Skiology Matt in Litigation

Skiology, LLC v. Bramble

Trademark case filed on January 27, 2023 in the Vermont District Court

dockets.justia.com

 

[raisingarizona]

Somehow I missed the thread last year.

He’s an amateur weather nut that does a decent enough job putting together pieces to make a forecast (though many could do that just using NWS), but his obsessive postings are too much to take for me.

Despite the fact that he just started snowboarding in his late middle age, he thinks he knows everything about the industry. Literally everything.

And he’s never wrong, even when he’s clearly wrong. Earlier this season he had a post lambasting Stowe for not sharing the quad was down where Braten showed him he was 100% wrong.

Of course as an obsessive, rather than admitting he was wrong he followed that up with another post asking about how terrible it was at Stowe on one of the days the quad was down (and suggesting the mountain didn’t do enough to warn people not to come). Then everyone says it was a great day with minimal lines for the double, walk on at the Gondi etc, he launched into some screed about how they got saved by the snow keeping people away or some nonsense. But he’s not done. Never done. Yet another post that was supposed to be an apology for being wrong, but really was about why when he was wrong, he was really right. That is a taste of how he works.

My take is… he was likely not a guy with the biggest social life. Found snow late in life. Got obsessed with weather and found that the page made him part of the cool kids club (amongst low info skiers). He now has made it his life.

All of this which doesn't make me talk shit about the guy, I just feel badly for him.

 

[drjeff]

Yea...setting up a website with a paywall or restricted access to content is extremely simple. There's numerous existing platforms out there already to do exactly that (and some even have corresponding mobile phone apps so your users don't need to even go to a website from their mobile devices). So multiple years for "development" is absurd and certainly suspect.

Which is very likely why he knows that the #'s and $$'s don't work out if he takes it behind a paywall. Unless he gives out the info for each and every storm on the free side, to attempt to attract folks who will pay for content, it's not like he's then able to push the brand to a wider audience to generate more subscribers given the randomness that storms can descend on New Enlgand ski resorts. Plus with how is alienates just about anyone who disagrees with him, he's created many enemies, both outside and inside of the industry who will certainly chime in every now and then when the topic of his social media page comes up on other platforms to provide some perspective for those who see him as someone who can do no wrong. He's burned many bridges for sure

 

[djd66]

If the guy doesn’t have a company- which based on the lawsuit he does not,…. I wonder how he is reporting all the income he has taken in? Would not surprise me if he hasn’t reported anything, in which case the IRS should take him down.

I have no sympathy for this guy as he really seems like an arrogant prick.

I am really surprised that there are people on here that would even follow him - much less even pay for the BS that he puts out.

 

[Kingslug20]

View attachment 56941I am also very turned off by his long held bias against Jay Peak. He takes every opportunity to take a shot at their snow reporting (which admittedly seems to be much more honest the last few years) and will twist and omit material facts to reinforce the subtle shots. These pics are telling—at the end of the day this is a minor qualm, just one example of him attempting to control all narratives. He claims they overreported by reporting 6” but leaves out that they actually reported 3” - 6” which is well within the northern range of this storm (Stowe reported 6” down to 2-3” in QC, Jay is right in the middle )

Well..Stowe got more than 3...my feet don't lie....won't talk about the woods....

 

[Bostonian]

If the guy doesn’t have a company- which based on the lawsuit he does not,…. I wonder how he is reporting all the income he has taken in? Would not surprise me if he hasn’t reported anything, in which case the IRS should take him down.

I have no sympathy for this guy as he really seems like an arrogant prick.

I am really surprised that there are people on here that would even follow him - much less even pay for the BS that he puts out.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the IRS is looking. Also love that it is in federal court too. So at least $75k in damages against him (if I remember my civics correctly)

 

[Kingslug20]

What I truly don't understand is why people try to exactly quantify a mountains snowfall.
As if every inch of hundreds of acres and thousands of feet of elevation would have an almost exact amount.
They seem to forget about...wind. That tends to have a bit of an impact.
Want to know how much snow a place got..go there.

 

[Edd]

What I truly don't understand is why people try to exactly quantify a mountains snowfall.
As if every inch of hundreds of acres and thousands of feet of elevation would have an almost exact amount.
They seem to forget about...wind. That tends to have a bit of an impact.
Want to know how much snow a place got..go there.

Well, c’mon, some mountains do better than others and day trippers have choices. Wildcat could get way more snow than Loon from the same storm. Gotta quantify and market it. Not remotely practical to “go there” every time.

 

[Kingslug20]

I get that...it's all the bs about over reporting..under reporting...the arguments about it. I'm relating it specifically to this post.

 

[Newpylong]

Who is this guy again?

That's a rhetorical question. I think he's getting far too much attention.

 

[cdskier]

What I truly don't understand is why people try to exactly quantify a mountains snowfall.
As if every inch of hundreds of acres and thousands of feet of elevation would have an almost exact amount.
They seem to forget about...wind. That tends to have a bit of an impact.
Want to know how much snow a place got..go there.

Yea...it is impossible to give an "exact" measurement of how much snow fell because it can easily vary from one spot on the mountain to another. And like you said, wind makes a big difference too. A somewhat accurate range is fine, but anyone that is criticizing a resort for under/over reporting by an inch or two is foolish.

 

[drjeff]

Yea...it is impossible to give an "exact" measurement of how much snow fell because it can easily vary from one spot on the mountain to another. And like you said, wind makes a big difference too. A somewhat accurate range is fine, but anyone that is criticizing a resort for under/over reporting by an inch or two is foolish.

And how the heck is one going to account for those typically couple of times a year elevation dependent storms where the base to summit snow total differential can easily be over a foot.

