I was going to go into more detail with my post, but... after (not) a lotta thought, I found that I cared a lot less about this than younger me might wish I would, lol
I'm going to try to make this as short as possible. (god I hope it's short)
Disclaimer: A LOT OF THIS HAPPENED LONG ENOUGH AGO FOR ME TO NOT HAVE SCREENSHOTS OR RECEIPTS OF EVERY EVENT. Additionally, not all of this post is about my experience alone.
I am an old man. Please take it with a grain of salt.
If you personally are aware of these situations and have your own screens for these, please feel free DM me and I'll edit this post.
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I first encountered Mystic on this forum around 17 years ago. I was 10 years old. About a year into it, I tried to make a mod without understanding what that actually means.
Here is the thread from 2004:
https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=16361
(please go easy on me; I hadn't even encountered puberty yet)
This is extraordinarily cringe for me. I wasn't equipped to handle a whole-ass mod alone, obviously, so I did the "recruiting" taboo and tried to create a team.
(During this time, I was using SRB2 to escape from some pretty serious abuse from my parents who were both divorcing at the time (with me as the scapegoat). I'm fine now.)
Unfortunately, though I had picked up a lot of skills to actually make the mod happen—this was around when I started learning web dev and other technical skills—I was put on a schedule to do hard releases, because I had set a release date. Naturally, since I was
11 years old here, I couldn't keep to a hard deadline for something like this. I could barely handle getting
homework done on time, lmao.
Mystic demanded I make the release or get banned, and I couldn't. I had a breakdown, and I was banned.
(I was 11.)
This experience is shockingly similar to a lot of other people's on here—children were pushed to
produce content. Anything that wasn't tangible production was just kinda locked and removed. People operated on "I can't share this if I can't release it". If they happened to be able to produce and their content was *good*, they were poached and put on dev to get straight to work on the game.
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Shortly after, I was groomed by a person on staff whom I need not mention. A friend of mine tried to report this behavior, but it was ignored by Mystic, and they continued to develop content for the game, ending their tenure after having implemented the core of LUA support.
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I hopped around for while, but eventually came back. I started contributing on this account as a young teen (like, 13/14?) and had a pretty... normal time? Mystic still had an issue with me though, despite most people actually not caring much. I was doing college prep then, but the modding scene kept me back—this is what motivates most people back, I think.
It was around this time the atmosphere was beginning to become the most stifling, with users being banned for not capitalizing their I's or not having perfect grammar. Lots of bullying of ESL (Engish as a Second Language) users and frivolous bans, like this one:
(During this time, there was no infraction system. 1st ban was 3-day, 2nd was 1 week, 3rd was permanent no matter what the previous bans were for. Imagine being banned for not capitalizing the letter "i" once, and being close to a permanent ban because of it, lol)
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Eventually I was "Permabanned (For The Lulz)" with the ban reason "I don't need a reason to ban you." by Mystic. I looked, but I wasn't able to find a screenshot. It may have been the original ban on this account, but I no longer have access.
This is the source of the "Permabanned (For The Lulz)" title if you've seen it before. You can see it used in this video created by Sonict:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdTNZ4Y2ZsQ
Staff spread rumors about me involving this ban, which is where most of my weird notoriety comes from. People from back then might remember me being a "hacker" or some other crazy nonsense, but all of that was bullshit. (More on this later.)
Don't get me wrong: I was a little dick emulating that uppity sort of pompous behavior everyone had on here, but all in all, my ban was the result of a grudge I never fully understood. It was always something that was going to happen, whether or not I broke any rules.
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Sometime in the middle of this was the creation of the #SRB2Fun forums, which firmly divided the community into "elite" and "plebian". I wasn't around for a lot of this, but I would encourage people to prod oldbies here for insight on how *not* to run a community. This is where a lot of bullying and gossip took place with membership being invite-only.
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My account, with me not on it, was used for SRB2's 2008 April Fools' Day event, "Rainbow Unicorn Blast 2".
This was the avatar they gave me:
(An image of the full account, here)
This was confirmed by Spazzo:
(Other people have taken a screenshot of this, as well as saved a direct link to the message in case it gets deleted.)
