Kanye Fan

Is a person bad for listening to Kanye? Nope! But they certainly raise some flags for me if they still listen to him and think he’s an alright person after the weird things that he’s done publicly.

This is the story of one such individual who used to be active in our server and ended by sending us a “manifesto.”

I’m not looking to accomplish much here besides just noting down some events and poking into why such things might have unraveled this way. Unfortunately, I can’t cover the full details and dynamics in this post or it would be a several hour read so I’ll be omitting pieces. The pieces omitted are mainly buildup that adds to tension between the members so while it may look like a sudden snap, there were definite sustained issues between the members, like pulling a rubber band until it snapped. So imagine we have the rubber band pulled already.

I’ll use “cryptographic” aliases to at least give them some pseudo-anonymity, so if you see “Alice”, “Bob,” or “Charlie”, these names aren’t the real users’ names and may not align with the preferred gender of the individual. The main person of interest will be Alice.

If you know the real usernames behind the pseudonyms, I ask that you don’t share them with anyone who’s asking for them, to protect each user’s identity and prevent harassment from any side. Do not ask me for names as I won’t reveal them either.

To start at the beginning and give some background, we can’t even begin talking about Alice. Let’s talk about Bob and his love for a video game franchise. Bob loves this certain franchise to such an extent that they’ve invested several thousands into merchandise for characters of the show and nearly always would talk about it in the main channel of the server.

Now, Charlie, a moderator, would see Bob talking about it and always ask, “hey Bob, can you please talk about it in our specific channel for this?” Always a “yes” from Bob but then never any adjustments. Charlie knows Bob isn’t malicious and is just passionate about this franchise, so it’s weird to punish him, but Charlie ends up getting frustrated and would either give small mute punishments or poke fun at Bob and whoever else for never moving into the correct channels.

Alice would join in occasionally and berate Charlie for asking Bob to move the conversation to a better location. “Guys, you better stop talking about the Cryptography franchise or Charlie will blow a gasket,” Alice would say. She would antagonize Charlie, and Charlie would reciprocate with a retort to defend himself.

This went on for a while until one day, Alice came out publicly and said “I don’t like this place, I’m leaving.” An amazingly mature move to just leave, which I applaud them for. The next few moves weren’t as mature unfortunately.

She goes on to talk poorly about Charlie and bring drama about him into Erin’s server, an innocent person, unrelated to any issues, simply friends with Alice & Bob. Why would one bring unnecessary drama into a friend’s server? The first thought might be “Alice is venting in a friend’s server,” but since Alice had left already, there was nothing to worry about at this point, so I don’t think the venting excuse isn’t as valid as if something was happening live.

I think it falls down to some level of narcissism where the world has to revolve around Alice’s problems. Maybe Alice aligns with Kanye because of that shared trait? There’s no doubt Kanye has his own narcissistic tendencies, but I think it’s weird for one narcissist to idolize another, so I don’t believe Alice is fully there, either sharing small traits of it, or modeling her behavior after him.

Ok, but that’s a big label to just throw on someone so let’s give some background for it. Remember, Alice has left the server with Charlie and is in Erin’s server. Alice would bring up Charlie unprompted, saying “Charlie only became a moderator because of his friend,” to “Charlie just hates minors talking in the server, no matter what,” and “I’m not joining back until Charlie is demodded.” I would argue, if you’re over this, you wouldn’t be ranting about this on an unrelated server.

The hate for Charlie became so much for Alice to bare, that she went and left every single shared server with Charlie, even going as far as sending “Fuck you Charlie” in the last server before leaving. Going beyond that, Alice blocked every moderator (some of whom hadn’t interacted with Alice) to just spite Charlie more. Certainly not a healthy mindset after removing yourself from what you consider to be a toxic server. Why harbor all this resentment towards Charlie? Is there some other problem Alice is facing in life? Her idol being shown as anti-semetic? I can’t claim to know why, but there was certainly something that caused Alice to just hate Charlie beyond normal, even after claiming to sever the connection.

At this point, it gets pretty quiet for a few months. Alice seems like she’s calmed down from the past events, not mentioning Charlie in Erin’s server. Bob has changed positively and now brings up the franchise less often compared to before, and we seem to be on a good course.

I have to dive into a side tangent because it’ll tie into this story later. To keep one part short, Dan is a member for about a year who gets promoted to moderator because of how outspoken he is in addressing issues of the server and being civil to other members.

