The Troll Chronicles: 2nd Degree Thought Criminals
NEWS/OPINION — How Staff’s Ongoing Paranoia, Dismissal of Careful Thinking, Hyper-Censorious Nature, and Eagerness to Be Heroic, Help Keep Hate & Hypocrisy Alive on the SCP Wiki
Past posts in this, a series of essays about what banned people say about those doing the banning:
- The Troll Chronicles: Part 1 — SNOM
- The Troll Chronicles: Part 2 — Pizzacougar and the SCP Department of New 1984
This is an entry about banned users who were one degree removed from actual thought crime. In case that last sentence didn’t make it clear enough: these people aren’t the real trolls in this picture, and the reader will understand why by the end of the essay. This might should be separate posts, but the themes and likenesses overlap so much here, it is a difficult demarcation to make.
Part I: Superblobby and KYS
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men. — Nietzsche
It’s January 2017 on O5 Command. Superblobby, a user with a past history makes an uncalled-for but flippant “kill yourself” comment in a public chat as a bad joke. Ops are called like 9–1–1, they run in and confront it head on, weapons drawn. The user is apologetic after being called out, and agrees that suicide is not truly funny... he has a history of repenting in honesty when having done wrong. He is given a 24-hour ban and a statement is posted to O5 Command about it, a semi-transparent, Photoshopped ledger of wrongdoings meant for consensus and reference, but that has the added benefit and more direct usage of being a tool of pressure & public shame. A Chat Staffer who started an underground fetish NSFW chat channel — and who would later be banned herself as a scapegoat when heat from publicized, widespread sexual inappropriateness with minors on-site was at its apex — posts the thread, and comments how creepy it was that the person used the word “sexual” at some point in the conversation (the provided records will show, the use was not in reference to this person).
Nothing out of the ordinary, really, sad to say, this is routine. But let’s go 100x magnification and compare this to a near-identical situation, but with known site darlings in place of Superblobby; users who are simply in another caste, a different sort of “untouchable”, whose thresholds for punishment and public ridicule are much, much higher; but who at the same time have no less of a troubled history with the chat & site.
This would be a fine spot in the article to have screenshots of chat logs that show well-known individuals and staff telling others in their Super Secret Staff Chat to “kys”. However, Medium has an obscure loyalty to those who wall themselves up in dishonesty, and has told me to not post those here. I wonder if they are anywhere else on the internet… maybe somewhere I used to be a lot?… Where did I hang out just before this blog… Kiwi… something… I can’t remember the name of the place. (KumquatFarms? Is that it?) Oh well.
Three months after Superblobby was given a ban for joking, an exact replica by Staff was swept under the rug very quickly. We see that no 24-hour ban was in order or necessary. This is in part due to the privileged position Staff award to themselves, but it was also due to #site67 being private — part of that privilege. No one could see in here but Staff. Thus, off-shift from the political theater, the uptight integrity can be let down, and the mask slip; if the public is none-the-wiser, no prior stated morals, acted-upon convictions, nor consistency in rules need apply.
Perhaps this was an anomaly; a one-time outlier. A sample size of one is certainly not enough to draw strong conclusions from. OK, let’s see what else a cursory search of the chat logs bring up:
Here again would be another great moment to post chat logs of long-time and influential staff members saying the whole phrase “kill yourself” and no one batting an eye. Damn. If only there were numerous pictures and screencaps of these somewhere on the internet that starts with a Kiwi and ends with a Farms and has something to do with covering and commenting on SCP. A shame.
Dexanote, in particular, was present for numerous of these “kys” joke incidents in Staff Chat, and likely several undocumented others. And yet we see him lead the group’s pearl-clutching over it as if it was all alien to Staff’s capability and far below them:
We might take Staff’s intolerance of kys joking (in public) to mean that they would apply an equally strict and generous help concerning potential or possible suicide attempts of users on their grounds. Wouldn’t that make sense, seeing as how the affront with “kys” is the possibility of someone then committing suicide? However, historically, Staff also seem very dismissive of these situations, not at all the type of reaction you might expect.
