17 Facts You Don’t Know About the SCP Wiki 2018 Pride Logo Controversy
NEWS/OPINION —aNd ThAt tHeY dOn’T wAnT YoU tO KnOw~!!
Note: Don’t flag me bro!
There are no leaked or private chat logs in this post.
The following discusses content that is presented as fact, but that cannot be cited or verified as such here, due to the gun that is aimed point-blank at the head of this blog.
Some people don't want me to cite sources. This restriction has paradoxically put me in the luxurious position of not having to cite my statements, something you would typically think that one would want an adversary to have to do. C’est la vie. The issue is that my stripped ability to cite definitive sources is hoped to be used as an argument to invalidate these claims as mere speculation, or complete error. But read below (or just skip to the very end) to discover how it is that will still present all the facts. I can prove everything I am going to write. Just not on this platform.
Recently, the Confic Wiki released a definitive article on the often-muddled history of the June 2018 Pride Logo Controversy. When I say “definitive”, I mean just that. It has 164 sources cited.
And it could have had more! As comprehensive as this article is, there are numerous dots that remain to be connected. This was for two reasons. One, the encyclopedic format allows one to show but not tell. Two, I agreed to abide by the primary author’s ethics to not include any information obtained from sources that could be construed as “private”, such as group chat logs of Staffchat that have been shared openly with Confic Magazine LLC by a past participant in those discussions.
But I can’t imagine a better place to supplement the article than here.
1. SCP Wiki Site and Chat Staff were ordered to indiscriminately ban.
This isn’t technically prohibited information per that mentioned ethical position, as it is data present in the logs from a public chat on SkipIRC, #site17. So, this information ended up being included in the Confic Wiki article. But what is most interesting about this are the unspoken implications.
The massive political fall-out from the 2018 pride logo controversy was largely pegged to renegade and hasty actors on social media who were removed a degree from the actual site, i.e. AdminBright & Co on the Tumblr/Twitter, and djkaktus on the r/SCP subreddit. The title of the official post-mortem autopsy on O5 Command included “our social media response” (emphasis mine). After, there was a large push to further oversee, centralize, and craft the cohesive statements distributed on these social media platforms. The idea was that these platforms were not officially moderated by SCP Wiki Staff at the time of the fiasco, and that was in part why this situation got so out of hand so quick.
However, one moment — captured in a dump of #site17, the public “ask Staff for help” channel — changes that narrative. We see the same “ban them all, ask questions later” attitude proclaimed by a Staff member who was the captain of numerous teams, the resident authority in #site17, and a moderator on the actual Wiki. Not only that, but it is given in the form of an order for other Staff to follow. I’ll quote the Confic Wiki here:
On June 18, ProcyonLotor posted in the public site 17 chat:[97]
Okay, ops and all other staff, I’m gonna tell you to not be patient or hesitant with bans for the next few days
Ban first and let god sort them out.
When asked whether this applied to main-site staff, ProcyonLotor responded: “everyone with perms in here.”[98]
This was immediately after the Metokur video; about 10 days after the social media sites played the same tune, and the same day that Staff held two discussions on O5 to dissect what went wrong during the controversy, in which they agreed it had been handled poorly.
Therefore, it is not just the social media platforms who failed. The Wiki and Chat did the same thing, and despite ample warning from the mess of the social media renditions. They should have known better, 10 days removed, which almost makes this repetition of it worse.
2. Staff blamed djkaktus the most.
There were several at fault, and we just saw in #1 that someone on Staff did as bad or worse of a job responding to the situation on the home turf of the SCP Wiki as, say, the r/SCP, and that these people are lucky that others’ incompetence upstaged their own. However, that individual on Staff was never called out or reprimanded in the way djkaktus was… maybe because this Staff member didn’t make a sticky post explaining that any dissent was 100% evil (despite saying so, only less visibly).
