of the group's founders, responds:

      "Meanielover and all From the Founders
      his club was organized to bring Meanie lovers together in a friendly atmosphere; a place where we can promote Meanies, sell buy, trade, chat and have some fun ..."

      Full text isn't available on the posts referenced so far, but we can see that bixler23 and Chris Bores have generated negative energy in the group. It's unclear whether they knew Chris Bores was bixler23 at this time. (And I think meanielover is also him, but I don't have proof on that one... yet.)

      Chris soon re-appears as louis_dot_com, sometimes signing his posts as "Louie" and sometimes "Louis." (Interesting note, Linda's middle name is Louise.[13]) He asks questions when he already knows the answer[14], is unable to follow simple directions[15,16], starts his own website when the group already had a great website and the only response is from Piratejacko who I also believe is him (again, no proof on that one)[17,18], and later just generally behaves like a negative ass once the Meanies excitement begins to wane[19].

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  13. Chris'll never read that. He's an ignorant jackass who can't take criticism.

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    1. What Crisbo needs to learn is that criticism is very important. Heck, in College, you are expected to accept criticism. It helps you know what the problem is and how you can fix it.

      Heck, Guru Larry even once offered some advice on how Crisbo could improve. And Larry was nice and didn't use mean words. Crisbo being Crisbo, well...yeah, if he keeps this up, he'll never improve.
      -_-

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  14. Chris Bores hasn't changed a bit in 8 years since he started.

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  15. It is after midnight Ohio time, and nothing. See you all Friday while I work on training my OR/AS event Zoroark and some Spanish. Happy Veteran's Day, and "hasta luego."

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  16. I was going through his videos on YouTube... that video where he did a tribute to Leonard Nimoy complete with him begging for subscribers? It's either been removed or set to private. I can't find it anymore.

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    1. Your comment made me think, last night, I was checking IG's playlists on his channel. There is one called "Lets Plays, Hanging with Irate Gamer", it had, i believe, 2 videos that were on it that said not available. I just checked again after reading your comment, and now not even the "this video is not available" thing is there. I wonder what those videos may have been.

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  17. some update video

    10 mins..lol

    how is an update video longer than a real video?

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    1. EDIT: LOL typical bores, he mentions the Amazon "accolades"

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    2. Chris Bores: "I Always come off humble..."


      LMAO...riiiight

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  18. On this new video he says, near the end, that he is "back on the pole". Did he just admit to being gay (not that there is anything wrong with that)?

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  19. Jesus Christ, everything that comes out of that man's mouth is shit.

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    1. BatDan, if you're going to make a post about this "update video," it will probably be short. It's just him stroking his ego and bragging about ghost garbage that nobody cares about for 10 minutes.

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    2. Oh my fucking God. He's literally telling us to bug people to get the Irate Gamer in town for a ghost event. He seriously used the words "bugging people." You truly are pathetic Chris.

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