Think with me for a second — how great would it be if somehow, I was able to snag chat logs of numerous members of Staff in #site67 joking about someone in #site19 having public, suicidal ideations. How fitting would it be right after that last sentence in that last paragraph to display chat logs of that nature, showing that behind closed doors, they have swept away the premise of caring about possible suicide that is baked into the manufactured concern for the phrase “kys”. Kiwi. Farms. Kiwi. Kiwi. Farms. SCP Thread. SCP.
How much of the grievance that Staff likes to display is simply a result of it being in public? We may also take notes from the infamous ban of Scantron off of Staff (previously a moderator), who told EchoFourDelta — a white supreme who was on SCP Staff — in a non-joking manner to kill himself. (This is the only time that “kill yourself” is recorded in a non-joking manner in this essay, this includes the O5 disciplinary logs for users who were banned for joking about it.) Scantron’s O5 Command disc thread headers the fact that this was done in a public channel, and this detail is repeated as being particularly egregious in the discussion. One has to wonder if the situation would have been handled differently, the result different, were it neatly tucked under the rug instead, like these other instances.
Part II: TheRedBaron and Anything Remotely, Possibly To Do with Nazis
Finally, we admit that the “bad faith” argument holds no ground and should not have been brought up during initial townhall discussions. Upon reflection, we recognize and agree that basing policy decisions and interactions with the community at large with a hypothetical malicious entity is fruitless and contributes to unnecessary paranoia.
— Naepic, Staff, September 22 2021, in response to criticisms made in the Town Halls [source]
Let’s demonstrate another angle of silent injustice and doublespeak, used insincerely to discipline, publicly shame, and ban a user. This one goes by the name of TheRedBaron. His O5 post says that he is being written up for “Fascist content”. Just prior, TheRedBarron posted a “problematic” idea to the Idea forums, seeking a greenlight. Let’s look into the thread for a moment. The issues at hand will be analyzed without addressing the quality of the proposed and posted article, which is beyond the scope of our interest:
TheRedBaron gets some feedback here:
It would appear from just this much already that TheRedBaron is a learned observer of history, and understands more about Nazis than the average SCP critter. Does this make him a Nazi sympathizer? Not technically. Not yet… But he is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
The worry here, funnily, seems to be a potential sensitivity around the idea or simple use of Nazis (on a horror fiction site in October, but that’s neither here nor there). There is no endorsement of Nazism on the part of the author. Were there, it would be highlighted in an inverse celebration by staff in the O5 thread. This instead is just the use of an idea that reminds Staff of Nazis. It would seem arguably about Nazis at all. In any case, the distinct impression that we get from this series of concerns is that mentioning Nazis in SCPs is… not allowed.
Multiple, quiet cases testify to this new rule: a user by the name of KlaxonMajor is given a disciplinary thread with the subtitle simply “Nazi article”. There is no more to this. The article as reproduced there is subpar and would not have survived as it is, but the disciplinary thread makes it clear that a consensus deletion is not enough, they must go further to make their morality clear, understood. Again, the article does not endorse Nazism or sympathize with Nazis. It simply is about an anomalous Nazi weapon.
I don’t think an article about or involving Nazis is any inherently better off or worse as a result of its subject matter. In talented hands, an article including Nazis could be done very well and without endorsing the ideals behind them, I’m sure even by the talent on SCP. There might even already be articles on SCP about Nazi-branded humanoids, alternative realities where Nazis won (maybe even more than one), seemingly random uses of Nazis when other groups might have had the same effect, very revered authors casting Nazis in their works, anomalous clones of Adolf Hitler, a tale by a long-time, now-retired Admin retconning the Holocaust as a Foundation containment operation (well received), or even a GoI about Nazis. (This is not even scratching the surface of holocaust inclusion in SCP works.)
Are there good articles out in the ether that include Nazis and that don’t in any way endorse Nazism? Yes. Are Nazis an appropriate topic for containment fiction? Horror? Clearly yes. Will they be at SCP? Not anymore. (Although I imagine this new unspoken rule would be denied if a well-liked and popular author did the same as TheRedBaron.)
