Thank You - Bebop
Mar 3, 2023 12:03:14 GMT -5
delerak, Prime Minister Sinister, and 5 more like this
Post by bebop on Mar 3, 2023 12:03:14 GMT -5
Hi everyone, the other post with my original document has blown up and gotten a bit long. So I wanted to make a separate post to reflect on what’s happened since.
First off, I just want to say thank you to everyone so much for your support, back up, telling your own stories, messaging me, and advocating for me since I cannot advocate for myself on the GDB. It really means a lot and it has helped me get through this entire process more than you know. This ongoing issue was something I held onto for a long time because I was scared. Scared of real life retaliation, scared to lose access to the game and community I loved and scared of the victim blaming or ridicule I may open myself up to.
I just want to say that everyone’s response to me (with a few exceptions, particularly from Armageddon staff) have been so kind. I really appreciate you so much. Seeing that Delerak was putting a complaint in for my character who wasn’t asked for consent during a torture scene years ago was pretty crazy (and appreciated). I’ve come to learn a lot from opening up the dialogue and what I’ve seen and found out has been darker than what I originally realized.
I’m not going to lie, I thought of these spooky Shadow boards as a scary place. While there are people here who’s methods of communication I don’t agree with, the majority of the people here have been supportive, thoughtful, fair, kind and done so much to cheer me up. Thank you.
I just wanted to say that as screenshots continue to be posted and more stories come to light, I may be quieter as I’m processing all of this. Initially, I had a lot of faith in the remaining producers of the game, that they would do right by me. Instead, I’ve been flippantly banned. People aren’t even allowed to say my name on the GDB. And no current staff member has reached out to me to apologize, humanize me or make sure I’m okay after seventeen years as a trusted member of their community.
At this point, I feel like I’m just witnessing an abusive relationship towards the players that remain. Staff have not taken any true accountability for cheating them or harboring someone who was abusing them. They have banned and moderated more people than they’re admitting to from both Discord chat and the GDB. Instead of banning my husband's account they changed his password, recovery email and info so he can no longer access the account he’s had for ten years. Their behavior is incredibly slimy, even as people call for them to stop over-moderating and do the right thing.
As are many of us, right now I’m feeling a lot of emotions while I process all of this. As I said above, I’ve been watching what’s gone on following all of this and I feel like I’m witnessing an abusive relationship. Players are being told they can have a discussion as long as staff can modulate the tone, key points, and omit names entirely. That isn’t an open discussion. That’s more exertion of control. They’re not being told about the people actually being banned or moderated across their communication channels. Pleas for bans to be lifted go up and more bans come down. In a time of rampant screenshots, I’m not sure why they think this is an effective method of control. It just serves to make them appear more duplicitous.
Where I’m sitting with this right now, is that I feel everyone that cares about what happened are in different phases of acceptance. The conclusion I’ve come to is that abusive relationships can’t be fixed, they are inherently abusive by nature. That means that they have to end. You cannot negotiate an abuser into healthy behavior. Believe me, I know. Coming to terms with this is hard. People don’t want to let go of things they love, and humans don’t like endings, they make us sad.
I think the only thing that could save Armageddon at this point would be a changing of the guard. No staff, but a group of trusted facilitators and coders. Unfortunately, there is no infrastructure to allow this. Staff have, historically, always picked the staff, meaning that culturally all it took was one bad apple to spoil the bunch and continue to pick apples that would be easy to turn. There’s nothing in place to allow for fair voting or for an effective changing of the guard at present, so I don’t hold out for that reality.
That leaves us with a hope and a prayer that the current staff that either facilitate or turn a blind eye to staff cheating abruptly change and become capable of policing themselves. But, in lieu of all of the actions I’ve witnessed during this debacle, I can’t say that I trust them anymore to do the right thing. They’ve had every chance. Instead, they seem to be ready to burn the game down around them, instead of taking a firm stance against what’s gone on. This entire situation had every opportunity to be a learning situation and cultural shift, and instead it's just been a gateway towards more control.
