Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

With Mystic gone from the team, there's something I need to tell you guys:

Back when I was a kid, I did things in the SRB2 community that I'm not proud of, but that's beside the point.

When #srb2fun on irc.esper.net was the current place for SRB2 and general conversation, I would say or do something minor that would lead to me getting banned from the channel, mostly from Mystic, for the following reason: "It seems that you are not mature enough to be part of the conversation. You can come back when you grow up."

On that note, according to a log that I lost, Mystic declared that all of my SRB2MB posts were "stupid", which made me feel really uncomfortable with posting whatever was on my mind and actually relevant to the topic at the time. This also went with anything I made related to SRB2, including YouTube videos related to the game. This actually hurt my feelings, and I felt like I was walking on thin ice with anything I tried to post.

On an old thread, Mystic infracted me for "sucking up" to him all because I agreed with him on what he said to D00D64. With Mystic gone, I no longer feel like I'm doing anything wrong.
 
SuperChris:

Mystic's modus operandi was "bullying children". Even if you're well-aware that this is the case, please understand that it wasn't your fault for not being "mature"—you were a child. A lot of his pathologically manipulative and abusive behavior came from the artificial power he got from his former position ruling over kids. You, as well as many others (including myself) were at the receiving end of this.

You were very likely doing nothing wrong. Hopefully with him gone, users in the future will never have to feel the way you did back then.
 
I remember I "called" Mystic a 'little shit' over a release date for 2.2 just about 4-5 years ago when I was an immature brat on the MB. (I didn't want to remember, tho. I gladly got infracted for it!)

Turns out he WAS a little shit after all. Isn't it ironic?
 
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For future reference whenever this is archived, there've been like 60+ users constantly at once viewing this thread all day, with entire Discord servers of prominent oldbies returning and newcomers alike literally celebrating the news.

If that doesn't speak volumes about how frustrating the guy's been, I dunno what would. Game will be fine, as stated by other devs here. (Not that he was the only problem).
 
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It's been crazy. I don't think I've ever seen so many people viewing one thread at the same time.
 
For future reference whenever this is archived, there've been like 60+ users constantly at once viewing this thread all day, with entire Discord servers of prominent oldbies returning and newcomers alike literally celebrating the news.

If that doesn't speak volumes about how frustrating the guy's been, I dunno what would. Game will be fine, as stated by other devs here. (Not that he was the only problem).

Holy crap, this feel's like a fucking celebration!
 
Mystic, I've occasionally felt that he was a Grinch so much that I at one point made an edit of his avatar replacing the face with that of the Grinch. Don't think I ever posted it.

But this was in response to how against SRB2 Christmas content he was. He even locked up my SRB2 Christmas Megamix mod topic to try to prevent me from continuing work on it after the Christmas Demo Levels were transferred into SRB2 the Past in 2010.

Even said there was no precedent for doing it.

I don't think I've ever really felt intimidated by him though. Angry yes, but intimidated, no.
 
Being under the former leadership the game had, like many pointed out in this thread, was not a good time. It constantly felt like walking on thin ice, because it felt like any sort of disagreement with the higher ups of the team would cause things to explode


This is very much the atmosphere I felt when being brought on during my short time, despite being told "you make cool stuff"
Not even one day passed, and I felt uneasy for reasons
 
Okay, so, I've been reading the past few pages of posts, and, well... they've given me personally a lot to think about. Thank you guys for being honest about your experiences.

excuse me while I write up a big post about my thoughts now, may take a while
 
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It's been crazy. I don't think I've ever seen so many people viewing one thread at the same time.


Indeed, I was surprised myself to see the response to this thread, most people I've seen at once viewing it was 80.

Initially, as I stated in the original post on page 1, I made this because I thought it's a big thing that could drastically change the course of this game, yet nobody said anything at all on here in the days following the announcement (maybe this whole discussion would have happened there, had that thread not been locked immediately after the announcement.)

By now, it's become a place where everyone shares their terrible stories in dealing with the removed members' temperament, which is fine, these things need to be said and people need to get the context of the how and why of the situation.