AdminBright however, did make such a statement. It was first posted onto his personal Tumblr, and reblogged on the “official” SCP Wiki Tumblr soon after:
I don’t know if this was reposted onto the SCP Twitter, but it might have been there too. (The Twitter posted its own inflammatory comments, which got more visibility and attention than this one, despite them being more lukewarm.) Bright was one of the ones running the SCP Tumblr, and was also an administrator on the SCP Wiki Staff.
So say what you want about these two controversial and larger-than-life figures acting in the social media outskirts of the SCP Wiki, but one of them got away without even a slap on the wrist, despite both doing very similar things. Maybe one recovered better than the other after the dust and catecholamines settled? That leads us to…
3. djkaktus and AdminBright didn’t express remorse.
These are from a public O5 Command discussion thread that asks what went wrong:
While not so out-in-the-open, djkaktus also refused to admit any wrongdoing. In kaktus’ mind, he defended the r/SCP and the Wiki from homophobes and was betrayed by the remainder of the r/SCP staff. He states on one occasion in chat logs that he stepped down from being a moderator on the r/SCP specifically out of spite for this betrayal, so that the rest of the team would have to deal with the mop-up by themselves.
Numerous statements in Staffchat suggest that SCP Wiki Staff members approached djkaktus after the event and pressured him to step down from his role as a r/SCP moderator. This is in line with the push for greater Wiki-centric control of the errant social media platforms in the aftermath; djkaktus wasn’t a staff member on the Wiki proper, he had quit for personal reasons and had been specifically uninvited to staffchat spaces, all in the past year. So, given that the new rule was going to be that anyone involved with any social media sites and their upkeep needed to be on the SCP Wiki Staff too, djkaktus was not long for the position in any possible world, step down or not.
Yet when a long-time friend and once co-author of djkaktus suggested that he was asked to step down, kaktus responded by blocking him from his cool-club IRC chat room and ghosting him. In a rant, he went into detail defending himself as the sole hero of the situation, saying that everyone else — not just the homophobes now — was in the wrong. Kaktus stated that if he could go back and do it again, he would not defend the subreddit… not because he regretted it ethically, but because doing so “screwed him over”. This statement is at odds with the simultaneous claim that he was in the moral right to do so. Kaktus would seem to rather avoid doing what he strongly believes is right if it is going to mean a hit to his reputation.
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which — AdminBright or djkaktus — is the less graceful recovery.
4. SCP Admins considered deleting RPC.
A then-SCP Wiki Administrator introduced a then-girlfriend to the new RPC Authority as a scout. That girlfriend then went somewhat rogue, and later became the owner of the RPC Authority.
It is common knowledge that this girlfriend would play emotional games with CFOperator, the creator and once-de facto leader of the RPC Authority, and gaslight him into a vulnerable state, once noting that she had “cucked” him. It is also common knowledge that CFOperator, through a series of poor decisions unbecoming of a leader, would eventually step down and hand the keys and future of RPC to this girlfriend. Unexpectedly, she ended up managing the RPC Authority relatively responsibly, and even helped unite a diaspora of tribes after the site splintered in its newness and fragility. Some believe that RPC wouldn’t exist without the caretaking of this individual, and those people might not know how correct they are.
Were it not for this girlfriend’s refusal to be puppeted by that Admin, confic history may have been very different. After she obtained control over RPC, the fate of RPC was discussed in a SCP Wiki Admin-only Discord server. One participant wrote that SCP had “won” and that the infiltration of RPC was complete. Suggestions given during this chat included dissolving RPC for being a rallying point for hate, absorbing the non-bigoted portion of RPC back into SCP, and the installation of a SCP Wiki Admin as the owner of RPC, with the goal of then purging RPC based on political lines (same as what had just happened on the SCP Wiki). Other Admins fantasized about just deleting the site outright.
The Admins, wisely, decided to do nothing.
5. A Popular SCP Author LARPed as an RPC bigot on 4chan.
A notable member & author of the SCP Wiki would participate as an agent provocateur in the 4chan threads regarding SCP and RPC around the time of the split.
