Well, since Razor is banned, he asked me to post this statement from him to explain himself. Well, here it goes:
Why I deliberately got myself banned on Mortal Kombat Online
Let me start by saying that I'm posting this on Twitter because...well, frankly, I'm not currently planning to come back to the board when my temporary ban is over (though I definitely intend to stay on the podcast). At first, I didn't want to talk publicly about what happened and make the internet drama any worse, but given the comments about the offensive things I said, and especially the concerns about me continuing to be on the NetherKast, I think everyone deserves an honest explanation for what happened and why...at least, from my side of the story.
I also don't want what I have to say to reflect on the podcast or my fellow hosts in any way. Honesty is important to me, so I'm going to be candid about my feelings and I apologize in advance to anyone who gets into trouble for being associated with me or sharing this on my behalf. I also apologize that this issue has derailed the podcast's thread as much as it has. I assured BC I'd leave them out of all this controversy and be as diplomatic as possible, so...and this point is important:
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I'd like to politely ask everyone, after this has been shared, to NOT discuss this issue in the the podcast thread any further, thank you.
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In the meantime, remember: NetherKast Episode 7 is up on our Youtube channel, friends! Please be sure to check it out and comment (and to subscribe to our channel, not just the MKO one, since ours will keep you more up to date on future episodes when they release).
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So firstly, regarding the racist/xenophobic things I said in the thread where I was banned: let me make it perfectly clear that I DO NOT believe any of those sorts of things and I apologize to anyone whose opinion of me was lowered because I used those words. You have to understand that I only said them because my intention in the thread was to deliberately say the most offensive and insulting things I could think of at the time. I took it too far ON PURPOSE.
Why would I do something like that?
To show how bad moderation has gotten on MKO. To bring attention to the issue in as big a way as I could, a way that people could no longer ignore.
I sincerely believe this forum is dying. Averaging less than 20 posters online at any given time, during the pre-release hype period for a new game? Frankly, that's a very bad sign. It's pathetic compared to how busy the site was when MK9 was coming out.
I have watched major fansites and forums die before in other fandoms, places I thought were untouchable because at one point in time, they were THE place to be in that community. But they always fall sooner or later. A bigger, fancier looking, better run site will eventually steal your spot atop the mountain and everybody will migrate there because they want to be where the people are. So I know what it looks like. In our case, it's likely to be a very slow death, the site will surely linger and limp on for many years, despite the board gradually becoming a ghost town. Want to see what our future looks like? Pay a visit to TotalMK. (I'm not saying his site was ever the biggest or best, I'm just saying that's what a site looks like when it dies but its dessicated corpse lingers on like a zombie because it refused to grow or change or get deleted.)
There's more than one reason WHY MKO is dying, most of them are things Mick unfortunately can't do anything about because he's not a coder, he's a custodian. His title says "Webmaster" but all he actually does is admin the forum and post front page news. Metaphorically speaking, he's Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, sitting on the tiny chair NEXT to the throne pretending to be a king while the big chair is empty and the country falls to the Orcs. It's not his fault MKO hasn't changed its layout since Deception came out and the board is permanently stuck with outdated HTML in 800x600 resolution. So I don't blame him for that, seems he's as helpless as we are there...but it is just one more thing that's chasing potential posters away, and that's a tragedy.
We could also talk about the fact that in the WB era, sites like ours no longer have exclusive content, the real news only goes to places like IGN, GameInformer, and Youtube, so there's nothing that makes MKO special or gives us a unique voice compared to other fansites. Or we could talk about people losing interest in the franchise because of the reboot/retcons hurting their interest in the story and characters, or because MKX doesn't have the Trilogy roster and those are the only characters the mainstream cares about, or it could be because MKX news has trickled out so slowly that we're all bored and have nothing to talk about...but if these were bigger issues, they'd be affecting EVERY MK site. It seems to me like TYM and TRMK are still quite thriving and MKO alone is the one whose userbase has been slowly but steadily hemorrhaging away over the past couple years.
So here's the reason that concerns me the most, because it's one Mick CAN do something about: the fact that the board has turned nasty. Verbal abuse has become commonplace and I think it's a safe assumption that it's scaring people away, they don't want to post in a hostile environment.
I have TRIED to campaign for the past FOUR years, since before it really became a problem, since before Mick was even the admin, when Crow was in charge and we still had a reasonably sized moderation staff, that flame wars and trolls were not being dealt with anywhere NEAR quickly and efficiently enough. Since that time, all the staff has LEFT the site and no one's been picked to replace them. I saw Predator post a week or two ago, he even did his job and gave Red Sumac some skull points, admirably enough...but that was an extremely rare sight. When's the last time you saw Ninja Mime or Tony the Tiger around, folks? They're all gone. We effectively have NO moderators. It's just Mick. It should be no wonder then that things have turned into the wild west.
When I say "I've tried to campaign", what do I mean exactly?
Well, this is far from the first time I've stated publicly that I think the rules are too lax and people clearly take advantage of the leeway to get away with being abusive to others freely. This is far from the first time I've stated publiclty that Mick being the ONLY moderator on the ENTIRE site is a big problem. I've just never made a big show of taking a stand before like I am now. I've also privately messaged Mick a couple times to bring to his attention times when another user was insulting and flaming people in clear violation of the few, vague rules we do have. In those PMs, I've voiced my concerns a bit that he allows people to get away with far too much.