But I would also ask everyone not to forget the initial purpose of this thread: reasoning why you think this change might be or might not be beneficial for the developement of SRB2. So far I've seen some very good points being made, so let's keep that going as well.
 
Just been skimming through all the receipts and peoples experience.

Truly awful and disappointed in Mystic's behavior especially from someone at a high status in the development team. I could tell Mystic was a stubborn brick when i spoke to him and just generally in discussions but behind the scenes, all the receipts tell everything. The one that pisses me off the most is the handling of terrible moderation (its much more robust since that incident)

But enough of the doom and gloom, I am mostly excited to see what the new team have to offer for future versions. As a participant of all SUGOI collaborations, i totally agree that it sparked up SRB2s community life and creativity (maybe a brand spanking new OLDC in the future????)
 
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But I would also ask everyone not to forget the initial purpose of this thread: reasoning why you think this change might be or might not be beneficial for the developement of SRB2.

No other opinion about whether this is beneficial for the game's development or not is worth more than the developers themselves'. If their own testimonies about how Mystic was like a living miasma that constantly sapped their motivation to work on the game and may have done more to stifle progress than to actually contribute aren't enough to convince you about how good this change is, I'm not sure what you were expecting by creating this thread.
 
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There's not a lot I can say publicly about it, but despite not being that involved in the community in the past few years, I had a pretty rough run-in with Mystic in private fairly recently that really stuck with me. In the decade plus I've been in this community I never liked him anyway, but for me it was personal. A lot of the issues brought to light in this thread only make my hatred towards him stronger. Good riddance to that crusty old fuck.
 
No other opinion about whether this is beneficial for the game's development or not is worth more than the developers themselves'. If their own testimonies about how Mystic was like a living miasma that constantly sapped their motivation to work on the game and may have done more to stifle progress than to actually contribute aren't enough to convince you about how good this change is, I'm not sure what you were expecting by creating this thread.


I am personally more than convinced now, I assure you. But it's good to maintain the thread as a general library of reasons for anyone else that comes along and might be uninformed on the situation. And the stories shared here provide just that, so it's in the right direction, I suppose.
 
I am personally more than convinced now, I assure you. But it's good to maintain the thread as a general library of reasons for anyone else that comes along and might be uninformed on the situation. And the stories shared here provide just that, so it's in the right direction, I suppose.

For what it's worth, I can't think of any cons to this situation beyond the initial rebuilding and gap-filling. I know how strong of a motivation it can be to maintain a middle-of-the-road, neutral stance in the face of a controversial situation. I totally understand how you might feel and what you may have sought for this thread. The reality is: it's unusually unifying how unanimously people feel about this departure. Sometimes... that's just how it is.
 
Okay, I'd like to take the opportunity to dive into what lead to recent events, especially the talk surrounding Mystic in particular. It has recently become clear to me that something was very wrong with the SRB2 community in the past, and it holds very much relevance to said events.

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Let's talk about bullying a moment.

"Bullying" is usually defined as something like seeking to harm, intimidate or coerce someone vulnerable, in a repeated way. For our purposes, we are mostly going to be talking about intimidation, or similar acts like repeatedly making fun of people. Since this is the internet of course, bullying here falls under the term "cyberbullying". It may have escaped some older users' notices, which is understandable in a way, but what I think has happened is that our community did a lot of this without realising this. For a long time, it was pretty normal for members of all ages to regularly make fun of unpopular members of the community, either because they did or said something stupid in public. Some of these unpopulars did not seem to be allowed to forget this.

For some of the older members, it may even have turned out that you were actively taking part in this bullying and you didn't realise it. This is shockingly easy to do. If the cool thing to do currently is to make fun of that kid with the stupid level pack or the awful recolor, why not join in? This does not mean that you are therefore cursed to be a bad person forever, but it would explain why some people have overlooked what has gone on in this community for so long. It's because they were unwittingly part of it too. I am not an exception to this, I must say.

