Drew Linky
1st of June
We’ve had a new user around lately who has been engaging pretty consistently, to the point that I’m already comfortable considering them a regular. This fellow, Misha, is easily the most engaged and well-spoken newcomer we’ve had in a long time. He revealed in some cursory discussions that he’s interested in a wide range of topics, especially history and philosophy. Among other things, he’s able to at least reasonably participate in conversations about them.
Just in the last few nights alone, we’ve talked about everything with him from figures of the classical age in the Mediterranean to the ethics of eating meat and how it might relate to climate change. It’s been a delight having new opinions to work with and discuss--even with less eloquent people it’s usually a breath of fresh air, but in this case it’s fostered some very interesting conversations.
Of note, there was an incident with Misha some weeks ago before he had ever come to mspa-lit. He was talking in #general about video games with people, when Nat came in. Nat sometimes bans people too readily, and Misha wanted it addressed because it did seem rather unfair. After bringing it up in modchat, it was deemed “questionable but fair” and I delivered the bad news. He surely interpreted this as powertripping and left the server, at which point I thought we would never see him again. Following this, I was rather surprised when he came back and started participating in mspa-lit.
The decision the mod team reached wasn’t inappropriate, either; if I were to offer any sort of criticism of Misha’s character it would be that he can take a rather flippant stance when it’s ill-advised. It should be pointed out that I don’t know if this is actually the case with him; I’ve only seen it happen once, and it was pretty vague. I’m sure he doesn’t quite agree with that assessment.
This one thing aside, I do hope that Misha remains. He’s the latest in the line of people like Daniel and Wadapan, who actually know how to engage and carry themselves properly. I can only hope that we’ll receive more in the future; it greatly enriches the community when you have more people who are willing to participate and know how to do it well. As long as we see people like this trickle in, I’ll know that we’re doing something right1 .
Nothing more for today.
5th of June
In the wake of the Epilogues releasing, I’ve noticed something of a paradigm shift in the participation across the bigger channels in the server. The smaller ones being more or less the same as usual, I’d like to begin by briefly summarizing how activity has historically looked when looking at each channel. I’ve grouped each into two categories: “major” channels, which would always see over 1,000 messages a day; and “minor” channels, which received less than such.
The major channels have always been #general, #altgen, and #mspa-lit, with every single other channel being relegated to minor status. Some of the latter would often get close to or even surpass 1,000 messages on special occasions, but it was by no means a consistent thing. In particular, I’ve always seen #gaming as being on the cusp between being a minor and major channel, owing to a small but very active set of users--it is arguable whether WoC’s position as pseudo helps or hurts this, although I would venture to guess that he is a more positive influence.
After the Epilogues, I started to see a change in the numbers across each channel. #general, #altgen, and #mspa-lit are still the champions, averaging to about 4,000 messages a day each this year so far. Without getting into too much detail, this is a little bit less on average than 2018, but it is not terribly striking. Instead, it feels like those extra messages have been redistributed: #homestuck is now seeing over 1,000 messages a day.
In the case of #homestuck this is absolutely not a surprise. The Epilogues, while not nearly the force for conversation that they were when freshly released, have given ample new perspective to fans who are eager to relate events in the last segment of the story back to what we had already, or vice versa. The channel on average sees triple or quadruple the number of messages it used to before, and if this keeps up into next year I will happily be recategorizing it as a major channel.
A different and far weirder case has also arisen: #oc-shrine has been something of a mystery these last several days. Its activity was not bolstered by the release of the Epilogues in the slightest--if anything, it took something of a dip for about a month. Two weeks ago, however, for no discernible reason the post count positively skyrocketed. Where before it would see about 100-200 messages on average, it suddenly had over 3,300.
I was flabbergasted to see this spike, but despite combing through the channel for an answer I could not find anything out of the ordinary. What’s more, while lower than that, this continued for a period of about 10 days. The only explanation I can come up with is that the presence of a new user was generating discourse or content. Indeed, after some thought I am forced to conclude that it was some sort of strife: I recall a user from the channel griping to me in DMs about another who was causing some problem.
