Geezer (aka Dead) randomly blamed for Shalooonsh's harassmen
Dec 29, 2019 6:46:02 GMT -5
jkarr, pinkerdlu, and 2 more like this
Post by mehtastic on Dec 29, 2019 6:46:02 GMT -5
There's so much weird shit in this situation that it's all pretty hard to parse. But just to tie this particular thread to the main thread of the Shaloooonsh/Kaitrena situation, based on the information we have:
- On November 29, 2019, Draugr messaged Nile/Okthen regarding an IP sharing, asking if "any action that might need to be taken to see if there is any chance there is someone playing from the same IP address" as him. Okthen replied that it might have been his friend making an account at his place. The match information Draugr shared was this:
##### Okthen 2019-MM-DD 04:08:53 2019-MM-DD 04:45:44 212.92.123.242
##### ###### 2019-MM-DD 05:33:51 2019-MM-DD 06:01:52 212.92.123.242
- At some point before December 5, Shabago approaches Kaitrena and talks with her, and suggests that the staff discovered an IP match, that her harasser may be posing as Shalooonsh to troll the staff and game, and that this impostor shares her IP address.
- On December 5, Kaitrena posts her thread on r/MUD. Just search for "Armageddon abusive" there and it's the first one out of three threads on the top. :-| In this thread there is an imgur gallery showing Shabago's discussion with Kaitrena, which most likely happened somewhere between the area of November 29 and December 5. The screenshot just shows the timestamp as "Today" which could mean Kaitrena took the screenshot earlier or it could mean that she took it the day she was making the post. It's worth noting that she takes umbrage in her r/MUD post both with the fact that she was sexually harassed and the fact that staff appeared to engage in a cover-up. In her words, " I reported sexual harassment from a staff member (or someone who appeared to be a staff member) on Discord, and the response was slow at first, but turned into seemingly paranoid, since it involved staff suspecting me of multiplaying and it felt like the responder, Shabago, was trying to gaslight me into thinking that a rogue player had harassed me and not a staff member." Importantly, Kaitrena shows that Shabago messaged her stating that once things are cleared up, the account that they believe is responsible for harassing her will be banned.
- On December 6, Draugr posts a staff announcement on the GDB " note on Player/Staff Complaints and Consent in General" where he says "there can, unfortunately, be incidents where complaints are not made in good faith. Where allegation are made that, via the tools available to us, are proven to be blatantly untrue or worse yet constructed maliciously; either against players or staff (past or present)", possibly suggesting Kaitrena is lying about everything, including her conversation with Shabago. Shabago replies to add "in the interest of further transparency" that:
"A) Discord logs were checked, RL time comparisons were made and pattern of text behaviour were compared. There are no logs of this discussion, times do not link up, and neither does the text/wording used." In other words, there's no record of Shalooonsh's account having this conversation and the Shalooonsh that spoke to Kaitrena doesn't speak like the actual Shalooonsh.
"B) The evidence put forward by the player in question was 1) easily spoofed and 2) The portions other than the screenshots were proven to be false." In other words, the staff believe Kaitrena was either lying and was posing as Shalooonsh, or fooled by an impostor. Kaitrena additionally put out evidence that she spoke with Shabago, but it is possibly dismissed here as spoofed as well.
"C) As seen on the review and screenshots provided, staff were able to find direct links to another account that has been with us for years, with various matches to this 'new' account in various ways. This account in question has been well known to hold a personal grudge against Shalooonsh for some time now." In other words, this references the IP match with Okthen. At this point, it becomes likely that staff's main theory is that Kaitrena is Okthen's alt, stirring up shit against Shalooonsh over an unexplained grudge Okthen previously held against him.
- On December 9, four days after Kaitrena announces that she's been told the impostor posing as Shalooonsh to harass her has been banned, Draugr messages Okthen with a "thank you for the clarification" message and resolves the IP Sharing Notification request they presumably opened on Okthen's behalf.