Somehow, the topic of Nazis has suddenly been blanket banned on SCP with endorsement of the SCP staff as “fascist content” with no clear rationale. While there isn’t a “Nazi” tag, there is a “historical” one given to numerous Nazi-based and Nazi-involved articles on the site. Why couldn’t this draft be considered under the same historical tag? Why is it given the tag “fascism” instead?
On a careful examination of the recent disciplinary threads on O5, there indeed is an uptrend in Nazi citations. But once the details are observed, there seems to be more and more question as to whether or not these represent actual cases of Nazi or fascistic sympathy, or if it is instead an uptrend in merely the strictness regarding topics that the site doesn’t want expressed any longer.
Why the change? The tightening of the grip around any topic conceptually adjacent to Nazis is most probably due to a recent event that accompanied the ascension of the atypical object class Apollyon tag. A user, Comrade Xander, used the NSDAP in an analogy with the object class, attempting to undermine somethings “official” status simply because it is called so. This user’s membership was revoked for this analogy.
Another link in the introductory post shares chat logs from TheRedBaron’s request for crit, posted 10–11–2021:
I’ll bring out a few bottom lines, that meant in more way than one:
<%Mooagain> TheRedBaron why would you want to write about Nazis?
<DrSoulDen> Any army can be desperate… Why the Nazis specifically
<MrItachi> but like other countries can also do that
<MrItachi> I think you’re focusing more on why germany than on why can’t it be any other country
A bit more detail now:
<Aolsen4> DrSoulDen being a history nerd, the nazi regime is and the global conflict surrounding it is incredibly interesting. I have no sympathy for nazi’s but an objective interest in knowing history to its fullest. I think that’s why so many people enjoy writing about it
<Aolsen4> I butchered that first sentence, I hope you still understand the meaning
<DrSoulDen> Maybe
<Slendercreppy0> May I ask why you chose AuSchweitz?
<DrSoulDen> But it’s kinda weird that uh
<DrSoulDen> It’s gotten an uptick recently
<DrSoulDen> Like in the past week or 2 we’ve seen a few Nazi articles and that ain’t normal
<TheRedBaron> I chose it for the reason that it was 3 in one, making it the largest one. If its the largest, unlimited test subjects.
<Aolsen4> Well, the correlation could indeed be spooky month. Or maybe it is due to the rise of neo nazism on a global scale, anyways thats politics, and not for this channel :) Feel free to dm me if you wish to discuss the topic further
…
<Slendercreppy0> I’m not as experienced at giving critiques but does what he chose really matter
<Slendercreppy0> Like what if wrong if he chooses Nazis
<Slendercreppy0> it could be random
<Slendercreppy0> asking for me
<Slendercreppy0> Does It matter*
<TheRedBaron> Its not that I am glorifying Nazis
<Slendercreppy0> Wow
<Slendercreppy0> such silence
[… Again, it should be noted with some intuition applied that Slendercreepy0 was soon given their own disciplinary thread three days later, for seemingly unrelated reasons.]
<TheRedBaron> If you look at the bigger picture of the narrative, its that Hitler was losing,
<%Mooagain> Slendercreppy0 try to keep down the random chatter, this channel is for criticism only
<TheRedBaron> he wanted immortal troops to push the Russians back
<%Mooagain> Again, this could be literally any army that was about to lose a major war
<DrSoulDen> The way I see it, you chose the Nazis because it’s the most shocking/gets the biggest knee jerk reaction from people.
<DrSoulDen> You could easily slot in the Soviets into the slot and nothing would change
<TheRedBaron> developed a serum by testing on POW’s and Innocents in those camps
<MrItachi> So it’s basically a captain america story? Like a super soldier serum?
<TheRedBaron> no
<Aolsen4> Super Soldier serum gone wrong?
<TheRedBaron> Not wrong, more of “wait boss it aint ready yet”
<TheRedBaron> and Hitler not giving a dang
<TheRedBaron> bit
<MrItachi> So is this SCP supposed to be scary or something?