I assume that virtuNat got to this problem user, because the channel has been declining back to its normal rate of usage in the last few days. However, to return to the origin of the conversation, it feels like #oc-shrine and most of the other minor channels have been seeing a somewhat increased average message count this year overall. The total server message count is lower than normal, but the minor channels are seeing more usage. I’m not sure how to explain this effect, but I suspect that the pseudos are glad for something more to do.
To segue into a different but vaguely related topic, I’ve noticed a shift in how I’m feeling about writing. Griever coming back and spewing his unbelievable vitriol seriously upset me, to the point that it made me stop talking as much for a few weeks. To add to this, I feel as if the slowing of the server has been contributing to the effect. It’s not quite my usual brand of gloom and doom, but it’s pronounced nonetheless.
Rather than being upset at the slowdown, I believe I’m just having a harder time finding novel things to describe. There’s only so many ways to say “we had some funny exchanges today,” or to enumerate what we discussed in particular. The Epilogues releasing is an event that has fundamentally changed things: we have obtained closure, meaning that we are satisfied, but also necessarily making it harder for us to find things to talk about regarding Homestuck.
A lot of our discussions were founded in part by a bitterness that there was so much left unresolved, and what had been addressed narratively was done so in a very negligent or shoddy fashion. The Epilogues have remanded that to a large extent, and now we have few if any remaining demands. We still enjoy the story and appreciate it greatly, but there’s only so many ways to filet a fish, so to speak.
A different way of phrasing this, in summary, might be that the server has matured somewhat. I can’t remember if I’ve spoken about this in a recent entry or not, but I feel like our rate of change has diminished. The speed with which we gain new regulars (note: regulars, as distinct from users in general) has slowed significantly, and by extension the rate at which our culture and the needs of the server change has slowed exponentially. We are no longer in a time of burgeoning growth and all of its accompanied drama; we have entered something of a halcyon period instead2 .
Without delineating who believes exactly what, suffice it to say that most think this is preferable. I largely agree with this, although there is a not-insignificant piece of me that sides with the other belief: it’s nice when a lot is happening, and quickly. Still, it wasn’t fun to be on the receiving end of drama. Often enough it got out of hand such that it wasn’t fun to watch it happen to others, either. While I’m slightly ambivalent, this is probably for the best in the end3 .
Nothing more for today.
6th of June - The Gnomening
Note: this entry was written in real time, please excuse any conflicting remarks as new developments arose.
Makin has been loosely threatening to have another reckoning for a while now. In fact, I believe he started threatening it just a month after the Rapture at the beginning of last year. Finally last night, he said it was happening for real and to prepare ourselves. Most of us became somewhat nervous, and initially there was some talk of staying up in case it happened immediately--I know Toast and Nat specifically tried to do this at first. I decided rest was more important and that if I was demodded while asleep, then so be it.
As things went, I woke up this morning and nothing had happened, so I made the right choice. I assume the others also did so, although throughout the day I noticed that all of the mods were present on the sidebar--a somewhat rare occurrence. We spent the day as normal, talking about all manner of things. We didn’t bring up the possibility of the Reckoning, but I’m sure it was in the back of all our minds. Eventually around 3:30 PM EST, it finally began.
Makin started by posting numerous images of garden gnomes in #announcements. I should explain for any who are unaware: there’s a meme similar in spirit to a Rickroll where you’ll be linked to a video of a 3D animated gnome dancing around. The overall idea is the same, where you trick someone into clicking that video instead of whatever they were looking for. It’s a very basic prank, but its absurdity has been pretty funny since it started coming in vogue late last year.
Returning to today, I was fortunate enough to be present the entire time, so I have the leisure to make notes as thoroughly as I can. Makin posted images of gnomes with some regularity until about 3:45, at which point he demodded every pseudo4 . At this point, there was no doubt left as to what was happening. At 4 PM he then demodded all of the full mods too. In announcements, he requested that everyone begin the process of nominating new #general pseudos and janitors, with preference towards people who haven’t had the position before.
People indelibly went to nominate qweq as the janitor again, but Makin seemed reluctant. He likes to mix in new blood to prevent people from getting too chummy5 or lazy, so he specifically wanted a new person for the position, at least at first. To this effect, people began to gravitate around Reti as the new general pseudo, which Makin accepted. With this done, the first pseudo of the new era was chosen.