This individual — who some know, and who some others might easily guess — is universally suspected to have attempted an incognito false flag op against the RPC on 4chan threads, attempting to smear CFOperator’s reputation. This individual, hidden by the anonymity, uses slurs unbecoming of a notable SCP Wiki author and do-gooder.
This fooled neither the actual RPC participants in the thread, nor the SCP Staff observing the events behind the scenes, who — right or wrong — all happened to call out this same person by name.
There is a very comprehensive analysis that virtually proves this to be true, but that is another analysis for another time. What I can say is that this individual is seen in behind-the-scenes chats bragging about posting in the same 4chan threads, at the same time.
6. Staff knew CFOperator’s ban was BS.
CFOperator was banned from the SCP Wiki for some pretty feeble reasons, unless you want to argue that SCP should police what people say elsewhere (hello SCP!… they do try). When it comes to on-site activity, he shared his negative opinion of a SCP-4000 contest entry in a Discord. That was it.
It also happened to be an article co-written by ex-SCP Wiki author kinchthekifeblade (“Kinch”); the significance of this will become apparent after later sections. The circumstances and ban appeal are also public information, the latter taking place in #site17, and was captured in the aforementioned public chat logs. It’s also reproduced elsewhere. It is truly a “debate” to witness.
But the souped-up accusation that was latched onto more desperately than a baby to a tit was that in criticizing it publicly, and because he had some influence, CFOperator therefore advocated for others to downvote the article… the equivalent of “inciting a riot”. CFOperator argued against the ban, claiming that sharing a negative opinion didn’t equal asking others to go do the same. Some Staff scratched their heads at the accusation as well.
This was escalated when another user downvoted the article and commented:
This was the only point of support that SCP Wiki Staff could muster in their heavy-handed over-reach of the rules. The prior holdouts were convinced; and CFOperator was permanently banned for inciting a “raid”.
This second individual, WriteWingSpedSquadz, would later post on the RPC Authority forum in a discussion about the injustice of the permaban, and apologize, stating that CFOperator didn’t send them to downvote as the SCP Wiki Staff had concluded, but that he was seconding the criticisms CFOperator voiced. (This is in fact what “a la” means; literally, “in the style of”.) The individual admitted the wording was poor and accepted blame for the miscommunication:
So in no exaggeration, CFOperator was permabanned because someone agreed with him. The user also received a permaban from SCP for allegedly participating in a raid (source)… for agreeing with CFOperator.
But the real scandal here was, as you might expect, behind the scenes in staffchat.
First, the Staff consider punishing this WikiDot user for their problematic name. No, not the “sped” part, which can be a derogatory term for “special education”, and was later mentioned in the official O5 Command Disc thread. Instead, it was the “WriteWing” part. Initially, Staff fixated on that. Not the “sped” part. They felt, essentially, that anyone who expressed anything to do with right-wing politics was dangerous and not welcome.
Second, and worse, members of the Staff admit to themselves that they have done the same thing CFOperator had done; they had numerous times shared negative opinions of articles to others, lots of others, in public places, with more influence, and said they saw the rating of said article drop after.
Staff knew that having a public negative opinion of an article was not a crime, and they knew that CFOperator wasn’t capable or likely intending to incite a raid. They certainly couldn’t prove it. The inverse was common at the time; SCP’s offensive against RPC articles/posts. None of these facts mattered. Perhaps we all knew already that the facts didn’t matter.
Telling in this event, and to return to the public surface of things again, SCP Staff followed this ban up by changing the Site Rules page. As if covering their tracks, Staff made it explicitly “against the rules” to make a public critique of an article, if the Staff don’t like you:
The designed ambiguity of these rules (an outlier for the usual pedantry) ensures that whether or not a downvote is interpreted as malicious, or a criticism is interpreted as inciting a raid, is dependent upon the pure biases of those in charge.
7. The Staff suspended site apps prior to the raid on SCP-2721.
Anticipating an onslaught from the Metokur video, the SCP Wiki staff closed website applications during the pride logo controversy beginning on 6–18–2018. They re-opened them nine days later, on 6–27–2018.
