Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

There's a point I want to expand on regarding on the "personal private/public" matter.

Transparency is important here for a couple reasons:

* All relevant information needs to be out in the open so that there is no miscommunication, no missing context, and little room for factual ambiguity.
* The personal elements need to be present so that the everyone understands how previous moderatorship and misuse of the domain has had a toxic effect on the community and staff culture.

Prior to dev restructuring, the staff leads generally handled conflicts by DMing the relevant parties for private conversations. What this has lead to is a lot of "he said/she said" with little transparency and oftentimes many people getting stuck on the wrong page. This became even more of an issue in the events leading up to Rob and pv2's removal.

As further evidence for why "keep it to DMs" isn't always such a good option, I'd simply point to the recent fiasco that was SFGHQ, where a similar (yet somehow even worse) dynamic took place with the head admin privately attempting to manipulate people through DMs for political ends -- as far as I can tell, their whole staff (current and former) still haven't been clued into all of the details as to what's supposed to be true and what isn't.

Lack of transparency degrades trust, and for good reason.

I think there's a fine line between legitimately and honestly bringing this stuff out in the open/venting about it, and dehumanizing the people who caused it. I also think there are some people who definitely crossed that line in this thread. However, I do not think this entire thread is crossing that line, and I believe the people who did cross that line were usually called out for it by other people.

Charybdizs said:

These ARE his flaws as an administrator of a community that attracts young children by its very design. And yes, knowingly sharing porn with minors does, in fact, make you a disgusting person. Of all things, that's the least debatable -- it could literally land you in jail.

Click to expand...

Did he really share porn with minors, though? Honest question. From what I gathered, he had a hidden hentai subforum and he could give access to it to people of his choice. Unless I missed it, the matter of whether he gave access to minors or not hasn't been touched upon. All I've seen was people acting outraged and going "How dare he have that in a forum visited by children!?"

Well, since I find it a little bit unfair to be cutted-out like this, let me end the discussion with this post. After this, I'll not be responding anymore to this thread.

First of all, I understand what I'm talking about, don't assume things about me you don't know. I've read this thread in depth when it was more active, it's just that I can't deliver some insightful commentary right now because my memory isn't fresh enough and I don't want to come back to read all of this, I'll probably get full of anger and I'm having enough with my own life, but I have a personal position regarding Mystic's actions and management that I obtained from my own personal investigation and analysis. Also, I don't feel like it's necessary to talk about this, but I've been a victim of bullying from my childhood to my early teens, so I empathize with the feelings of the people here, and I respect them. But that doesn't change the fact that your bullying and trauma is still nothing of my concern (and other users), this is something that should concern to you and your close friends (and relatives), something that can be seen here. You people don't, and should not, care about me, but if you want to empathize, that's okay.

I understand being transparent about what happened behind the curtain, though I still think it would have been better that some things hasn't been exposed (mostly because of their pointlessness toward the subject in cuestion), that's still a flaw of this thread. In fact, it's important to be transparent as to be able to analyze the matter. The thing is, this whole thread has still been mishandled, since this transparency led to hatred being publicly thrown towards a person because of no useful reason (and I mean, publicly useful, that's the main problem and what I find horrible, using the things told here for damaging a person, not coming –in general– from the people who were transparent towards the subject, but from the ones who read it and wanted to comment on it) in a place that could have avoided this (yes, doing this in places like twitter is horrible too, but nobody except twitter's staff can do something about it). A lesson people here didn't learn from this, was "Do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself". Maybe, someday, you will fuck up (right, it could happen to anyone, I fucked up a lot of things in my life, and it's probable that you also have done it too), a thread like this will be made towards you, and maybe that day, you'll understand Mystic a little bit. I try to be open-minded, so I don't mind if I'm criticized, as long as it's constructive and not about my person. If Mystic damaged you, don't damage him, doing that doesn't make you any different from him. Also, it's unfair to Mystic, since he is not the only culprit here, everybody involved shares some bit of guilt in a way or another. Again, it's nothing of my concern, so think about it yourselves.

