Farewell

[Ryan]

I have officially been harassed out of the community. Goodbye, Giant's Lair.


I am not resigning, to be clear. I have not resigned. I have been demoted, with the following reason:

Spoiler: Demoted for Why?

Fiz says I am not portraying the values this community is committing to. What are those values?


A ton of Jew Hate.


I don't mean Israel hate, by the way. I mean actual, real Jew Hate.


Here are several examples.

Spoiler: From moderator, coriander

Spoiler: From Lead Admin Muffinman

Spoiler: From Former Moderator, Pokeben10

And see my staff app. I discuss a lot of the very old, very Jewish phrase, "Am Israel Chai," which translates (literally) to Israel Lives. Israel, is a character from the Torah that us Jews get our name from. Jew is a new word, before that, we were just called Israel. We still call ourselves Israel in our daily prayers, because we are fucking Israel. The modern State of Israel is a country, and uses a different phrase in hebrew to describe it: HaAretz, or Eretz Yisrael.

Spoiler: From recently banned users who spewed hateful shit constantly

For my entire staff tenure I have had to deal with constant bullshit blows from fellow staff members and community members. As a Jew, of course I believe Israel has a right to exist. That's been the only public take I have shared. A part of this was intentional - I will not subject myself to some kind of litmus test by simply stating that a country that has existed should continue to exist. I shouldn't have to say "Oh yeah, Israel is a country. It exists. Oh, and Israel should leave the West Bank immediately. And Israel needs to stop occupying Gaza too. Oh, and Israel also needs to get rid of their fuckass prime minister, and the insane political leaders like Ben Gvir (fuck ben gvir)." Those are beliefs I do hold, by the way. Nobody really asked, they just kinda assumed that I want innocent kids to get blown to bits or something.


Hateful Content and wishing death upon innocent people:

Spoiler: Former Moderator, ParkRangerMoon

Spoiler: Tiefling Lesbian

This user has just kind of generally posted crazy harassing shit to me for a while. Here is one example, where the user set their discord status to some insane hateful shit. It's written in completely broken fuck ass hebrew, but I believe they mean to say "There are no Israeli victims," quite a fucking horrible thing to say.

I then went into their direct messages, and asked them a few times about it. They just kinda trolled and dodged the question or whatever, so I gave up. Of course, I took no moderator action against them for their discord status since that isn't a thing we police much here in Giant's Lair, but they need to hear that this sort of thing isn't okay to say. Even if you hate Israel, and Israelis, you cannot say that the innocent children in Israel that die aren't victims. This is hate speach.

Spoiler: Some More Hateful Conduct, that some users were COI'd for.

Spoiler: Some batshit insane things Pokeben has said to me

I also want to point out some very important things I've been directly told by Admin+ to justify why I do what I do:


I don't have screenshots of it because it's in staff channels and I'm not staff anymore, but at some point I was told multiple times to not do any staff action against people for the hateful content I mentioned above. I was told to instead just say something like, "Wow, that's really fucked up that you'd think that," and other things. Just like I did with Tiefling Lesbian.


The owner of the community also directly told me,

Spoiler: you don't gotta take that Zionist shit from pokeben btw

But apparently, I am supposed to just take the bullshit all the time, as evident from demoting me.


If it's not the above bolded values, then:

What are the values this community is committing to?

[Reposted with permission from Noctorious.]

 

[Noctorious]

I'm sorry to see this demotion come to pass and the feelings that have accompanied it.This is the most disappointing part of current staff culture that is a relic of the past:

I don't have screenshots of it because it's in staff channels and I'm not staff anymore, but at some point I was told multiple times to not do any staff action against people for the hateful content I mentioned above. I was told to instead just say something like, "Wow, that's really fucked up that you'd think that," and other things. Just like I did with Tiefling Lesbian.

As I said in our DM conversation we had, I don't agree with the 'rise above' mentality that came when almost all interactions were on the TTT server and temporary. Now that discord and social interactions are a much more major part of the community, staff should not feel afraid to ask for support from their own fellow staff or feel nothing will come of it when it comes to feeling bullied or harassed. To be clear, I did not approve or like the way the situation with tiefling was handled but I understand why the other avenues you could/should have taken felt blocked off to you.

Even with this farewell the responses from community and staff are disappointing. The people are not always represented by the actions of their leaders or military, and if as you said is true that nobody asked directly if you supported the actions of the leadership of Isreal then big assumptions were made.

 

[tiefling lesbian]

me when i triple down on making shit up because i can't read after it's already been disproven

 

[ari]

people are allowed to not like zionism or zionistic views, sorry to inform you

This user has just kind of generally posted crazy harassing shit to me for a while. Here is one example, where the user set their discord status to some insane hateful shit. It's written in completely broken fuck ass hebrew, but I believe they mean to say "There are no Israeli victims," quite a fucking horrible thing to say.