The public logs from #site17 in these days are filled with hopeful users asking why they can’t join the site. The phrase “applications are temporarily closed” in one form or another, is repeated over 50 times. The question and answer came up so incessantly, Wiki Admin Decibelles made it the official topic of #site17 by 6/22/18.
Occasionally, these answers are accompanied with reasons why: “due to troll raids”, “due to an issue with trolls”, “due to wild trolls in the area”, “due to roving bands of wild trolls”, “due to an issue with troll accounts”, “due to severe brigading from 4chan and other sites”, “to prevent trolls”, “because we’ve been dealing with a large amount of trolls for the past week or so”, “the wiki is being brigaded right now”.
The reason that Staff assumed a brigade was happening was, reasonably, this:
A pro-LGBTQ article — SCP-2721, written by kinchtheknifeblade AND dolphinslugchugger (why was only one individual so attacked?)— was suddenly tanking in ratings. This was a result of the pride logo controversy, specifically the Mister Metokur video and livestream, which had drawn attention to it. I’ll quote the Confic Wiki article on this point:
Since its posting on July 7, 2016, SCP-2721 had gained upvotes at a roughly linear rate; this rise continued for over a week into the pride controversy. From June 17 to 24 however, the SCP dropped from 157 net upvotes to only 68 net upvotes (a drop of about 57%).[108] Staff, concluding that a brigade was taking place against SCP-2721, suspended new applications to the site and placed the article in the newly created “Protected” category which disabled ratings. [109] A raid was also concluded to have occurred on the r/SCP Reddit.[110]
We might notice that the memorandum on applications started the day after SCP-2721’s rating just started to plummet. Staff, perhaps a bit touchy, concluded hastily that this must be an exogenous and hostile force exacting the will of Mister Metokur; a flock of trolls sent to devastate the flashpoint of the war.
Oddly though, and laid out quietly in the facts of the case in the Confic Wiki, the drop in rating for SCP-2721 didn’t stop as a result of the application bans. If you look at the screenshot above, you can see that the slope of the downvotes does not change (SCPper is updated daily). If you go to the SCPper page for SCP-2721, you can trace it with your mouse and see that the slope continued at its constant, downward rate during the time frame that new membership was paused.
What could this mean? New applicants were coming in from “4chan and other sites” specifically to downvote SCP-2721; that was clear as day, right? So why didn’t the temporary pause in applications solve the problem? If others were coming in and raiding the SCP Wiki, wouldn’t we see a decrease in the velocity of downvotes? If this was an outside attack, shouldn’t the re-introduction of new applicants see a faster drop in the article’s rating? Instead, it actually slows down at that time.
This means…
8. SCP-2721 was massively downvoted by existing members of the SCP Wiki.
The belief that a raid occurred that was made up of outside actors seems to be the most prevalent & lasting myth from the entire fiasco:
The oddest part is that Staff have to know this is false, yet have never corrected the record.
At the same time this presumed raid was occurring, Staff were reviewing who was downvoting SCP-2721 in an attempt to snuff out and track down these trolls and raiders. A document was created, titled “brigaders”, that listed everyone who downvoted SCP-2721 around the time of the controversy, courtesy of the scpper database. You can see the formation of this document (two, actually) happening in the chat logs.
This document noted whether or not the voter:
- was a member of RPC
- upvoted SCP-7143-J (the sexy doornob)
- downvoted SCP-3625 (djkaktus’ “anti-alt-right” response article to the controversy)
… and it gave a full analysis of their prior voting history (including when they last voted). Most investigations also noted when the user joined the SCP Wiki. Each entry in the list ultimately ended with a determination “yes” or “no”; guilty or not guilty for the crime of brigading and malicious downvoting; recall, for disagreeing with what Staff wanted to have happen. The guiding political bias in this exercise should be disturbingly clear.