I think this vent-thing could have been better if it had been done in another thread or place, with some kind of census as to separate people that was directly affected from Mystic's (and other people's) behavior and people who don't have anything to do with it. Then, this thread wouldn't have been derailed into public trash-talking, instead, you could have done it between people who supports and listens to you without directly affecting Mystic's public persona, and this thread could have been used to analyze the wrongness (and the good things) in Mystic's overall actions, with a neutral position.

If I have to comment about Mystic, his problem was not letting the game be managed by other people when his time was done. When times change, let other people be in command of the game development, or just kick everyone out of the dev team and gatekeep it, that's another solution (though maybe not the best one). See how I rescued something good from the stuff told here without going like "fuck you Mystic, I'm glad you're gone you piece of shit" or "wow, now I understand how horrible this person was, I feel sorry for anybody here in this public space anybody can read, get along with the general consensus that Mystic is a horrible person since it's easy to do that instead of analyzing the whole drama, and furthermore damage him, something that's highly unproductive and can be seen as shameful depending of the point of view" (of course, I'm overreacting on purpose, I clarify this since you could be nitpicking about this).

I don't have any power in this community, and I'm not looking for a change being made here, I'm only expressing my thoughts (and trying to constructively critical). I know there are flaws in my statement, I don't have the intelligence nor the motivation to fix them right now, but I think you people can understand what I'm talking about here, take this post the way you like, though I advise to think about yourselves and analyze this whole thread again, if you want. Goodbye, folks.

Spiky said:

Did he really share porn with minors, though? Honest question. From what I gathered, he had a hidden hentai subforum and he could give access to it to people of his choice. Unless I missed it, the matter of whether he gave access to minors or not hasn't been touched upon. All I've seen was people acting outraged and going "How dare he have that in a forum visited by children!?"

Click to expand...

Because having that shit in a forum visited by children, about a franchise made for children, is creepy. Hell, trying to share you porn in a semi-public fashion is creepy. There should be no association between a children's game and pornography. And you can't stop that elsewhere on the internet, but the mods can sure as hell stop it here.

Laziness said:

snip snip (snip snip)

Click to expand...

Mate this has been going on for literal YEARS, for as Charyb had stated hundreds of people. And furthermore, this is not about you, so please miss me with that "you need not care about what I have to say" bs.

shayne said:

Because having that shit in a forum visited by children, about a franchise made for children, is creepy. Hell, trying to share you porn in a semi-public fashion is creepy. There should be no association between a children's game and pornography. And you can't stop that elsewhere on the internet, but the mods can sure as hell stop it here.

Click to expand...

You may find it creepy, but unless Mystic was sharing it with minors, he wasn't hurting anyone.

The way I see it, whether or not someone was directly abused by Mystic himself is irrelevant to the validity of someone posting about it. Even if someone never interacted with him, should they be silenced when they speak out about their experiences with a friend who went through what he put them through? If someone never interacted with him, but wanted to share their experiences in what was going on here on the MB or on the Discord because of him, should they be silenced too?

The fact of the matter is that this is real life, and the gravity of Mystic's actions extends further than direct involvement with him. This is something we went through as a community, and as such nobody should be silenced just because they were less directly involved than those who interacted with him personally.

It is true that Mystic should not be demonized for what happened. He is a human being just like the rest of us, and it is in our nature to make mistakes. Sometimes, terrible mistakes. Every last one of us has skeletons of some form in the closet that we wish we could get rid of. It's part of being human. As such, there's a certain degree of maturity that should come with dealing with a topic like this. However, this is not a community designed to attract mature adults, it is open even to children. Even if we were to make a topic just for people who had experiences with Mystic personally, there would still be those who lack the maturity to avoid demonizing him at least a little bit. It's something that can't entirely be avoided. Those people have generally been called out in this thread, at least recently. Doing the thread differently wouldn't really make a difference in this regard.

There's no perfect way of handling something like this, but it still needed to get done, and this thread is serving this purpose sufficiently, I believe. Sometimes you have to realize when what you have isn't going to get any better. Otherwise, you will find yourself just making things worse.