Apart from this, there was also an epidemic of cynicism throughout the community for a long time. Mystic in particular regularly showed his contempt for the Sonic franchise (at least after Sonic Heroes, the last Sonic game he personally touched for a long time IIRC), and that affected how he managed development of SRB2 I believe. Likewise, for some time Mystic had equally been showing contempt for the stupid kids in the community (and then eventually the community itself), which likely affected how he managed the community itself. This cynicism from both areas unfortunately seems to have been rather contageous, as regularly members would be like "lol Sonic" or "lol SRB2" or "what is SRB2", "lol this person is stupid", and so on. This also seems to cross into apathy and nihilism in some way. I don't think any of this was healthy for either SRB2 itself or its community. For SRB2, it just seemed like it was being made to spite SEGA (despite that SEGA created the very franchise it is based on), while for the community, at times it seemed like they didn't care at all. If they don't care, why should I care? See, now I caught the cynicism bug!

I will note that, as far as I remember reading up, Sonic Robo Blast 1's origins, let alone 2's, were originally inspired by a 11 (12?) year old kid's desire to show his school mates how cool Sonic is, or something like that. NOT because they hated Sonic's official games so much that they had to show up SEGA or something, or show SEGA how to do it correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong here. =P

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Now, far from wanting to just use some nebulous "the community was bad" statement, I also want to make light of exactly *how* it was bad. This I want to do by listing a few examples of people who have been negatively affected by this. Call this the "Case studies" section if you like.

The most "why didn't anyone notice this sooner" example to me is what happened with Glaber. He was known back in the day, even way before my time, for making a lot of maps of the same sort of middling or low quality, particularly those he submitted to the Official Level Design Contest (abbreviated as OLDC). Eventually, I think Mystic decided that Glaber was unchangable, and even considered banning him from entering the OLDC so I recall. I believe Glaber even coined his own "syndrome" as a result of the negative view of his maps (please forgive me if I'm stepping on old sores Glaber, this was a long time ago). Similarly, there was what happened with Glaber's SRB2 Christmas and Halloween releases. Mystic got tired of them, so naturally he locked the thread for the Christmas one and told him not to continue (as Glaber has already said). Glaber was unfortunately regularly made fun of by a bunch of other members for this notoreity (and maybe for his own syndrome thing), so it was a surprise to many when slopes came around and Glaber was for once able to make maps people liked for the SUGOI series. I believe had Glaber been maybe encouraged in the right direction much earlier on rather than being told to stop, I don't think Glaber would have taken so long to succeed in mapping.

Ash... I don't know what happened here. I first encountered the guy the same year I joined the community, only for him to disappear behind a permban some months later? But from Ash's recent posts I get the impression something very awful happened. But whatever it did seemed to invoke a lot of rage, and a lot of spam insulting Mystic in particular (that was you, right?). For a long time, I took this to mean Ash was a terrible terrible person who deserved the permban. This may actually be all wrong for all I know now. I can't even remember what he was permbanned for anymore anyway! I also had my personal gripes with Ash for some harsh criticism in my first year of being in the community, but at this point they disappear into dust because they are nothing compared to what he has endured probably. So yeah, please tell us your story when you can Ash, I am interested to hear.

A cat probably is still a user to make fun of even today, especially for his hate list and general vitriol towards the SRB2 community and especially Mystic and D00D64-X (who get a special place in said list). However, his story is probably not much different from some others here. He joined way back in 2009, made a few levels for the OLDC, then started work on his level pack called "Cape Cod". Only, he would not stop talking about it. This irritated some people no doubt, and eventually he got a ban (maybe not for that particular reason, I honestly don't remember anymore). Then another ban, then another, then a permban. This was back in 2011 or so. The next we in the community heard about him was from Sky Base, where it was learned he had finally released his level pack. However, the state of the release was a complete trainwreck! Multiple copies of srb2.srb and srb2win.exe stuffed inside? Stolen levels? Some kind of level with a bear pun? This was ripe for the picking for many members on IRC at the time. Not long after, we learned A cat had also made a wiki for his level pack. Then, someone had the bright idea of vandalising this wiki. From there, I'm not sure how this true this is, but I think A cat may have been triggered to vandalise the wiki and SRB2MB for years after that in a sort of revenge. This was when the hate list and everything else eventually developed. Did we create a feline monster? In a way now I feel sorry for A cat maybe for the way he was treated in his early years. Even if I did have to personally ban many of his ban evasion accounts and so on.

