Okay, this post won't go on the front page, so I can be a bit more direct here.
I should note one caveat to my resignation. Just in case an emergency happens, I have admin powers in a secondary usergroup. I just don't plan to use them for anything super meaningful.
You guys may as well remove me from admin status too. I haven't really been a part of TSC since dropping out of IRC which isn't really fair to the community, and honestly I feel like I've gotten to the point of moving on from this site.
Note sure why you didn't just remove yourself, but okay, it's done.
I think I speak for everyone when I say we dont want you to go though? can we at least vote on it?
I basically let that happen last year when all of the silent people suddenly spoke up about it, so I returned. Unfortunately, not much changed upon my return. If anything, I can't pull the same "leave, then return" stunt twice or it starts losing meaning.
I guess the main question now is why SonicAD refuses to give up his position as site owner when he hasn't done anything for TSC in years. It's ridiculous, to be honest.
We were planning to post the "Best of March" on the front page today. Would posting it in a few hours make you feel bad?
That second one is a PM, which I guess means I'm a bad person for sharing, but I had to put those two quotes together to say "wow, that's just plain dickish; fuck you." I don't expect anybody to feel forced to say goodbye or to weep at this turn of events, but to immediately question if you can strip somebody else of a title too and then ask if you can bury this topic's announcement to post things about March at the end of April? I hope you step on a Lego barefoot for those sentiments. It was nice working with you too.
Thorn leaving changes the shift of TSC entirely. Now, whenever a dispute has to be decided, it's Gerbil making the calls, and he's probably not around often enough and/or at the "right times" to do just that (not his fault, ofc, but it's the truth).
Giving GerbilSoft the title was more symbolic than anything. The fact of the matter is that the things people have wanted fixed lately have only been accessible by GerbilSoft, so the title went to the person who has that power. Honestly, I expect that he'll notice this topic within a few days and immediately throw the title at Zeupar. It won't mean Zeupar has any more power, though.
As far as I see it, this might begin the (slow) final decline of TSC, once and for all.
No, the final decline began when the community became toxic enough to push me away, not when I took the actual step. If
A leads to
B and shit happens after
B, blame
A. I know that I made most of my points in my resignation post about how I felt out of touch, but I wasn't going to call people out on the front page. I left my position because I was sick of watching people use this website to be assholes to each other or to reward immature behavior.
BS calls have become witch hunts. The supersonic917 BS call is the quintessential example, with a few people barging into the topic without permission and a large swath of the community discussing spurious evidence in Skype groups. They may have been right in the end, but that doesn't justify the methods used. For another example, I also had people saying that the best times for the Big Foot boss in Sonic Adventure 2 must be false because they scoured the web and couldn't find anybody else that good. When I pointed out both that one of the people at the top was well respected with no reason to lie and nobody had hard evidence, I started getting yelled at and told I was "corrupt" and making "excuses". Of course, the very next day, I was messaged saying there was a non-TAS video of the top time all along. Hell, I'll give a third example: I currently have a long text file from a member regarding possible cheating in Sonic 1, but half of the arguments within are "the player didn't do this thing how other speedrunners do it" while the other half are "the player used the strategy other speedrunners use this time" but with an angry tone. How do you work with such logic? We're at a point where faking proof is too easy and making BS calls based on hard evidence is nearly impossible, but that doesn't make it okay for people to make BS calls without that evidence.
Dickish behavior is being tolerated and even applauded for some reason. When The Kid throws a tantrum and further destroys broken charts, the correct response is not to glorify the act in YouTube videos and give him lots of Twitter attention. When there's drama between notable site members that threatens to draw everybody in, calling the head admin of said site part of the peanut gallery and saying he'd better not get involved is not the right course of action either. When I do get asked to be involved in drama but I need to do something in the real world such as go to work, I don't care to hear that the timing of my real world obligations is "convenient" for dodging the drama (that we just said some people didn't want me in anyway); I couldn't imagine telling my students that their teacher couldn't make it to class because he had to solve problems for a Sonic the Hedgehog site. Coming home to drama like this after work was never fun.
Everybody seems to want to be a special snowflake lately, and if that special snowflakeness isn't shown to everybody on the site, it's not good enough. It's also the case that people are holding other people to standards that don't actually affect anything on the site. For instance, The Kid destroyed those charts even though everybody who knew him was aware of his zero-point championship just because the site wasn't giving him the title. Zeupar just asked for SonicAD to relinquish the "site owner" title as if somebody else having the words "site owner" in his/her profile would make the person more special or powerful. The two former TSC Race Night moderators started snapping at each other because they each believed the other wasn't upholding the ideals associated with the title, and one of the two even said that without the title, he/she would not do any more work for Race Nights because he/she wouldn't feel special. Even being a moderator on Twitch channels with 10 viewers is considered important to some people around here. These are all just arbitrary titles and aren't worth drama!
Speaking of drama, I found an amusing Twitter exchange that talked about two people claiming they'd stop dealing with recent TSC social drama but that had a screenshot of what looked to be such drama. How exactly does bringing it up again help? Pretend it doesn't exist and use your block button liberally if it gets overwhelming (note: admins don't have the luxury of burying their heads in the sand like that). Poking around Twitter right now, I see a few TSC-related profiles that are mentioning recent drama even now because everybody's so helpful!
- "what the hell is drama i don't even know :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^) :^)"
- "Getting a little tired of seeing stupid shit spread with a friend of mine. Leave him be. I don't want to hear a single fucking word about this whole drama situation anymore."
- "…what I saw was a person that I had respect for has been washed away and I am so sick of people doing this shit. Stabbing others in the back and talking shit behind others, starting drama."
Twitter, Skype, Twitch, etc. have block buttons for a reason. Use the damn button instead of acting like kindergartners and then having everything traced back to TSC. Similarly, if you want to minimize drama, don't give people moderator powers in your Twitch channels and Skype groups unless they can use the power responsibly; friendship does not equal responsibility.
My two cents to many of you guys would be to start managing your online friendships better while putting less attention on being some special, recognized person, as your missteps drag in everybody around you. Don't throw around accusations you can't prove, don't shit talk as much (and certainly not publicly), don't award assholery, and branch out of your closest circles of friends once in a while. I have a special Skype group for my closest friends from another website, but I also speak in the site's many IRC channels and touch base with every friendly site member there. Perhaps you could do the same with #soniccenter to stir up a friendlier community? I shouldn't have had to look at a group of my friends who identify as furries—the stereotypical Internet drama group—and think "Wow, if only I had such open, friendly, and accepting people on my website!" Of course, I don't have to think that anymore, because it's no longer my website. :)
FUCK do I hate having to organize these sorts of rants. On a lighter note, does anybody feel like actually having a good time doing anything online? I'm free tomorrow night and I know 200cc Mario Kart 8's been a blast. :P I've been interested in D&D and Pathfinder lately too. Also, as always, I'm looking to polish my waning Puyo Puyo (Mean Bean Machine) skills if anybody wants to puzzle like it's 1993.~