To me, gaming should be a positive experience. It’s going to your friend's house with good food and snacks, gathering around a table and laughing or gasping about the story that unfolds. It’s being on a headset with your buddies screaming and cracking up about whatever’s going on. It’s cuddling up to your partner and mining some stone together and building little houses. It’s sitting on your own with a warm cup of tea and your pet between your feet while you explore strange new worlds. It’s stories that make you cry and smile and look back as well as any good book.
Armageddon was that for me once, it’s not anymore. That's sad. This was our community.
I never meant for all of this to blow up. I practically pleaded with staff to take it seriously before posting this publicly. I thought a few people would see it, and because I’d been blown off by the staff so much, I assumed I’d get a similar response from the players. I was dead wrong. And I appreciate so many of you having my back. Then I held out hope that staff would react by doing the right thing, and they didn’t.
I would highly encourage any people left as active players to do at least one of a few things:
---Take care of yourself, don’t allow yourself to be abused. You are not responsible for regulating others emotions or modulating your emotions as long as they are sincere and not abusive in nature.
---Advocate for better or completely different staff.
---Accept that Armageddon is not going to outlive us, and that you don’t have to catch a cheater for a cheater to still be a cheater. The staff don’t have to end the game for you to end the game for you. Take care of yourself. Process how you need to. Advocate for yourself and don’t subject yourself to something that doesn’t make you happy.
---Don’t let staff continue to “other” people easily by taking away their names, privileges and demeaning them. This is an abusive cult-like tactic. I never paid attention to the “shadow” boards because the staff had me so convinced everyone here was toxic and crazy. You have more in common with your fellow players than you do with staff.
There is so much left I could say. More dots I could connect. More stories I could tell about both my real life and in game experiences. I will just reiterate one last time that it isn’t a coincidence that a half a dozen to a dozen players have experience that all mirror each other in many ways. I just wanted to say thank you all for the support and years of gaming and fun. For me, Armageddon is over. Even if I was unbanned, I do not ever see a reality in which I would be comfortable being under current staff’s thumb in a community where they will not let people speak freely therefore forcing them to be levels of complicit in their own abuse.
Please take care of yourselves. My DMs on Discord are open. My minecraft server is open. And I’m happy to play in more wholesome environments with any of you that would like to. My husband and I are always happy to make new friends and gaming buddies. I’ll still be around, just maybe a little quiet as I try to detox from this entire mess.
Thank you again. Shade and profits!
Bebop
First off, I just want to say thank you to everyone so much for your support, back up, telling your own stories, messaging me, and advocating for me since I cannot advocate for myself on the GDB. It really means a lot and it has helped me get through this entire process more than you know. This ongoing issue was something I held onto for a long time because I was scared. Scared of real life retaliation, scared to lose access to the game and community I loved and scared of the victim blaming or ridicule I may open myself up to.
I just want to say that everyone’s response to me (with a few exceptions, particularly from Armageddon staff) have been so kind. I really appreciate you so much. Seeing that Delerak was putting a complaint in for my character who wasn’t asked for consent during a torture scene years ago was pretty crazy (and appreciated). I’ve come to learn a lot from opening up the dialogue and what I’ve seen and found out has been darker than what I originally realized.
I’m not going to lie, I thought of these spooky Shadow boards as a scary place. While there are people here who’s methods of communication I don’t agree with, the majority of the people here have been supportive, thoughtful, fair, kind and done so much to cheer me up. Thank you.
I just wanted to say that as screenshots continue to be posted and more stories come to light, I may be quieter as I’m processing all of this. Initially, I had a lot of faith in the remaining producers of the game, that they would do right by me. Instead, I’ve been flippantly banned. People aren’t even allowed to say my name on the GDB. And no current staff member has reached out to me to apologize, humanize me or make sure I’m okay after seventeen years as a trusted member of their community.
At this point, I feel like I’m just witnessing an abusive relationship towards the players that remain. Staff have not taken any true accountability for cheating them or harboring someone who was abusing them. They have banned and moderated more people than they’re admitting to from both Discord chat and the GDB. Instead of banning my husband's account they changed his password, recovery email and info so he can no longer access the account he’s had for ten years. Their behavior is incredibly slimy, even as people call for them to stop over-moderating and do the right thing.
