The shoutboxes is a training tool.

Strange but true. Let me recount an experience when we first started out in chess. Mark's first MSSM for Perak. We were given a few days training by a trainer who came down from KL. Mark was playing Scandinavian as black then when he was U12. This trainer called me up on the day before MSSM and told me that Mark needed to change his opening. I asked for his reasoning but he just tried to assert his authority as a trainer and on top of that he was belligerent and rude. His basic "argument" was that I do not play chess and he was a trainer.

Even at that time I knew you cannot change your opening at the last moment. As I have said before, the first level of attack is on your mind. If you cannot tell the hidden agendas, the half truths, the lies, the fabrications, the obsfucations etc from the truth, then you will succumb very early. The belligerence and the threats is meant to overwhelm thinking.

A few friends have mentioned about the ugliness on the shoutboxes and in the beginning I used to agree with them. But now I think there is a use for them.

We like to think that chess is a safe place for our kids. But maybe we are in denial. Maybe we need to see it for what it really is. There are a very few people out there who are out to do harm. And if we don't acknowledege they are there we will be unable to protect our players.

Now I encourage you to look hard at the shoutboxes, see their lies. It's about judgement. We need to learn who we can trust. The strongest clue is that they remain anonymous apart from the two I have named, who think they are untouchable. The second clue is that they are unable to reason and can only use personal attacks.

Be clear. We cannot move to the next level if we allow the threats from these few people to overwhelm our reasoning. Use the shoutboxes as a training tool. See how psycho attacks work, see how the illusion of numbers is created. Learn to protect your mind through reasoning. It is enough to just see clearly. To understand why they have to do what they do. It's now in English and Malay.

ps: Ref: here. Peter was not the trainer but can you now see the correlation of why he thinks he can say we have messy minds and then call us lowly and then know he can get away with it? What does he know that we don't?

Note: If you cannot see past the psycho attacks, you cannot play chess. Can you see examples of this is your own chess games? If you can see through the attacks and you now know their "arguments" well, the next time they whisper it to you in person, you will be able to recognise them. Like if they tell you to change your opening the day before a major tournament for example under the guise of "help".