Interestingly, and to what must have been the great horror of those on SCP Wiki Staff researching, all of these accounts that downvoted SCP-2721 in the “troll raid brigade from 4chan and other sites” were not new accounts. Most dated back years. Not a single one was a vote cast by a WikiDot account created strictly to downvote SCP-2721. They were all pre-existing members.
On top of that, of the 166 individuals investigated on this list, only 28 were joint RPC Authority members. That’s 17%.
This leads us to our next numerical, which by now stands on its own as a conclusion:
9. Staff incorrectly assumed the idea of an external raid on SCP-2721.
The raid was — at the worst — another, more latent portion of the existing site that hadn’t been made aware of the article, and who were catching up with their votes. The situation would be the same if 100 people who liked my article all voted first, and then 150 downvoted next. I don’t get to cry foul or demand it be protected for political reasons; I was fortunate to have the upvotes but now it is going the opposite direction. This was and is a mundane and basic risk of exposure; the same risk anything on the Wiki faces when given particular attention. No one should write or post if they aren’t prepared for criticism or a negative reception.
Kinch seems to sometimes understand this well:
And not so much other times:
Yet this is not the approach that Staff have. See here:
The Staff’s aggregate statement (by this point not a logical one, but again a purely political one) was that the only correct response to the article’s content was to upvote it. This is an author and Staff who believe their political stances make them above the terms of the site’s democratic processes; people who will relish in the gain and feel entitled to no pain; who cannot allow the negative side of a reception to manifest if it isn’t in the direction of their political goals.
The line that there was such a raid was merely an assumption that became the go-to, party-towed line used to save the touted political preferences of the site an embarrassing loss. Who believes SCP-2721 wouldn’t have reached deletion range if not protected? The Staff didn’t; that’s why they protected it. The “raid” was an assumption that was never truly or adequately questioned; a denial of reality used to invalidate hundreds of downvotes.
SCP Staff purported to know definitively the intentions of every one who voted; that they weren’t voting for the content of the article, but due to a boogeyman of transphobia. Staff took away the option to vote for the content of the article on the one hand, and vilified voters for not letting the content decide the fate of the article on the other.
In reality, they saw a pro-LGBTQ article tanking in pride month (the last thing they wanted or hoped for in celebrating) and promised the author they wouldn’t let it happen, all before figuring out the details of the situation. Staff acted more content-independent & politically biased than the voters.
This central assumption here is of course false. You can’t possibly know why people who were just being exposed to an article that likely went under their radar (no pun) were voting the way they were. That’s the bottom line. Yet, the lie was that this was obvious; so obvious that it didn’t require any investigation or confirmation. The SCP Staff told the users that they were not allowed to curate content on the site. They sanctioned particular political expressions and banned others. It remains one of the largest, unspoken missteps of the pride logo controversy, and has never been readdressed or retracted.
10. Staff protected SCP-2721 when pausing site applications didn’t work.
It was only after Staff re-opened site applications, and saw that SCP-2721 continued to be downvoted, that they then created a new category of “protected” articles, that removed the option to vote on SCP-2721. SCP-2721 remains the only article to occupy the category. The page was protected on 6/26/2018; a day after applications had been re-opened.
So, it is with renewed embarrassment that we can read the knee-jerk reaction of public statements from some figures in the community over these downvotes, and also see the immediate pandering to political sensitivities above facts. From the public facing chat of #site19, on 6/18/2021:
<djkaktus> Just use SCPPER to pull the last thirty downvotes and ban them all
<AbsentmindedNihilist> kinch you have my word i will do everything i can to make sure this article stays on the site
<djkaktus> then get wikidot to pull the downvotes.
<DolphinSlugchugger> who the fuck cares if they’re delivering it politely they’re still “politely” putting poison into our fucking food
<djkaktus> -arcing it doesnt do anything.
<salvagebar> It will not fall into deletion range
<kinch> i agree w/ my bud dolphin as always
<djkaktus> It just means it can’t be downvoted.
<djkaktus> how about the goddamn score.