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Sometime during the middle of this, Prime (who was also removed) attempted to dox me and one other user (who has
also returned due to this news). He wasn't successful.
(I DO NOT HAVE A SCREENSHOT OF ME CONFRONTING HIM ABOUT THIS. Please, again, take this with a grain of salt.)
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On "hacking": some years later, a former dev asked if they could use my name to troll the Master Server with their clientless EXE. I
already had this reputation for some reason, and I didn't care much, so I said they could do whatever they wanted because I really wouldn't be able to stop them regardless. They had left dev and created this hack because they were burned by Mystic and company, and trusted me enough to not share their name. Some people might know who it is, but I won't be sharing their name here.
It had the ability to join games without a join message and execute all admin commands. Other versions of it had a triggerbot aimhack system, wallhack, and uh... more.
Link to "hacking" example:
https://youtu.be/FLJudrzMp10 (please feel free to remove if not allowed—this is defunct and no longer exists)
I believe when this dev left, progress was halted for a while.
This is similar to the situation with Graue (a441) who did a massive chunk of the programming for 1.08 -> 1.09's transition, who left due to Mystic being upset at the slow progress on their attempt to completely rewrite the netcode (IIRC—feel free to correct me).
Link to post: https://mb.srb2.org/showpost.php?p=685995&postcount=11
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When I was removed for no reason, I fucked around with SRB2 a little bit on an alternate account, but mostly moved on, because I was about to be starting my undergrad. I didn't really have a motivation to stick around and make maps, because people saw me as a literal demon (lol) and I had other stuff going on.
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My closure:
I'd ping Mystic on Esper every couple of years ago just to bug him. I think sometime in 2012/13 he responded to me. He was depressed and talked to me a bit about how his life was not going very well. At the time, my life was going
VERY well (I had just won a massive competitive scholarship in my field of study), so I just gloated. I told him that how he felt about how other people perceived him was a result of his own behavior, and I had never felt a desire to hop on IRC ever since.
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Fastforward to now, and I'm poking my lil nose around, aged, feeling kinship through other people's awful experiences dealing with Mystic. It's very warming to know that I wasn't alone. I hope that those who knew me can forgive my awful know-it-all behavior back then, as I've already forgiven them for whatever silly junk they may have done 10+ years ago.
It's weird, but as I was writing this, I started to realize that even just the name "Mystic" meant more to me as a League of Legends LCK player than as the Mystic I know here. I honest to god havent thought about SRB2 in so long; most of my recent exposure has been SRB2Kart (which is a testament to what this game *could* be without the influence of a NEET "creative director") and SMS Reborn.
I appreciate this thread being allowed to be kept open, as a lot of people needed this to be able to heal. Hopefully, with time, we can move on and forget him, like I had gotten close to doing completely.
The amount of raw, creative potential energy this community has is like nothing I've ever experienced anywhere else online, and it's all executed thanklessly. An alternate reality SRB2 without this massive fog of toxicity drowning it was something I could only *dream* of as a dumb little kid. You all have the chance to make this a reality right now.
The bullies are gone. Make a good future.
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Despite the garbage I had to deal with as a youngster who just wanted to make levels and junk, I really do hope Mystic gets his stuff together. I think, for the longest time, he was just envious of what other people could do (while simultaneously relishing in the power he had over these creatives), and reveled in his power over literal children. Hope he can find help. Hope he can find peace.
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As for me, I went to a crazy music school, won a lot of money, came out of the closet, won some more money, wrote a lot of music, taught for a while, got bored, and now do full-stack software development. Truthfully, getting banned back then was one of the best things that could've happened for me and the course of my own life.
If you have any questions for me or about any of the above, I encourage you to contact me either on here or on Discord (which can be found on my profile)—I'm actually pretty approachable (I hope) and absolutely do not mind random people hitting me up.
I might make a couple maps for 2.2 and do some Lua, since it seems easy and pretty fun to do nowadays. Slopes didn't exist when I played, so I'm THRILLED to mess with them. Not sure how long I'll stick around, though, as my era of SRB2 has long been gone, and I had moved on so long ago.
Until then.