Foreword

I’m honestly terrified of how things have gone so far. I will try to hold it together a little longer and put out level-headed answers to public allegations, for those who want to judge based on evidence, but what’s been going on beneath is really bad.

Manipulations

Manipulation is inseparable from the suppression of truth. For if truth is established slowly and biases uprooted, then it’s not possible to manipulate. I don’t want to sling shit at other people to distract from answering for my ban, but I think it’s necessary that I first draw attention to my perception of manipulation being done against me, to make the reader aware of sources of bias. There are 4 such tactics I’ve so far seen the SMS community do in this case:

1. The normalisation of the idea that you can mount an abuse case with no evidence, entrust the decision to mods who’ve many times in the past acted incompetently, and drive the accused insane by not telling em what it’s about. I still know I didn’t do anything, which is what makes it so painful. It makes a mockery of the 7 months and 7000 words it took me to expose lumardy, and the plight of every victim before me and since. And the fact this has happened to only me, after lu also happened to only me, and just knowing I’m bound to always be ostracised for things I didn’t do, via the suppression of information.

2. Mlarvitar, someone close to this case, has conspired to create a situation where the mods know about an abusive letter I sent to a close friend, out of its original context and with added spin, despite said friend never coming to the mods with the letter, and ambiguity over whether said friend even consented. This same person said to me, before anything public happened with Jeff, that it was a mistake to defend me from the bingo community. Implying it’s OK to, for example, knowingly like Toburr’s false tweet, seemingly because destroying me, by any means necessary, is for the greater good. He decided I’m a “manipulative parasite”; done. And he decided that only off the back of taking a side on my letter to my close friend (a friendship he knows nothing about) and his petty personal grievances with me.

3. When I write tweets to disprove a false narrative, the response that gains the most support (by rudhira) argues that, actually, it isn’t false (it is), by explicitly distorting what 1ups said (point 2), distorting the overall nature of #community-reconciliation (point 2.1), casting doubt on 1ups’ motives (point 4), and trying to discredit the whole ban of Toburr and euphemise the fact that he did something so toxic that it made 4 people leave a Discord (all of whom then supported the ban or at least the basis behind it), and many il mods feared interacting with him (point 6) – insinuating the ban was really my “personal vendetta”.
    
   It’s the fact that people only own up to things to buy social favour and otherwise press advantage to rewrite history, knowing that for example 1ups would never stand up for me, and that the mods were compromised enuff to never officially rule on Toburr, and so enable the rewriting to happen (see Lego not intervening with a factual clarification on Toburr’s accusation for example). The extent to which what actually happened in the past is determined by who people like today. That really harrows me.

4. Both Mlarvitar and the mods have pre-emptively set up trap narratives for me to fall into – trying to clear my name means I’m going to harass and expose victims “again”, and me investigating the case is just me speculating again. I have confirmed that even when I say something that’s true, mods will discredit me by accusation of speculation – see below, where I present evidence that was disclosed by Jpep and Mlarvitar, without telling the mod how I knew, thus baiting the accusation of speculation. This shows that the mods prioritise the secrecy of their ban over the truth, and that has to be remembered when assessing their unsubstatiated narratives of me, and whenever they try to discredit me without actually using evidence.

Being Believed

Given the above, it’s certain that I can’t be believed just by testifying and getting cross-examined alone. The mods and Mlarvitar have fabricated a number of false motives about me (e.g. that I went after Jeff because I “disagree with” him, that I think I’m always in the right because I’m arguing “factual events”), but their burden of proof is missing completely. On the other hand, I’m held to a high standard, where any evidence hole is labelled “speculation”, despite them having all the information and me hardly any.

The motive of this ban is purely the dozen people who were uncomfortable with me, with the obvious problems that I would bring up stressful topics in public, and had dire relationships with several abusers, ex-friends and mods. They could exploit the fact that a couple of these relationships had wrongdoing from me that contributed to the other person’s decision to leave the community, whereas I kind of just weathered the times I was abused, exposed them and stayed put. It’s not the content of the cases themselves that matters – to quote Mlarvitar:

if a lot of people are uncomfortable with someone, and mods receive that those members are uncomfortable with him, then that alone should legitimise them to take action.

