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The Ballad Of Mike Sparks

Clashed with one of Mike's many Sockpuppets on the M113 en.wiki page in the mid-2000s

Very strange man

But a good article @Coiler demonstrating that even absurd ideas can have intriguing concepts found within them

I'm also reminded of the Pentagon Wars film when you talk about Sparks making the M113 all things to all people
 
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I've heard about this in passing. It was particularly surreal for me as I hadn't heard of Gavin the man until reading "Fear, Loathing and Gumbo" so it seemed even more random than it already was.

There has to be a very obscure conspiracy theory that he was accidentally ISOTed here from the Command & Conquer Red Alert universe, where you really can convert an APC to any kind of vehicle role if you garrison the right kind of infantry inside.
 
When Colin sent me this article and the first line was 'Mike Sparks is one of the most infamous internet commentators' and I had no idea who that was at all, I was somewhat worried it would be the equivalent of me writing an article about 'msscribe' and it would be greeted with general bewilderment.

The fact that three different people have replied to go 'oh, god him' means I probably misjudged that one.

I just need to always trust Colin's instincts, clearly.
 
I haven't encountered this particular commentator or their enthusiasm for the M-113, but it does bring to mind others who pop in from time to time, utterly convinced that they've got a particular idea that absolutely would've changed history if only it had been acted on. The WAllies using the Frisian Islands as a staging ground against Nazi Germany comes to mind as a prominent example from a few years back.

Arguing with these sorts of folks feels like arguing with conspiracy theorists - No body of evidence or degree of experience with the subject matter is sufficient to sway them from their preferred position. In the end, you just have to walk away.
 
I haven't encountered this particular commentator or their enthusiasm for the M-113, but it does bring to mind others who pop in from time to time, utterly convinced that they've got a particular idea that absolutely would've changed history if only it had been acted on.

With pieces of equipment in particular, you have the problem of them not actually going through the inevitable development problems and thus looking better on paper than OTL hardware that did. There's also the issue of even legitimately capable platforms being inevitably exaggerated.
 
When Colin sent me this article and the first line was 'Mike Sparks is one of the most infamous internet commentators' and I had no idea who that was at all, I was somewhat worried it would be the equivalent of me writing an article about 'msscribe' and it would be greeted with general bewilderment.
If it's any comfort, I was wholly unaware of their existence until now either.
 
When Colin sent me this article and the first line was 'Mike Sparks is one of the most infamous internet commentators' and I had no idea who that was at all, I was somewhat worried it would be the equivalent of me writing an article about 'msscribe' and it would be greeted with general bewilderment.

The fact that three different people have replied to go 'oh, god him' means I probably misjudged that one.

I just need to always trust Colin's instincts, clearly.
Pleasingly, the twitter post also got more engagement than most do and has a comment of exactly that type on it.
 
There has to be a very obscure conspiracy theory that he was accidentally ISOTed here from the Command & Conquer Red Alert universe, where you really can convert an APC to any kind of vehicle role if you garrison the right kind of infantry inside.

Ironically, you can use an M113 chassis for basically any kind of role, including small tank (The Australians and Filipinos put 76mm Scorpion turrets on them for fire support). It'll be a comparably fragile 1950s design, but still, that is a genuine advantage of them.
 
When Colin sent me this article and the first line was 'Mike Sparks is one of the most infamous internet commentators' and I had no idea who that was at all, I was somewhat worried it would be the equivalent of me writing an article about 'msscribe' and it would be greeted with general bewilderment.
Like @Talwar and @Hendryk, I'd never heard of him either - but always reading about events/people/whatever that I'm familiar with would be boring, and I enjoyed the article (thanks @Coiler). I found the two complementary conclusions ('even the craziest concepts can start from a viable foundation' and 'good ideas can frequently spiral into bad ones') very interesting - they could be applied to many fields, including the writing of AH.