Ifnar was reinstated as the #serious pseudo, amidst a landslide of people voting for him. The way he carries himself and his ceaseless presence made him a shoe-in for the position, and Makin relented for it. $trider (who now brands himself as godfiend) took the time to mention that he might like to be the #music pseudo. Makin responded: “strider no offense there is no fucking way you'll ever be a mod without paying / I can guarantee that / even after your redemption arc you'd still be a horrible mod.” The rest of the chat cajoled him greatly, although I believe $trider took it in good enough stride for the occasion.
The first true upset of the evening was with the Homestuck category, which Toast was in charge of. He was the pseudo for #homestuck, #hiveswap, and #althomestuck. Some voted for him, but there was a lot of interest in a popularly-deemed Homestuck expert called Photino. Though Photino denied the position, he was elected anyway due to having more posts than Toast (the original claim that Toast had no messages in #homestuck was proven false, but he still had less than Photino across all three channels. More importantly, Makin had already sent the announcement through so that, in his words, it was too late). Toast accepted his loss, though I’m worried it will bother him greatly.
The next question was what to do about #art-cosplay. Most people again went with the person who was already in charge of it, in this case Spiral. Though a full-mod, Spiral checked in on #art-cosplay often enough that the channel was kept in good working order. There were no alternatives and she’s honestly a very capable member of the team, so Makin promoted her back as the first full mod of the new era.
A far more contentious position, #oc-shrine was next. Nat has of course had her occasional run-ins with users, but there’s basically no one else who wants to do the job. When asked to come up with suggestions, everyone in chat started nominating WoC to “punish him.” Makin gave up in short order and just re-elected Nat to stem the tide, moving on to #writing. This too was handled quickly, as #writing literally doesn’t need a pseudo do to its slowness.
CyclopsCaveman, who has instead been going by Polyphemus for many months now, was a popular pick for #music pseudo. Olki has been less active over time, so the choice was natural for both people in general and Makin. #gaming was locked for WoC, although there was some talk that Tipsy or RAAR could take his place (Tipsy historically has not wanted the position at all, or any position, and RAAR did not secure enough votes).
The media channels were a bit of a toss-up. Ngame was active enough in #western-media, but his presence wasn’t that solid, and many other names such as Misha and LLF were posited. It came down to messaging history: both Ngame and another suggestion, Zilten, have less than 5,000 messages total since the new year. LLF had more with about 16,000, but Misha has come in as a true powerhouse with about 25,000 messages in just the two months since he joined. At first Makin decided to keep Ngame as the pseudo for western-media, but Tipsy eventually came online and said that in fact she would like to be the western-pseudo. Accordingly, Ngame was deposed, Tipsy was established as the western-media pseudo, and Misha became the pseudo for eastern-media.
Nat was unceremoniously made the #science-math and #coding-tech pseudo again. The people brought it to Makin’s attention that he had skipped #altgen by mistake, and there were various suggestions ranging from Dingus and Deus again, an oldie named Valkyrie, and a bunch of altgenners nominating themselves such as MaxiCreep, Mr. Skullium, Spongyboi, and a variety of others. Eventually, Makin said “fuck it” and made me “one of” the #altgen pseudos. This just gives me license to conduct more sacrifices and mess with the base, so I can’t complain. Valkyrie was then instituted as the janitor, but after Ifnar recommended Deus back for altgen pseudo, Makin went against him and turned Valkyrie into another pseudo. Deus is the janitor now instead.
Anervaria received their position back as voicechat janitor literally just for showing up, which no one can argue with. She’s handled it perfectly well so far, and due to having a higher post count than Dingus she was later promoted to a pseudo. With this out of the way, we returned to the topic of general. Makin decided Wadapan as another pseudo so that he would “get out more,” to which Wada responded: “lmao fuck now I have to unmute gen.” Qweq was reinstated as a janitor, which was deserving in my opinion.