The problem is, the mods and others then invent false motives and explanations for what happened, like the retconned Toburr case, in order to try to legitimise the ban. That’s how we come to this absurd characterisation that a situation like this can be entirely my fault. But the people who had been uncomfortable with me are still a small minority, and most of them had an external reason to be uncomfortable – that they’d done something bad to me. And I feel that appealing to the unanimity of a secretive mod decision, or that someone like Mlarvitar suddenly turned on me, or that I lost my former best friend to the repercussions of what lumardy did – all that still isn’t going to somehow debunk 2 years of personal experiences of the rest of the community and the clear incongruity between that and what specific people are saying I am. At least, that’s what I hope.

But I’ve found that even tho I self-documented my motives when writing about Jeff, albeit not well, people didn’t listen and instead invented new ones and a false history (like saying my accusations were “entirely” based on speculation). I wrote a lot in Shine Heads documenting the dynamic of being put between a rock and a hard place by the ongoing bad behaviour of abusers and their friends, and the lack of patience from the public and support from the mods in getting things heard and settled (I will include a copy at the bottom of this). I asked for help with lumardy. But almost nobody seemed to listen. By far the biggest support went to “Lego is doing his best. Cut him some slack” when I had a distressed reaction to Lego burying what I was saying. And just as I was trying to open up about those things, I got banned. And the ban didn’t acknowledge anything – not the situation with lumardy, not my motives for what I did to Jeff, not how the mods’ actions helped create the situation. Nobody even asked me about 1ups, or consulted the witness to our situation (despite the mods saying they consulted all relevant parties).

It just brutalised me at my most vulnerable. No mod so much as offered me compassion for my mental health. They just dishonestly pretended they’d given me a chance to talk things out.

I never hear my own words come from another’s mouth. And that’s what makes my attempts to give my side seem so futile. I’ve always felt like I’ve had to argue my situation as a victim and only this because otherwise nobody would believe me. Not being believed was fundamental to how the bingo community got leverage to bully me in the first place, so I deprioritised others’ concerns because I felt that not doing so would make mine get wiped out. Rudhira’s alternative history of the Toburr ban shows me I was right. But nevertheless it feels like the only way forward is to neutrally assess what’s happened, and explain and apologise with minimal emotion. It’s a situation with fault on both sides, after all.

I’ve tried both being unemotional and emotional at this point but it’s never worked out, maybe because I never sucked up to anyone, negotiated with or explained myself to someone like Mlarvitar, or took Jpep’s advice for how to not lose support. I always wanted to just be myself. And that comes with an inability to manipulate/suppress truth and a propensity to have everything out in public (the two go hand-in-hand of course), and so cause drama. If you really want to feel how things feel from my side, read my Shine Heads thread (below).

But it’s with this understanding of manipulative strategies the community is using against me and my history of not being believed that I want the reader to assess the apologies/explanations in my following docs with an open mind.

Appendix: My Thread in Shine Heads

Thread [CLICK TO EXPAND]

what really hurt in this situation is the steady loss of friends i’ve endured since [lumardy] was banned

cos even back then, i was really alone, and people were struggling to even understand what he did to me

with urbani, it was easy. the case was more convoluted imo, but it was less deeply/rigorously argued, affected more people, and it was easy for people to just jump on it with likes and a comment ignorant of what the case was cos one of their friends was a victim

even now, like, jer will deservedly call out urbani for 20 likes and beat my 15 on my original case and it’s petty but i’ll feel terrible cos i know it’s real

i was constantly getting character-assassinated by the bingo community at the time

every time i picked a fight with, like, my best friend (a lot of whose friends were lu’s friends), or the sms players who were bullying me, or the mod who conspired to make it harder for me to hold them accountable

the response was always “it’s not what you’re saying but how you said it”

this comment in gb cord that said “i don’t understand how the bingo community is abusing you” with the “this^” react by 5 people and such stuff is seared into my mind

i just feel like the child who’s always pointing at stuff going “look!” but being ignored and then losing friends. EDIT: and i appreciate the bad consequences that the way i said things caused but could never understand how much this was used as an excuse to not give a shit about what i was saying