Then, there was me. Yes, I too was once picked on by some members of the community very early on, though specifically not by Mystic as far as I can remember. In my first year or so of being on IRC, I gained a reputation for being clueless and ignorant on many subjects, in a complete contrast to my current "living Wiki" persona of later years, and I was frequently called "slow" as a result by one particular user by the name of Spazzo. And good riddance, he was gone long before Mystic was. One particular incident also involved another user (Rob), and the phrase "break in your headphones", which I was completely unable to understand since I have never heard the phrase in real life (I still haven't heard it spoken to this day). It was commented by him at the time he wished there was an IRC Quotes thread, implying what I said was stupid enough to qualify for it. I personally held a minor grudge against him for years and years after this, and eventually about a decade later confronted Rob about what he did then. At least in this case, he apologised for what he did at the time, and acknowledged he should have taken action against other users antagonising me back then (including Spazzo). Unfortunately this has no bearing on what may have happened between him and other users, which I was not personally aware of until recently.

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Now, I must say very loud and clear, as a moderator and later as an admin, I shamefully did nothing at all to address this bullying issue. I have even up to recently been accused even of keeping the status quo, maybe rightfully so. For the longest time I wasn't even taking Mystic's actions to be awful, some of them actually happened right in front of my nose and I didn't even take them to be bad. Maybe it was the fact that, after being the unconfident newbie initially, I gained respect and confidence and joined in some of the poking fun myself? Without realising it, I had been taking part in some of this bullying almost certainly. All of the above users in the case studies section besides me I have probably poked fun at some point, among others for all I know. Furthermore, Mystic is 10 years older than me, so he always came across as a wiser and more serious person than I ever was. Oh, naiive young me.

Initially on drafting this "essay" of sorts, I had wondered whether to step down from all authority roles as atonement for my sins, as I have obviously failed those roles in some respects, but I am having second thoughts about that. Maybe I'll stick around for years yet, who knows! :)

Lastly, I hope Mystic got something out of retirement, as much as he is now hated by many people here. Being in charge of a community that you hate (and hates you back) must take a toll on you over the years. So maybe leaving was the best thing for not just the community but for Mystic himself. Not that it excuses his behavour of course.
 
Initially on drafting this "essay" of sorts, I had wondered whether to step down from all authority roles as atonement for my sins, as I have obviously failed those roles in some respects, but I am having second thoughts about that. Maybe I'll stick around for years yet, who knows! :)

I don't think you should, because a) you're awesome, and b) hindsight is always 20/20. It's obvious that Mystic's character flaws only got worse as time went on, and also without a check on his power, it eventually did him in. It's unfortunate he had to take so many people along the way.

Ultimately, I think a lot of this boils down to people overstaying their welcome. Some folks should have left long ago, and sometimes it takes a 'push' like this to finally get them to make the right decision.

In fact, Mystic has been around *so* long, that I'm probably the only person qualified to tell the story of how he actually came to be on the team, why he stuck around for so long, and why I left him in charge when I retired. I'll be happy to tell it someday, but right now I do not think is the appropriate timing.

I for one look forward to the absence of constant newbie villification and the return of Christmas mode. Everybody starts somewhere, and things are allowed to just be for fun.
 
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Man, I never knew things were like that in the old days. Reading this was quite the experience, considering the fact that 2.1 was my introduction to the game (outside of mod showcases). I hope we can have the best future for both SRB2 and the community.
 
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I'm very proud of you for coming up and saying all of that, Iestyn. I don't really want this to descend into all of us clapping each other on the back over and over again, but that genuinely looks like it must have been pretty tough to write up.

Newbie vilification is one of our old community bugbears, and it's something I've tried to really stamp out in 2.2 with what limited authority I have as a judge by setting a good example. (With limited results! My activity is still spotty after all). But it's definitely something we need to address going forward. Because while this thread about Mystic is pretty cathartic and clearly necessary, I think now is the time for us to also look forward and act better on all fronts, and thank you for being a pretty good example of learning from ourselves there, Iestyn. You did good.
 

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