Nepanthe meltdown post reposted so you don't have to look for it.
Alright, so this is probably going to be my only post in the thread. It's not gonna be any PR speak, nor is it going to assuage anyone's feelings, staff or members. Y'all are going to be mad, but that's the secret at this point. It’ll be a recap of things, but most of it is going to be about the toll this has taken on me. No, I don't give a shit if you think this is inappropriately rerouting the conversation; I'm burnt out and subsequently apathetic. I've been holding on to a lot of this for over a year, and I'm going to get it off my chest now before I discuss what I want to do for ResetEra moving forward. However you take it is on you. This thread will also be locked so you can't skip over it, and it will be reopened in 10 minutes, approximately 9:40 PM EST.
Let's start with Black Chamber. I don't want to relitigate too much, but yeah, that was a fuck-up, and I apologize. Even if he wasn't a MAGA asshat, his inability to consider the feelings of trans members meant he should've lost right to the OT immediately at the bare minimum. I believe part of the unstated goal of ResetEra is that members take an ethical approach to expressing video game fandom, by which I largely mean not stepping on the toes of minorities who get the short end of the stick in a medium that is largely still a conservative, white-ass cesspool of juvenility. BC didn't do that, so fuck him. And Cyberpunk, that trash-ass game.
After that, Sophia decided on her own to enter talks with Trans Era members. That was fair, and I know she was in Discords with and friends with members who were hurt by what happened. At this point, I wasn't asked to be involved, and frankly I wasn't going to be initially. I'm still exhausted from the Asian Era meeting (more on that at the end), and I didn't feel like picking up something like that at the moment. But from what I understood, the meeting was going to be about Black Chamber and Cyberpunk, how to handle contentious OTs, the issues with egregious fan hype- shit that had to do with the immediate issue that had happened to Trans Era.
Imagine my fucking surprise then when Toxi PMd me about Ketkat out of nowhere.
Again. I am not part of the Trans Era Discord. I was never included or mentioned as wanting to participate in anything Sophia was organizing at that time. Ket had fuck all to do with the Cyberpunk issue since she was banned. So why, oh why, is anyone relitigating this bullshit to me, specifically, at this moment in time?
I didn't respond to it. Instead I let staff know about it, at which point another staffer admitted they'd been strung up about Ketkat on Discord. I called it what it was- a set up- and actually told us to disengage, that the talks were not going to be productive, and that it was going to blow up some way or another. There was a lot of back and forth about it, to which again I want to apologize to Sophia about, who took this endeavor on entirely by herself in an effort to fix things. Everything that has gone down is an absolute insult to her and her efforts, and I know my reluctance was another wrench in the works.
I also want to make it clear that I didn't say this with the attempt to paint every single trans person who is an Era member, or even the overwhelming majority of trans members, as problematic. Minorities as a whole are NOT the problem. The majority of us here all want the same goals at the end of the day, which is for ResetEra to be a place where minorities can comfortably discuss gaming from their unique points of view without the bullshit they face everywhere else on the Internet. Kyuuji, for example, has been an amazing force for getting these issues pushed to the forefront of the wider forum at large. But the unstated fact here is that a lot of the issues regarding the forum culture and the nature of our moderation are inexplicably tied into toxicity and long-held grudges, and some individuals will use genuine efforts to better the site as opportunities to harass staff, a lot of them not even being part of the aggrieved groups in question.
I also want to further preface this by saying that it is likely my belief that the meeting was about the Cyberpunk incident, when instead it was about previous grievances, was nothing more than the result of miscommunication. I wasn't there with Sophia for the majority of the planning, so I don't know anything that was discussed. But again, from my perspective, I'm getting pulled into some irrelevant shit for a discussion that I never actually volunteered for. So yeah, it smelled funny to me and thus I thought the talks were a bad idea.
