05-14-2017, 11:08 PM
**I tried to provide as much context as I can, but keep in mind these are all my opinions, experiences, and perspectives**
At the end of 2015, I had just reached the end of my time at RIT. When I arrived there in September 2012, I was suicidal and, according to my therapist, one of the worst cases she had ever seen. At the end of the Spring 2013 semester, I was starting to get my life back on track. Shortly after I arrived back in NYC for summer break, one of my best friends killed himself the exact same way I planned on killing myself 9 months earlier. He was my father figure, brother, and role model, wrapped into one package. I was beside myself with grief and spiraled into two and a half years of alcoholism in order to cope with it. After a few failed relationships, I sobered up and decided to restart my life back in NYC with my family. I also decided to play some TTT, a game I saw a lot of videos on. It seemed like a lot of fun.
I joined the first server I saw and I fell in love. Something about the sardonic atmosphere made me want to keep coming back. The first people I met here included Assbutt, Anthony, Queef Commando, Colleen, Drew, Ted, Dakody, Chiron, Sassy Phoenix, and Scoovie. All of these people were awesome and a great first impression. They were the reason I initially became a Donor; I wanted to keep funding the place where all my friends were meeting up.
See, that’s one of the things that will be a running theme here. I didn’t have any real life friends when I moved back to NYC. Everyone was off in college and I am (well, I was a lot worse back then) too socially awkward in real life to easily make friends. Being online was a safe way for me to make friends; no one cared about my looks and we didn’t have to physically travel to hang out. My internet friends are as good as my few IRL friends; the only difference is physical proximity.
Anyway, I decided to become staff to further help this place I loved. My first staff app was declined for being too new. I applied at 100 hours exactly and wasn’t involved in the community. I was told to apply in another month or two. Shortly after that, Dudewrath Exalted joined the server. For those who haven’t had the (mis)fortune of playing with them, they are one of the angriest people you’ll ever meet. There have been serial whiners in the past (looking at you, Russ), but he took it to another level. They were the second worst whiner in the server’s history, and no I’m not the first (I will decline to name them since I am on good terms with the first, but old time staff will absolutely know who I am talking about). I was still struggling with my emotions and wasn’t yet back in therapy. Dudewrath made it seem fun to be angry, so I entered what I refer to as my “Angriest Man On The Server†phase. When I applied for staff a second time, I was rejected for being too angry. I calmed down and refocused myself before I applied for staff again. I was still too goofy, though; I had the “Were you RDM’d? Type !ttt to report them†bind and necro’d a bunch of threads which resulted in a 72-hour forum ban from Ted (the prick). By the time I applied again, I knew I was gonna donate for TMod shortly after getting Trusted to support the server more. I got rejected and was told to apply again next month, so I said “fuck waiting†and coughed up the dough.
Man, those first weeks of being staff. I did every report I could, I was helpful to new players, and I was always playing. This place was a cathartic release for me. This was the early summer of 2016 and I never wanted to leave. This is around the time that Scoovie and Queef invited me to start playing L4D2. Through them, I made some strong friends that I wanted to hang with all the time. Modded Minecraft, L4D2, Killing Floor, it didn’t matter. I had good friends.
This was also the time I started pushing for the new rotation. The old one had gotten stale and I was tired of constantly playing fucking Dolls. It’s a great map, don’t get me mistaken, but the server would soft crash several times a day back then which meant I spent too much fucking time on there. So I cobbled it together, the Admins signed off, and Dink pushed it live. Of course, it had some issues at first, but it was eventually tweaked. After a few months, I started to look into updating the rotation again. I ran that survey and got some good data out of it. I was gonna have Dink mount it, but then I mentioned map voting to him and he decided to spend the 30 extra seconds to make it work. It took us some time to tweak it a bit more and some maps had to go as well (RIP Polaris and old Krusty Krab), but I’m happy with the final result.
It was over the summer that Ritsuneru started playing on the TTT server. It’s surprising to say now but her and I were friends way back then. We’d talk a lot about our lives, our families, games we like, and whatever. I did try flirting with her, but she said she wasn’t interested so I dropped it (Hey, you never know if you don’t try). I actively encouraged her to apply for TTT Staff because she was on during the night and a lot of fun to be around. Once she was staff, however, things started turning for the worse.