As for full mods, Sea Hitler was immediately reinstated. Mines was also a popular vote to become full mod, which it seemed was to his surprise. Dingus was also a rather popular suggestion, and after some time of this Makin decided to give him “one chance.” He then asked: “what is the best MGS game?” Dingus was on mobile the entire time and unable to properly answer, which counted as a fuck up. The altgenners present gave him a tearful farewell as he went back to work.
Tensei was reinstated as full mod with little affair. Makin asked for further suggestions: Toast was a very popular one, because of his long history and rapport with people. Makin asked for pros and cons as to why he should be promoted to full mod. Tensei initially was in support, but Andrew called Toast an “oldie,” which caused Tensei to change his mind. Sea Hitler wrote a lengthy message in support of Toast, describing how he’s been an active user for ages and posts actively enough outside of mspa-lit.
Due to this and in mockery of someone pinging him, Makin agreed and decided to make Toast a full-mod. “But,” he said, “HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?” Toast’s reign has been kind of a joke in the past, such that the length of it is always in question6. Finally, Makin reinstated Dingus and I as full mods because we’re “pitiful.” That concluded the more pressing positions, and though Makin opened the floor for any last-minute suggestions, no one had anything compelling enough for consideration.
Such is how The Gnomening of 2019 proceeded. It was a much less chaotic affair than 2018’s Rapture, although even that paled in comparison to what Toast and others describe the original Reckoning as. There was no shuffling or reorganizing of channels this time around, only a simple dialogue between Makin and people here. I have a feeling he wanted to shake up things just a bit more in regards to who exactly was on the team, but things are in fact pretty different.
As for those mods we lost today, we no longer have Nights (who of course left the server ages ago anyway), Wheals, Ngame, Olki, and Tera. While the first four are variously inactive anymore, I feel like Tera’s removal is more unfortunate--it was good at its job and attentive, and I’m sure it’s going to be dismayed by this when it sees what happened. I’ll have to check in and make sure Tera is doing okay when it comes around.
The lineup now is significantly different. To summarize, the changes are: Dingus, Mines, and Toast (full mods); Reti and Wadapan (general); Valkyrie (altgen); Polyphemus (music); Tipsy (western-media); Misha (eastern-media); Anervaria (voicechat pseudo), and Deus (altgen janitor). It’s going to be an interesting few months getting used to the way the sidebar looks, I already miss some of the old mods. I hope that the next year or however long will be all the more engaging for these changes.
Nothing more for today.
10th of June
Altgen sacrifices have been dwindling in both frequency and intensity as the months have gone by. I no longer remember when the first sacrifice occurred, or what might have spurred it beyond random action. I’ve already largely retired the event, after holding it on a weekly basis for those first few months. After some thinking though, it didn’t feel right to let it wink out of existence without any pomp or celebration.
Thus, I stormed altgen a few days ago and made it clear to all present that we would be having The Ultimate Sacrifice in order to truly give the occasion the sendoff it deserves. It was originally slated for this past Sunday evening the 9th, but was delayed so that more people could participate when the time came. Given how tonight’s affair went, this proved to be an excellent decision.
I had stressed to those present last night that I wanted it to be an absolute raging mess when we finally got around to it today. Specifically, I urged them to get started and build some excitement for themselves around 6:30, and then the sacrifice proper would commence at 7. I arrived home to see they had already started losing their minds at about 5:45, and it only grew from there until the appointed time came.
There are a few altgen traditions that I feel bear description after tonight given that they probably won’t appear again often, if ever. Long ago I made mention of how they have an assortment of memes concerning the one-off character from Barnyard called “Biggie Cheese,” especially in conjunction with spamming the phrase “THE PHYSICAL RETURN OF CHRIST.” There is another practice stemming from this same movie, wherein they’ll begin to scream “WILD” and “MIKE” in rapid succession, rendering the chat completely unusable.
Both of these, while inane, are pretty simple to understand as simple references. The thing that has increasingly bewildered me is instead something that--too my understanding--Sea Hitler started. He will announce to the chat: “let’s go on a bread expedition,” or some such. This immediately triggers the chat to begin spamming the word “BREAD” for a time. As far as I’m aware, there is no more complexity to it than this--there is no deeper “why,” the habit simply sprung into existence like that.