But they went forward anyway, even with Sophia- whose mental health had already taken a downturn due to prior stress- pulling out because the rules for engagement that were apparently established beforehand weren't respected by a few individuals in the Discord, and made her personal situation worse. From the gist of the participants, things weren't going too well. I think that, in general, people have appreciated my presence in these matters before and that I have somewhat of a knack for community engagement, so against my better judgement, against everything, and everyone- actual friends of mine- screaming at me not to do it, it is at that point when the meeting was already underway that I finally told them to give me an invite to see if I could help.
The beginning actually went pretty well! Ignoring sudden deluges of questions and the inconvenient timer, A.by, Banshee McSpook, Robin, and others were asking me questions, I would answer them to the best of my ability, and they would understand, regardless of whether or not the answers were what they wanted to hear. There were even a few laughs to be had. For a moment it was a genuine roundtable, and I was hopeful, especially since it was going to give me an opportunity to discuss things that staff had been talking about regarding long-term solutions. I will also admit that again my overall lack of participation in the planning phases meant that some of my answers and understanding of the purpose of the meeting meant I was inaccurate or ignorant to some of the things that were brought up, and a few members felt I had just been tossed in there (and I want to again appreciate the concern, but again I willingly volunteered last minute to talk.)
I was eventually faced with a Google Doc of demands/bullet points, and Ketkat jumped in around this time. As I had figured out before then, this really wasn't about the latest kerfuffle. Not fully. It was partially about Ket; indeed the first three points of the list revolved around her to various degrees. After some beating around the bush, I told her straight to her face that she wasn't coming back and that any demands folks had regarding her were totally non-negotiable.
That's when and why things blew up. We didn’t get to the rest of the list or any other questions various folks may have had. I faced a mix of angry venting, the dismissal of my identity (I'm NB), deliberately bad-faith readings of my posts, and petty snipes, particularly from Papa Santanas, who is also permed and thus I don't have the pleasure of fucking bodying them personally for engaging in an overstepping of bounds that I will talk about at length later on. Now note, the anger from various folks didn't personally bother me; I understand, especially because I know real life 2020 shit is compounding on top of the problems people have with staff and the forum, and thus I don't mind if people need to vent.
However, Ket also tried to paint me as a liar for my participation in the debacle back in November 2019 on top of this, which is fucking ironic because I am one of the few reasons she even got a third (not even a second) chance in the first place. Let it be known- without me jumping in that day, and without me having it out with staff about how things went down, Ket would've still been gone the first time. So any problem she, or anyone else who is in her circle, has with me on that front, you can miss me with that. I don’t give a fuck.
Regardless, once things settled, I was disingenuously asked by Ket if I had anything to say to everything that I had been privy to, all of the venting and rage and sarcasm, as if there is some magical response anyone can craft in the face of tens of posts of stream-of-consciousness to make it all better. And I will reiterate the same sentiment to you all.
No.
I don't.
Because while I can jump into threads and mediate, and answer questions, and engage with ideas, and take things back to staff, and field PMs, and remind my team of outstanding issues and tickets and things of that nature, and further codify new lessons in the rules and staff policies, I can't eliminate the hurt, the grudges, the feelings of betrayal, and the resulting toxicity coming from all corners of this blasted website whenever shit goes down, a lot of which is from people's personal lives or involves fights I was never privy to, and it was wrong for me to try to involve myself. I'm not a fucking Magical Negro and I'm tired of trying to play one at the expense of my mental health when, ultimately, none of this shit matters.
Because again, all of this? It's not REALLY about Cyberpunk. It's not even really about a few dumb bans and Poodle's dismissive "pound sand" remark to A.by (which shouldn't have been done and was uncalled for, no matter how he feels about it). We ALL need to be honest about that. It's about people being angry, and people not liking each other, and people unhappy with the community demographics and how those demographics inform the atmosphere, and about how personally betrayed people feel when their friends get banned, which staff can’t actually do anything about. And if it's all really about that, then individuals need to ask themselves if Era, even at its best, can give them the online community they desire. Because if nothing else, if Era cannot be a safe space, if staff- if I, Nepenthe- have failed that fucking badly, then it's not fair to any minorities to stay in a hostile environment, and for those people, I will not tell them to stay. It is selfish to beg people to put up with shit they don't have to put up with for the veneer of harmony. I don't even do that with some of my Discord friends who don't post on Era anymore, so why would I do that to others?