- On December 26, 11:29 PM, Okthen confronts staff about the fact that he was accused by staff, to a third party, about posing as Shalooonsh to sexually harass that third party. Essentially he was being used as a scapegoat. It's important to note here that he didn't insult staff at this point, but simply expressed his disappointment and that he wants to resolve the issue quietly instead of "blow the shit up" on the shadowboard. Nessalin replies with "I guess since you read it on the internet it must be true? That something posted anonymously on the internet is a more trusted source than the staff you claim you'd always held in high regards?" It's important to note here that this doesn't refute anything. Indeed, as punished ppurg suggested, Nessalin seems to suggest here that the conversation between Kaitrena and Shabago was fake. So this seems to be another hint at the belief that someone cooked everything up, from the Shalooonsh conversation to the Shabago conversation, and made it seem like they were harassing Kaitrena and covering up the harassment. But of course, at least half of this can't be true: the Shabago conversation is very unlikely to have been faked, because Shabago posts the IP match evidence to Kaitrena in the same format Draugr showed it to Okthen. Shabago presented the match information like so:
Gaahl Okthen 2019-08-04 04:08:53 2019-08-04 04:45:44 212.92.123.242
Ryn Kaitrena 2019-11-22 05:33:51 2019-11-22 06:01:52 212.92.123.242
Draugr censored the exact login dates, and censored both Okthen's character name and Kaitrena's character/account name, but forgot to censor the time of day. The match is very likely to be exactly the same, so whoever messaged Kaitrena as Shabago had to have access to the login tracker tool. Or in other words, he had to be a staff member. This is the best evidence we have that the Shabago conversation with Kaitrena is real, despite apparent suggestions otherwise by people like Nessalin.
Even if we take Nessalin's message more broadly and assume he's talking about the accusation Kaitrena levied against Shalooonsh (i.e., Nessalin's asking why Okthen believes Kaitrena's accusation), that's entirely irrelevant to this particular case. Okthen's taking umbrage with the fact that he was scapegoated. He found Shalooonsh/fake Shalooonsh's behavior disturbing but he doesn't really make an accusation against Shalooonsh here; he's talking about how Shabago treated his name.
- On December 27, 10:10 AM, Okthen replied to staff to state he was unsatisfied with Nessalin's response and insulted him/the staff body repeatedly. Shabago gives Okthen the abusive boyfriend treatment, stating "The person you just decided it was appropriate to call a 'pedo' was the one attempting to give you yet another chance rather than just banning you at the time".
- On December 27, 6:18 PM, Okthen sends one last message stating his only "vendetta" with the staff was that he was used as a scapegoat, that he feels like the staff plotted against him for some unknown reason, and that he was trying to avoid an escalation in the first place by bringing the issue up with staff. In other words, he only got angry at first because the staff scapegoated him, and got more angry when Nessalin wouldn't even give him the time of day, and tried to gaslight him instead by trying to make Okthen feel crazy for believing the entire Kaitrena post and gallery.
A lot of people are going to think "well Okthen shouldn't have called Nessalin a pedo and a retard if he didn't want to get permanently banned". And that's technically true: he most likely wouldn't have gotten permanently banned if he didn't do that. But the issue at hand here, as far as I can tell, is:
- Staff told a victim of sexual harassment that her harasser would be banned from the game after using the game's community as a medium for harassing her. They didn't do that, though: they targeted someone whose IP matched with hers. Whether it was Shalooonsh or a fake Shalooonsh is irrelevant; staff did not get the right person, they got someone who happened to use the same VPN address as Kaitrena.
- The person whose IP matched with Kaitrena's finds out that he was scapegoated by the staff and brings this up.
- The staff tell him that he shouldn't believe everything he reads on the internet (or to put it in context, he shouldn't believe that he was scapegoated).
- He gets angry - justifiably so, considering Shabago's message to Kaitrena proves he's a real staff member.
- He gets permanently banned, with staff using the anger as a justification, although they essentially provoked him into anger by using him as a tool to reassure a potential new player that she would be safe to continue playing Arm.
So yeah. That's about it. Shabago, Draugr, and Nessalin are apparently in the habit of starting and participating in plots against members of their own playerbase to try to save the game's image in the eyes of a newbie, and to give her a false sense of security. Shalooonsh may or may not be a sexual harasser, but staff sure rallied in his defense. They scapegoated and provoked someone into a ban and called the case closed.