I was very close to becoming Mod in Late August. In fact, I had passed the Admin vote. However, I had a bad panic attack the night before I was to be promoted. If you’ve never had a real bad panic attack, consider yourself lucky. They manifest themselves in several ways, but mine manifest in pure vitriol. The target of this was Dalek Emperor, who had just purchased TMod. I won’t share what I said about him in Staff Chat, however it was pretty fucking awful and something I continue to be remorseful for. Regardless, I had lost my promotion to Mod and decided to banish myself for a week as an act of penance. Rits never forgave me for that and, combined with her personal life rapidly changing for the worse, lead her behavior to start getting more hostile towards me.
She started frequenting 4th Life, a TTT server started by the permabanned Mushroomz just to spite Dink. I have nothing to say about Mush, however the barebones community over there encouraged Rits to start making more and more photoshops of me. She also started to shit on me on the forums and on the server. She was the real genesis of the “fuck Rippe†mentality and she reveled in it. She found a sense of camaraderie in that toxicity directed exclusively towards me. This is where Ted also joined in. I had chatted a lot of shit about Mush and he took exception to this. Shortly after my panic attack, he stopped answering any of my messages. As a friend, as a person, or as an Admin. Nothing. After everything went down, it came to light that Ted was encouraging the behavior of Rits and was actively making those shitty photoshops of me. But that’s jumping ahead of myself.
I had asked the Admins repeatedly for help, to step in and intervene to make her stop. It was almost entirely Kody who I was asking, but I also asked Drew and Obi every once in awhile. Nothing. I knew (but couldn’t prove) that Ted was encouraging her, so going to him was worthless. Tyler was never around and never wanted to shake the boat. So it was just me begging for help into an uncaring void.
And then Fozzy’s second ban happened. Oh boy.
Cards on the table, I didn’t think Fozzy was hacking after the second ban. However I encouraged the Admins to keep him banned in order to flex their muscles and tell the community that their bullshit and callouts would not stand. I recognize this was wrong and this is another one of my regrets on the server, so my meager penance is this: Fozzy was going to remain banned purely for political reasons. The evidence was disputed and even Tuturu said it was junk, however the majority of the Admins wanted to show strength. The riots worked and I commend everyone for doing the right thing in this case. Fozzy, I’m sorry for my part in this.
After the riots, Tyler resigned. He was too busy to be the co-owner anymore and it was good for optics that someone step down over the riots. There was a void to fill, so Kody & I approached Dink with a proposal: make Kody co-owner (temporarily at first, but permanently after a time) and get Colleen to come back to promote her to Admin. Dink was receptive to all of these and we had previously spoken to Colleen about the idea, so the ball was rolling. Obviously this isn’t how all this panned out after the second seat opened once Ted was forced to resign, however I’m glad she’s still around as staff. I’m proud to call her my friend and all staff should seek to emulate her.
This was also where Kody & I approached Dink about the Forum Janitor. He really liked the idea and whipped it up. The anti-Rippe sentiment was very prevalent, so I proposed giving the role to Lycan as well to mask this fact that Janitor was created just for me. I’m gonna gloss over the riot that Mallakk started and Rits encouraged over Janitor, since I don’t have much to say about it other than it was dumb, however I will highlight one thing and move on to November 28th, 2016.
The Admins finally banned Rits on that day. After months and months of begging and pleading, multiples panic attacks, losing weight due to stress, and more tears than I’d like to admit, the person responsible for nearly harassing me off the server was finally gone. The TTT Admins were going to ban her permanently, but PH was not their avenue. I spoke to Noah and expressed how uncomfortable she made me feel. He said that he’d be ok banning her if that’s what I wanted and I expressed that. Internally, I would have been ok with her eventually getting unbanned on PH but never being unbanned on TTT. During her unban request, she behaved in such a horrid fashion that Noah decided to never unban her.
I’d like to share some messages she sent to me unsolicited immediately before & after she was banned. These messages speak for themselves and I will provide no commentary other than to say that I believe her obsession with me came from the post-ban exchange.
During the whole Rits debacle, though, my ability to enjoy this server was greatly diminished. The atmosphere became openly hostile towards me and I started getting angrier and angrier. Some people told me to just “ignore it,†but that doesn’t work. You don’t ignore bullies. You make them stop. I couldn’t make her stop and my frustration and anger at her turning people against me made me sicker and sicker. Hell, I even lashed out at Tuturu when he almost ruined the plan to get Rits demoted. I offer this not as an excuse, but context for my behavior.