(Note: This is ACTUALLY what people are referring to when they discuss the "admin who told them to fuck off." Notice how fucking weasely that characterization is? I never once told anyone to fuck off.)
So afterwards I talked a little more with A.by, specifically about how her ticket was dismissed and about receiving an apology from the staffers who signed off on it. I told her that was perfectly fair because it was unprofessional, and would take it up with relevant staff to get apologies underway. That's where things ended.
Actually, no it's not, because I got pinged hours later- literally around TEN HOURS- by Hexe regarding the above, who said something to the effect of "customer service speak strikes again!" At that point, I had had it. I had fucking had it. I made a crack about Hexe not having the spine to say some shit like that to me on the day of my birthday, reiterated my stance, thanked TransEra for allowing me to talk with them, and requested politely not be pinged again. Hexe then said something to the effect of "you have to understand that we are just angry, and the fact that you're receiving angry responses is not your fault."
Then don't fucking act like it's my fault. Don't insult me. Don't get your lick in hours later and fall back on how you feel or any perceived slights you have that have nothing to do with me, as if merely being upset allows you the moral high ground to treat anyone any kind of way. I won't mince words- this is simply justifying verbal abuse, no two ways about it. And this shit happens all the time to staff, and any members who can see the verbal abuse and the justifications for what it is and who then get caught in the crossfire. At that point, Robin ended it. Some time later on, me and Alice were forcibly kicked.
And you know how I'm fucking right about all of this? You know how I have ground to say this despite being a staffer who should "shut up and listen" and not "tone police?" You know how some of this behavior is NOT okay? I woke up that next morning to a whole-ass three apologies from participants, two of whom were Robin and A.by! A.by apologized for how angry she got (which, again, I say to her that anger is okay. Venting is okay, healthy even! Everything she said to me personally was fair game and I will stick by that) and Robin was dismayed about how the talks were unproductive and ultimately nasty because of those few rabblerousers.
(Robin, btw, PM'd me during the original Trans Week debacle to check up on me. She is legit a good person and is invited permanently to my cookouts.)
The other apology, I will not name unless the person wants me to for the sake of their privacy because of what happened to them after the fact (but they are also absolutely lovely and I wanna talk with them again): they said they received pushback from the Discord for even daring to suggest that treating me, Sophia, and Alice with a modicum of basic human dignity for walking up in there and trying to work things out was unthinkable, and that in reality we deserved everything coming to us.
Imagine how shitty I felt for this person, someone who wanted to help mend relations, who was actually excited about some of the stuff I was able to talk about, someone who wasn't even around for the whole Ketkat thing, being told that their concern about some members' behavior was inappropriate simply because we are staffers and thus we are the enemy. Imagine how shitty I felt hearing that, cementing my original belief that- yes- I had walked right into a trap beget by a few assholes hijacking an important moment against my own better judgement.
Alas, here we are, once again, where unaddressed anger and dumb, unforced errors on part of staff have resulted in yet another one of these blow ups. Yes, the ban on Sibylus was wrong in the way it was conducted, and no amount of staff frustration can make that one okay. So I apologize; the ticket was sent in and we’ve reduced the ban and updated the banner to be more accurate and professional. And again, I know none of this is what anyone wants to hear (but I'm not in a placating mood anyway), and yet people want to know, especially in the wake of what was done to Sibylus and A.By’s PM, is how can Trans Era trust staff? Indeed, Papa said some backhanded bullshit during the meeting like "is there anyone on staff who can properly represent their community?"