There has to be a very obscure conspiracy theory that he was accidentally ISOTed here from the Command & Conquer Red Alert universe, where you really can convert an APC to any kind of vehicle role if you garrison the right kind of infantry inside.
it does bring to mind others who pop in from time to time, utterly convinced that they've got a particular idea that absolutely would've changed history if only it had been acted on. The WAllies using the Frisian Islands as a staging ground against Nazi Germany comes to mind as a prominent example from a few years back.
Obviously, if the Germans had had something like the M113, Sealion would have been perfectly feasible. :rolleyes: :unsure: o_O 🤣
 
Actually, thinking about this more, the addition or subtraction of a nickname for a piece of military hardware is an interest 'soft' AH way of indicating that you've diverged into a parallel reality that can be noticed by those with a particular niche interest before those who might not have that knowledge, and therefore have to wait for a broader ahistorical event to occur

One thing that always sticks in my head is in the original Shuffling the Decks when @Meadow and @Lord Roem very early on in the book note that - after Churchill's death as the PoD for the titular shuffling - the M4 Shermans advancing through Europe have their nicknames changed to 'Winstons' rather than retaining their OTL designations, as a spontaneous event by the soldiers manning them. It's very much a passing comment, and doesn't have any effect on the greater story; and nor would anything much have been lost in terms of the narrative if it hadn't been there. But I think it's a fantastic little nod to the specialist reader (albeit, of course, in an explicitly AH title) that the timeline is changing in more subtle ways as well as more obvious. I don't know if that was a Meadow or Roem bit (probably the former) but it's a nice touch

Moving this back around to Mike Spark's decades-long obsession, perhaps there is a reality where the M113 'Gavin' is so-named, and there's something ever-so-slightly different about that reality to ours.
 
Moving this back around to Mike Spark's decades-long obsession, perhaps there is a reality where the M113 'Gavin' is so-named, and there's something ever-so-slightly different about that reality to ours.

I've thought the nickname makes more sense for an M113-based but very heavily modified vehicle intended for air transportability. If it's near-unrecognizable, then giving it a special name makes sense. Maybe the US ITTL makes practical air droppability one of those weird requirements that distorts the vehicle so much, and the resulting "M113 Gavin" is basically an Ameri-BMD instead of its OTL basic box?
 
Actually, thinking about this more, the addition or subtraction of a nickname for a piece of military hardware is an interest 'soft' AH way of indicating that you've diverged into a parallel reality that can be noticed by those with a particular niche interest before those who might not have that knowledge, and therefore have to wait for a broader ahistorical event to occur

One thing that always sticks in my head is in the original Shuffling the Decks when @Meadow and @Lord Roem very early on in the book note that - after Churchill's death as the PoD for the titular shuffling - the M4 Shermans advancing through Europe have their nicknames changed to 'Winstons' rather than retaining their OTL designations, as a spontaneous event by the soldiers manning them. It's very much a passing comment, and doesn't have any effect on the greater story; and nor would anything much have been lost in terms of the narrative if it hadn't been there. But I think it's a fantastic little nod to the specialist reader (albeit, of course, in an explicitly AH title) that the timeline is changing in more subtle ways as well as more obvious. I don't know if that was a Meadow or Roem bit (probably the former) but it's a nice touch

Moving this back around to Mike Spark's decades-long obsession, perhaps there is a reality where the M113 'Gavin' is so-named, and there's something ever-so-slightly different about that reality to ours.
I agree, it'd only reach some people but that's an advantage nowadays in today's internet discussion space for dropping subtle hints (I'll be doing an article on this at some point).

The Shuffling example is a good case of 'realistically messy thing that smacks of OTL' because on paper, obviously it would be endlessly confusing to have both a Churchill tank and an unrelated Winston tank.
 
When Colin sent me this article and the first line was 'Mike Sparks is one of the most infamous internet commentators' and I had no idea who that was at all, I was somewhat worried it would be the equivalent of me writing an article about 'msscribe' and it would be greeted with general bewilderment.

The fact that three different people have replied to go 'oh, god him' means I probably misjudged that one.

I just need to always trust Colin's instincts, clearly.
Ftr I didn't know who this was but I do know msscribe so that'd be one person at least.
 
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