Sometimes people with way less knowledge than they can admit about something just really need to accept that what they think should be reality isn't possible and move on and find some other relatively meaningless topic to rant about on social media!

 

[Kingslug20]

There's a big difference in the type of people out there in the mountains...
I get it that most are relying on the weekends and this season is pretty frustrating. But if you pick this little hobby/sport/ lifestyle...you get what you get and how you deal with it is all that matters.
Not much we can do with the weather...except blow snow. Which will never replace the real stuff.
A weather/ conditions web site should not turn into a bitch fest.
But that's social media.

 

[FBGM]

The rage is real with this guy it seems. Universal hate from the crowd.

Kinda want to troll now…

 

[crippity]

guys a fkcing tool, longer this thread exissts, longer he existss, everyone has up to date infor (great job) lets close this and hope his fake ass gets closed soon enough

 

[Harvey]

And how the heck is one going to account for those typically couple of times a year elevation dependent storms where the base to summit snow total differential can easily be over a foot.

Gore consistently reports from the base. If it's zero at the base and 3 inches at 3000 feet they'll report zero.

I don't expect the number to be perfect. The report does help me because it is consistently reported, if somewhat late in the morning.

 

[Blanton]

North Star Hot Tub Matt and Freeride Fred Matt social handles are still available. He could pivot and post some original over age drinking content and lower his legal fees.

 

[ThatGuy]

Can’t say I bothered to read past the cyber bullying part…but heres the whole thing for posterity

At this point I'm pretty certain that I'm going to change this group from Public to Private. I'm going to explain why I wish to do this first, and then what the effects are, but again, please note that this will have very little effect on members.

The main issue is that as this group has grown, the abuse that I receive has also grown. I've been the target of a cyberstalking campaign for 3 years now despite having no contact with these people and many of the participants were never even members of this group in the first place. Basically I've become the mayor and police chief of a virtual town of 50,000 people and that's not what I signed up to do. Now if I wasn't a content creator primarily and if Skiology wasn't a business, I could hide in the shadows like most large group admins do and catch far less flack, but as is, almost every time a moderator takes action on something that a member disagrees with, I get the nastygrams. Even very friendly people will have a post rejected just once after a couple years and then go bonkers on me (note, we don't reject that many posts and are quite lenient in relation to our stated requirements).

Making the group Private will dramatically slow the number of members that join, and eliminate out need to deal with non-member comments and scammers trying to sign up. With less growth the group will be more stable as we won't have hundreds of new people signing up every week.

Skiology is also a lot of work and it is not very lucrative. People may not recognize the work that goes into running a group well. There's a reason why this group is friendlier than many others and also more useful, and that's because of the direction and actions of myself and the other 5 moderators. It's not just approving posts, it's contacting people to ask for modifications to help save posts because they are lacking something required, it's messaging with countless people on an ongoing basis, it's dealing with disagreements between members, and it even involves dealing with flat out dangerous and insane people at times. This is why we don't allow people to attack other people here, and that includes attacking me. So by reducing visibility of the group and slowing down new membership I believe the workload will reduce because it is rare that a 3 year member will ever get angry at me, but there are a pretty good number of people who walk in here thinking they are the best skier on the hill at XYZ and then start challenging every rule and insulting people. Those people tend to wash out in a week to a year, or sometimes they just realize that it's not allowed here and they get along just fine which is totally cool with me. As they say, when in Rome...

This is an attempt by me to essentially save the group because it needs to get friendlier and easier for me to continue, and I'm not going to give it away to someone else, and I do not believe anyone is interested in filling my shoes. I don't want to be Mayor of Skiology, never did, I just wanted to have a highly interactive community focused on weather, conditions, and news, but unfortunately with such a large group someone has to be the boss because leaving things to chance will never ever work out in a large internet group.

The Effects of Going "Private" for Members

Making the group private means posts can only be seen by members and posts from the group can't be shared except in Messenger to other members ("Share" is Replaced by "Send").

This will stop Facebook from suggesting posts to the group which it does regularly on some more popular posts, and combined with the lower volume of sharing the number of eyes seeing each post will reduce somewhat, but I'm assuming by just 20% overall on average and it will have hardly any effect on the reach of less popular posts.

Some members actually won't comment or post here because they don't want the whole world to see what they are saying, or even that they are skiing or riding, and while going Private doesn't stop someone from screen capturing a post and sending it to someone else, those people may feel more inclined to participate. So that's one positive for members. I've received such feedback before from some.

There is a possibility that people who are following the group but were never approved to post will become members after this change and this includes probably 100-200 scammer accounts. We'll clean them out as they pop up if so. This was a change that Facebook made last summer and it caused a lot of Groups to go Private at that time.

That's it. That's all this does as far as members go. Note, once we make the group Private we can never reverse this. It's Private forever after.

We're Also Considering Going "Hidden"

What this means is that non-members can't find the group even in a search. This is not noticeable for members though. The Group becomes sort of like an unmarked glade that is hard to find and you need someone to show you where it is. The only way new members would come would be by way of another member inviting them.

This would cause the group to likely shrink slowly in size as new members would possibly not outpace old members leaving for whatever reason. I don't mind that happening, and it likely would increase the quality of the content and discourse here along with making the group Private.

 

[cdskier]

Oh the irony...



So ok for him to use another business's name...but not ok for someone else to create a group on FB using his name. Got it...makes perfect sense.

 

[Blowhard]

North Star Hot Tub Matt and Freeride Fred Matt social handles are still available. He could pivot and post some original over age drinking content and lower his legal fees.

shouldn't we all grab the appropriate handles and FB group names to cybersquat and extort him?

 

[KustyTheKlown]

Obviously this screed of personal persecution goes on for many screenshots…