You guys might remember me more than once telling the story before about how, under Crow, it took like 6 months of me going "Look what this guy is saying to people, why aren't you doing anything about it?" to get an active troll named "ColdWindBlows" banned back in 2010 or so. And I was a moderator-in-training back then. If a member of the staff isn't being listened to, what chance does anyone else have?
You might recall how long it took Mick to ban HankyPanky last year, despite almost EVERYONE on this board complaining about him constantly.
You might have noticed my public frustration with the fact that Red Sumac STILL constantly gets away unpunished with openly insulting people left and right. I'm banned after ONE thread, but in THREE years of trolling nothing has ever happened to him? Is he somebody's cousin? Is money secretly changing hands behind the scenes? Is he having sex with a staff member? What the fuck is protecting this guy?!
When Mick responds to my concerns, he's always put on a professional tone but been a bit dismissive and patronizing. He's never actually taken action on any concern I've had in a visible way so I always get the impression that he's just brushing me off and ignoring my efforts to help or be a voice for positive change.
So the flaming and trolling has only gotten worse because either no one notices it, there's no one there to do anything about it, or the one person who IS there and has that power doesn't think what was said is severe enough to punish. And that's how escalation happens.
In my opinion, MKO has gradually become a toxic environment where intelligent debate cannot thrive, where it's no longer safe or fun to post, because any person, at any time, can call you names and get away with it and it ruins entire threads. I don't want to be a member of a place where it's not against the rules to say "shut up" or call someone an "idiot" and let's be honest, people there say a LOT worse than that to each other and no one seems to care.
People are starting to not have boundaries there anymore because they've realized they have nothing to fear, there will be no punishment if they treat someone else poorly, so they don't fear verbally abusing each other, they run their mouths however they like and the result is a BAD forum, where people DON'T want to be.
It's become a forum where *I* no longer want to be.
And I've been there TEN YEARS. I'm fairly certain I'm THE most constant/frequent poster there. If not, I'm definitely in the top three. This place has been like a home to me, that's a LOT of loyalty, passion, perhaps even addiction, that I have to fight against when I think about leaving this place. And, y'know, I've always tried to take care of this digital home of mine, to have an influence on the level of discourse, to encourage intelligent conversation and provide helpful and educational services for other posters. I enjoy deep analysis and exercises in logic and reason, that's what I come there for and what I want to see most. I like to talk essay-length about shit that seems meaningless to others, like Reiko's backstory, Tanya's personality/motivation, "Why does Liu Kang wear a headband?", stuff that most people will respond to with "those reasons don't exist, you're overthinking it, it's just a video game and the characters are shallow"...I'm one of the reasons MKO is a place where you could have those kind of conversations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to puff up my ego there, I'm definitely not the first person to encourage those sorts of threads, and hopefully when I'm gone I won't be the last...but I don't think those kinds of threads survive for as long as they used to anymore because of the way people talk to each other there now.
All of these elements have added up to me feeling that taking some kind of drastic and extreme measure was necessary. I've been sitting on that feeling for quite a while, not sure how to proceed.
...So finally, on Tuesday afternoon, I decided to test a theory.
Yet another person with no social boundaries essentially attacked me unprovoked. Who that person is wasn't really important, it could have been almost anybody and my response probably would have been the same because I'd been kind of subconsciously waiting for a moment like this. I don't much care about this Sharefrock guy, I haven't had the time to, he's a newbie. I wasn't really mad about what he said, I was just annoyed that it seems like everybody has this aggressive "I'm attacking you at the drop of a hat just because I think you looked at me funny" attitude now and can talk that way to each other and get away with it. So in the moment, I decided to use him as a test subject in an experiment.
I decided to post the worst, most insulting shit I could think of, just to see what would happen. I was curious to see HOW far a person needed to go before Mick would get off his ass and do something.
Was that childish, immature, and inappropriate of me? Oh yes, extraordinarily so.
Do I still think it was necessary? Honestly, I kinda do.
And I gotta tell ya, I do NOT like the results.
The only thing I regret about what I did (other than the fact that it hurt the podcast, which I never intended), is that I don't think anyone caught on to the lesson I was trying to teach...so perhaps I went about it in the wrong way. But I think the outburst still needed to exist as an example of how bad things can get if they don't change, and as an attention-grabber, a shock to the system to wake everybody up and get them to take a look around and see what's happening to their community. It's just that we have to TALK about the example in order to learn anything from it, and being banned kinda prevents me from doing that, at least until almost three weeks from now, and by then it might be too late to make the point, people will have stopped caring and moved on.
So let's take a detailed look at what the results of my experiment were:
1) It took Mick HOURS to notice what I'd done and ban me for it. If we had a full moderation team who were active and cared, how long do you think those posts would've lasted? I SHOULD have been getting modded within minutes of each post, the argument should have been interrupted before it lasted a whole page.