So, you want to talk about minority communities and how they're represented? Let's talk about them! Specifically Black ERA! My friends, nay- my family. Y'all ain't put them in your mouths a lot during this entire time. Because you know you can't (or you've forgotten our existence. Not the first time you've excluded us).
Black ERA exists in a space that is just as hostile to them as it is for Trans ERA. They put up with cracka-ass nonsense constantly, a lot of which is from folks who also happen to be LGBT. They have dealt with a staff that has overlooked their concerns and has been ignorant to the issues, philosophies, and culture surrounding blackness and all various black cultures. They too had a meeting, the first one on the forums proper. While staff in general were involved, me and Mist took the reins. We ran back and forth between both parties to organize how the meeting was to be conducted, took feedback, arranged solutions on the fly, all in an effort to let them speak. And speak they did.
Changes happened within reason. AAVE language bans largely stopped. Bans for anti-black racism and pro-cop sentiments were largely helmed by black staff and given the proper punishments they deserved, and in general we started treating that more seriously overall. A lot of bullshit “hostility” reports being directed to black members were batted away. And we have allowed more leeway to black members to go in on stupid, white-ass shit. Has it solved literally everything regarding the culture of Era? Is Era a haven where black members can exist freely without any worry of facing any anti-black sentiments? Well, no; just look at the last few pages of this thread. Overall, Era still is a space dominated by whiteness, which is inevitable by sheer demographic force and is something we cannot change unless we start banning white folks en masse (and everyone understands this won’t happen). There are still some bans that Black Era and the BCC Discord have problems with to this day. I actually got into a protracted slapfight about one ban that I personally enacted, and they are free to tell it themselves in here if they want to however they want to tell it.
But what cannot be said is that I did not try, that Mist and the rest of staff did not try. It cannot be said that we don’t care. It cannot be said that I was incompetent. It cannot be said that I go to bat for them just for the woke points. I cannot be said that they don’t have full trust in me as a black staffer to handle the forum to the best of my ability. And that is what is missing-- trust, and the understanding that there is only so much that individual staffers can do and change on a whim not just because of the forum structure, but because of the people who inhabit it, trust and understanding that our hearts are in the right place even if we cannot push as far as we want to go or achieve every single point on a bullet list that some members want, trust and understanding that if we can’t deliver on something, or even if we get it wrong, it’s not because we hate Black Era because they’re black. They understand that this is a working relationship regarding an imperfect hand being dealt, and that we service them with the intent to make a better space for them to the best of our abilities, inch by inch, day by day.
So I will stand here and declare with pride and confidence that I have done right by Black Era members, and that I have taken these same exact methods and attitudes with me to other communities, including Trans Era. But the fact remains that my efforts just aren't reciprocated in kind.
You want to talk about how minorities here are chased away by staff? Well, where the fuck is the thought for Black Era members when you all use anti-police and black power rhetoric in an effort to foolishly demonstrate your contempt for staff? Where the fuck is your thought for Black Era when you start talking about MLK? Where the fuck is your thought for Black Era when you are NOWHERE to be found defending them when political armchair analysts shit on black people for being low-information voters, homophobes, or saboteurs of elections because they don’t want to vote for candidates that are pro-police? Where the fuck is your thought for Black Era when you co-opt our pain, our issues, our realities, solely for scoring points in some nonsnse internet drama? You want to know one of the reasons why a lot of Black Era doesn’t really engage with you all at this point in time with the exception of a few threads and their community thread? Look in a fucking mirror. Papa did that shit in the meeting too, and again I’m mad they’re permed because I can’t say this to their face. I’m paraphrasing, but this is what she said:
“Imagine being black or Asian and coming to the conclusion that staff just outright hate you for being a minority.”
This right here? Look at it. This is pure, unadulterated crackery. The whitest whitery that ever did white. This is Super Saiyan Blue Karen. It is some of the most uncolored bullshit I could have encountered in a meeting that had absolutely nothing to do with people of color in the first place!