After Rits, everything started going right for me on here. We started hosting all the data on the mySQL server. We added Pointshop 2. The new Admins engaged in clearer and more frequent communication with the community. Prop Hunt was switched to EPH and it’s as popular as ever. Hell, the join/leave/ban lag is significantly reduced! There was greater accountability every step of the way. Everything I ever wanted for the server was finally implemented and I finally got my promotion to Mod.
I’ve even lead a few inquisitions and gotten Staff demoted for abuse. Prince Nicky got 11 Staff demoted. I only got 4. My biggest failure is not even getting half his number.
This transitions very well into something else I want to bring up. Long-time players will remember Prince Nicky. He was one of the most controversial people in the server’s history. He was there since nearly the beginning and he fought long and hard against corruption and abuse. He sought to make the server a better place and he would pick fights with anyone who tried to stop the server from becoming better. He got more and more frustrated as time progressed and eventually realized that this place was too negative for him. He resigned when he came to this conclusion and seems to be doing well for himself.
A few people have made the comparison between the two of us. Hell, I’ve claimed to be the heir of his throne. That’s why I adopted the title of Prince Of A Thousand Enemies; both as tribute to him and as a tribute to Watership Down. None of you ever caught the Prince With A Thousand Enemies.
In World War Z, a character by the name of Señor Alvarez talks about Che leaving Cuba after their revolution. “It's a lot easier to blow up the trains than to make them run on time.†I have nothing left to work towards; it’s just maintenance work which doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’m tired and angry all the time now. The harassment never stops and there are staff who try to cut my nuts off every chance they get. I’m bored of dealing with it, so I’m abdicating my throne. Nicky described this feeling very well in his letter.
What will I do after I leave? I don’t really know, honestly. I’ve got a LOT of single-player games to play through. I’m probably going to go back to my Xbox and finally hit 100,000 gamerscore (I’m at ~75K currently). I might get into speedrunning Max Payne 2 and Mis-Ed-Ventures on my Twitch channel. I’ll still be in the public Discord, but only to play Overwatch with the people there.
Now, I know some of you are asking why I’m banning myself. The simple reason is that I care too much about this place. Everyone has seen my obsessive personality on this server and making things better here. It’s earned me a lot of shit, but it’s also gotten the server to the positive state where it is. It’s impossible for me to turn off my laser-focus and the only way I’ll ever be able to let go of this place is if I’m not allowed to care about this place. Will I ever come back? Maybe in a long time from now. But I’m never gonna be staff again and I’m gonna stay banned on the forums. I’d be here only to play a game, but only after I let go. And I’m ready to let go.
I have one last thing to say before I leave. There will be people who will seek to destroy my legacy. Who will smear my name. Who will say my influence on the server was nothing but negative. Who will say I did nothing here to get this server to improve. Those of you who know what it was like before I came here will know this is bullshit. I didn’t program or maintain the database, sure, but I pushed for all these changes. I was project lead for the Dev Team and my ideas were implemented because I did the research and presented it to those who could do it. I’m not an angel. I’m only human with human flaws. I’ve sinned, but I only ever sought to do the right thing. My final request is this: don’t let them smear my legacy. Don’t let my name be only associated with negativity. Remember me for who I am; a man who only wanted the best from this place.
Thank you all for the fantastic memories. I will remember them for the rest of my life.
At the end of 2015, I had just reached the end of my time at RIT. When I arrived there in September 2012, I was suicidal and, according to my therapist, one of the worst cases she had ever seen. At the end of the Spring 2013 semester, I was starting to get my life back on track. Shortly after I arrived back in NYC for summer break, one of my best friends killed himself the exact same way I planned on killing myself 9 months earlier. He was my father figure, brother, and role model, wrapped into one package. I was beside myself with grief and spiraled into two and a half years of alcoholism in order to cope with it. After a few failed relationships, I sobered up and decided to restart my life back in NYC with my family. I also decided to play some TTT, a game I saw a lot of videos on. It seemed like a lot of fun.