As are many of us, right now I’m feeling a lot of emotions while I process all of this. As I said above, I’ve been watching what’s gone on following all of this and I feel like I’m witnessing an abusive relationship. Players are being told they can have a discussion as long as staff can modulate the tone, key points, and omit names entirely. That isn’t an open discussion. That’s more exertion of control. They’re not being told about the people actually being banned or moderated across their communication channels. Pleas for bans to be lifted go up and more bans come down. In a time of rampant screenshots, I’m not sure why they think this is an effective method of control. It just serves to make them appear more duplicitous.
Where I’m sitting with this right now, is that I feel everyone that cares about what happened are in different phases of acceptance. The conclusion I’ve come to is that abusive relationships can’t be fixed, they are inherently abusive by nature. That means that they have to end. You cannot negotiate an abuser into healthy behavior. Believe me, I know. Coming to terms with this is hard. People don’t want to let go of things they love, and humans don’t like endings, they make us sad.
I think the only thing that could save Armageddon at this point would be a changing of the guard. No staff, but a group of trusted facilitators and coders. Unfortunately, there is no infrastructure to allow this. Staff have, historically, always picked the staff, meaning that culturally all it took was one bad apple to spoil the bunch and continue to pick apples that would be easy to turn. There’s nothing in place to allow for fair voting or for an effective changing of the guard at present, so I don’t hold out for that reality.
That leaves us with a hope and a prayer that the current staff that either facilitate or turn a blind eye to staff cheating abruptly change and become capable of policing themselves. But, in lieu of all of the actions I’ve witnessed during this debacle, I can’t say that I trust them anymore to do the right thing. They’ve had every chance. Instead, they seem to be ready to burn the game down around them, instead of taking a firm stance against what’s gone on. This entire situation had every opportunity to be a learning situation and cultural shift, and instead it's just been a gateway towards more control.
To me, gaming should be a positive experience. It’s going to your friend's house with good food and snacks, gathering around a table and laughing or gasping about the story that unfolds. It’s being on a headset with your buddies screaming and cracking up about whatever’s going on. It’s cuddling up to your partner and mining some stone together and building little houses. It’s sitting on your own with a warm cup of tea and your pet between your feet while you explore strange new worlds. It’s stories that make you cry and smile and look back as well as any good book.
Armageddon was that for me once, it’s not anymore. That's sad. This was our community.
I never meant for all of this to blow up. I practically pleaded with staff to take it seriously before posting this publicly. I thought a few people would see it, and because I’d been blown off by the staff so much, I assumed I’d get a similar response from the players. I was dead wrong. And I appreciate so many of you having my back. Then I held out hope that staff would react by doing the right thing, and they didn’t.
I would highly encourage any people left as active players to do at least one of a few things:
---Take care of yourself, don’t allow yourself to be abused. You are not responsible for regulating others emotions or modulating your emotions as long as they are sincere and not abusive in nature.
---Advocate for better or completely different staff.
---Accept that Armageddon is not going to outlive us, and that you don’t have to catch a cheater for a cheater to still be a cheater. The staff don’t have to end the game for you to end the game for you. Take care of yourself. Process how you need to. Advocate for yourself and don’t subject yourself to something that doesn’t make you happy.
---Don’t let staff continue to “other” people easily by taking away their names, privileges and demeaning them. This is an abusive cult-like tactic. I never paid attention to the “shadow” boards because the staff had me so convinced everyone here was toxic and crazy. You have more in common with your fellow players than you do with staff.
There is so much left I could say. More dots I could connect. More stories I could tell about both my real life and in game experiences. I will just reiterate one last time that it isn’t a coincidence that a half a dozen to a dozen players have experience that all mirror each other in many ways. I just wanted to say thank you all for the support and years of gaming and fun. For me, Armageddon is over. Even if I was unbanned, I do not ever see a reality in which I would be comfortable being under current staff’s thumb in a community where they will not let people speak freely therefore forcing them to be levels of complicit in their own abuse.
Please take care of yourselves. My DMs on Discord are open. My minecraft server is open. And I’m happy to play in more wholesome environments with any of you that would like to. My husband and I are always happy to make new friends and gaming buddies. I’ll still be around, just maybe a little quiet as I try to detox from this entire mess.
Thank you again. Shade and profits!
Bebop