But that doesn't change the fact that your bullying and trauma is still nothing of my concern (and other users), this is something that should concern to you and your close friends (and relatives), something that can be seen here.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's cool and all but that's not your call to make. I agree I could leave the comments from people who aren't related, but I actually legitimately REALLY care about what explicit victims have had to say in this thread and making sure those people now feel welcome. It's flat-out just pretentious to assume that what you feel about a thread is how everyone else feels about a thread. Dunno what else to tell you there, dude.

Maybe, someday, you will fuck up (right, it could happen to anyone, I fucked up a lot of things in my life, and it's probable that you also have done it too), a thread like this will be made towards you, and maybe that day, you'll understand Mystic a little bit.

Click to expand...

If Mystic was bullying adults I'd probably not care as much, I'd just think he's a jerk and move on with my life. The part it feels like you aren't understanding is that he was literally picking on children because it made him feel superior for 17 years. (yes, there is a log of him saying this.)

You also keep saying it as if everything happened over night and we're just bashing him over one mistake. Everything complained about him in this thread isn't something that came out of nowhere. It's not like Mystic wasn't made aware of it, even; he just actually didn't care and didn't take anyone's complaints seriously. When he left, he explicitly denied wanting to improve himself and thought he was always in the right the entire time, up to the very end.

But even if he made a complete 180 and apologized on the spot and said he'd work on all of his flaws, is that enough to make up for 17 years? I like to think I'm pretty accepting of apologies, but I'm not even sure how I could take that seriously. I feel like even if I were to accept an apology I'd still need him to take a long time away. But who knows, if we were in that scenario and he was truly being genuine, this might not have even had to happen this way.

I do think his reputation should be be called into question into this community, because it's ignoring literally 17 years of damage to do anything less. But the keyword there is "this community"; once again, witch-hunting or following him to other communities has been discouraged multiple times in this thread, because the point of the thread is making sure people understand why he's not welcome SPECIFICALLY HERE anymore.

I have to keep emphasizing 17 years because that is not exaggeration; this behavior dates back to when they first joined in 2003.

If I have to comment about Mystic, his problem was not letting the game be managed by other people when his time was done. When times change, let other people be in command of the game development, or just kick everyone out of the dev team and gatekeep it, that's another solution (though maybe not the best one).

Click to expand...

Literally nothing I care about in this thread is related to his status of a game designer or project leader. It's been brought up because it's related as to why tensions were rising *now*, but I totally agree, it's not even a remotely good reason to kick someone out of a community entirely. But if all you got from the entire thread was "he was a questionable game dev", you definitely did not read as thoroughly as you say you did.

I don't have any power in this community, and I'm not looking for a change being made here, I'm only expressing my thoughts (and trying to constructively critical).

Click to expand...

My immediate first reaction that went through my head reading this was: 'nothing says "constructively critical" as a first post that boiled down to "This thread is useless and disgusting, I don't give a shit, ban me."' I know that's unfair to your other posts, but you really ruined a lot of your potential argument credibility with that idiotic shitpost. Think about how to communicate yourself next time if you want people to take you more seriously. After that all I can see is that you're a massive hypocrite, because if this thread doesn't reach "our goal", then you sure as hell didn't reach yours either.

I think his motives are being misunderstood.
I deeply relate to what Laziness is trying to do here. Not his message, I believe there are alternatives to being handled that are better than both his proposition of what could've have been done, and what ended up happening. That doesn't matter, everything is set and done..

What I am referring to, however, is the thoughts of `I have opinions- a hot take. I am unable to change what has happened. I don't want to change what has happened, but god dammit I'm not going to keep my opinions bottled up for all eternity. These are my thoughts, take them as you will.`

He does not want to argue. His message was not made for the sake of argument, it was instead venting of sorts. Letting all his thoughts and opinions off of his chest, and being over with it. This is what he thinks, so let him.

Your motive for these messages is something that hit's home with me. Because the entirely justifiable reaction is 'Why did you speak in the first place? If your message adds nothing to what is said in done, and is even directly contrarian, there was no point in speaking in the first place.' Except I entirely relate with 'I just wanna speak. I want to get my thoughts out there. I can't handle keeping them stored up inside myself.' It's something I've done. It's something I've been scared of doing due to the inevitable backlash that comes along with it. It's something that, even if I don't quite agree with your thoughts and messages, I can at least respect.