However, once they’ve done this for a while, they’ll start adding words. Whenever I’ve witnessed these bread expeditions, they invariably add the name of various users. On the occasion of tonight’s sacrifice, they added the names of mods, altgen regulars, or very historied members of the chat, such as Andrew. To reiterate, that’s literally all there is to it: screaming “X BREAD.” After enough of one prefix they’ll move on to another, and continue in this way for an hour or more.
To aid with the sacrifice, Sea Hitler spearheaded the expedition as usual, although he had a very specific plan for how it would progress. I was initially going to sacrifice people based on whoever could create the best original content. While this is indeed what happened, it wasn’t quite in the way I expected; a bizarre interplay began soon after the bread expedition started.
An altgen user named Walter seemed to be one of the only people present not participating in the expedition. After some observation, I noticed that they were actually putting out simple variations of the same image: an empty stage from some E3 conference this year, with the word “SEX” overlaid onto the stage. The sole variation was a number, starting at 1 and increasing with each iteration of the image Walter released.
Sea Hitler noticed this as well, and then managed to get everyone participating in the sacrifice--a healthy 20-30 people or so--into the #altgen voice channel. I was also asked to join, and was greeted with more absurdity: Sea Hitler had effectively organized everyone present such that they were a disturbingly efficient shitposting machine. He was directing people to spam different variations of “X BREAD,” and timing the change with the release of each of Walter’s images.
The stated goal was to get to 69 different forms of BREAD, as marked by Walter’s images. For any who might harbor doubt, I promise that this is a real thing that actually happened and was perpetrated by real people. Every time Walter released an image with another number on it, Shitler immediately directed everyone present to start spamming the next variation on BREAD, and would even plan some three or four varieties in advance so they could respond as quickly as possible.
This actually shacked up marvelously with the time limit I had set--they neared the 69th variation at almost precisely 7 PM, at which point I ended the sacrifice. I was sufficiently impressed with their organizational skills; for Walter being original and inspiring the bizarre coordination, I made him the sacrifice. The event was so amusing to me that I actually relented and awarded the position to two additional people: Shitler for leading the charge, and one of the altgen community’s choosing (of which they decided on a regular called hauntedPainter). To each of them I gave the usual role, and then as an additional reward in this final sacrifice, I gave each of them a month of Discord Nitro.
Those who were present also managed to have a really good time, so much so that they decided to commemorate the event somehow. At one point, there was a form of BREAD that made them laugh more than the rest of them had: an errant typo or joke from one of them led to “BRUHD” being somewhere in the mix, so it was suggested that everyone present could simply post “[BRUHD],” such that they could search for it on Discord and find the context easily.
Taking a step back and looking at it more objectively, this is all clearly insane. Yet, I was honestly a little touched at their collective appreciation for having a good time and how readily they engaged with each other. If they were to apply that mania and social strength to other things, they could achieve wonders. It’s almost too bad that most of their efforts are used for evil instead.
As it is, the bread expedition was more than fun already. Even if not for that, it was enormously successful: after checking the message count for today, altgen had literally 18,000 messages because of the sacrifice, which is more than the entire server has on average these days. To be sure, I don’t think that altgen has ever had that many messages in one day, certainly not within the last year.
Though the sacrifices are done for good, Shitler has promised that the expeditions will continue on occasion. I’m sure that other such traditions will inevitably be created and then fall into obscurity as time goes by. Altgen has changed considerably since I joined, being more of a shotgun of shitposts back then. It now resembles something more refined, or focus--more purposeful in exactly how it shitposts. I suspect that’ll change even more as time goes by.
Nothing more for today.
22nd of June
Things have been idling by as normal for the last week or so. On the surface things have been mostly quiet, except for a couple of stirrings. Of note, there have been a large number of times where we would bring up a show or movie that some of us haven’t seen, and have put it on a list. LOST is such an example, being one of the few shows that Makin considers shill-worthy, yet a hefty number of us have not seen. This alongside some old classics such as Avatar: The Last Airbender are of particular interest to us right now. Misha is already running anime night on Sundays, so if we slot something into Saturdays then we could very well have regular entertainment for a while.