———

idm being disliked but i do really abhor how much protection from abuse in this community depends on how many friends you or the other victims have

i have more patience for urbani than most seem to because even tho he still fixates on his own paranoias rather than owning the consequences of his actions, those paranoias are well-founded

the community does heavily ban people based on peer pressure. i should know, cos i presided over the zoomers

that’s why i always had this sick feeling over how some of the less offensive zoomers were treated and why i incurred so many arguments over that sentiment

cos i knew the whole time what it implied for me and lumardy

i would like even urbani to face a tough-on-crime punishment but i worry that no1 will even say that if lu does stuff like this then he shouldn’t come back

i’ll leave it there

———

I don’t entirely see how the situation with lu relates to some of the other drama with some bingoers or mods, but lu targeting records like that is some zoomer shit. That must be really hard to deal with and I’m sorry you’re being put through that.

thanks

the way it relates is v important so I need to really try to explain it

the two connections are that the root of the problem is the same and the downward spiral dynamic is the same

both problems started out, from long before the year i’ve just spent under this immense pressure, as rough patches in my personality tripping something in someone else

stuff like me being candid and curt with my language

built up in other people persistent slander, harassment etc

the web of friendships connecting the abusive people right down to me was always really strong and people have always defended friends fiercely

(again i’m talking about both lu and the bingo-derived conflicts simultaneously)

but the buck doesn’t just stop at the abusive people and then we move on. if only

in the beginning, there’s a strong supply of patience and people are willing to listen. in the beginning, the accusations are also at their strongest

there’s one set of people that’s opposed to their friends being called out for abuse, so they defend staunchly and the more exhausting conflicts ensue

but this has indelible consequences

with lu, after 7 months of his manipulation, everyone became aware of what had happened, and it put a rift in the friend group. i’d been betrayed by multiple people, and that never gets undone, but my own friends supposedly on my side were still very involved with them

that requires a lot of communication to navigate, but after getting distanced by silence, i lose my best friend to this

the first allocation of patience allowed me to argue a serious abuse case, and i did it well. the second problem i was arguing was smaller, but the patience i was given was much much smaller

being given no platform to argue meant that i came on really strong, hurtful, toxic about it

and that caused a problem with the third level of people. they couldn’t see where i was coming from and gave me zero patience, so i was out of friends

with the bingo community, basically the same thing happened

the first set of people and accountability was stressful enough for everyone, but then the reduction in patience to listen to me complain about mod abuse was much greater than the reduction in seriousness of the offence vs the original one

people gave me space to argue the first case, but almost none to argue the second, so it came out in a toxic, stressful, conflicty way

and then that pissed off the third level of people, who didn’t care what my reasoning was

so in both cases, the pattern is that an abuse has repercussions, but they don’t get cut off cleanly. someone always does something bad in response to the original incident that i feel emotionally compelled to complain about, but i don’t get afforded the space to complain, so i do it in a damaging way, which becomes the issue to the next set of people, and so on

i’ve experienced it as a fundamental lack of compassion, that i expected people to be more patient in hearing how i feel about things, but they became less, not even cos i became more toxic, but more cos they’d become exhausted

but the exhaustion is inevitable cos the knock-on consequences of abuse don’t stop and always go against the victim

these situations where people managed to ostracise the zoomers and urbani are exceptional. i think what’s happened to me in both incidents is more typical

and the two incidents had some terrible crossovers too

post-lu, i needed space to recover, but what i got instead was intensive bullying by the bingo community

the stuff i tried to address with jeff isn’t just the stuff that i could argue culpability for but also stuff i didn’t mention cos it wasn’t his fault, like how his actions helped sow a lot of distrust between me and my friend from the lu situation, which contributed in that breaking down

so yeah, that. i hope that explains how the two situations go hand-in-hand