Laziness said:

Maybe, someday, you will fuck up (right, it could happen to anyone, I fucked up a lot of things in my life, and it's probable that you also have done it too), a thread like this will be made towards you, and maybe that day, you'll understand Mystic a little bit.

Click to expand...

when i was 11 he and his buddies perpetuated nasty rumors of me for over 10 years, where people i'd've never interacted with would track me down on other websites and ask me "are the rumors true"?

i've experienced what you're describing, and tbh after the first few years or so, it went from frustrating to really, really funny

if mystic is so frail that he can't handle other people sharing stories of his behavior, maybe he should've considered changing his behavior before the community decided, near-unanimously, "no "

Laziness said:

If Mystic damaged you, don't damage him, doing that doesn't make you any different from him. Also, it's unfair to Mystic, since he is not the only culprit here, everybody involved shares some bit of guilt in a way or another.

Click to expand...

mystic actively bullied children when he was in his late 20s and early 30s. people saying "mystic ruined my experience in the srb2 community; here are the screenshots" is not anywhere close to the same as any of his described antics, and "everyone involved shares some bit of guilt" is victim-blaming—a form of gaslighting that's pretty well-documented in this thread

i'm not sure what point was trying to be made, here, but i do think it's interesting how this discussion has progressed

I don't think anyone speaking contrary to Laziness is trying to silence him. Everyone is certainly free to speak their mind, and no attempt has been made to censor opinions like his. All anyone has stated is that they disagree with him and the premises he has put forth. This is a natural part of discussion. People don't always agree, and it's normal to point out what you don't agree with.

Laziness said:

I've been lurking the board since 2009, and made an account in 2016. I don't feel like re-reading the whole thread to point-out all of its flaws, but this wasn't the best way to achieve the goal you people wanted.

Click to expand...

Why are you talking about lurking the forum? This isn't a d**k measuring contest. What goal? (I can't even remember when I started getting into the forum to download stuff) You really not matter that much (as if anybody does, but you think we needed to hear your unreasonable hate towards this thread).

Kwiin said:

I think his motives are being misunderstood.
I deeply relate to what Laziness is trying to do here. Not his message, I believe there are alternatives to being handled that are better than both his proposition of what could've have been done, and what ended up happening. That doesn't matter, everything is set and done..

What I am referring to, however, is the thoughts of `I have opinions- a hot take. I am unable to change what has happened. I don't want to change what has happened, but god dammit I'm not going to keep my opinions bottled up for all eternity. These are my thoughts, take them as you will.`

He does not want to argue. His message was not made for the sake of argument, it was instead venting of sorts. Letting all his thoughts and opinions off of his chest, and being over with it. This is what he thinks, so let him.

Your motive for these messages is something that hit's home with me. Because the entirely justifiable reaction is 'Why did you speak in the first place? If your message adds nothing to what is said in done, and is even directly contrarian, there was no point in speaking in the first place.' Except I entirely relate with 'I just wanna speak. I want to get my thoughts out there. I can't handle keeping them stored up inside myself.' It's something I've done. It's something I've been scared of doing due to the inevitable backlash that comes along with it. It's something that, even if I don't quite agree with your thoughts and messages, I can at least respect.

Click to expand...

Well the problem is, he came off as aggressive. Not venting, threatening. Going so far as to say they saved the thread for later reference as if they planned on using it against us weather or not that was the intention.

Spiky said:

Did he really share porn with minors, though? Honest question. From what I gathered, he had a hidden hentai subforum and he could give access to it to people of his choice. Unless I missed it, the matter of whether he gave access to minors or not hasn't been touched upon. All I've seen was people acting outraged and going "How dare he have that in a forum visited by children!?"

Click to expand...

Yes, he did. I was a minor at the time and had access to both that subforum and the hidden NSFW IRC channel. I know of one other confirmed minor that had access to both as well. This information has been corroborated by multiple parties, it's not just an assumption.

