Sumo Talk revisited (split from another unrelated topic)

[yorikiried by fate 2,029]

2 hours ago, Churaumi said:

Didn't know you were part of that. I guess I'd ask why so negative about the Kyokai all the time? There's plenty to critique that doesn't involve some of frankly outlandish claims that get made on there. If the organization is that corrupt, why bother following it?

Those are difficult question to answer satisfyingly in the off-topic hijacking of another thread. Let's say back then (my contributing career spanned from Nagoya 2008 to Hatsu 2013) the ST community (i.e. forum) was still existing and actually (in a very toxic, early-YT way) healthy. At that time, there was a (partly imagined) rivalry ongoing between SF snowflake purists, who wouldn't accept the thought a thrown bout, even if confessions written in the rikishis' own blood were filed to the Vatican archives, and the nutcase tinfoil hats of ST, who would not accept that any consequential bout could be untarnished.

Naturally, it was more fun to rile up the purists.

Note that I was and am moderate, at least that's my self-perception. Some insights from the time were valuable, IMHO. Nowadays it's pretty wild, but honestly, I haven't read anything there for years. And the forum is long dead.

If you are interested in what I poured out back then, here's my debut report, and two other random days, like here and there.

For all the criticism towards Mike, he was the one who organized some semi-legal stream acquired through some technical gizmo in order to provide live footage back then for the masses, when no-one else could watch otherwise.

[Kintamayama 45,495]

37 minutes ago, yorikiried by fate said:

For all the criticism towards Mike, he was the one who organized some semi-legal stream acquired through some technical gizmo in order to provide live footage back then for the masses, when no-one else could watch otherwise.

Really? Did not know that. Can you divulge some more details? I actually did some translating for ST for a while, everyone was really nice to me, especially Mike. Our forum owner contributed excellent professional commentary as well. I got into a really wild flame war with Clancy Kelly, one of the more controversial contributors there, and we ended up becoming great friends and he even was here for a visit and we met. 

[Churaumi 745]

5 hours ago, yorikiried by fate said:

Those are difficult question to answer satisfyingly in the off-topic...

Thanks for answering. I realized after sending I might have sounded a bit hostile, but am not trying to be. It is just about the most internet thing to have a fan site that seems rather down on the thing it is supporting. Looks like a lot of this happened before my time as a dedicated sumo fan (Aki 2014), but there has always been the lingering ghost of some drama on here about SumoTalk. It was the first English resource I found for sumo but alienated me pretty quick, but that looks like that would have been after your time with it.

[yorikiried by fate 2,029]

15 hours ago, Kintamayama said:

Really? Did not know that. Can you divulge some more details?

If the ST forum would be operational, I could go full forensic on that one, but alas!

From memory it was like this: Mike, who never posted enything in the forum, was quoted as trying to set up some stream. He obviously involved more tech savy guys, most likely Mario, he of the LHC and Estonian persuasion. From what I gather, it involved some person with access to NHK coverage (I assumed Mike himself with some sort of expensive subscription; maybe some of the people in Japan, like Clancy) to grab the signal and splice it into some server, hence the gadget comment. The link was then shared in forum. At first openly, but then some mass paranoia ensued, so after a while, it was hidden in a section open for specific usergroups, with invitations shared by and to "trustworthy" people (a lot of SF regulars suddenly turned up, I remember...). It was all a bit childish, but exiting. So when I wrote "the masses", it was actually a bunch of massively hermetic freaks. But that was running for about two years IIRC, and stopped, when the NSKs free lizard people stream got upgraded.

Don't quote me on any of that, it's some time ago and the plot was lost with the forum.

 

15 hours ago, Kintamayama said:

I actually did some translating for ST for a while, everyone was really nice to me, especially Mike. Our forum owner contributed excellent professional commentary as well. I got into a really wild flame war with Clancy Kelly, one of the more controversial contributors there, and we ended up becoming great friends and he even was here for a visit and we met. 

See, I didn't know any of that, or I may have partly forgotten. The translation thing rings a bell, as well as the Clancy thing. You might have mentioned that.

Clancy always was quite the character, as were others in that special webitat.

Who is our forum owner? That part is really news to me.

 

10 hours ago, Churaumi said:

Thanks for answering. I realized after sending I might have sounded a bit hostile, but am not trying to be. It is just about the most internet thing to have a fan site that seems rather down on the thing it is supporting. Looks like a lot of this happened before my time as a dedicated sumo fan (Aki 2014), but there has always been the lingering ghost of some drama on here about SumoTalk. It was the first English resource I found for sumo but alienated me pretty quick, but that looks like that would have been after your time with it.

No worries. Your first post to which I reacted sounded to me less hostile, but instead underinformed. You have to realize, conversation about ST has become highly symbolical and in part near-fictional here in SF. At least, if people try to reconstruct the situation 10-15 years ago by deducing it part from (bad) memory and mostly from the zombie-like activities there from today. Thus, most of the occasional ST talk around here is to be considered condensed and symbolical at best. We were not all Flat Earthers.

If (my) memory serves, the two tribes thing went from "I don't know them but they suck" to some genuinely warm crossover teasing, with a small group of people posting both here and there. ST even had a team of players under that banner in one of the more popular sumo games, bantering along with the other ichimon from here or e.g. the German groups (and we were good!!!).

