Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

[time gear]

The futility of the matter only makes the behavior worse in my opinion. If you know that you can't stop people from talking about it, don't start handing out infractions for doing so. The topic never should have been locked to begin with. The opinions of the community are important, regardless of if a moderator likes them or not.

 

[D00D64]

Did you... not read what the infraction was for? It's literally just repeating what was already said without adding anything. At this point, its just echoing. Mystic has been around a long time, so there's always an opportunity for another old member to come by and say something about their own experience, hence why it's still not locked. However, if someone who never truly known Mystic just reads the posts and all they can do is echo the same opinion again and again, then you're not adding to the discussion, you're just perpetuating it for no real reason. We're not infracting for hating an opinion, we're infracting because you're not giving anything we have not seen. It's barely your own perspective or opinion.

 

[time gear]

Did you... not read what the infraction was for?

I did. That's why I stated the specific reasons for why I was confused in my edit.

We're not infracting for hating an opinion, we're infracting because you're not giving anything we have not seen. It's barely your own perspective or opinion.

The initial post was serving two primary functions: The first function was briefly pointing out that the discussion wasn't going anywhere new to try to prevent this from looping all the way back around again. The second function was drawing a distinction for anyone who might only just now be joining in and hasn't read all the way through the admittedly long topic so they don't get the wrong idea about the topic. I did toss in a little bit of opinion, but that wasn't what I'm getting infracted for so let's move on.

My continued discussion after that was because I pointed something out in that initial post that someone else here voiced that they had not heard of yet, so I wanted to briefly elaborate on that point. From my point of view, it appeared as though while this had been discussed before in the topic, it was new to this person and so since they had expressed interest it wouldn't do any harm to give it some brief coverage for them.

Effectively, it feels to me as though I'm being infracted for covering content the topic has covered before even though I was covering for someone who wasn't in the know, and my initial comment was in part warning others about how the conversation before I arrived was starting to get rehashy.

Overall though, I'm not trying to get the infraction removed or anything. It's not going to ruin my whole day that I got an infraction or anything. I just find the reasons for the infraction to be confusing, as I have elaborated on.

 

[Charybdizs]

D00D, you're coming into this without context and that's my fault, I should have given you some. His second post was already made before I did that and it was not in reference to the warning.

Anyhow, you're both a little mistaken because that isn't an infraction, that's just a warning. :o

It was the corresponding response to me infracting Basic Bronze Sonic for coming onto the topic and doing a "wait, what? what's going on?" style post on a thread he could have just read up on. In similar fashion as people shouldn't be making posts like his here, you also don't need to rehash/explain it all whenever anyone does. In terms of responding to everything, I'd like to remind you that you have a grand total of 20 posts in this thread, which is the most out of anyone here, to my knowledge. :V

Effectively, it feels to me as though I'm being infracted for covering content the topic has covered before even though I was covering for someone who wasn't in the know

This *is* why you're being warned, yeah. You don't need to worry about this, I promise; if people are going to be posting in this obviously info-heavy thread without context of at least reading a few pages, their posts themselves aren't really justified and will probably just get moderated when we see them.

 

[time gear]

I can respect that. Post count seems a little bit arbitrary to me, but other than that I have no issue with your explanation. I'll keep in mind in the future not to chime back in on this topic unless there's a much better reason to.

 

[Phinsfan]

It's been almost 14 years since I last logged into this forum, and I read most of this thread thinking about things that haven't crossed my mind in years
And you know what? This is my original forum signature from back then, note the last line
I'm glad this community is finally taking a stand against bullying people for being awkward children, better late than never of course
I hadn't even hit puberty yet and already I was being shamed by people adjacent to Mystic, or possibly even Mystic themselves, I can't remember
Either way I probably won't have much business on these forums here in the future but reading this thread put a smile on my face and also a frown, and I just wanted to share, especially after logging in and seeing my signature was an explicit reference to the systemic problems that infested this community for so long

 

[GKDubya]

lmao now isn't this something? I tried telling you guys 15+ years ago about this idiot and it took you this long to understand he was a admin abuser and a weirdo, I find it amusing he's 36 years old still mocking kids talking about sonic lmfao pedo vibes much, what a loser. remember kids karma is real, no matter how long it will take it will come for you

 

[Charybdizs]

"You guys" is really vague. Regardless, you're right. It's stupid how many people were willing to just let so much things slide. Numerous people did speak up about it throughout time (including myself, which is why I can say this without looking like a hypocrite) but a few people with no real authority can't get those karma gears turning all on their own. The only reason something finally happened last year is because of their poor (but fortunate, for the sake of justice) choice to give Wolfs admin on the official discord. Still really proud of him for taking that stand. Man...

 

[GKDubya]

Yes,
I am the infamous GKWX2, literally on my grandmothers soul. I pop by every couple of years to see hows the community is doing and getting rid of this idiot is the best thing thus far.
I was an 13 yr old boy when I first came to this community in 2003, and like many of you I had to experience this grammar nazi first hand, I would like to believe I was the first to stand up to the prick
one thing I can say positive about mystic is that I pushed myself harder to work on my english and grammar, from those day forward I made damn near an A in every english class, wish he woulda mocked me about my math lmao

Mystic if you are reading this , which I know you are, you had this coming for years and I love the fact that you have gotten a taste of your own medicine, If I was to ever see you in real life you would be walking with 3 shoes on, two on your feet and one in your ass

Kiss my robo-ass

 

[Monster Iestyn]

To tell the truth, I've never actually heard of you myself. It's been so long now I expect that nobody who has heard of you is active at all anymore. As it turns out, the most recent mention of your old nick I can find on the SRB2MB so far dates back to 2007 (in a staff forum, mind), and I joined the year after.

It certainly has been a long time now, yep.

 

[GKDubya]

To tell the truth, I've never actually heard of you myself. It's been so long now I expect that nobody who has heard of you is active at all anymore. As it turns out, the most recent mention of your old nick I can find on the SRB2MB so far dates back to 2007 (in a staff forum, mind), and I joined the year after.

It certainly has been a long time now, yep.

google my name you will see how far back it goes
but back to the subject I think I was the first child to be mocked and bullied along with the very long list that I am seeing now
Seriously fuck mystic
he's lucky I don't remember his real name , I would love to pay that punk a visit
fucking mark and to think he was facilitating pedophiles and showing kids porno, what a fucking weirdo, thought he was better than that, oh well fuck em, hope you guys make this game and community better than ever.

 

[xxBeanGirl420xx]

Yes,
I am the infamous GKWX2

omg i remember you!! you were like, the quintessential example of the "Mystic Bullies Kids" trope. holy moly i remember joining in on the GKWX2 dogpile to try to fit in better back when i was "zash". for people who don't know, Mystic basically had everyone, and i mean EVERYONE make fun of this guy, though i can't remember why—Mystic uploaded the logs onto his Sepwich and would share them constantly; you can see a lot of future-and-then-retired staff be rude about this in ancient topics on here, but the link to those logs is now dead.

man that shit sucked; i'm sorry for participating (though i was a dumb kid myself, lol), and i'm sorry you went through that.

 

[GKDubya]

omg i remember you!! you were like, the quintessential example of the "Mystic Bullies Kids" trope. holy moly i remember joining in on the GKWX2 dogpile to try to fit in better back when i was "zash". for people who don't know, Mystic basically had everyone, and i mean EVERYONE make fun of this guy, though i can't remember why—Mystic uploaded the logs onto his Sepwich and would share them constantly; you can see a lot of future-and-then-retired staff be rude about this in ancient topics on here, but the link to those logs is now dead.

man that shit sucked; i'm sorry for participating (though i was a dumb kid myself, lol), and i'm sorry you went through that.

Damn Zash , I didn’t think you would be the one to be courted like that , hope all is well but didn’t you end up getting banned like shortly after me ? I could of sworn that zash persona was banned at least 5 times lmao
But back to the subject I’m super surprised in JTE, didn’t know he liked children but I hope you are stronger today and have a beautiful wife and kids !

 

[xxBeanGirl420xx]

Damn Zash , I didn’t think you would be the one to be courted like that , hope all is well but didn’t you end up getting banned like shortly after me ? I could of sworn that zash persona was banned at least 5 times lmao
But back to the subject I’m super surprised in JTE, didn’t know he liked children but I hope you are stronger today and have a beautiful wife and kids !

i was a huge loser when i was a kid, no cap

a lot of people played the role of "internet intellectual™" back then, and i definitely got sucked into it (up until i started getting bullied myself, lmao). when i got banned when i was like, 11, i was woken up a little bit from that mentality. i cringe at some of the posts on this account, personally, but i've hopefully grown up a smidge.

JTE was hiding in plain sight—his ability to stick around was the failing of an entire administration. a huge shame, but at least he's gone now. i'm definitely doing much better but uh, no wife or kids lmao. hope you're doing ok as well.

 

[NerfPlayeR135]

I never actually read this whole thread until now, when GK decided to chime in. And all I can say is holy sh*t, am I glad I joined the community after all this was over.

Seeing all these accounts of the toxic environment Mystic and the old guard created, where anyone could be scorned for being "immature," reminded me of my own experiences with bullies. I know how it feels to have a target placed on your back through no fault of your own. Being incredibly easy to upset in your formative years thanks to Asperger's Syndrome and anxiety did me no favors in that regard. But I never thought about joining those that made my life hell - yet that's what so many people did for so long in this community, just to fit in. I know I'm late on this, but my condolences go out to everyone, no matter which circle they were in, who was hurt by all those years of rampant abuse.

 

[therealyocow]

Hi everyone. Long time lurker here, I've had this account since 2011 and have been playing the game since even before then, but have never really engaged with the community until very recently. A large part of it had to do with the fact that, even as a dumb kid, it was extremely obvious to me how unwelcoming the atmosphere was to younger folks, or anyone deemed not smart enough by the "old guard". I did not feel very safe at all putting anything out there in an environment like that and thus relegated myself to just lurking, and kinda just did that for a decade.

I have been happy to see that Mystic in particular has been removed from the team. He always struck me as way too much of a hard-ass, and I really do feel like it probably stifled the creativity of younger folks or, like myself, even outright discouraged them from engaging in the community at all. Maybe I can't speak for everybody, but the general atmosphere of this community definitely feels a lot more welcoming after his removal, and I hope that trend continues.

Thanks for doing the right thing.

 

[Chimes]

After thinking about it, it's pretty fucking ridiculous that ESL people were treated like shit here for the longest time!

 

[Emperor Scarlet]

Hello, first time posting here. First started lurking here in mid 2020, so I just barely missed the Mystic situation. It's crazy to think all this happened just before I started playing SRB2. For what it's worth, from what I've seen the community nowadays seems to be much more welcoming and friendly than it apparently was way back when. It's so nice to see how a community can change for the better like this.

 

[Pinkio]

Yes,
I am the infamous GKWX2,

May i ask why were you infamous? I searched for your username and couldn't find anything other than this thread from March 19th, 2004, also i was born on July 3rd from that year so it's kind of ironic to think it just happened when i was practically -4 months old

I was an 13 yr old boy when I first came to this community in 2003, and like many of you I had to experience this grammar nazi first hand, I would like to believe I was the first to stand up to the prick

This is ironic to read because i was near that age (i was 12) when i got a warning from him for bad grammar here; even if writing bad was kind of my joke, it actually was a nice correction from him (i guess)...

Spoiler: the image

one thing I can say positive about mystic is that I pushed myself harder to work on my english and grammar, from those day forward I made damn near an A in every english class, wish he woulda mocked me about my math lmao

And yet, i'd say the same sort of thing happened to me, though that year my average score for the Grammar/Language class was 94/100, and to be honest english is not even my main language (i'm a spanish native from Guatemala, así que sé hablar español), and yet i think that's the only warning/infraction i ever got on this Message Board

My grammar more or less sucked until 2019 or 2020 on both languages, so the warning makes sense, and it felt bad indeed, but i know i performed a lot after that (it might feel like i'm showing off but i'm even a storywriter now and have written over 300K words in total), i'm now a bit popular thanks to a mobile game named "Rolling Sky" and i don't see people correcting me too much like before, so i clearly performed over this stuff and the warning got me real--- now i see that you can practically "suck" at something and even be bullied for it, but some time later you can end up being an expert at the same thing even if you never expect it to happen
It's cool when that happens so i can feel how good GKDubya felt after defeating the grammar thing with Mystic lol


I know i started to play SRB2 around 2008, one of my first videogames in fact, though it wasn't until 2016 when i discovered the wiki, MB and other stuff, but i wasn't involved in any part of the community until 2017 because it was around exactly 5 years ago when i discovered netgames and joined my first one (i used to spend time playing SRB2 at my school with classmates and then at home with online friends, 2017 was probably the best year of my life thanks to this)

What i didn't really expect is stuff like this, but at the same time, i'm not too surprised... I can only say some of the banned staff looked to me overly serious, sarcastic or stuff like that ever since i saw some of their posts on this MB, even on 2016 i used to think people like Mystic were being too serious about their position or didn't really correct people on a right way that isn't just mocking them, though i don't have any examples about what i've seen but i don't think it's really needed after all

Also, 2020 and 2021 really got rid of bad people from the past... This isn't the only community where i saw a lot of troublesome people getting allegations of any sort of bad things, it kinda scares me how much people got allegations from let's say 5 or 6 years before making the allegation public, but stuff from over a decade ago? I still don't get surprised it happened, but i almost never saw an allegation of someone from stuff that happened over 10 years before getting rid of them, which i can guess it only made the situation worse imo--- also, for the stuff that happened with GKWX2 before i was even born, i take it with all seriousness, but looking that he literally waited 16 (or 17) years to be able to complain about Mystic all what he wanted back then, it's kind of funny? My reaction when reading it was like "Wtf bro you really waited this whole time for this lol"

 

[tabu]

gee i was wondering why the recent srb2 updates were so awesome

really i'm getting a kind of schadenfreude from the metric ton of shit i was given from the old guard for being firmly against analog camera being taken out with how, now that they're gone, it's not only reintegrated and better than ever, but the DEFAULT. really confirms to me that all this insistence from them about muh statistics was really just some kind of batshit power trip about forcing everyone to play the game the way they themselves were personally used to. it's great to see the new dev team seeming to fully embrace letting players have as many options as possible.

i think the creepiest thing the old guard seemed to consistently do were imply disagreements over a sonic fangame were an indication of some kind of legitimate mental/emotional problem with the disagreer. it's just such a disgustingly petty form of gaslighting but its at least validating to see i'm not the only one they pulled that shit with. i probably was being a jackass in my brief srb2 discord tenure but good god was the discourse absolutely awful. it really felt like posting in good faith was just a waste of effort when i was just going to get dogpiled by weirdos who insist i need therapy for liking a different control scheme. this new community environment is just so much healthier. my previous experience almost kind of soured me on srb2 in general despite loving it ever since i downloaded it off acid-play in 2005 and its very nice to see an environment that lets the community express themselves without some tyrannical 4chan edgelord breathing down everyone's neck.