Frank needs more explanation. Frank is a long term member (3+ years, maybe?) who has a muddled history on the server. He sent some inappropriate messages to a minor on the server, telling the minor “I’ll forgive you if up suck up to me like a slave.” Not banning Frank as soon as I was aware of this is, without a single doubt or hesitation, my biggest regret in any moderation action or inaction in the 6+ years since the server has been active. My justification at the time was “well, he’s been a long term member without other issues, would it be right to remove him for one offense like this.” To answer past-me, the answer is yes. But I didn’t see it at the time and allowed him to stay, without even bringing it up because I figured that since he was an old member, maybe he should have some leeway. Some time after this, he also stated his love for the Traptrix YuGiOh! card archetype. Readers beware of some of the card art, but it’s young looking girls who represent most of the cards. So Frank isn’t looking like the ideal individual.

Shortly after Dan gets promoted, Frank leaves, citing no reason other than “I guess it’s time for me to go.” No mention of Dan, or even congratulations for Dan, so it didn’t seem like Frank cared and it was simply some personal issues he was going through causing him to leave.

As a side note, Frank was banned after his departure to prevent him from rejoining, finally closing the loop on the regret I’ve had from several years back

Shifting our focus back to Alice, one day she rejoins our server. Remember that Alice was never banned and had left the server of her own choice. Knowing how malicious she was in Erin’s server however, Alice was immediately banned since she could only be joining to not be nice. Definitely a judgment call to make, but let’s see how it played out.

Alice publicly calls me out on Erin’s server, asking why I banned her. I stated the above, that I don’t believe she would be civil in the server with Charlie, knowing her distaste for him.

I will quote verbatim since Erin’s server has since been deleted but I have records of dialog from Alice from another party.

“i was genuinely going to join back and be nice to you all again but i guess not” - Alice

“I don’t think this is something to bring into Erin’s server” - me

“i’m just gonna do this shit and move on from here” - Alice

Right after that, Erin asked us to move this conversation to private messages, an absolutely reasonable request. Within 10 seconds, I have a 4500 text document in my direct messages from Alice. So, we can say with absolute certainty that Alice planned on dumping this publicly on the server which is why I believe it’s OK to write this document and show everyone the absurdity of it.

I may sidetrack from the initial goal I stated in the opening because I want to take apart this “manifesto” for my own sake and to show how ridiculous some pieces of it are. It lets me address common things that people have questions about in the server and also relieve some stress from these events.

I’ll quote the full excerpts, with the only changes being names.

I never thought that I would come back here but I have been DYING to get this off of my chest ever since I left, so no matter who may be reading this, whether it be a moderator or a normal user, please, and I really mean this, hear me out, don’t just skim through or ignore this message, please read through all of this.

We will certainly address & dissect all of it, Alice.

I have had so many fucking problems with this place, so much so, that I don’t even know how I’m gonna write this thing out because there’s way too much shit that frustrates me about this place, even after I left. I don’t really remember when I left, but I do remember saying some shit like “oh I just feel like nobody wants me here… :(” or “oh I’m just losing interest in this place…”, but none of this was true.

I will confirm that some of Alice’s last messages were close to that.

The real reason why I left was because I was fed up with everyone’s shit, more specifically, I was fed up with the moderation team and the shit that they could get away with just because they were a moderator, and the mods who might actually be reading this instead if skimming through it and/or ignoring every point that I make know EXACTLY what I mean by this.

I believe I know exactly the event that Alice is angry about here, but for the moderator’s anonymity, I won’t bring up specifics (it was omitted from the background above). The part that members of a server don’t see are the inner workings and private messages between us.

While the moderator may have gone overboard on a reaction, when you have Alice, Bob, and others close to harassing you for trying to moderate the server, an overreaction is all but expected. I’ll note that the overreaction was not a ban or a kick or anything permanent to the server residents, but the moderator’s language went south. The moderator in question was then in contact with me and told to refrain from adding ‘fuel to a fire’ in situations like this.

Should Alice have been informed of this? Absolutely not, it’s not his business. But we go back to the narcissism issue of everything being about her and “if the world wrongs her, she’ll wrong the world”.

The mod team needs a SERIOUS revamp, half of the mods do fuck all in the server and probably just got mod because of some bullshit reason, seriously, that’s what it looks like in my point of view, because it BAFFLES me how some of the mods managed to get mod, and for some of them it’s really fucking obvious which ones were given the role because of connections and which ones maybe applied for it, I wouldn’t know since I joined the server a little later (thankfully) compared to everyone else, but as I said, that’s what it looks like.

Very long sentence but let’s break it up.