All this somewhat imploded after a while. Traffic on the forum, which was always much less than on SF, reached the critical lower threshold and eventually died. Several people moved to the busier place, i.e. SF, since the welcome had turned out to be friendlier than expected. Many people just disappeared. That Mike's commentary slowly moved from controversial but informed to fringe/cringe to comedy to self-parody didn't really help.

 

If I was asked how I would see myself in all of this - which I wasn't, but I indulge myself: I am happy to have found a healthy, enduring harbour for sharing sumo interest, collecting likes for inconsequential one-liners, dropping silly photoshops, being geeky. And: This is a place with quite a few selfmade experts, who invest an immense amount of time in gathering, processing and relaying highly intricate and detailed knowledge for others to share in. Every good forum has a couple of those, but here it seems to me a rather large group (and I don't count myself into that bunch at all; very far from it).

That being said, I see myself as a corrective voice when certain ST related comments pop up (provided I notice them). Even in a generally enlightened place like here, people are craving for dichotomy. Prominent SF figures (and I'm only naming who is already involved in this particular thread, either by Post or Like) have positioned themselves in various ways. The most honorable Kintamayama-san is - like is his habit - the furthest on his Dao. From personal comments I gather that for himself he transcended the original purist-nutcase-struggle. Another guy like Randomitsuki always went full sciency on all or at least the nuttier parts of the ST spectrum. All the while he kept an open mind at all times and is a joy to converse with (alas, too little for years now). Others with stricter positions tend to keep silent or at minimal level of involvement (albeit peppered with snarkiness). And finally, there still are the real-for-real no-nonsense purists, who are also very knowledgeable, but keep a long stick up theirs butts since forever.

The latter are not for me to convince about anything. I tend to react to newish people who don't know better and tend to pick up on the quote of the quote of the quote, effectively lending themselves to the legend-building machine that is all human conversation about the past. If it turns out fine - like with you - I'm happy, if not and continously, there's always the ignore list.

 

[Kintamayama 45,495]

5 minutes ago, yorikiried by fate said:

 

Who is our forum owner? That part is really news to me.

 

The person known as Kaikitsune.

[yorikiried by fate 2,029]

24 minutes ago, Kintamayama said:

The person known as Kaikitsune.

Yes, OK, but I cannot relate that person to a former ST contributor. But we don't have to name names.

[kumoryu 95]

I always used to read ST during tournaments back in the day, and the thing that seems to be missing in the above discussion was that it was fun; it was a laugh. It was entertaining in a way that SF by nature is less set up to be. Things got out of hand as the number of writers dropped until it was just the one guy left, and he certainly isn't fun any more; but for a longish period of time it was a very entertaining read.

[Kaioshoryu 63]

I remember when ST came on the scene, it was really exciting for me to have another english source of information about sumo. And the site was interesting for a long time, it had good contributors who wrote interesting and funny reports. I didn't agree with everything they wrote, but it was refreshing to have another viewpoint on sumo. It even featured Alice Cooper's guitarist (Kane Roberts) as a writer at one point.

But as others have said, when the contributors left and it became a oneman show, the site descended into parody. Everything in sumo is a conspiracy became the narrative. Come to think of it, that outlook is almost kind of racist, e.g. the evil japanese NHK who seeks to ruin the chances of the valiant mongolian rikishi.

The most annoying thing for me, was when the things that Mike said would never happen, happened. For instance, Hakuho would never be allowed by the NHK to beat the record for most yusho. But Hakuho did do it, and there was never any soulsearching by Mike on how he got it wrong. Further, if the evil NHK runs everything by way of yaocho and other shady business, why are mongolian rikishi still winning almost every yusho? Makes no sense.

It really is a shame how it ended up, because ST really was worthwhile when it sprang onto the scene all those years ago. It was a good supplement to this site, kind of what I think tachiai.org has become now. And it was fun. Now it's just sad.

[slt 9]

Haven't posted in years, but was dallying around here again when I stumbled onto this thread and was reminded of Sumo Talk.

It was extremely useful in the old days, when it was hard to get video of the bouts and you could try to picture them through the ST descriptions. Despite some of the debatable statements or theories (especially by some of the writers), they offered quite detailed descriptions of the bouts, which I usually found very effective. My approach was always to see ST as less "serious" English-speaking sumo commentary, and I never really understood the presumed competition with this forum. Access to ANY sumo info in English was a major challenge in the day, and there was more than enough space for both for anyone who was interested in reading a bit more...

To open another can of worms... whatever happened to the fantastic "NHK wrapup videos" that Dale used to post on his website along with the individual bouts ? I still have a bunch of those and some were really cool (Haru Basho 2003 to name one...). Do they still exist ? Can they be found somewhere ?

 

 

[shimodahito 317]

On 31/07/2022 at 08:45, Asashosakari said:

People were also doing summaries here and on the old Sumo Mailing List,

I do miss Kintaro's musings.....

[shimodahito 317]

Even critics of Mike can't deny he is very knowledgeable about sumo.  I actually enjoyed the daily summaries.  But Kintaro's musings on the email group were the most entertaining.