Similarly, Spiral has taken it upon herself to rejuvenate writing contests in an attempt to make the affiliated channel more active. She’s receiving some help from Red and Andrew, as they’ll be figuring out what prizes will go to the winners. The last writing contests, if memory serves, eventually stopped due to a lack of participation. It’ll take a deft hand to actually motivate people to get involved; I’m sure that if anyone is to make it happen, it’ll be Spiral.
On a less pleasant note, underneath all of these gentle happenings there’s been a more disquieting event unfolding. Keeping record of the server’s statistical information on a daily basis has afforded me some insight on patterns of behavior here, including the average rate that we lose or gain users. We’ve noticed some mildly weird activity lately, but this really came to a head last night when I was taking count.
Roughly speaking we don’t gain or lose more than five people per day. Sometimes there are gentle increases, but it’s uncommon to see gains or losses of more than ten people except on special occasions, like meme dates or holidays. It was to my great surprise, then, when I noticed that we had gained not ten, not twenty, but fifty users in one day. Checking the userlog for the last day confirmed my fears: similar to a few months ago, we’ve been encroached upon by some kind of bot network without even realizing it.
Thankfully, spotting these build-ups is the most important step in preventing some kind of major attack. It’s not clear what they even want--we noticed a few porn bots spamming various channels like #hs-art-cosplay and #western-media, but it was a lone account out of the dozens that are simply staying quiet. The possibility of them being DM bots was brought up, and given the circumstances that makes the most sense. Thinking of the bots harassing users in private messages and us never finding out about it is actually quite upsetting.
That having been said, now that we’ve noticed them showing up, we’ll be far more attentive at picking them off for the next month or two. This is far from the first time that we’ve been assailed in such a manner, and though it’s tedious we’ve become quite efficient at removing the threat. I can only hope that whoever’s responsible for this nonsense will lose their motivation and go harass some other hapless server.
Nothing more for today.
25th of June
For the last few days, the regulars in mspa-lit and gaming each have been concerned about the disappearance of a Youtube personality named Etika. Etika has a history of mental instability, although a vast swath of his fanbase wrote off his recent hints of suicide as memes or some nonsense. As it is, Etika’s body was confirmed found today, and everyone who cared about him or his content expressed their sadness today in chat.
Normally these sorts of things would pass without much comment, but Tensei found the chat’s responses weird and uncomfortable. He claimed that it was as if everyone in chat were bereaving a close family member instead of a random person online. This naturally prompted a significant response from the people who had cared about Etika. I didn’t know about him before this event myself so I freely admit the news didn’t impact me at all, but this isn’t the first time that Tensei has taken the chance to be supremely callous.
The conversation that followed was weird and uncomfortable, for everyone involved. I’m not sure how much of it was Tensei playing it up for jokes versus being serious; everyone else, even those who didn’t particularly care about Etika, were irate with his thorough insensibility over the event. Even I was kind of put off by it, honestly.
Some weeks ago we all had a conversation that revealed a decent rule of thumb for participating online. Tensei, being fond of jokes, was submitting an outrageous take on whatever it was that we were discussing, which similarly caused people to spurn him. When asked whether he was being serious or not, he said something to the effect of whether or not it was reasonable to actually have the opinion he was expressing. Most everyone present said “no,” and that was effectively his answer.
To clear this muddy paraphrase: he was suggesting that in a given conversation, you shouldn’t just assume someone is speaking earnestly if what they’re saying is ridiculous. It leads to a lot of unnecessarily hurt feelings to assume someone is being serious when they’re speaking tongue in cheek. I find this to be a good faith approach to any discussion, and have tried to keep it in mind when talking with people since then.
However, the problem with today’s discussion is that neither of the choices mean well. He might have been serious, in which case he was being critically uncompassionate. Conversely he might have been joking about people caring too much, which most people present agreed was inappropriate for the occasion.
After thinking about it some, I don’t really want to paint what Tensei did as wrong or right7. I think it’s an important display of the difference in priorities and ideals that our group has. This same issue has come up before, in the sense that someone has been dismissive or joked about something that everyone else thought was inappropriate. This is hardly a new thing, so it was weird to me that the conversation got as unruly as it did today.