<kinch> its v important to me, i cant lie
<kinch> but i mean, making it undeletable would be a small victory, only if it got into range but
<DolphinSlugchugger> weryllium: pride is important
<djkaktus> so look up the downvoters
<kinch> as salavage said thats like
<AbsentmindedNihilist> kinch and it’s important to the site
<kinch> not gonna happen
<djkaktus> fucking ban them
<AbsentmindedNihilist> djkaktus i’ll talk to staff about it
<weryllium> Can you??
<djkaktus> weryllium: yeah you can.
<Sterbai> it won’t get downvoted into deletion
<weryllium> Oh.
<djkaktus> wikidot has done it before.<kinch> i still dont like losing a chunk of votes in my AVERAGE
<kinch> ~AVERAGE~
<Modern_Erasmus> kinch: don’t worry, no matter what happens it won’t be deleted and we’re already looking into the possibility of wikidot clearing the recent downvotes
As noted in the Confic Wiki article, SCP-2721 fell to a rating of +32 before it was protected by Staff. We can also see that the loss of upvotes seems to be a particularly scary thing to this culture, but of course there are larger statements being made. This leads us into our next point…
11. As an apology, Staff gave Kinchtheknifeblade a permanent Rule Zero pass.
Question: would the SCP Staff offer the same amount of protection for an any old article, or one with a political opinion that they didn’t agree with?
Of course not.
One might wonder if the SCP Wiki Staff felt especially bad for kinchtheknifeblade. It was their negligence after all that eventually put this individual in the crossfire of an internet flame war. Kinch, in my opinion, was an innocent bystander who ended up being collateral in the firespray that Staff started. So it is no wonder they felt as though they owed Kinch an apology (even if to some Staff members’ chagrin). Staff seemed to have mostly moved on from the trauma, though a significant amount of PTSD is still evident.
Poor Kinch though has not ever recovered from the mental trauma of being so quickly thrust into such a center of attention. This was not her choice. While she is not responsible for what happened, and in that sense truly is a victim, her ongoing lust for victimhood, and reciprocal treatment of others have negated any sympathy I might have once had. The pity was latched onto like a leech. The SCP was happy to feed it, as Kinch had become somewhat of a relic for their intended political celebration.
Soon after, SCP would make such grand gestures as:
Also this eventual formal apology (oddly not posted anywhere very visible or definitive like O5 or the Twitter as far as I can tell), where Kinch’s best KiwiFarms impression was excused, where “rumors” and “several eyewitness testimonies given to her” became two separate things. We can see the special treatment particularly when Kinch resorted to personal attacks in response to her SCP-2721 being downvoted:
These were not cited in any disciplinary fashion, as others would have instantly been. Contrast this to the threshold given to Kinch a year earlier, which was more typical:
Or consider the potential disciplinary thread created for her a year after:
It’s awful on both sides for sure. However, Kinch is excused by SCP from similar behavior that a Nazi participated in, and who was banned on Discord for. The reason is the ongoing harassment she faced for putting herself out there; again, something any author or writer (as opposed to a compliment fisherwoman) takes as a known risk in the very intentional action of posting. The reception of death threats means someone is elevated to a lawless status… a dangerous precedent to set, and a fairly easy one to game, were someone so inclined.
Notice how twisted the gravity of the ethics is bending around the political concerns. Suddenly, making fun of people in an article is OK:
And for a snort of pure hypocrisy straight into brain, see here:
Dexanote would later make a Disciplinary thread for SCP-DISC-J, arguing for its outright deletion, with the accusation that making fun of people is not tolerant or tolerated on the Wiki. (Unlike SCP-4493, SCP-DISC-J did not mention anyone by name, but was a general satire for all of SCP Staff.)
DrEverettMann even stated that the abuse that Kinch was receiving was enough justification to let her do what she wanted to:
It would seem that when Staff protected SCP-2721 from downvotes, they also applied that equally to Kinch herself. In a strange act of reason, the assumption and axiom of Rule Zero was collapsed; Kinch became synonymous with her article. To insult SCP-2721 was to insult Kinch. (This gave a new meta-irony to Kinch’s statements that SCP-2721 is not a self-insert.)