Like jkarr , I'm also confused as to why any self-respecting person plays this game anymore, and I'm personally tired of talking about the game and providing criticism on the game as if it can be saved. As long as sociopaths like Shaloonsh, Shabago, and Nessalin are at the helm, the game is going to rot. It doesn't need a shadowboard to "destroy" the game when the people running it are doing well enough at that.
- On November 29, 2019, Draugr messaged Nile/Okthen regarding an IP sharing, asking if "any action that might need to be taken to see if there is any chance there is someone playing from the same IP address" as him. Okthen replied that it might have been his friend making an account at his place. The match information Draugr shared was this:
##### Okthen 2019-MM-DD 04:08:53 2019-MM-DD 04:45:44 212.92.123.242
##### ###### 2019-MM-DD 05:33:51 2019-MM-DD 06:01:52 212.92.123.242
- At some point before December 5, Shabago approaches Kaitrena and talks with her, and suggests that the staff discovered an IP match, that her harasser may be posing as Shalooonsh to troll the staff and game, and that this impostor shares her IP address.
- On December 5, Kaitrena posts her thread on r/MUD. Just search for "Armageddon abusive" there and it's the first one out of three threads on the top. :-| In this thread there is an imgur gallery showing Shabago's discussion with Kaitrena, which most likely happened somewhere between the area of November 29 and December 5. The screenshot just shows the timestamp as "Today" which could mean Kaitrena took the screenshot earlier or it could mean that she took it the day she was making the post. It's worth noting that she takes umbrage in her r/MUD post both with the fact that she was sexually harassed and the fact that staff appeared to engage in a cover-up. In her words, " I reported sexual harassment from a staff member (or someone who appeared to be a staff member) on Discord, and the response was slow at first, but turned into seemingly paranoid, since it involved staff suspecting me of multiplaying and it felt like the responder, Shabago, was trying to gaslight me into thinking that a rogue player had harassed me and not a staff member." Importantly, Kaitrena shows that Shabago messaged her stating that once things are cleared up, the account that they believe is responsible for harassing her will be banned.
- On December 6, Draugr posts a staff announcement on the GDB " note on Player/Staff Complaints and Consent in General" where he says "there can, unfortunately, be incidents where complaints are not made in good faith. Where allegation are made that, via the tools available to us, are proven to be blatantly untrue or worse yet constructed maliciously; either against players or staff (past or present)", possibly suggesting Kaitrena is lying about everything, including her conversation with Shabago. Shabago replies to add "in the interest of further transparency" that:
"A) Discord logs were checked, RL time comparisons were made and pattern of text behaviour were compared. There are no logs of this discussion, times do not link up, and neither does the text/wording used." In other words, there's no record of Shalooonsh's account having this conversation and the Shalooonsh that spoke to Kaitrena doesn't speak like the actual Shalooonsh.
"B) The evidence put forward by the player in question was 1) easily spoofed and 2) The portions other than the screenshots were proven to be false." In other words, the staff believe Kaitrena was either lying and was posing as Shalooonsh, or fooled by an impostor. Kaitrena additionally put out evidence that she spoke with Shabago, but it is possibly dismissed here as spoofed as well.
"C) As seen on the review and screenshots provided, staff were able to find direct links to another account that has been with us for years, with various matches to this 'new' account in various ways. This account in question has been well known to hold a personal grudge against Shalooonsh for some time now." In other words, this references the IP match with Okthen. At this point, it becomes likely that staff's main theory is that Kaitrena is Okthen's alt, stirring up shit against Shalooonsh over an unexplained grudge Okthen previously held against him.
- On December 9, four days after Kaitrena announces that she's been told the impostor posing as Shalooonsh to harass her has been banned, Draugr messages Okthen with a "thank you for the clarification" message and resolves the IP Sharing Notification request they presumably opened on Okthen's behalf.
