Hafitz Muhammad
2024-02-21 21:31:46 UTC
“Piss off sand-nigger. The only ‘lump’ I have is the big fucking wad of CASH…”
Lord Valve/Willie Whittaker when informed by a person of color of his diagnosis (March 1, 2020)
**Willie passed 13 months later from Lymphoma**
In their writings, the Greeks outlined the practice of civic moderation in an ideal state. Referred to as “The Body Politic”, they saw justice and injustice in the political discourse as comparable to health and illness in the body, and many writers saw political leaders as akin to physicians curing “diseased” communities. These ideas formed the basis of what we expect from politicians today. The health of the population and communities that comprise it depends on a healthy Body Politic. A corrupt Body Politic can usurp civil discourse and cause the breakdown of social order due to the general population's lack of faith and trust- and paranoia, conspiracy theories, hatred, and even the potential for violence.
The death of this NewsGroup alt.guitar.amps, and the death of one of it’s “champion” leaders - William “Willie” Whittaker / Lord Valve, mimics the death of the Body Politic.
Perhaps you came here searching for information about guitar amplifiers; if you are, you’ll need to go back pretty far to find any actual discussion about guitar amps.
Perhaps you came here looking for information about Willie, or maybe you are a family member looking into the past to get to know your relative a little better.
Of course, you would, because there is virtually no obituary posted anywhere, newspaper, internet, or otherwise. If you are curious, you would wonder why? If you are like most people, and you did not really know him, or know about this Newsgroup, you might find that strange.
If you are one of these people, you came to the right place. Because in this archive, you will find everything you need to know about William Allen Whittaker Jr. AKA Lord Valve. This is where he spent the majority of his waking time the last 24 years of his life, posting commentary, diatribes, etc. day in and day out from roughly 1997 to 2021, the year of his death.
Search the content here, and you will know why his family deliberately DID NOT post his obituary anywhere. You understand a family likely RELIEVED he is gone, and do not wish to be reminded of who he was and what he stood for.
The content will also conjure up a number of adjectives: Intelligent. Talented. Profane. Funny. Sarcastic. Impulsive. Agitator. Cruel. And at times, Mentally unstable and unbalanced.
Back to the “Body Politic”. Willie’s descent into a diseased Body Politic, a diseased mind, and thus a diseased body are well represented here and can be thought of in stages; what you will also find is that in certain cycles, his rantings spun further and further into the fascist/racist hard right.
Here is a general timeline:
1997-2000: semi-civil discourse; many technical spats with other people who had knowledge; these are the years the “Lord Valve” persona was established, and solidified as an “authority” on tube (valve) guitar amps.
2000 – 2004: Wille builds his “brand”, and starts to become more well-known, as he was doing amp tech for some prominent national figures, Derek Trucks being the most well-known. He also had affiliations with many manufacturers. AGA participation is very high, with many people posting about guitar amps. AGA actually starts to build… community.
Starting with the aftermath of the 2000 election, and the controversy surrounding it, this is where Willie coined the phrase “libtards” to label his “enemies” on AGA. It’s also where the rhetoric started to get really nasty and drift away from guitar amps, and towards politics mostly (for example Willie's cut and paste “And Now The News” segments culled from hard-right fascist news sources). Willie has an entire team of online boot-licking right-wing thugs. The thugs coalesce around Willie's right-wing diatribes and start to gang up on anyone who disagrees.
2004-2008: more of the same as the previous era, just intensifying, especially after the 2004 election cycle. More labeling, more intense tropes, and elements of racism creep into his writing. As a consequence, AGA participation starts to seriously decline.
2008-2016: The Obama election and Presidency. This is where Willie flew off the proverbial white supremacy deep end. He outwardly used racist tropes to label Obama and black people in general; he no longer posted about guitar amps; and his endorsements and affiliations with major national figures and manufacturers ran away, one by one.
2016 – 2021: The Trump years. Willie goes full on MAGA and Qanon. Parroting his Anti-hero Trump mostly, but somehow stays away from beong critical of COVID countermeasures and also not buying into the MAGA approach to bullshit remedies (interesting.. Willie was not stupid).
Bu 2020, all sense of decency and fairness is now gone, replaced by cruelty and nonstop attempts to humiliate anyone who he disagrees with. Posts on AGA now consist of Willie and only a couple of other people, maybe one “supporter” of his, and a couple trolls. AGA is dead.
Willie passes away April 28, 2021, from Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
THE END
MLV
About me:
I knew Willie “back in the day”, was a regular customer from 1998 to 2002. I had many phone conversations with him, learned about his military service; he said he was in the US Navy during the Vietnam era, and the Navy is where he learned electronics and tube electronics specifically. He once helped me source, really taking a lot of time, to find military-grade 6V6s when there were little to no options available for high-voltage amps. I still have the wired Koss headphones he had on special for a few years. And I sincerely miss his tube catalog emails. They had a lot of information and were gold.
It was when we had a disagreement here on AGA that things took a turn. I never took AGA seriously, and when I sarcastically and for the sake of humor got into with him and called him out about his behavior, I struck a little too close to home. Apparently, and I found this out after his death, some of his online personality could be attributed to his self-proclaimed Asperger’s diagnosis. Whether the diagnosis was true or not, it did seem to fit what I know about Aspergers. In any event, what I got back were seriously nasty threats of retribution including violence. I even tried to call him and reason with him, but to no avail. I mean, I gave him a little taste of his own medicine – after all, I learned trolling from HIM, the master. I got off of AGA and forgot about it.
Anyway, flash forward a few years, and AGA and “Lord Valve” is mentioned on another forum. I decide to check back in (this is maybe 2017?) and wow what a shithole AGA had become- Willie had scared nearly everyone off, and only trolls were left.
He looked... sad and lonely to me. I felt… sorry for him. Like he needed a foil, and yes, I also felt that his worst impulses (racist, fascist, etc) could be agitated, and he would expose himself as the vile person he really was.
So I invented an “enemy”, one that he would really have it in for, and that would be too tantalizing to resist.
A Muslim man.
To further heighten the troll, I used HIS name “Muslim Lord Valve”, and started posting the Koran, a few lines at a time, translated into Arabic.
Borrowing a tactic from an earlier Troll who went by the name “Jarl Sigurd” (google him LOL) I posted ENDLESS passages – and NEVER broke character.
He of course, and predictably, responded right away. And called me every nasty, awful, cruel, racist name he could come up with. Oh, and he was VERY creative.
One comedic side note, I would write a response in English, translate to Arabic, and then back to English.. and the results were seriously funny – like a real Muslim who did not speak English well, attempting to “idiomatic” English (Willie’s words – he picked up on it!). It's all there.
Willie died only a couple days after a “flame war” with a fake Muslim, whom he despised, and who brought out the very worst in him. It probably brought him great joy.
I’d like to think so.
YMMV
Lord Valve/Willie Whittaker when informed by a person of color of his diagnosis (March 1, 2020)
**Willie passed 13 months later from Lymphoma**
In their writings, the Greeks outlined the practice of civic moderation in an ideal state. Referred to as “The Body Politic”, they saw justice and injustice in the political discourse as comparable to health and illness in the body, and many writers saw political leaders as akin to physicians curing “diseased” communities. These ideas formed the basis of what we expect from politicians today. The health of the population and communities that comprise it depends on a healthy Body Politic. A corrupt Body Politic can usurp civil discourse and cause the breakdown of social order due to the general population's lack of faith and trust- and paranoia, conspiracy theories, hatred, and even the potential for violence.
The death of this NewsGroup alt.guitar.amps, and the death of one of it’s “champion” leaders - William “Willie” Whittaker / Lord Valve, mimics the death of the Body Politic.
Perhaps you came here searching for information about guitar amplifiers; if you are, you’ll need to go back pretty far to find any actual discussion about guitar amps.
Perhaps you came here looking for information about Willie, or maybe you are a family member looking into the past to get to know your relative a little better.
Of course, you would, because there is virtually no obituary posted anywhere, newspaper, internet, or otherwise. If you are curious, you would wonder why? If you are like most people, and you did not really know him, or know about this Newsgroup, you might find that strange.
If you are one of these people, you came to the right place. Because in this archive, you will find everything you need to know about William Allen Whittaker Jr. AKA Lord Valve. This is where he spent the majority of his waking time the last 24 years of his life, posting commentary, diatribes, etc. day in and day out from roughly 1997 to 2021, the year of his death.
Search the content here, and you will know why his family deliberately DID NOT post his obituary anywhere. You understand a family likely RELIEVED he is gone, and do not wish to be reminded of who he was and what he stood for.
The content will also conjure up a number of adjectives: Intelligent. Talented. Profane. Funny. Sarcastic. Impulsive. Agitator. Cruel. And at times, Mentally unstable and unbalanced.
Back to the “Body Politic”. Willie’s descent into a diseased Body Politic, a diseased mind, and thus a diseased body are well represented here and can be thought of in stages; what you will also find is that in certain cycles, his rantings spun further and further into the fascist/racist hard right.
Here is a general timeline:
1997-2000: semi-civil discourse; many technical spats with other people who had knowledge; these are the years the “Lord Valve” persona was established, and solidified as an “authority” on tube (valve) guitar amps.
2000 – 2004: Wille builds his “brand”, and starts to become more well-known, as he was doing amp tech for some prominent national figures, Derek Trucks being the most well-known. He also had affiliations with many manufacturers. AGA participation is very high, with many people posting about guitar amps. AGA actually starts to build… community.
Starting with the aftermath of the 2000 election, and the controversy surrounding it, this is where Willie coined the phrase “libtards” to label his “enemies” on AGA. It’s also where the rhetoric started to get really nasty and drift away from guitar amps, and towards politics mostly (for example Willie's cut and paste “And Now The News” segments culled from hard-right fascist news sources). Willie has an entire team of online boot-licking right-wing thugs. The thugs coalesce around Willie's right-wing diatribes and start to gang up on anyone who disagrees.
2004-2008: more of the same as the previous era, just intensifying, especially after the 2004 election cycle. More labeling, more intense tropes, and elements of racism creep into his writing. As a consequence, AGA participation starts to seriously decline.
2008-2016: The Obama election and Presidency. This is where Willie flew off the proverbial white supremacy deep end. He outwardly used racist tropes to label Obama and black people in general; he no longer posted about guitar amps; and his endorsements and affiliations with major national figures and manufacturers ran away, one by one.
2016 – 2021: The Trump years. Willie goes full on MAGA and Qanon. Parroting his Anti-hero Trump mostly, but somehow stays away from beong critical of COVID countermeasures and also not buying into the MAGA approach to bullshit remedies (interesting.. Willie was not stupid).
Bu 2020, all sense of decency and fairness is now gone, replaced by cruelty and nonstop attempts to humiliate anyone who he disagrees with. Posts on AGA now consist of Willie and only a couple of other people, maybe one “supporter” of his, and a couple trolls. AGA is dead.
Willie passes away April 28, 2021, from Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
THE END
MLV
About me:
I knew Willie “back in the day”, was a regular customer from 1998 to 2002. I had many phone conversations with him, learned about his military service; he said he was in the US Navy during the Vietnam era, and the Navy is where he learned electronics and tube electronics specifically. He once helped me source, really taking a lot of time, to find military-grade 6V6s when there were little to no options available for high-voltage amps. I still have the wired Koss headphones he had on special for a few years. And I sincerely miss his tube catalog emails. They had a lot of information and were gold.
It was when we had a disagreement here on AGA that things took a turn. I never took AGA seriously, and when I sarcastically and for the sake of humor got into with him and called him out about his behavior, I struck a little too close to home. Apparently, and I found this out after his death, some of his online personality could be attributed to his self-proclaimed Asperger’s diagnosis. Whether the diagnosis was true or not, it did seem to fit what I know about Aspergers. In any event, what I got back were seriously nasty threats of retribution including violence. I even tried to call him and reason with him, but to no avail. I mean, I gave him a little taste of his own medicine – after all, I learned trolling from HIM, the master. I got off of AGA and forgot about it.
Anyway, flash forward a few years, and AGA and “Lord Valve” is mentioned on another forum. I decide to check back in (this is maybe 2017?) and wow what a shithole AGA had become- Willie had scared nearly everyone off, and only trolls were left.
He looked... sad and lonely to me. I felt… sorry for him. Like he needed a foil, and yes, I also felt that his worst impulses (racist, fascist, etc) could be agitated, and he would expose himself as the vile person he really was.
So I invented an “enemy”, one that he would really have it in for, and that would be too tantalizing to resist.
A Muslim man.
To further heighten the troll, I used HIS name “Muslim Lord Valve”, and started posting the Koran, a few lines at a time, translated into Arabic.
Borrowing a tactic from an earlier Troll who went by the name “Jarl Sigurd” (google him LOL) I posted ENDLESS passages – and NEVER broke character.
He of course, and predictably, responded right away. And called me every nasty, awful, cruel, racist name he could come up with. Oh, and he was VERY creative.
One comedic side note, I would write a response in English, translate to Arabic, and then back to English.. and the results were seriously funny – like a real Muslim who did not speak English well, attempting to “idiomatic” English (Willie’s words – he picked up on it!). It's all there.
Willie died only a couple days after a “flame war” with a fake Muslim, whom he despised, and who brought out the very worst in him. It probably brought him great joy.
I’d like to think so.
YMMV