So shame on those of you responsible for the shit you have been pulling, and the shit you pulled the last time during the Asian Era blow-up (Yeah, don’t think I forgot that purple Punisher logo), and every other time we’ve come to this point. I’m sure you’ve been seeing perms for the equation of anything that goes on on ERA to the reality of being black in America. Hello. That was my doing, and I don’t regret it. I don’t care what mistakes we have made, and I don’t even care what bigoted bullshit game companies have put out at this point. You are not George Floyd. You are not Breonna Taylor. You are not any of the myriad of black victims (many of which are trans) who have been legitimately lost to the spectre of white supremacy.
And again, this isn’t the first time this has happened- I’ve seen y’all try to gaslight about that and act like this is new. It ain’t new. What’s new is that this is the first time that I and Black Era are actually checking your asses in public. If you want this to be a forum that takes into account ACTUAL intersectionality, that is a safe space for ALL minorities, not just the groups you and your friends happen to belong to, do your due diligence to your black brothers and sisters and keep our names and our issues out your fucking mouths over forum bullshit. Or else you can get kicked off too.
This is another reason I’m fed up to the moon, and I will declare publicly that my staff team, particularly the ones of you who warned us for literally months that we would be strung up by some of these bad faith actors and trolls who always hijack these conversations, you were right. You were bang on right. And I’m sorry for not heeding the warnings. The sheer disingenuousness that runs concurrent through these conversations, and the inability for staff to check things like this because trying to do so and reroute things back to a course of productivity and understanding is picked apart with the most bad-faith readings imaginable and dismissed as tone-policing and ignoring the issues, even when it comes at the cost of stepping on other minorities in the process.
To say nothing of the fact that this behavior, as noted, runs rampant in the various community Discords too before it’s pushed back onto the forums writ large. A lot of feelings of anger, resentment, and dissatisfaction are had in places where we’re not present, or at the very least where we’re not staff. And it’s not like I don’t get it. Shit-talking and venting is gonna happen off-site. I’ve done it, you’ve done it. We’ve all done it. But it gets out of hand and makes it even harder for us to discern what is and isn’t good faith engagement when it gets self-perpetuating and unchallenged, and thus becomes part of the Discords’ culture, where even trans individuals can’t tell others to cool it a little bit without getting jumped on for "defending us." It gets perilous when you’ve got members from Era hopping on to Discords to stir up shit and then coming back here smiling in our face about the next blow-up that’s undoubtedly coming.
I’m not the only one this happens to. Every other staff member has at least several stories about some Discord or another opining that we’re legitimately out to get people, which only makes it that much harder to even engage in the chatting and discussions you supposedly want us to be involved in on site. People say they want us to be more active in threads. Who would want to do that when it’s clear a lot of folks just don’t like us as people? Like, why would I want to hang with someone who is not even intent on trying to coexist with me? I wouldn’t. Hell, you want to know why it’s easier for people to leave staff than it is for people to come aboard, even if we took out the interview process entirely? Because a lot of the people who turn us down just don’t want to deal with it. They see these threads, they see the attacks, they’re in the Discords reading what is posted, and they think “you must think I’m crazy to do this shit.”