After thinking about that for a bit, I think it’s for two reasons: primarily, death is a more polarizing topic than most that come up in here. I can state with near certainty that there is no other issue which causes us to take such firm stances. Additionally, Tensei being a mod complicates things. People in positions of authority come under much greater fire for things that would probably be dismissed casually from a normal user. This is appropriate as a way to try and keep those in control in check, but I don’t think it’s really effective for people who don’t take these things seriously. I’m not sure why I bothered to think about this as long as I did. The conversation stuck out to me as a good example of one we’ve had before, I suppose--the topic of whether or not it’s appropriate to joke about certain things. Certain of us ascribe to the idea that everything is able to be mocked to some degree, and others have a more sacred view of various issues. Still others don’t believe jokes are appropriate in any real-world case, although I can’t think of an example of this last group. I guess all of this is just another cross-section of the way our community works.
More important to the server as a whole, the bot raid of the last few days seems to finally be slowing down. On the night of the second day or so, Makin asked me to submit a report to the Discord Abuse Center about it. We’ve witnessed no response thus far, but we’ve been preparing in case they speak up and want more information. Mines has taken up the inglorious task of logging every single bot we’ve banned.
To date, we’ve banned literally over a thousand bots, and identified a number of strange patterns among them. The one I noticed was a variety of the accounts having names or avatars depicting cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. It’s not clear if these bots are all from the same group or if we’re somehow being assailed by swarmed by multiple groups at once. If it’s the latter, then there are at least two or three distinct “types” of bots getting through, and it’s been pissing all of us off.
Makin removed all links to our server from Disboard. This means it’s harder for people to find us, but it seems to have worked in the sense that the rate of bots joining has plummeted today. I hesitate to say that, because we thought we had the problem licked a couple days ago and then it came back with a vengeance. With luck though, perhaps it’s finally over.
Nothing more for today.
26th of June
Something extremely unusual has happened, one that we’re not quite sure how to handle. Makin’s Patreon page, as I’ve described at one point, has a tier at $720 where someone receives all of the usual perks and becomes a temporary full mod. Realistically we never once expected anyone to actually pony up that kind of cash. Today, we were proven wrong by the one individual that I suppose we should have expected it from: User5.
User5 paid for this tier in full around 2 AM EST. The immediate response for most was amusement, but amongst the mod team it was surprise and even a little fear. User5’s reputation lends itself to the imagination, as to how he would behave with unfettered permissions. Fortunately the reward tier does come with the stipulation of “no destructive powers,” but we had never actually planned for this scenario; we had no idea what the extent of his perms would be.
Makin gave him the custom mod role “KILL-MODERATOR,” and he received access to the mod chats. Yet, User5 claimed that he didn’t even care about the mod permissions. Instead, he was purely interested in getting Makin to join a Discord server to which he invited various other people including myself. I declined the invitation, so I have no idea how many people took him up on the offer.
We have literally no idea what will happen as a result of this, but there are already some side effects of the expenditure: principally, the SS13 server (SS413) will be going back up. The cost of an SS13 server is much more expensive than for other games, so Makin has made it clear it will only remain up for the duration that the Patreon can afford it. The server is to be resuscitated in a few days after he and Putnam get the code working.
Another side effect is that Dickle’s exile has been lifted. He was unbanned, reinvited, and immediately rejoined the server. He is extremely grateful for the opportunity of course, although I don’t think User5 is even aware of Dickle’s existence. This was an absolutely strange way to get him back, but not unwelcome by any means8.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 drew, the rest of the time: THEY'RE NOT BRINGING THEIR BEST
2 drew, crouched in front of his floor keyboard while eliminating breads: BEHOLD, I KNOW FANCY WORDS WITH MY DUMB BIOLOGIST BRAIN - i question your grasp of the english language if you don't even know the word "halcyon"
3 auspicious timing to say it's good that nothing is happening, kinda like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n3pFFPSlW4
4 I demodded all the janitors earlier but no one noticed, which says a lot about our society
5 hello there old
6 this explanation was 100% necessary
7 https://bowman.bandcamp.com/track/wrong-or-right
8 you had a perfect fucking chance to make a prequel joke and you squandered it