I joined the first server I saw and I fell in love. Something about the sardonic atmosphere made me want to keep coming back. The first people I met here included Assbutt, Anthony, Queef Commando, Colleen, Drew, Ted, Dakody, Chiron, Sassy Phoenix, and Scoovie. All of these people were awesome and a great first impression. They were the reason I initially became a Donor; I wanted to keep funding the place where all my friends were meeting up.
See, that’s one of the things that will be a running theme here. I didn’t have any real life friends when I moved back to NYC. Everyone was off in college and I am (well, I was a lot worse back then) too socially awkward in real life to easily make friends. Being online was a safe way for me to make friends; no one cared about my looks and we didn’t have to physically travel to hang out. My internet friends are as good as my few IRL friends; the only difference is physical proximity.
Anyway, I decided to become staff to further help this place I loved. My first staff app was declined for being too new. I applied at 100 hours exactly and wasn’t involved in the community. I was told to apply in another month or two. Shortly after that, Dudewrath Exalted joined the server. For those who haven’t had the (mis)fortune of playing with them, they are one of the angriest people you’ll ever meet. There have been serial whiners in the past (looking at you, Russ), but he took it to another level. They were the second worst whiner in the server’s history, and no I’m not the first (I will decline to name them since I am on good terms with the first, but old time staff will absolutely know who I am talking about). I was still struggling with my emotions and wasn’t yet back in therapy. Dudewrath made it seem fun to be angry, so I entered what I refer to as my “Angriest Man On The Server†phase. When I applied for staff a second time, I was rejected for being too angry. I calmed down and refocused myself before I applied for staff again. I was still too goofy, though; I had the “Were you RDM’d? Type !ttt to report them†bind and necro’d a bunch of threads which resulted in a 72-hour forum ban from Ted (the prick). By the time I applied again, I knew I was gonna donate for TMod shortly after getting Trusted to support the server more. I got rejected and was told to apply again next month, so I said “fuck waiting†and coughed up the dough.
Man, those first weeks of being staff. I did every report I could, I was helpful to new players, and I was always playing. This place was a cathartic release for me. This was the early summer of 2016 and I never wanted to leave. This is around the time that Scoovie and Queef invited me to start playing L4D2. Through them, I made some strong friends that I wanted to hang with all the time. Modded Minecraft, L4D2, Killing Floor, it didn’t matter. I had good friends.
This was also the time I started pushing for the new rotation. The old one had gotten stale and I was tired of constantly playing fucking Dolls. It’s a great map, don’t get me mistaken, but the server would soft crash several times a day back then which meant I spent too much fucking time on there. So I cobbled it together, the Admins signed off, and Dink pushed it live. Of course, it had some issues at first, but it was eventually tweaked. After a few months, I started to look into updating the rotation again. I ran that survey and got some good data out of it. I was gonna have Dink mount it, but then I mentioned map voting to him and he decided to spend the 30 extra seconds to make it work. It took us some time to tweak it a bit more and some maps had to go as well (RIP Polaris and old Krusty Krab), but I’m happy with the final result.
It was over the summer that Ritsuneru started playing on the TTT server. It’s surprising to say now but her and I were friends way back then. We’d talk a lot about our lives, our families, games we like, and whatever. I did try flirting with her, but she said she wasn’t interested so I dropped it (Hey, you never know if you don’t try). I actively encouraged her to apply for TTT Staff because she was on during the night and a lot of fun to be around. Once she was staff, however, things started turning for the worse.
I was very close to becoming Mod in Late August. In fact, I had passed the Admin vote. However, I had a bad panic attack the night before I was to be promoted. If you’ve never had a real bad panic attack, consider yourself lucky. They manifest themselves in several ways, but mine manifest in pure vitriol. The target of this was Dalek Emperor, who had just purchased TMod. I won’t share what I said about him in Staff Chat, however it was pretty fucking awful and something I continue to be remorseful for. Regardless, I had lost my promotion to Mod and decided to banish myself for a week as an act of penance. Rits never forgave me for that and, combined with her personal life rapidly changing for the worse, lead her behavior to start getting more hostile towards me.
