A Goon Squad in real life is a team of men hired by and loyal to a person or outfit to cruelly enforce their positions gangster style tough by overpowering or threatening. If a Goon Squad visited you or your place, usually the Goon Squad would destroy property and people with much violence, or at least the threat of it. After the Goon Squad visited, the ones visited no longer have a will to resist.
IDK, 4-5 years ago, there was a thread on TTD about Pro versions of Tenergy and National versions of Hurricane and so forth. As comedy, I saw a chance to make a joke out of the whole "Pro" or "National" rubber thing.
Usually, these rubbers are made exclusively for the pros or national team and it is highly unauthorized for these rubbers to make it outside the hands of the few select. It was a huge positive status to possess such a rubber, even more to sell one. If you had more than one of them, you must have stolen it from a pro or national team... or committed espionage to get more than one.
The thread involved many people openly having many of these rubbers. So, since it is "Illegal" (in the eyes of the rubber makers) to have 2 or more, the TT companies would need to "Enforce" their position and strike fear into those who were encroaching on their sacred and sole source of power.
In such a case, the outfit would send out a team of 2 to 20 "Goon Squad" to tear up the place or persons doing this. That would violently punish those having the rare unauthorized rubbers and serve as a way to scare the living crap out of everyone else to keep them in line.
So, I made the comment that BTY, DHS, etc were "Sending out the Goon Squad".
This became a kind of TTD inside joke. Older members remember this, newer members see the occasional reference to the Goon Squad and are like WTF?
The Goon Squad term got driven by Upside Down Carl and Co, who got many a laugh out of the phrase used just right. The Goon Squad turned into a tough, really keystone cops stupid, yet dangerous enforcement team who really seemed to be constantly chasing after Carl... but Carl was always 3 steps ahead of them and plotting ways to entrap them to fall down a secret trap door into a one week confinement a dark, rat infested basement septic tank. Carl used his "SpyPhone", which was an Apple Smartphone somehow caught the wrong gamma rays and had got some serious capabilities. Then Carl got better equipment with even more capabilities.
You get the idea, we made a running inside joke out of the term Goon Squad.
Later, whenever myself and several TTD members could meetup in NYC, it evolved into a gathering of the Goon Squad. If you saw Next Level, Der_Echte, and a few other members together, we were not exactly 1.6 meter 50 kg people.
Years later, anytime multiple TTD members could get together somewhere for TT and mayhem, it would also be a Goon Squad gathering.
In the David Bowie video, the Goon Squad he was referring to was himself and some others entering NYC to strong arm the fashion scene and force it to go a certain way.
So, wherever I go, I make it a mission to find other TTD members and get them together having fun. It is my personal way to cause trouble. Usually, we take pics or a few vids and post them to the thread. It is a great way of community and recording the brand of fun we Table Tennis players enjoy.