- On December 26, 11:29 PM, Okthen confronts staff about the fact that he was accused by staff, to a third party, about posing as Shalooonsh to sexually harass that third party. Essentially he was being used as a scapegoat. It's important to note here that he didn't insult staff at this point, but simply expressed his disappointment and that he wants to resolve the issue quietly instead of "blow the shit up" on the shadowboard. Nessalin replies with "I guess since you read it on the internet it must be true? That something posted anonymously on the internet is a more trusted source than the staff you claim you'd always held in high regards?" It's important to note here that this doesn't refute anything. Indeed, as punished ppurg suggested, Nessalin seems to suggest here that the conversation between Kaitrena and Shabago was fake. So this seems to be another hint at the belief that someone cooked everything up, from the Shalooonsh conversation to the Shabago conversation, and made it seem like they were harassing Kaitrena and covering up the harassment. But of course, at least half of this can't be true: the Shabago conversation is very unlikely to have been faked, because Shabago posts the IP match evidence to Kaitrena in the same format Draugr showed it to Okthen. Shabago presented the match information like so:
Gaahl Okthen 2019-08-04 04:08:53 2019-08-04 04:45:44 212.92.123.242
Ryn Kaitrena 2019-11-22 05:33:51 2019-11-22 06:01:52 212.92.123.242
Draugr censored the exact login dates, and censored both Okthen's character name and Kaitrena's character/account name, but forgot to censor the time of day. The match is very likely to be exactly the same, so whoever messaged Kaitrena as Shabago had to have access to the login tracker tool. Or in other words, he had to be a staff member. This is the best evidence we have that the Shabago conversation with Kaitrena is real, despite apparent suggestions otherwise by people like Nessalin.
Even if we take Nessalin's message more broadly and assume he's talking about the accusation Kaitrena levied against Shalooonsh (i.e., Nessalin's asking why Okthen believes Kaitrena's accusation), that's entirely irrelevant to this particular case. Okthen's taking umbrage with the fact that he was scapegoated. He found Shalooonsh/fake Shalooonsh's behavior disturbing but he doesn't really make an accusation against Shalooonsh here; he's talking about how Shabago treated his name.
- On December 27, 10:10 AM, Okthen replied to staff to state he was unsatisfied with Nessalin's response and insulted him/the staff body repeatedly. Shabago gives Okthen the abusive boyfriend treatment, stating "The person you just decided it was appropriate to call a 'pedo' was the one attempting to give you yet another chance rather than just banning you at the time".
- On December 27, 6:18 PM, Okthen sends one last message stating his only "vendetta" with the staff was that he was used as a scapegoat, that he feels like the staff plotted against him for some unknown reason, and that he was trying to avoid an escalation in the first place by bringing the issue up with staff. In other words, he only got angry at first because the staff scapegoated him, and got more angry when Nessalin wouldn't even give him the time of day, and tried to gaslight him instead by trying to make Okthen feel crazy for believing the entire Kaitrena post and gallery.
A lot of people are going to think "well Okthen shouldn't have called Nessalin a pedo and a retard if he didn't want to get permanently banned". And that's technically true: he most likely wouldn't have gotten permanently banned if he didn't do that. But the issue at hand here, as far as I can tell, is:
- Staff told a victim of sexual harassment that her harasser would be banned from the game after using the game's community as a medium for harassing her. They didn't do that, though: they targeted someone whose IP matched with hers. Whether it was Shalooonsh or a fake Shalooonsh is irrelevant; staff did not get the right person, they got someone who happened to use the same VPN address as Kaitrena.
- The person whose IP matched with Kaitrena's finds out that he was scapegoated by the staff and brings this up.
- The staff tell him that he shouldn't believe everything he reads on the internet (or to put it in context, he shouldn't believe that he was scapegoated).
- He gets angry - justifiably so, considering Shabago's message to Kaitrena proves he's a real staff member.
- He gets permanently banned, with staff using the anger as a justification, although they essentially provoked him into anger by using him as a tool to reassure a potential new player that she would be safe to continue playing Arm.
So yeah. That's about it. Shabago, Draugr, and Nessalin are apparently in the habit of starting and participating in plots against members of their own playerbase to try to save the game's image in the eyes of a newbie, and to give her a false sense of security. Shalooonsh may or may not be a sexual harasser, but staff sure rallied in his defense. They scapegoated and provoked someone into a ban and called the case closed.
Like jkarr , I'm also confused as to why any self-respecting person plays this game anymore, and I'm personally tired of talking about the game and providing criticism on the game as if it can be saved. As long as sociopaths like Shaloonsh, Shabago, and Nessalin are at the helm, the game is going to rot. It doesn't need a shadowboard to "destroy" the game when the people running it are doing well enough at that.