Even if he didn't share that secret hentai page with anyone, it's still incredibly irresponsible at best to even use this domain for that kind of thing in the first place when you're one of the owners and are aware that plenty of kids visit(ed) this social network. I'm not completely sure whether Mystic was really an outright predative monster, or if he was just really, really stupid and uncaring, though I kinda feel like i'm leaning toward the latter.

Yeah, no, I'm calling bullshit. Mystic was an abusive presence whose toxic behavior negatively affected the entire climate of the SRB2 community and development for over a decade, alienating and hurting hundreds of people. Claiming that people shouldn't be talking about this fact with all the truths of the matter on display because "he's just flawed" is performative morality that invalidates all the experiences of the people's he's hurt over the years. Any "loss of reputation" that would happen because of this thread is entirely his own fault, not the fault of the people who finally decided to come out about it.

listen, okay, maybe im misunderstanding something here, but saying 'theyre still a human being at the end of the day' is a TERRIBLE thing to say when talking about an abusive person in a position of power thats been doing this kinda stuff for over a DECADE.


like. yeah. mystic sure is human huh! we all are, i presume. and mystic still harrassed minors, had a superiority complex and shared nsfw in a community (i literally will not forgive the loli shit ever) with a bunch of Minors for who knows how long. i dont care if mystic is still human, the stuff he did is absolutely unforgivable, its actually Traumatizing, and calling this thread useless and whatever else shows how much you dont care about abuse victims or people getting their deserved punishment for abuse and borderline pedophilia (for clarification: im not calling him a pedo, but. HM.)


as far as im aware nobody here is wishing death upon mystic or any of the other ex-admins, and if there is someone doing that, theyre probably gonna get a warning from the current mods because thats not something you say in a public forum with CHILDREN. this is a thread to share negative experiences with the ex-mods, and hell, just. talk about abuse in general, i guess?! this is just public venting. people have meaningful conversations about how not to be an asshole 101 here! and then to make your first post in this entire forum be 'this thread sucks' (in a nutshell) is just..... god. i cannot imagine being that uncaring for other human beings. and the fact you only started making actual long posts with Actual Sentences And Paragraphs And WORDS once you got called out shows you were expecting to write that post and get away with it. HOW.


god i hate this i dont even know what to say anymore. im just disgusted. bye im going to sleep

If good intentions pave the road to hell, where would malintent lead? Heaven, or something even further below... ? While there may have been some form of a goodwill behind Lazy's posts, the rest of the vibes make it impossible to read. That tone would need to be strictly revised for any sort of golden rule reasoning to shine through, honestly. Kwinn, while I think I get what you're trying to say, it's incomplete -- it takes guts to speak up, but, there's little to respect in merely lashing out. As everyone's personal experience can likely back up, this only ever makes things worse for everyone.

... Well, even beyond that, there's no need to defend someone pointing a sword, at least when they're only being asked to put it down. While I won't tell you to revise your stance, you may want to reconsider jumping off of bridges attempting to catch people who aren't falling.

----

That aside: we protect people from damaged reputations for honest misunderstandings that they make attempts to correct. In cases not fitting that bill: as the only way to halt wrongs produced by those in positions of power is to somehow erase their power, you have to turn to some form of social punishment. It's actually the least desired outcome, but years of open hands turned away are gonna turn into closed fists one day. And with this long, who's to say he didn't see it coming? No one to blame but hubris here.

Reminding people that someone is still a human being at the end of the day is by absolutely no means a "TERRIBLE" thing to say. Mystic was and possibly is still garbage, but does that make him non-human? No.

Someone can still be a human being with a ridiculous amount of flaws and problems that need to be rectified if they wish to function as a productive member of society, while still having done things that no one should be expected to forgive them of.

There's a certain mindset that's been brewing in social media communities over the past few years, i've noticed. One that I personally find to be a little bit problematic: It's when you liken an individual to being either inhuman or even "less-than-human", simply because they did something that is considered abhorrent. Comparing said individual in this way often makes it easier for people to justify painting a black & white worldview for themselves. It just makes the world a little bit easier for people to understand when they can simplify complex matters down to such a binary level. People today need to be way more aware of the dangers presented by this mindset.