She started frequenting 4th Life, a TTT server started by the permabanned Mushroomz just to spite Dink. I have nothing to say about Mush, however the barebones community over there encouraged Rits to start making more and more photoshops of me. She also started to shit on me on the forums and on the server. She was the real genesis of the “fuck Rippe†mentality and she reveled in it. She found a sense of camaraderie in that toxicity directed exclusively towards me. This is where Ted also joined in. I had chatted a lot of shit about Mush and he took exception to this. Shortly after my panic attack, he stopped answering any of my messages. As a friend, as a person, or as an Admin. Nothing. After everything went down, it came to light that Ted was encouraging the behavior of Rits and was actively making those shitty photoshops of me. But that’s jumping ahead of myself.
I had asked the Admins repeatedly for help, to step in and intervene to make her stop. It was almost entirely Kody who I was asking, but I also asked Drew and Obi every once in awhile. Nothing. I knew (but couldn’t prove) that Ted was encouraging her, so going to him was worthless. Tyler was never around and never wanted to shake the boat. So it was just me begging for help into an uncaring void.
And then Fozzy’s second ban happened. Oh boy.
Cards on the table, I didn’t think Fozzy was hacking after the second ban. However I encouraged the Admins to keep him banned in order to flex their muscles and tell the community that their bullshit and callouts would not stand. I recognize this was wrong and this is another one of my regrets on the server, so my meager penance is this: Fozzy was going to remain banned purely for political reasons. The evidence was disputed and even Tuturu said it was junk, however the majority of the Admins wanted to show strength. The riots worked and I commend everyone for doing the right thing in this case. Fozzy, I’m sorry for my part in this.
After the riots, Tyler resigned. He was too busy to be the co-owner anymore and it was good for optics that someone step down over the riots. There was a void to fill, so Kody & I approached Dink with a proposal: make Kody co-owner (temporarily at first, but permanently after a time) and get Colleen to come back to promote her to Admin. Dink was receptive to all of these and we had previously spoken to Colleen about the idea, so the ball was rolling. Obviously this isn’t how all this panned out after the second seat opened once Ted was forced to resign, however I’m glad she’s still around as staff. I’m proud to call her my friend and all staff should seek to emulate her.
This was also where Kody & I approached Dink about the Forum Janitor. He really liked the idea and whipped it up. The anti-Rippe sentiment was very prevalent, so I proposed giving the role to Lycan as well to mask this fact that Janitor was created just for me. I’m gonna gloss over the riot that Mallakk started and Rits encouraged over Janitor, since I don’t have much to say about it other than it was dumb, however I will highlight one thing and move on to November 28th, 2016.
The Admins finally banned Rits on that day. After months and months of begging and pleading, multiples panic attacks, losing weight due to stress, and more tears than I’d like to admit, the person responsible for nearly harassing me off the server was finally gone. The TTT Admins were going to ban her permanently, but PH was not their avenue. I spoke to Noah and expressed how uncomfortable she made me feel. He said that he’d be ok banning her if that’s what I wanted and I expressed that. Internally, I would have been ok with her eventually getting unbanned on PH but never being unbanned on TTT. During her unban request, she behaved in such a horrid fashion that Noah decided to never unban her.
I’d like to share some messages she sent to me unsolicited immediately before & after she was banned. These messages speak for themselves and I will provide no commentary other than to say that I believe her obsession with me came from the post-ban exchange.
During the whole Rits debacle, though, my ability to enjoy this server was greatly diminished. The atmosphere became openly hostile towards me and I started getting angrier and angrier. Some people told me to just “ignore it,†but that doesn’t work. You don’t ignore bullies. You make them stop. I couldn’t make her stop and my frustration and anger at her turning people against me made me sicker and sicker. Hell, I even lashed out at Tuturu when he almost ruined the plan to get Rits demoted. I offer this not as an excuse, but context for my behavior.
After Rits, everything started going right for me on here. We started hosting all the data on the mySQL server. We added Pointshop 2. The new Admins engaged in clearer and more frequent communication with the community. Prop Hunt was switched to EPH and it’s as popular as ever. Hell, the join/leave/ban lag is significantly reduced! There was greater accountability every step of the way. Everything I ever wanted for the server was finally implemented and I finally got my promotion to Mod.
I’ve even lead a few inquisitions and gotten Staff demoted for abuse. Prince Nicky got 11 Staff demoted. I only got 4. My biggest failure is not even getting half his number.