The wiser of the SCP Staff might have known the kind of insatiability they were feeding. Kinch’s sainthood was a bitterness and self-elevation that would never truly go away, and it was never quite enough to satisfy her demand for ongoing special treatment. When SCP eventually tapered it off and failed to do this continually, Kinch then had to do it herself:
Sad to see, Kinch feels no hypocrisy or contradiction in saying and treating those with opposite political opinions the same way she was treated, and with the same ideological hate and close-mindedness, the same acidity; only deemed a bad thing when she is the recipient of it. It would also seem that, were it Kinch in the position of authority on the social media platforms instead, she would have performed the same mistakes. Despite the victimhood, in possession of the same authority and opportunity, Kinch would have likely encouraged the same response, and also trauma, whether to herself or some other by-standing LGBTQ+ author.
One might not be able to totally blame her for an inability to handle well what she dishes out to others though, because despite her tantrums for more special treatment, her immunity and status as a victim-saint on site never truly waned:
So it might not be a surprise or stretch to learn that behind the scenes, Staff explicitly immunized her from the most basic rules of behavior on the site and “went easy on her” for her political role. It was and still is Staff’s way of saying sorry for painting a target on her back. Both Staff and Kinch alike shiver to think what would happen — what would be stated loudly and for all to see — were SCP-2721 suddenly unprotected and the rating module returned.
The coddling by SCP staff was the real damage done. It helped to foster and calcify a self-centric view in Kinch, one that she plays like an ace up her sleeve still to this day. The sad truth is, Kinch is still a victim; a perpetual one, more of one even, now just by her own ongoing intention and design.
Which brings me to…
12. RPC Authority was a direct result of djkaktus, not of the pride logo or SCP-2721.
djkaktus is the most controversial, destructive, and traumagenic author in SCP history. It is not close. Who else could have two separate articles, separated by a year or so, flank the largest controversy in the site’s history, and both of these articles acting as polar opposite litmus tests for enemies and friends to the site’s politics?
It might surprise people to learn that the RPC Authority was not specifically a reaction to the pride logo or to SCP-2721. Just as there was no raid from outside users, this fact seems to be generally misunderstood in the community. Yes, the role of these two things in the establishment of the RPC were unavoidable, and a larger point about maintaining an official neutrality was made, but the inclusion of the logo and SCP-2721 were incidental. That is to say, the dissatisfaction that inspired RPC would have existed still without them.
An astounding interview that — in a good impression of SCP Wiki Staff, the RPC Authority staff has silenced — describes a very different scenario than the common presumption. CFOperator speaking with The Volgun about the RPC’s origins notes that he didn’t care when the pride logo was featured on the site, that he didn’t bat an eye — an initial reaction I share with him. He cited that the direct action that caused him to create the RPC was djkaktus’ inane reply to all of the r/SCP drama. I’ll quote the Confic Wiki article:
In a July 2018 interview with TheVolgun, CFOperator claimed he was not concerned with the pride logo but rather how SCP staff reacted to the ongoing controversy, and that the logo fiasco offered the opportunity to capitalize on a long-felt initiative. According to this interview, the immediate catalyst for the RPC Authority was djkaktus’ First Amendment post (covered previously), which CFOperator claimed was dismissive of claims against the logo.
CFOperator would go on to argue in the interview how this was the last straw on a slow-boil frustration with how moderation occurred on the SCP Wiki and in its satellite spaces. (No pun.)
13. SCP Staff continued to quietly discriminate against RPC members for years after the controversy.
This is notably in stark contrast to their more visible diplomatics, which signed a truce and adopted a “live and let live” philosophy. There was a rumor going around that applications were being rejected if the individual was a member of the RPC Authority, and chat logs from Staffchat confirm this occurred on several occasions.
The paranoia was witch-hunt pitch for more than a year. A disciplinary thread was created and a ban argued for a user who, by way of neurotic combing through SCPper, was found to have downvoted 6 articles that featured pride logos… out of 16 total votes. That’s 32% bigot.
