Patrick.net is an online forum, a bit like Reddit, but with much more freedom of speech. Almost anything goes, but a few things don't, such as deliberately personally insulting another user, or deliberately misrepresenting what another user said.
I got the patrick.net domain name back in 1995 when I was one day too late for patrick.com. Missing the .com name turned out to be fine. I prefer the .net name now because life is all about human networks. This site was just my personal blog from 1995 to 2004.
In 2004 I started writing about the housing bubble, which catapulted the site to national fame for a while. I was interviewed on NPR, on Nightline on TV, and in other corporate media that I have since learned to recognize as poison. Here are my original the articles about the housing bubble (the dates on them are much later because I updated them):
The big housing bubble popped in 2008, and traffic fell, since it was no longer controversial to assert that we really had had a housing bubble.
About then, I decided to just let the public discuss things with each other and wrote my own forum software. I'm a programmer, so that was fun. At first I was kind of disturbed at the number of conservatives on the site, but as I discussed things with them and saw San Francisco literally turn to shit under far-left Democrats, I changed my thinking.
And yet I didn't change my thinking all that much, because once again, I'm opposing corruption of government by the oligarchy. Before, my enemy was the NAR (National Association of Realtors) and I still think they are nothing but institutionalized crime, but there are bigger fish to fry now, especially since the worldwide campaign to inject every human with a dangerous and ineffective genetic experiment, which is still not approved by the FDA. (They approved "Comirnaty", which is not available, to deceive the public.)
It’s like Pharma just backed a truck up to the Progressive Values Factory; stole everything; modified core values in order to maim people, make money, and implement global totalitarianism; and the left is just out there smoking a cigarette on the loading dock saying, “Sounds good to me.” What!? What the heck happened to the left? Is there no one remaining in that tribe who is capable of logic and reason!? Quite literally the worst industry in the world stole the left’s most cherished values and no one on the left is the slightest bit offended by this (even though they are offended by everything else)!? We live in the bizarro upside down world.
I have slowly concluded that everything progressives say they stand for causes immense pain and suffering to millions of people while funneling billions of dollars upward to the oligarchy:
You can tip any other if you have any money in your patrick.net account. Click the 💰tip logo at the top of a post, or on a user's home page, which you can get to by clicking a user's name or icon. Then you can choose an amount to tip, in cents.
To add money, mail literal paper cash and your user name to:
patrick.net PO Box 85 Menlo Park, CA 94026
To contact a user, send him or her a tip. You can include a short note which will be included in the email he gets informing him or her of the tip.
Withdrawing money
If you have been tipped or paid by other users and want to get your money out, click on your user name or icon to go to your home page, then "transactions", and then "request a check". There is a $1 charge to get a check, so you need to have more than $1 in tips to get a check. There is also a 5% fee on the remaining amount, so if you have $10 in tips, the check you get would be for (10 - 1) x 0.95 = 8.55. If you have $100 in tips, the check you get would be for (100 - 1) x 0.95 = 94.05
You can also withdraw money you mailed in, less the check fee and 5%.
Site Rules
Do not deliberately insult the other users personally.
Do not deliberately insult the site.
Do not misquote people.
Do not post porn except in the tits thread. No actual sex and no homo porn please.
Do not post illegal content, unless the US law making the content illegal is itself clearly unconstitutional. In that case, please do post it!
Do not threaten another user with violence or you will be quickly and permanently banned.
Do not post spam.
Do not promote the obviously ineffective and very dangerous toxxine.
Flag misquotes, personal attacks, and attacks on the site with the "flag" link by each comment so that they will go into moderation where they will be reviewed by a moderator. Please do not flag comments just because you don't like the opinion expressed.
If you're wondering why your comment was flagged, please click the "edit" link on it. It should be pretty obvious when you read your own words again. If you think there was a mistake about the content's being flagged, please write p@patrick.net When you edit and save your own flagged comment, it will go back into moderation where it will get reviewed by a moderator again.
If you're suspicious that comments are flagged for political reasons, note that you can actually see any flagged comment in the html source of that page. Use "View Source" in your browser. Yes, it's inconvenient, but that's deliberate, to keep those comments out of the conversation stream.
Effective and recommended debate technique: 1. State your opponent's position so that he or she agrees with it 100%. 2. State points of agreement, and anything you learned from your opponent. 3. Give your reasoning for why your opponent is mistaken.
Site Functionality If you ignore another user, you will not see that user's threads or comments. There is a user ignore link on each comment. To see whom you're ignoring and to unignore, look on your edit profile page.
To get another user's attention, mention that user in a comment with an @ character prepended to his username ( for example @Patrick ) and then he or she will get an email of that comment, unless he or she has emails turned off.
If you include an image URL ending in .jpg, .png, or .gif it will be converted into the visible image in a thread or comment. You can also upload images and videos and pdfs (under 10MB) from your local computer.
You may not post large sections of copyrighted material unless you have explicit permission from the copyright owner. But excerpts for discussion are fine, and in fact protected by law.
If you include an embed video url from Rumble, Bitchute, Vimeo, NewTube, or BrandNewTube, the thread or comment will display the video. Please try to avoid YouTube urls, since YouTube routinely censors or demonetizes politically incorrect videos, such as those about the dangers of the toxxine.
These basic html tags work in threads and comments: a b blockquote br code del font hr i iframe img li ol p strike sub sup u ul video vsmall
You can surround a word or phrase with the * character to make it bold or the _ character to make it italic.
Direct Messaging
There is a comment box on the tipping page, so when you tip someone, you can add a short comment when you send the tip, and that comment will be included in the email the user gets notifying him or her of the tip. It's not free, but requiring only 1 cent, it's not expensive either.
As usual, no threats etc will be allowed. I'll have a copy of the note logged, so it's not entirely private. If you want to be more private, you can just include your email in the tip message when you tip another and ask him or her to write you back at that address.
Searching
Use + to require a word or - to exclude it Search for phrases by putting them in quotes: "Tunnel in the Sky" Search for the beginning of a word by appending the star character: Tunne*
If you click "pin" at the top of a thread, it will get saved to your pinned list. For example, here is patrick's pinned list: https://patrick.net/pinned?a=Patrick
There is a thread for each zip code in the US. You can have local discussions there about anything, or you can post things for sale, etc. To find the thread for a zip code, just do a search for the town name or zip code.
Thanks for trying it! I know almost all the regulars have at least a few cents to pay because I tipped them myself.
I think the idea is still missing something though.
People aren't going to mail in money to read articles unless there are a lot of good for-pay articles. But people aren't going to write a lot of good for-pay articles until there's a big audience which has already mailed in money.
First one is up. Dug into the "87,000" IRS agents to be hired, with supporting links. Set fee at 5 cents initially, dropped it to a penny for the sake of being a first attempt. It's not about the money, it's more about helping you develop the concept.
I also doled out a couple of tips to others in an attempt to get this party started!
I like your idea of asking a question and then paying for a good answer. It's like Quora, but with small payments instead of a subscription fee.
How about this:
- User asks a question as a new post. - Other users answer the question as locked comments and each sets a price on their response. - After 90 days, all comments on that post become visible to everyone for free.
Now how would you judge whether or not to pay for a certain locked comment?
- You could see how much that user has earned from responses so far. - The comment author should give some qualification of themselves, or why they think they have a good answer, in the first 40 words of their response. - Some other way?
I got the patrick.net domain name back in 1995 when I was one day too late for patrick.com. Missing the .com name turned out to be fine. I prefer the .net name now because life is all about human networks. This site was just my personal blog from 1995 to 2004.
In 2004 I started writing about the housing bubble, which catapulted the site to national fame for a while. I was interviewed on NPR, on Nightline on TV, and in other corporate media that I have since learned to recognize as poison. Here are my original the articles about the housing bubble (the dates on them are much later because I updated them):
https://patrick.net/post/1282720/2015-07-11-ten-reasons-it-s-a-terrible-time-to
https://patrick.net/post/1282721/2015-07-11-eight-groups-who-lie-about-the-housing
https://patrick.net/post/1282722/2015-07-11-37-bogus-arguments-about-housing
The big housing bubble popped in 2008, and traffic fell, since it was no longer controversial to assert that we really had had a housing bubble.
About then, I decided to just let the public discuss things with each other and wrote my own forum software. I'm a programmer, so that was fun. At first I was kind of disturbed at the number of conservatives on the site, but as I discussed things with them and saw San Francisco literally turn to shit under far-left Democrats, I changed my thinking.
And yet I didn't change my thinking all that much, because once again, I'm opposing corruption of government by the oligarchy. Before, my enemy was the NAR (National Association of Realtors) and I still think they are nothing but institutionalized crime, but there are bigger fish to fry now, especially since the worldwide campaign to inject every human with a dangerous and ineffective genetic experiment, which is still not approved by the FDA. (They approved "Comirnaty", which is not available, to deceive the public.)
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-september-21-2022
I have slowly concluded that everything progressives say they stand for causes immense pain and suffering to millions of people while funneling billions of dollars upward to the oligarchy:
https://patrick.net/post/1347530/2022-09-23-killing-with-kindness-to-make-billions
https://patrick.net/post/1333340/2020-06-25-how-we-got-here-please-share-this
https://patrick.net/post/1342889/2021-12-09-another-democrat-reaches-enlightenment
I have a list of all US Congressmen as separate threads, where you are encouraged to comment on how good of a job you think they're doing:
https://patrick.net/post/1377838/2022-11-29-us-congressmen-lists
I could go on, but you'll get the idea by reading the site.
The daily memes summarize the each day's content:
https://patrick.net/memes
Please subscribe and share them with friends and enemies.
I have a platform of ideas for improving America: https://patrick.net/post/1303173/2017-02-19-patrick-s-platform
Tipping
You can tip any other if you have any money in your patrick.net account. Click the 💰tip logo at the top of a post, or on a user's home page, which you can get to by clicking a user's name or icon. Then you can choose an amount to tip, in cents.
To add money, mail literal paper cash and your user name to:
patrick.net
PO Box 85
Menlo Park, CA 94026
To contact a user, send him or her a tip. You can include a short note which will be included in the email he gets informing him or her of the tip.
Withdrawing money
If you have been tipped or paid by other users and want to get your money out, click on your user name or icon to go to your home page, then "transactions", and then "request a check". There is a $1 charge to get a check, so you need to have more than $1 in tips to get a check. There is also a 5% fee on the remaining amount, so if you have $10 in tips, the check you get would be for (10 - 1) x 0.95 = 8.55. If you have $100 in tips, the check you get would be for (100 - 1) x 0.95 = 94.05
You can also withdraw money you mailed in, less the check fee and 5%.
Site Rules
Flag misquotes, personal attacks, and attacks on the site with the "flag" link by each comment so that they will go into moderation where they will be reviewed by a moderator. Please do not flag comments just because you don't like the opinion expressed.
If you're wondering why your comment was flagged, please click the "edit" link on it. It should be pretty obvious when you read your own words again. If you think there was a mistake about the content's being flagged, please write p@patrick.net When you edit and save your own flagged comment, it will go back into moderation where it will get reviewed by a moderator again.
If you're suspicious that comments are flagged for political reasons, note that you can actually see any flagged comment in the html source of that page. Use "View Source" in your browser. Yes, it's inconvenient, but that's deliberate, to keep those comments out of the conversation stream.
Effective and recommended debate technique:
1. State your opponent's position so that he or she agrees with it 100%.
2. State points of agreement, and anything you learned from your opponent.
3. Give your reasoning for why your opponent is mistaken.
Site Functionality
If you ignore another user, you will not see that user's threads or comments. There is a user ignore link on each comment. To see whom you're ignoring and to unignore, look on your edit profile page.
To get another user's attention, mention that user in a comment with an @ character prepended to his username ( for example @Patrick ) and then he or she will get an email of that comment, unless he or she has emails turned off.
If you include an image URL ending in .jpg, .png, or .gif it will be converted into the visible image in a thread or comment. You can also upload images and videos and pdfs (under 10MB) from your local computer.
You may not post large sections of copyrighted material unless you have explicit permission from the copyright owner. But excerpts for discussion are fine, and in fact protected by law.
If you include an embed video url from Rumble, Bitchute, Vimeo, NewTube, or BrandNewTube, the thread or comment will display the video. Please try to avoid YouTube urls, since YouTube routinely censors or demonetizes politically incorrect videos, such as those about the dangers of the toxxine.
These basic html tags work in threads and comments: a b blockquote br code del font hr i iframe img li ol p strike sub sup u ul video vsmall
You can surround a word or phrase with the * character to make it bold or the _ character to make it italic.
Direct Messaging
There is a comment box on the tipping page, so when you tip someone, you can add a short comment when you send the tip, and that comment will be included in the email the user gets notifying him or her of the tip. It's not free, but requiring only 1 cent, it's not expensive either.
As usual, no threats etc will be allowed. I'll have a copy of the note logged, so it's not entirely private. If you want to be more private, you can just include your email in the tip message when you tip another and ask him or her to write you back at that address.
Searching
Use + to require a word or - to exclude it
Search for phrases by putting them in quotes: "Tunnel in the Sky"
Search for the beginning of a word by appending the star character: Tunne*
If you click "pin" at the top of a thread, it will get saved to your pinned list. For example, here is patrick's pinned list: https://patrick.net/pinned?a=Patrick
There is a thread for each zip code in the US. You can have local discussions there about anything, or you can post things for sale, etc. To find the thread for a zip code, just do a search for the town name or zip code.