2) I was banned immediately, without warning. In the past when I've pointed out someone ELSE was breaking the rules and should be banned for it, even in extreme ways like I did (I'm vaguely recalling an incident a few years ago with a newbie using homophobic slurs right around the same time when we were so proud of a thread about how many gay/trans members we had on the board, and had Hector Sanchez tweeting about it), I was told that it's MKO policy to never ban someone on the first strike, there are ALWAYS supposed to be warnings and some form of account probation first. (I don't know how this probation works, but if you ever see someone's avatar disappeared and was replaced with the generic Raiden-in-a-circle one but they can still post, I THINK that's what happened to them.)
Normally, I'd be happy to see this "giving too many warnings and second chances" practice dropped in the name of getting rid of problem-posters faster...but that brings me to my third point...
3) I was the ONLY person in the thread who was punished in ANY fashion. (except Optimus Grime, which is extra weird because the post he got skulled for didn't even say anything that breaks the rules.)
Sharefrock was not given skullpoints for insulting me in the first place and starting the argument, he was not given skullpoints for repeatedly calling me "dumb" or a "necrophiliac", or insulting my sister the same way I insulted his mother. Icebaby was not given skull points for calling us both "idiots" and telling us to "shut the hell up".
Justice is equality. Everyone who does wrong should be punished for it accordingly, not just the one guy who did the worst.
It seems to me that justice was not distributed equally here. I was singled out, while other people who break the rules continue to be encouraged to say anything they like without fear of punishment, which continues to foster MKO turning into a toxic environment where intelligent conversation dies on the vine and flame wars that derail threads thrive.
Why was I given special treatment in this example, why was I the only one skulled or banned? I'm rather getting the impression at this point that Mick just plain doesn't like me and never has. That I was punished because I'm the guy who speaks out, that this banning was meant to send a message to ME that I should "learn my place" or something like that, rather than to send a message to everyone that you're not allowed to flame each other, which is what it SHOULD have been.
It's clear to me now that I cannot BE the voice of change, because change is impossible here. I'll always be just another user, and apparently not a popular one with the staff, so I have no power to fix what's wrong there. My cries of injustice are, in fact, seen as an unwelcome burden, my voice is percieved as the buzzing of a fly by those I'm trying to reach, I'm just annoying background radiation. Perhaps it's not my place to try. It's not my website, my ten years of patronage and contributions don't actually MEAN anything, I hold no stock in it, why should I work so hard to fix it when it's broken?
All I know is that I no longer enjoy being there and I felt it was important to show everyone else the reason why I don't enjoy it there in a dramatic fashion. Because I think it's only a matter of time before you too, dear reader, feel like this place isn't fun anymore, like all people do anymore is argue and insult each other freely, and you don't want to be in a place like that anymore either.
In closing, I want to once again apologize to anyone who thought I meant the things I said to Sharefrock in the Ferra/Torr thread. I'm sorry for offending you and wish to assure you that none of those things I said are genuine beliefs I hold, I said them BECAUSE they are offensive, I said them to create a controversy on purpose, to prove a point. Hopefully, the point I tried to make has now been made clearer for everyone.
Like I said, I don't currently intend to come back when the ban is up unless MKO goes through some major changes and the problems I see are fixed in a satisfactory way. (Though just to be clear, I have no intention of leaving the podcast and am grateful to my cohosts that they have no intention of kicking me out, since the NetherKast is not officially part of MKO, we exist for the entire Mortal Kombat fandom.) So until then, this public statement was a one-time thing and I'm going to stick to that. I know, I know, "never say never" and all that...but honestly, if you want to talk to me, I can still be reached elsewhere. I have a DeviantArt, sometimes I respond to the podcast's Youtube comments, you now know that I have a twitter account, etc.
Lastly, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all my friends, fans, and followers, to the people out there who have on occasion posted extremely flattering things like "I only come here for Razor's posts", to anyone who was appreciative when I'd share my knowledge of MK continuity and lore...anyone out there who has benefitted from or was pleased by my hard work and efforts to educate others and encourage the spread of accurate information and intelligent debate. I've always done what I do for the benefit of you guys and any little popularity and support I've recieved has always meant a lot to me. I'd like to continue doing what I do, just...in a more friendly environment.
But hey, what I think isn't really important in the grand scheme, I'm just another spoke on the wheel. It'll keep rolling without me. MKO will continue to exist in spite of itself, and if nobody agrees with what I've said and done, if you're still all enjoying your forumgoing experience and think Mick's doing a fine job, that's cool, no hard feelings. I just wanted you guys to understand why I said those things, so I hope now you do, and don't think less of me for it.
Thank you for listening.
- Razor
I want to add something from myself. I have known Razor for couple of years on this board and when I read his comments in that thread I INSTANTY knew that there is something fishy here and he is doing it on purpose. That guy is probably the walking encyclopedia of MK storyline and I enjoy his intelligent posts and truly believe MKO is losing another valuable poster.
So having said that, Razor asked me to tell you guys to not discuss the matter any further because he regrets that the matter derailed the thread and would prefer people get back to talking about the show.
), but someone has to tell him to stop with those asshole comments...
MK Khronology: 58.49% complete...
