Hey everyone! LipstickLady here!

I said "other" side. Not "correct" or "only one worth reading."

Oh!  I totally agree.  Just throwing in that little bit of fun.  :D

The story has become immaterial to me when Alex post ed that as part of his "investigation" he read our personal messages and within hours deleted the post and several others that quoted it.

Dozens of us responded that we felt our privacy was invaded and asked Alex to remove us from his member list. He refused (more members=more revenue) but would not explain how we can remove ourselves. In my case I was locked out of the site after starting a thread in "rants and raves" demanding to be told how to cancel my membership. Any content where I mentioned Alex reading PMs was also removed and the "policy" thread he started yesterday was scrubbed and locked today.

As it stands i can't get to the  personal information that I had not yet deleted or post I am still a "member". 

As for Alex's story. First off I don't believe that a group of medical professionals approached him at a conference and told him they where getting reports from patients who did not feel "safe" there. I am a medical professional and have been a nurse for almost 40 years, a hospital administrat for the past 20. Patient advocacy is my specialty. It's my professional opinion that Alexes claim is utter BS. 

The more likely story is that Alex's business depends on newbies who buy the expensive and mostly unnecessary bariatric diet crap he hawks in his store. Alex chose money over the safety and wellbeing of the people who use his website. 

I definitely can believe there's more to the story on both sides, but in the end it looks like that site belongs to that Alex person, or he's the one that has the last word as to how things are run on the site. It's just how it is, although I don't know for sure. If the site is his product, then he'll run it as he sees fit. I'm not agreeing with his methods, but its hard to fight against something you don't have a say in.

It makes absolutely no sense that Alex would ban Lipstick Lady or anyone else for "not shopping at the store". Their posts were far more valuable than any money they would have spent.

You folks are smarter than this. Use logic, not emotion. Honestly, why do you think the bans happened? 

He didn't just ban LL, he banned a bunch of people who's only crime was in asking why he was banning people!!  Then when some people asked to have their accounts deleted, he outright refused!!  Then he banned those people while keeping their names and profiles up on his site as members!!!  

That has nothing to do with emotion.....just the facts ma'am!!  Also keep in mind that some of those same people had paid for VIP membership and no money was refunded!!  Quite the scam!  It should tell you something that within a couple of days 70 people followed LL over to this site!

As a long-time internet resident, here's my take:

We had an influx of people coming to the boards wanting absolution, permission, or some such nonsense for bad food choices.  And not just bad food choices, but potentially dangerous things only days or a couple of weeks post-op.  Veterans and people like myself (medical professional and post-op but not a vet yet) would comment that it was dangerous to do so.  Some put it more bluntly than others, but no name-calling or aggressive statements.  The poster would get up in arms about being "attacked" and other newbies would rally around coddling them.  It became unacceptable to point out that choices were either detrimental to the weight loss process, or that some choices were flat out dangerous.  A particular group of newbies seemed to follow certain vets around poking and trolling and looking for a fight, and then would start crying about bullying if the vets responded.  The only vulgarities and aggressive behavior I saw came from them.

Then out of the blue, LipstickLady was banned, and several people posted threads asking why, and asking that she be re-instated.  Many people changed their statuses and avatars in support of this.  LL states (and I have no reason to doubt her) that Alex never warned her or had any communication with her, he just permanently banned her.  Then content started disappearing out of threads, statuses started disappearing, and toward the end user names were being changed - sometimes by the user and sometimes by Alex - and avatars like LL's went missing.  Several people who were vocal supporters of LL were banned, and according to them there was no communication from Alex, they just showed up and were banned.  Alex posted the policy clarification and it came out at that time that he has been reading people's PM's in his "investigation" and he made some sweeping allegations that the vets he banned were conspiring to bully and "terrorize" new people on the board.  I have a real hard time believing that this happened.  I was banned a little later, likely because of posts I made here on OH as well as a post on my personal blog about online communities.

I've seen this kind of thing over and over in internet communities.  I think Alex's motivation at this point is his financial venture.  The cadre of newbies that were agitating things constantly were also very likely PM'ing him regularly about the "bullying".  People were leaving the boards, and that impacts his store and his Mexico surgery coordination business at this point.  The veterans aren't his primary demographic, newbies are.  So if it comes to a choice between them, it just stands to reason that he's going to prioritize his primary demographic.  So obviously no one was banned because they didn't shop in the store.  The bannings happened because 6th grade mean girl nonsense happened (as it does sometimes in online communities) and Alex came down on a particular side because that's where his money is made.

I need a lot less support now than I did when I logged in almost a year ago, and found it from LL and a number of other vets that made all the difference for me.  I stick around because I believe in paying it forward.  There's a whole new round of newbies there that need support.  That's not to say they won't get it, but they are going to miss out on some really great experience and advice from the people who have been banned or have left over it.  There is a lot of really bad information being spread around that board now, and a lot of the advice is coming from newbies, many of whom are still pre-op.  The overall tone has become one of coddling and normalizing food addictive behavior, and I don't think that's conducive to long-term success.  A lot of the people over there now want the surgery to be a magic fix for their weight problems, without having to change how and what they eat, and without having to address their food issues.  Mess up and eat solid food 2 days post op because you just can't stand the cravings?  That's OK, we're all human.  Anyone who says it's dangerous is being a drama queen.  I ate [fill in the blank] when I was just a few days post-op and I was fine.  Just chew it well, and you'll be fine.  I really worry about some of the people who are listening to this and thinking it's right.

Anyway, in case you can't tell, I tend to get on my soap box about things.  LOL.  I'll get off now.  :D

Wow, over 4K views. You have a lot of fans! 

Hi LL and all the other familiar faces/names! I checked in to BP today after a week's hiatus and the damned thing apparently went off the rails... but at least I found out where all the good people ended up. :)

I'd been logging in over there less and less as it because more precious little snowflake coddling and and less about healthy, smart decisions and advice. 

I saw the notice about Obesity Help's site, so here I am! Will have to do some exploring on here as I don't plan on returning to the other place.

Can I get an invite to the closed group? thanks!!

10 pages now, I skipped to 9/10 lol think I last read page 3.

I am just glad to see how the other side was ran before I spent to much time there, and as someone stated yes it's his site he can run as he wishes. just as people are free to not visit it. (Too bad were not free to remove our accounts) 

I am am new to all of this and my surgery is one day away and I will follow the educated people over the snowflakes who want tacos in their hospital room any day of the week. 

I watched threads disappear, posts I made gone.. and I was new and not in the fray of it all with no negative posts.. so I am happy we all had another forum to go to as welcoming as OH. I look forward to help from my BP folks and New OH ones..