We see this in the current day too, noted & cited several times on this blog by now, where chat staff member CuteGirl (aka flagsam) and others on chat staff hold a ban over someone’s head until they renounce their dual citizenship with RPC. From “Losing the Plot: Part 4 — SCP’s Toxic Maximalism”:
One SCP staff representative says it is “medieval” that someone should be attacked personally for writing something political into an article, referring to and in defense of kinch… and they then bash RPC because they think it’s a right-wing writer’s haven in the next lines (took an amnestic apparently). Some [staff] say that no one from SCP cares if a user is a dual citizen, but then we see staff interrogate others about why someone is a member of RPC, as if anticipating to turn over the rock and find a Nazi salute there.
This would continue as late as 2021…
… and given that this statement received no dissent or further discussion, likely continues.
Edit (1/30/22):
14. Staff anticipated only praise for the logo change.
Not a shocker. But very few people know that the idea of a pride logo for pride celebration was first suggested on record in 2017, in the Licensing Team IRC channel. It came up when individuals were talking about how far the Wiki had come since its early days, and how much better an environment it is for LGBTQ+ individuals. The suggestion was initially just for a contest, then for the whole site but just for a day. It was done in the explicit hopes of making the SCP Wiki, and I quote, “more gay”, and was felt that it would be a good PR opportunity for Community Outreach and Internet Outreach.
15. YouTube’s flagging system was weaponized to censor MisterMetokur.
Kinch would ask who on the “other side” of the controversy was harassed and received death threats. (She gave some herself, in SCP-4493.) But there was only one “side” that censored people outright.
Some SCP Wiki Staff participated in the Mister Metokur livestream. People might not know that in addition to the infamous video, there was a livestream too, separate from the video. Multiple SCP Wiki Staff members attended the stream, I presume attempting to argue with people there. This got to the point that a moderator had to remind them that that sort of behavior was what inflamed the issue, and that they should stop. One Staff member hadn’t slept in a long time, and had to be encouraged by multiple people to get off the stream and go to bed.
In an offensive and pro-censorship tactic that would foreshadow the methods used for this blog and the proto Confic Wiki, this Mister Metokur stream would shortly after its completion and posting be flagged and taken down for privacy violations:
We very well may have a reason why the original video is no longer available on Metokur’s YouTube channel.
16. DrClef’s SCP-4000 Contest Entry was initially going to be a spiteful RPC shitpost.
Shortly after the creation of the RPC Authority, DrClef is quoted in chatlogs as saying that he wanted to troll it by posting something brazen, crude, and that would make the RPC look bad. This ultimately became a better draft than was anticipated, and so it was entered into the SCP-4000 contest, which happened just after the pride controversy. It came in 4th place in the contest, and is now known as SCP-4960: Kedesh-Nanaya, Or: Why The Foundation Published Hentai to Awaken a Mesopotamian Love Goddess.
17. SCP Staff capitulated to peer pressure.
Staff gave up on how they truly felt. The argument that equating logo disagreement with bigotry and homophobia was publicly stated as the main misstep and issue, however it was largely agreed with behind the scenes in places like Staffchat. For example, SCP Wiki Staff later refused positions to individuals if they had disagreed with the logo change.
This probably doesn’t surprise anyone, but their response was mostly about fear and was a recoil of self-preservation from the shockwave of scandal. But it might surprise Kinch, who should know that the behind-the-scenes chatlogs demonstrate she is right — much of the Staff truly capitulated their moral stances to external political pressure… not to RPC bigots, but to the formless mass of wider public criticism. Why else would they have been so afraid as to not feature the pride logo again until 2021?
Well, there you have it; 17 facts about the 2018 Pride Logo Controversy that you probably didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t if you hadn’t read this. I encourage you to read the whole article on the Confic Wiki; you will likely learn a great deal more.
But what about my promise to show you how I know all this? How will I prove these claims? How will I show my sources?
… tune in every Saturday & Sunday at 12 PM EST:
