Bannings

[Pyrephox]

@hellfrog For me, it was very very simple: I had decided I wasn’t gonna participate in MSB anymore, but I still wanted to talk about games. So, I’d have happily hopped onto whatever else gave me the option to do that.

It wasn’t about MSB, per se; it was about having a need that MSB no longer could fill.

[Pavel]

@Pyrephox MSB dumped their girlfriend, and it turns out we were better friends with the girlfriend than MSB, so we went with her.

[IoleRae]

@Narson

I lost a twenty year friendship over this bullshit, and I’m probably never going to get over it.

[Roz]

BUT ALSO, does anything know what The Forge is?! Someone mentioned it in a list with MSB and BMD and I’m like, is there some totally different forum!! Inquiring minds, etc.

[Tez]

@IoleRae said in Bannings:

@Narson

I lost a twenty year friendship over this bullshit, and I’m probably never going to get over it.

God, the ability to upvote is a shitty way to convey ‘I’m sorry. That sucks. Please have my sympathy.’

[Pyrephox]

@Roz said in Bannings:

BUT ALSO, does anything know what The Forge is?! Someone mentioned it in a list with MSB and BMD and I’m like, is there some totally different forum!! Inquiring minds, etc.

The only “Forge” I’m familiar with was a tabletop forum, and I think it shut down about ten years ago?

[Narson]

@Roz Typo. It is The Froge. It’s the new cool @hellfrog nightclub where everyone wears a frog mask and commits insane acts of bullying terrorism in DMs. The downstairs moshpit.

@IoleRae I honestly am really sorry about that - I was “lucky” in that the good friends I had were many of those who stepped out early. Heck, my oldest friend on here that I know is probably @icanbeyourmuse, @WhiteRaven and @hellfrog - and that is all only 14 to 12 years ago. I have very few friends I’ve known that long, and losing one - even as people will go “ONLY INTERNET FRIEND” but that’s nonsense -must hurt. Really. I’m sorry you had to experience it.

Side note: I am glad you are now a penguin, which is a fine and noble beast.

[helvetica]

@Narson said in Bannings:

@Roz Typo. It is The Froge. It’s the new cool @hellfrog nightclub where everyone wears a frog mask and commits insane acts of bullying terrorism in DMs. The downstairs moshpit.

This sounds like a mad lib.

[Pavel]

@IoleRae said in Bannings:

@Narson

I lost a twenty year friendship over this bullshit, and I’m probably never going to get over it.

Yeah, but you said a nice thing about me so I’m probably going to live off that high for another decade or so.

[IoleRae]

@Narson

I was trying to express solidarity, and think I missed the mark! Thank you, though. It IS hurtful, and it sucks. But I also realized I’ve gotten myself another ACTUAL FRIEND these last couple of years because of this mess, so I’ll be okay.

@Pavel

You act like you don’t know I adore you.

[Snackness]

@Narson Goin’ to The Froge tonight.

[Evilgrayson]

@IoleRae Not just you, I promise.

Not just you.

[helvetica]

@Snackness said in Bannings:

@Narson Goin’ to The Froge tonight.

I’m picturing the like red-light district cathouse they lure Beetlejuice with

[hellfrog]

@Narson said in Bannings:

@Roz Typo. It is The Froge. It’s the new cool @hellfrog nightclub where everyone wears a frog mask and commits insane acts of bullying terrorism in DMs. The downstairs moshpit.

I do literally all my bullying out in the open. I hate DMs

[Testament]

@IoleRae said in Bannings:

@Narson

I lost a twenty year friendship over this bullshit, and I’m probably never going to get over it.

For whatever it is worth, you were one of the very few people who reached to me when I was at my lowest point when all this shit kicked off. When I went emotionally off the deep end.

You helped me in way that perhaps only one or two others did or even bothered to do when I was struggling far more than I’d like to admit.

I’m sorry you lost someone close to you.

[IoleRae]

@Testament

I think that’s one of the kindest things anybody has said to me in a long time. Thank you for telling me, and I’m so glad I was able to help. I’m even MORE glad that things are going better for you, and super excited for your October 8th. Almost as excited as I am about SPACE PICTURES.

[eye8urcake]

So, even though (or maybe because?) I wasn’t really part of the mass forced exodus from MSB, I’m going to make a couple of observations about why this topic is probably more healthy than not.

1. One of the major problems I keep hearing in the posts of the people grieving the loss of their community and long-time friends is that the bans and breaking of MSB leaves them needing a proactive way and place to vent, which this has become. As opposed to a serious tail-chasing ‘fuck MSB in its neck’, what I’m seeing (YMMV) is more like ‘fuck MSB for banning me for engaging in conversations in the very same way I/we/they had for literally years’. This seems to be leading to conversations even within the thread that hash out how setting out different behavioral and engagement expectations will form a healthier community, and I think that’s a good evolution.

2. As a person who has… I want to say two? maybe three?.. solid, 30+ year old grudges, against family members to boot, that I just can’t seem to let go of and that have absolutely shaped me and my perceptions and interactions as an adult, in hindsight I realize if I’d been able to pop the zit (so to speak) of those relationships with other people of different levels of empathy and perspective, I’d be a better, healthier person with far less conflict under my belt. I think this thread is those people popping their collective zits, which may be carrying a gross metaphor too far but which I think, in the end, will actually minimize the amount of resentment people who feel that they have been persecuted, bullied and defamed out of their community. That’s a win for this forum, and their/our future interactions, period.

So, I mean, TL;DR - while wallowing too deeply in anger, insult, and bad feels for too long isn’t going to be cathartic but detrimental, a benefit having other people who went through the same thing coming to build the new community acknowledging what actions led to the necessity of the splinter and what about the construction of the original community led to that is a net gain for everybody.

[Arkandel]

I don’t want to take sides. And I have received a number of messages on Discord asking me to. It’s not my place to do so any more.

But I will say this. It’s made me a bit sad. For a very long time I enjoyed the idea of a single forum open to everyone in the hobby where we could all either speak our minds or - worst case scenario - be able to coexist with those we didn’t like.

Now the community seems fractured. Hopefully it is a problem that will fix itself.

So… I am still sad about this state of affairs. When I was part of the hobby I worked hard to ensure it doesn’t come to this. I suppose it’s what it is.

[Jennkryst]

@Arkandel I, for one, would like someone to explain how you were not banned for speaking twice after the ‘DO NOT SPEAK’ threat, yet @Narson was banned for speaking just once… specifically asking why you were immune to the VERY CLEAR AND TOTALLY JUSTIFIED AND FAIR DECISION THAT ANYONE WHO SPOKE WAS TO BE BANNED.

If that’s taking sides… I dunno. I was banned for supposedly requesting it, without the chance to clarify what my post meant. It is what it is.

[Arkandel]

@Jennkryst I suspect you know the answer to that question.

But if you are asking me, you’re asking the wrong person.

For the record, I barely read the thread (or most un-fun threads ) to even know what was going on until well after the fact, and was confused at first about why it’d be an issue to post on it at all.