I then went into their direct messages, and asked them a few times about it. They just kinda trolled and dodged the question or whatever, so I gave up. Of course, I took no moderator action against them for their discord status since that isn't a thing we police much here in Giant's Lair, but they need to hear that this sort of thing isn't okay to say. Even if you hate Israel, and Israelis, you cannot say that the innocent children in Israel that die aren't victims. This is hate speach.

to defend tiefling though, i think it was a little weird for you to have this conversation with her while barely having interacted w/ her (your only real interacts with her were like the day before you messaged her)
your discord status is also just a personal space. ur not obligated to have someone explain or justify it to you lol, especially someone you barely interact with (or just in general as a staff member at the time)

 

[ari]

muffin catching strays is a little weird too when he's literally said things like:

<-unsupportive of the chant btw

ctrl f'ing and searching the word "jew" just to paint people negatively is SUCH a bad way to approach your post! :/

 

[anna]

I think something we all need to consider when we are involved in groups like this is; we are the main character of our own stories. We are merely NPC's in everyone elses.

There is nothing wrong with having strong beliefs, stances and opinions. There is nothing wrong with engaing in ways that are educational, empathetic and with good faith. There is nothing wrong with that at all. There is something wrong when you continue to engage with material that other people say, interpreting it as a dig against you specifically instead of what it is. Their own strong belief, stance and opinion. People are entitled to make a statement, to share their opinions and for it not to be taken as a constant attack on you. I cannot ignore that there have certainly been instances where people have behaved awfully and for that I am sorry. There have been times where others have engaged in conversations with the intention of being triggering and trying to get a rise. Ignoring that aspect would make me look like a hypocrit and I am sorry that you did not feel empowered and supported in instances where it was genuinely harassment.

In saying that however, there have certainly been conversations in which you inserted yourself to defend your opinions when you yourself were not the target. There have been many occasions where you have been antagonistic, and aggressive, calling people out publically in what came across in almost a "gotcha" way. And you can say that was not the intention at all, and that may very well be the case, but the verbage and way you engaged certainly came across that way. I am not typing here to start a long list of evidence, this is not the time or place. However; it would be remiss not to acknowledge that you too were at fault at times. A prime example having already been shown above. This consistent engagement in a negative way is the issue and while we are trying to combat it across the board, that does mean we have to hold staff accountable too (and we have been trying our best to be objective in that).

The values we are comitting to is being a place where people can engage in productive conversations. Where opinions can be shared in non inflamatory ways. We want this to be a place people enjoy coming to and are not constantly worrying about bullshit. This requires everyone to engage empathetcially and I think this will take some time to reflect appropriately. It means coming here with the understanding that the 1000+ people around will not have the same opinion as me and they can put that aside and still engage with everyone kindly. People have engaged in ways that were not in line with what we want to see 100% and went unchecked for an extended period of time. This is what we are working on, but, in working on it we need to put our money where our mouth is so to speak. That means no matter who you are, what time you have put here, the money you have sunk in, if you are just a member or any level of staff, you will be held to the general standard at the very least.

 

[Siddo]

Hello Ryan
I'm sad to see this being how things played out.

I think anna said everything I was going to say, so I'll avoid restating things already said. Save for one addendum;
There is a degree of self-righteousness to your position on the issue and inversely I think it would be disingenuous to deny that you've been disliked or baited. But this is another time where you've had a choice between mending fences or lashing out - and to me, this reads like the latter - again. And from what I can understand from fizward's messages to you that you shared, this was essentially the crux of his decision. That between two options, you chose the antagonizing one with some level of consistency. That choice exists independently of others antagonizing you, in my view. We can't ever choose what others do to us, but we can choose what we do unto others.

Which leads me to;
Naming-and-shaming other people of this community or posting discord snippets either with or without context, isn't a kind or good thing. A post like this is usually a really good time to acknowledge your own faults, where you've gone wrong, where you could do better - to commit to being better. If you see no fault in yourself, if you instead feel indignant - or feel vindicated or justified in your actions, I cannot and do not want to take that from you. Instead I'll let you know that all it does is further divide people, it accomplishes nothing good in the long run. It sows more conflict and what you reap is encouraging the people clowning around. I think it'd be good for you to take a step away for tonight - for a day or two even - and then come back when your emotions related to the demotion have settled a bit. Look at what you've done, and see what you feel with the famously 20/20 vision of hindsight.

I think, perhaps naively, that an earnest conversation or two could've done much here. For instance your conversation with tiefling, you came in hot and heavy, badgering a question, trying to make her explain and defend something you had already interpreted as hateful. That conversation was never going to be a positive one unless tiefling showed extraordinary social grace. It's setting yourself up for failure and will only make people uncomfortable around you.

If you choose to leave, I hope you find peace on your journey.
Choose to be kind, even when the world is cruel <3

 

[CelDamage]

Sorry to see you resign nobody was a better trans ally than you

 

[Chou]

Sorry to see you resign nobody was a better trans ally than you