Comment From A Longtime Tucker Max Fan

An anonymous poster has posted a comment about Tucker that really rings true. The following was submitted December 14, 2006 at 11:54 AM as a comment to the post "The Purpose of The Blog Is To Expose Tucker Max As A Douchebag":

I’ve been a member of the Tucker Max Message Board (TMMB) for almost 4 years. I first heard about Tucker and his site from an e-mail that was passed around. It was the “Miss Vermont Story” and got e-mailed around a lot a few months before he was on MTV and the site exploded. I have read every story posted on his old and new site and been a semi-frequent poster on the TMMB. Why? Quite frankly his stories made me laugh. Tucker tells a good story, or at least he used to, and it was an entertaining diversion from work or school. Mind you, he’s not a good writer in a technical sense, but his stories were funny and did a good job of conveying a hilarious mental image. I never assumed that the stories were 100% true, I assumed that they were embellished. Or, more precisely, the stories contained an essential kernel of truth surrounded by made-up/exaggerated elements of the story (a lot of the dialogue). I didn’t care, though, because I was just there to get a cheap laugh.

The more I thought about it, however, the more the fact that TM is basically lying in his stories began to bother me. His whole hook is that these stories are “true.” Anyone could just make this shit up and pass it off as fiction, it would get e-mailed around a few times and be forgotten. But Tucker presents it as true, that it actually happened to him, and it didn’t, he’s lying and that’s unacceptable. What gets Tucker his attention is people going “Man, I can’t believe that this actually happened to someone, that shit is so crazy!! I wish I were him.” In short, he was interesting because he represented something that many people wish they were but don’t really have the balls to be. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really that person, Tucker is more a persona than anything else.

Even still, this wouldn’t be that big a crime in my book if not for Tucker’s ever growing ego and arrogance. It was funny for a while, but now it has just gotten out of control. And this is reflected in the company he keeps. Like I said, I’ve been a member of the TMMB for a long time, long before most people knew about it. Back in the day, it was mainly Tucker and his friends from law school and friends of Tucker from real life. Almost all of these people were regular posters, something that kept Tucker grounded and provided a much-needed reality check, they weren’t afraid to call bullshit on his stuff or smack him down a bit. Basically, TMMB was just an online version of friends giving each other shit at a bar.

That changed after the MTV show and Miss Vermont lawsuit. All of a sudden, a bunch of people came out of the woodwork and began e-sucking Tucker’s cock (and a few did in real life too). The problem was, none of these people were in on the joke, they didn’t realize that the shit wasn’t all true. But in order to keep these new fans, Tucker couldn’t admit it wasn’t true, he had to maintain the façade. And the more often he repeated the lie, the more he seems to believe in it. Slowly, almost everyone on the TMMB who knew Tucker in real life, pre-MTV, started to drift away. Most stopped posting, deleted their accounts and haven’t been heard of since. Part of this is a natural maturation process, what his friends thought was funny at 25 became less so at 30, and a little diversion no longer seemed important. But what I think is also is the case is that a number of people who knew Tucker knew the truth and started to get disgusted at what he was becoming. You can see this in the dwindling posts of guys like JoJo, PWJ, SlingBlade, SippyCup and others. Anyone who “knew” Tucker in real life found one excuse or another to stop posting. Tucker’s their friend and they would never call him out, but they seem to have gotten sick of what he was becoming. The bullshit is funny when everyone knows its exaggerated; when Tucker started acting like everything was gospel truth, it became more than they were willing to deal with.

This has, unfortunately, only made Tucker worse. Unencumbered by people who could call him out and keep him grounded, Tucker has just fed off the adulation of people on the board. The TMMB is now populated by a bunch of people that worship at the altar of Tucker and believe everything that he says. Anyone who raises a question, or expresses a view contrary to Tucker’s is immediately flamed and banned by those incapable of anything other than groupthink. Even worse are his new core clique, basically the Rudius Media people. All of them are dependent in one way or another on Tucker for their “fame” and livelihood. People like Bunny, Kung Fu Mike, Solyent Green, DRex (who, for my money, is the absolute worst person in the Tucker orbit and probably world), Mr Jake/Luke and others are so tied to Tucker that the cannot allow anyone to question him. Their existence is tied totally to maintaining the fiction of Tucker’s life; ask Tucker if a story is true, and either DRex or Luke will quickly swoop in to say that it absolutely is because they were there and/or know Tucker and that’s the way it is. But they HAVE to say this, they’ve hitched their wagon to Tucker and are just trying to live in some of his reflected “flame”. This is what has bothered me the most, all of Tucker’s “friends”, the people who appear in his newer stories, are people from the TMMB. They basically have no lives of their own and exist solely to be foils for Tucker. Surrounded by this group of yes men and women, Tucker no longer has a touchstone with reality and can tell any fiction that he wants. That’s why anyone who questions Tucker orthodoxy is immediately destroyed, too many people are now dependent on THE LIE to allow the truth to be exposed.

And that’s the real problem, Tucker know “believes” the lie that he has concocted for himself. And why shouldn’t he? Those people immediately around him reinforce his belief and never challenge him or do anything but fawn over his action while simultaneously punishing anyone who dissents. As a result, Tucker has just gotten worse and worse, he actually believes his own bullshit and thinks he is the vanguard of some new “movement” that will change entertainment and gender relationships. Whereas before a lot of his bravado was tongue-in-cheek and done more for effect, now Tucker really believes in his self-importance and needs constant reinforcement of it. You don’t need to know anymore other than he CONSTANTLY refers to himself as a best-selling author, and finds a way to bring it into EVERY conversation. Congrats, that’s an accomplishment. But why should I care?

All this being said, there is one bright spot to Tucker: the re-launch of PhilaLawyer. I highly recommend everyone read philawyer.net, that guy is an amazing writer and actually has something to say.