Why do we have so many mods? It’s a great question, truth be told. Sure, we have some inactive mods. Life is a thing that happens to people, that doesn’t make me trust them any less. People have lives outside of a plush server and I don’t pay the moderators (as much as they would love to be paid in chicken nuggets). Ok, so what about ones who are actively online, but don’t moderate this server as much as others. Well, people have different personalities, and the results are different moderation styles. Some want to be a community leader, and be in charge of events, some want to moderate only a subsection of the server, while some want to be a moderator in the shape that Alice thinks all of them should be, moderating every channel every second they’re online.

If you have a server with lax standards of the quality of posts and content that you want, you surely don’t need that many moderators. But I have a decent vision of how I want the server to be compared to other larger servers and having several kinds of moderators helps accomplish that goal.

Let’s tackle which mods applied for the moderator role. A grand total of zero current moderators applied for the role. We have never had applications, and will never have as long as I retain owner. Why is that? Moderator applications are probably the 2nd silliest (2nd only to randomly picking a moderator) way to decide on a moderator for a chat community with usernames. The kind of people who would apply to be a moderator are exactly the people who you do not want to be moderators 98% of the time.

So how do moderators get selected? It’s a really simple process. One moderator vouches for a user, and then the other moderators give their opinion on the user. If someone is indifferent, that’s fine. If anyone has a negative opinion, that user is probably not a great fit already. Being friends with a user may influence a moderator’s nomination, but it doesn’t mean the person would get through. Why is this better? Because you are electing people who are active in chat, and align with how we view the server as wanting to go. If the current moderators are in agreement, we extend an invitation to the user who can accept or reject it. That’s it. No application with a resume or CV. You’re judged on how you interact in the chat with other users because maybe a surprise to you, a moderator interacts with chat.

Well, if you elect moderators based on that, why did the moderator above have an overreaction if you select based on chat interaction. Because we’re human and when you get frequently attacked, you’re bound to blow up at one point. Again, the moderator was talked to, because we’re adults and we can work out our issues.

Another thing that I need to rant about and actually get off my chest is that stupid fucking rule where EVERYTHING in chat NEEDS to be about fumos. This is the only rule I have a problem with, and is the only one anyone should have a problem with, because for some people in the server, they tend to talk about serious issues that they might be having in their life and how it’s affecting them, but NOPE NO YOU CAN’T TALK ABOUT THAT BECAUSE IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOUHOU PLUSHIES PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE, I’ve seen this happen so many times in chat and there has been NOTHING that I could have done because SOMEONE on the mod team probably would gave muted me for some retarded reason.

When all you contribute to chat is 90% venting about your life’s issues, you’re very clearly not using the server as a ‘fumo server’ and instead using it as a ‘venting server,’ so of course you’ll be directed elsewhere. To think you would have free reign would be silly.

Likewise, when all you post about is a single franchise, you’re probably better suited to find a server centered around that franchise. I understand you want to occasionally share something you’re passionate about, and I encourage it. But not when it’s the bulk of 90% of your messages.

I’m not really sure why people have a hard time with this ruling when they would have a much better time talking about it in servers that have more aligned interests, but I guess I have to be extremely explicit in stating this when we can’t think clearly because we have an intense dislike for the moderation team already.

While I’m on the topic of mods, why the fuck would you add another user to the mod team?

Well, I addressed the first part, but I can go into more detail for this user. The new moderator is extremely outspoken and happy to call out users when they do something silly on the server that doesn’t align with what the server strives to be. Hmmmm, almost like a good match for my earlier criteria for selecting a moderator. Curious.

And why is it the user that a majority of the users there dislike? It’s nearly like you’re trying to run the server into the ground or something.

The group that dislikes Dan is the same one that gets called out by Dan when they do dumb shit. Like Frank for one. I would disagree with the “majority of users” since Alice had left the server and would have been fed a biased view of the server, perhaps by Frank but I’m guessing so maybe Bob or another. I don’t blame them for thinking it’s a majority, but when you have a larger sample size, it’s just plainly false.

I also want to touch on this idea of “if a user is disliked, don’t mod them.” Let’s apply some traditional logic to this and change this statement into the contraposition. “Mod a user if they are liked.” If a user is liked, they would presumably be friends with the current moderators, for anyone’s definition of “like,” and then Alice wouldn’t be happy because then it’s suddenly because of connections. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. I know they’re just ranting, but it’s important to point out the logical inconsistencies sometimes in the hopes that people who know Alice realize how angry she really is.

We’ll see how I’m running the server into the ground later.

There’s enough fucking mods on the team as is, hell, we only really need 3 or 4 since the amount of active users compared to the user count is small, so what was the point in modding them?