Ultimately the fact that I have been afraid to even confront this at all because I thought I would be risking irrevocable damage to myself and the site, no matter the cost to my self-esteem and mental health, is indicative of just how much I was taken for a fool, and to everyone who does come into these threads and discussions with good faith and intentions, and to my Black Era family, I am sorry for denigrating myself like that for, again, well over a year. But it’s as I said in the Asian Era fallout, and it’s as I said with the Discord meeting, I’m done caring about platitudes and sucking up. I’m done caring about feelings, because most of y’all don’t give a fuck about mine anyway. I want ideas and results. I'm still prepared to work. So while you pick apart my post and tell me to go fuck myself, here’s what I plan to try and accomplish in the days and weeks going forward:
In the Asian Era meeting, a lot of discussion was had about the desire to actually ban people less for prejudices that could reasonably stem from ignorance rather than outright hatred, and that they wanted the chance to actually educate people on their particular issues and culture before we simply concluded they didn’t belong and tossed them out. I put in the idea of having an area of the forum, like a page, that is a huge compendium of resources related to minority issues, something that members can use as a tool of learning and a guide for engagement. It would include links to books, articles, videos, and other resources for better understanding issues that affect minorities, and it could be an on-going document that everyone contributes to. Not only do I think it’s a great idea in general to have this, but it will also hopefully cut down on disingenuous JAQing off in threads themselves, where minorities have to answer basic-ass shit that someone could’ve just read up on before they decided to engage a thread. I got a few PMs and some forum bookmarks that I want to use to start, but it’s going to need some work and research.
And to TransEra, you still are owed an explanation about what we’re going to do going forward regarding how we handle games like Cyberpunk. I don’t know if it’s been said before, but what we will do is directly oversee the OTs for such games and directly jump in to mitigate any ridiculous hype that is occurring at the cost of inclusion of minorities’ participation in such threads. So quicker and stricter bans for dismissiveness, for #oppressedgamer talk, and any of that nonsense will happen, as well as more thread consolidations. Hogwarts is coming up and it's our chance to head this situation off at the pass. Just as well, JK Rowling has been a subject of contention. Staff have been talking about whether or not to mitigate, if not outright ban Harry Potter talk for months now, which was actually a pleasant surprise to some of the Discord meeting participants. I want staff to get together as soon as possible and make a definitive ruling on how we are to deal with the franchise’s presence on this forum, and announce it to you all.
The last thing in general is regarding staff accountability, which is another thing that came up in the Discord meeting. Hecht has been spearheading these efforts already, but in short, what I want to do is solidify new rules for engagement in contentious threads on part of staff, protocol for when shit hits the fan because of their words and behavior, review protocols to undertake to establish where things went wrong, and measures of punishment for when a staffer continues to fuck up or goes past the pale, including immediate dismissals if it gets to that point in the future. I want these done ASAP and shared with you all as well, so you can know for certain that we are not above being beholden to stricter standards.
So that’s what I wanna do. Fuck all the bullshit. Fuck all the charges. At this point, it isn’t helping. What will help is me getting to work and implementing these things, so I’m going to work. You’re free to suggest things to help with that, and I’ll bring them back to staff. You’re also free to keep calling us incompetent and bigots. Again, I don’t care, but I’m not listening and internalizing that shit anymore.
At this point in Era’s lifespan, my tenure is the most uncertain it’s ever been. I’ve given all I’ve got, and my efforts, my beliefs, my intents, are not reciprocated in kind by way too many people to make it worth it. The three things above are what I want to absolutely finish before I think about walking away. I think I owe you all at least that. Don’t consider this a formal resignation though, because things can always change. If Era gets to a point where I am not obligated to take a bunch of mental anguish everytime something goes wrong, where I am not obligated to sit and allow people to talk to me like I’m any ol’ worthless nigga in the street, then sure, I’ll stay aboard. If that cannot happen, if staff are not going to be respected for the Herculean effort of trying to create the kind of large-scale online space that, as far as I know, does not and never has existed, if staff are going to continue to receive shit until they just burn out and shut down while being told they don’t deserve better just as human beings, then I’m gone. I’ve fucking had enough.
To everyone throughout my tenure who has reached out to any of staff, who has said they appreciate our efforts, who has come up to talk to us because they trusted that we genuinely want to make Era something special, and who have engaged in these threads in good faith, thank you. To those who are just here to have a go at staff, who think that the gall to volunteer our time for this place means it is open season on us, to those who think that we are your punching bags?
Pound sand.
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