with the boom in craft beer popularity it seems there may be a never-ending stream of new eyeballs for the site. but like so much cannon fodder, users will join only to be banned, or quit out of disgust shortly thereafter.

you just won't find many "old-timers" there. some faded away, some quit beer but most were banned for nebulous reasons or moved on as if fleeing a toxic relationship.

it's unfortunate that the site wields any influence in the community. many brewers, companies, bloggers seem to feel a need to suck up to them out of fear of negative publicity. it feels like a girl at dinner with family and friends that smiles throughout and lavishes praise on the boyfriend sitting next to her with hand on her leg, fake smile masking the boiling rage underneath, squeezing her leg to the point of pain every time she hints at something she "isn't allowed to say". she wants very much to break away but is afraid to be on her own.

one way to keep up appearances, as any controlling sociopath would understand, is to harshly crack down on any appearance of dissent.

"of course we're the perfect couple! we never fight! (if she even so much as turns her lip down a centimeter when we are in public i beat her mercilessly when we get home!)"

the sites mods read your "private" beermails. they monitor your facebook pages. your instagrams. your blogs. they monitor other beer sites. other non-beer sites. all for mentions of their name. all to ensure that no one dares say anything negative about them.

and if you do, regardless of your site loyalty, time served, how much you do support and back them.. you're going to get banned. you're going to lose links to your community of friends, you'll lose trades, any information you had saved will be gone.

i don't know one person who supports the site, nor their shitty 14 page magazine with 12 beer reviews. not one person who has met them and said "they're really nice, just misunderstood".

yet they fly around the country on the dime of site supporters who paid to "upgrade the servers" and that, unfortunately, buy their magazine. they are feted at bars and breweries around the country by the same people that run them down privately.

every time i see another picture of the 2 (or 3) of them at a beer event posing for pictures i look for the tell-tale signs of other in the photos with them. the look of "shoot me, this is going on the web" and "i hate myself for doing this. i hope people forgive me." doesn't take more than a split second to find it.

i post this in hopes that "new" beer people will read it and ignore the Beer Advocate google results when they search for "hoppy beer" or "beers like Blue Moon". find another site. don't waste your time building a profile there. don't waste time building relationships there. don't support people that hate you for being beer fans. don't fund their trips around the country.

these are not good people. they caught lightning in a bottle with a craft beer website before the industry boom. their success is a function of a fantastic stroke of luck.

you wouldn't shake hands with someone who spit in your friends face, much less wear a shirt with their name on it. don't make an exception for these people.

and if you're a member there now, reading this and thinking " this guy is all wrong, i love BA!"... give it time. you will be banned for some frivolous reason soon. might as well start looking for a new community/site run by decent people with a solid community of like-minded beer people that aren't lurking over your shoulder with a Stanley hammer waiting for you to say "what happened to my response to the question of how many bottles of Kirsch Gose were being sold at Victory today? why did i get a 3 day timeout for that??"

you won't get an answer, just a lump on the head.