This was addressed before, but including it to be true when I said I would read every sentence.

I know that Frank left because of this and he was talking in the server nearly everyday when I was there, seriously, think about that for a second, one of the most active users in the server leaves because of a shitty decision you all made, it won’t be very long before the active users in the server all leave and go to some other place.

I can’t prove or disprove the claim of why Frank left as I stated in his introduction. Frank definitely was an active member in terms of raw messages, but he wasn’t a valued member in my eyes. There are some users who have less than 100 messages, who I value more than some with more than 10,000 messages. Value makes it sound very transactional, but I use to refer to how sad I would be if the user suddenly vanished. Frank’s disappearance was so good, that he was banned after leaving so he wouldn’t be able to rejoin us. So, there goes that argument.

We can also touch on the “if one active person leaves, then all the active people leave.” I think we can classify this under a slippery slope fallacy. If an action I take leads to high-activity low-value members to leave, I would consider that a good action to take.

There’s probably so much more that I want to say, but it’s midnight right now and i’m not arsed to write any more shit about this place, so PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD, DO SOMETHING USEFUL AND MAKE THE SERVER AT LEAST SOMEWHAT TOLERABLE TO USE.

Looks pretty tolerable to most users.

You can even see we tapered off our leaves around June 2022 which coincides to when we switched to having a permanent pride avatar. But that’s not useful or tolerable, I guess.

This is likely to be the very last thing I ever do with the server but you never know, I hope that it is, but I know that as soon as I send this message in the server, one of the mods is gonna skim through this and delete it without even giving it a proper read, and taking my problems into consideration, and I should probably mention this, but I am definitely not the only one in the server who has these problems, ALOT of people, alot of active people agree with some of the frustrations that I have but are too scared to speak up about it because someone will probably ban or mute them over it.

Another huge sentence, let’s break it down.

Well, I was right in the initial judgment call where you’re joining to just start drama that you haven’t been a part of for months. Why the original plan wasn’t to send this in a DM to me directly, I’ll never know, but I can assume it was just to get the attention factor in the server.

I’m aware that Alice is scared of speaking up, because her kind of speaking up involves attacking the moderators personally and then expecting them to not do anything. For the people who are actually adults, we have meta discussions about our moderation, and I even encourage it when it’s something serious. But that’s alright Alice, I know you just wanted to rant.

In fact, the most recent stint was about 2 days ago as of writing this. A user was upset about why they were being “selectively moderated” in their eyes and the answer is simple. Because they keep doing the same things we tell them not to. But they can at least talk about in a more mature way than this whole manifesto. And it may be a surprise to you that the user came into chat a few hours later and thanked us for not nuking them. It’s almost like moderators are human and reciprocate actions…

Basically, what I’m saying is, cop the fuck on.

"cop on
phrasal verb of cop
informal•Irish

become aware of something.
"she never copped on—you've no idea of the guilt I went through"
    used as a way of telling someone not to be so stupid.
    "ah, cop on, I was only messin'"".

I can’t figure out how to format it correctly, but the above definition was a part of the manifesto. Thank you for including the definition Alice, I would have not known the term otherwise. I have copped on to the phrase “cop on!”

Get all of your shit together, fix the server up, reform the mod team, let people talk more about things that aren’t touhou plushies….

If I haven’t made my points clear by now, I can’t make it any clearer.

And the most important thing.

!!

Do better, all of you.

Thank you for your positive contributions to the server Alice, such as posting the same gif every day for several weeks in a thread where other people had discussions.

I’ll concede that I’m not a psychologist and labeling him as a narcissist without any training is wrong. However, applying that label makes so many things fall into place that it helps me see why this unraveled this way. Alice feeling attacked, followed by targeting Charlie, followed by trying to disseminate the manifesto. But it’s ultimately a label applied probably incorrectly by a non-professional.

What I know for certain, is that some people feel targeted when a moderator takes action against them and feel wronged if the moderator personally called them out. You know what you should do when a moderator says you did something wrong? “Oh I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” It’s not a personal vendetta against you. We’re trying to make the server a place for everyone. Not just your hangout.

If you disagree with the action, you don’t resort to shit-flinging. You have a civil discussion. We make mistakes, it happens. The mistakes tend to get undone when you approach them with a level-head. Any big decision we take has a longer discussion in a staff channel because that’s how much we value taking the right action, and try to not let an emotional state cloud a logical process.

I still don’t understand why there’s this much drama in a server centered around plushes, but that’s why we have moderators - to take out the trash.

Don’t come back to my server, Alice.