- Getting Ted demoted out of staff twice is my proudest achievement here. The server is a better place without the abusive cunt in any position of influence and I don’t regret any of the things I ever said about him. Fun fact: Rits claims that he looked up the IP addresses of myself and another person on the forums and confirmed our physical proximity to one another!
- Lycan very rapidly lost the trust of the Admins during the entire Rits situation. He also betrayed my trust on several occasions, so I have no reason not to share this. He invited Gragle back to the Staff GroupMe after he was demoted, who invited Rits back just to post more harassing memes of me. Fun fact: If you leave a GroupMe chat of your own volition, you can rejoin at any time and members in it can’t remove you. So Gragle left before I could remove him, which means he could rejoin, invite Rits back, and leave before I could remove him. This is why we moved to Discord, so I suppose I should thank him for that much. Anyway, Lycan was demoted after leaking staff chat to Rits and encouraging her behavior.
- In terms of Donors, I got Salt Aboose demoted for command abuse. He & I have since made up and play Overwatch every now and then. It wasn’t personal; he broke the rules and he was punished for it.
This transitions very well into something else I want to bring up. Long-time players will remember Prince Nicky. He was one of the most controversial people in the server’s history. He was there since nearly the beginning and he fought long and hard against corruption and abuse. He sought to make the server a better place and he would pick fights with anyone who tried to stop the server from becoming better. He got more and more frustrated as time progressed and eventually realized that this place was too negative for him. He resigned when he came to this conclusion and seems to be doing well for himself.
A few people have made the comparison between the two of us. Hell, I’ve claimed to be the heir of his throne. That’s why I adopted the title of Prince Of A Thousand Enemies; both as tribute to him and as a tribute to Watership Down. None of you ever caught the Prince With A Thousand Enemies.
In World War Z, a character by the name of Señor Alvarez talks about Che leaving Cuba after their revolution. “It's a lot easier to blow up the trains than to make them run on time.†I have nothing left to work towards; it’s just maintenance work which doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’m tired and angry all the time now. The harassment never stops and there are staff who try to cut my nuts off every chance they get. I’m bored of dealing with it, so I’m abdicating my throne. Nicky described this feeling very well in his letter.
Prince Nicky Wrote:Following the Bantz episode, I think this is when I really started to lose my love for the server. The constant challenges against me had really begun to wear me down and I just didn't feel that I had the energy to fight back anymore. I had stood alone for far too long and I just couldn't do it anymore. I had also been a staff member for over a year at this point and was just tired of it I guess. The constant expectations that players held for me, the necessity to try to be a role model of everyone, and the responsibilities I held had just been going on too long. I'd been playing pretty much exclusively on Dink's since I joined so I really had lost touch of TTT and just being able to have fun and what that entailed.
What will I do after I leave? I don’t really know, honestly. I’ve got a LOT of single-player games to play through. I’m probably going to go back to my Xbox and finally hit 100,000 gamerscore (I’m at ~75K currently). I might get into speedrunning Max Payne 2 and Mis-Ed-Ventures on my Twitch channel. I’ll still be in the public Discord, but only to play Overwatch with the people there.
Now, I know some of you are asking why I’m banning myself. The simple reason is that I care too much about this place. Everyone has seen my obsessive personality on this server and making things better here. It’s earned me a lot of shit, but it’s also gotten the server to the positive state where it is. It’s impossible for me to turn off my laser-focus and the only way I’ll ever be able to let go of this place is if I’m not allowed to care about this place. Will I ever come back? Maybe in a long time from now. But I’m never gonna be staff again and I’m gonna stay banned on the forums. I’d be here only to play a game, but only after I let go. And I’m ready to let go.
I have one last thing to say before I leave. There will be people who will seek to destroy my legacy. Who will smear my name. Who will say my influence on the server was nothing but negative. Who will say I did nothing here to get this server to improve. Those of you who know what it was like before I came here will know this is bullshit. I didn’t program or maintain the database, sure, but I pushed for all these changes. I was project lead for the Dev Team and my ideas were implemented because I did the research and presented it to those who could do it. I’m not an angel. I’m only human with human flaws. I’ve sinned, but I only ever sought to do the right thing. My final request is this: don’t let them smear my legacy. Don’t let my name be only associated with negativity. Remember me for who I am; a man who only wanted the best from this place.
Thank you all for the fantastic memories. I will remember them for the rest of my life.