<%Mooagain> TheRedBaron you have yet to give a reason as to why this can’t be any other country in any other time
We can see a clear, intentional aversion to rational thinking on this matter. The user, upon considering Nazi Germany as a writing implement or an in-character villain, is subliminally accused of being a Nazi himself because of that, and is pressured to change the story to exclude Germany as a show of innocence. By this logic, George Lucas is a Nazi sympathizer for naming the foot soldiers of the evil in his lore “stormtroopers”; we can run the same logic in parallel again in this example with the same questions and see how unhinged this is from good thinking (“You have yet to give a reason, George Lucas, as to why this can’t be any other country in any other time.”). We can also claim the same and ask the same questions of any previous SCP author who has written about Nazis or WW2 Germany.
But of course, none of these people are assumed to be Nazi sympathizers who posted fascistic content — and they shouldn’t be. But here, uniquely in the history and status quo of SCP, by simply bringing up Nazis, an individual is unfairly assumed undeniably guilty until proven innocent; an impossible criteria. Upon contact with their spindly forelimbs, the prototypical SCP guardians web and spin the situation, not to analyze it for any possible malicious motive, but to wrap it in an excess of it, desiccating the user of any possible neutrality until they lack the ability to say otherwise (i.e. the ban).
SCP attempts to peer pressure this individual into identifying as a Nazi sympathizer, so their paranoia can be proven correct, and for no other reason. No further evidence or indication is required to justify this paranoia. When this is met with resistance, they bully the individual into a pigeonhole as a closeted bigot whose denial only more proves their guilt. This is despite a believable, grounded, and good effort of logic and explanation behind why “stormtroopers” are being used... more of it, I’m sure, than any past author has had to put forward to get a creative writing product on the site. But it is as if a magnet is preventing SCP representatives from allowing the use or mention of Nazis to be anything other than an automatic dog-whistle; it is a sort of mutated physics here by now.
Why? Because they apparently want it to be Nazi sympathizing and white supremacy? But again, why? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s so that when they ban it, it will make them look and feel better and more needed as a moderating body.
In any case, the SCP mentality has fallen into the posture of the office HR manager; snide, sitting hunched over crossed legs, bracelet jingling, and toes tapping, eyes dilated upon the next victim of the filter feed.
The same magnetism is applied to TheRedBaron’s profile picture, which is reproduced below:
A simple reverse image search shows that this is one illustration in a series of re-imagined Star Wars characters, as they may have looked in the period garb of WWI (the others are simply badass too). That’s right, WWI: Star Wars stormtroopers are taken from WWI and have less to do with Nazis other than a precursor role anachronistically applied to them, and a slight rearrangement of their most used name.
No one in their right mind believes that Wolfdog here as an artist is a Nazi sympathizer because he (pronouns assumed in resort) drew Star Wars characters as time-period WWI-era figures. And yet, in the setting of SCP, TheRedBaron is one because he has this as his profile picture, and has done what the artist has visually done, only with words and in a containment fiction format. Again, there is no Nazi sympathizing in this piece of containment fiction; if there was, it would have been cited and quoted to high heaven in the O5 thread. But that doesn’t stop SCP from desiring that it does.
TheRedBaron does his best, but the verdict has already been around the world twice before he can get his socks on. The paranoia is so blinding, it travels at the speed of light:
TheRedBaron: The Stormtrooper is not Nazi
TheRedBaron: Context:
TheRedBaron: A WWI Imperial Stormtrooper was the Trench Raider of WWI. They were never aligned with the Nazis, purely due to time.
TheRedBaron: Stormtroopers were used from 1915–1918 and Nazi Germany existed from 1935–1945
TheRedBaron: 25 years after their first introduction
Lily: Alright; albeit Imperial Germany stuff can often be a red flag
Lily: Can you explain the rest though?
TheRedBaron: Nazi apologism
TheRedBaron: That is a bit laughable
TheRedBaron: The idea critique I posted to be critiqued is VERY anti-nazi
TheRedBaron: “ Research had gone into this new weapon since 1941 by using Jewish Concentration Camps as testing grounds for the serum, particularly Auschwitz.”
TheRedBaron: Quote from the article
TheRedBaron: I am not denying the holocaust and that it never happened
TheRedBaron: the serum was developed through the blood of POWs and innocents
Lily: By “nazi apologism” I’m referring to your backing of the myth of the clean wehrmacht
TheRedBaron: not clean, no
TheRedBaron: never was
Lily: Furthermore, “this scp was tested on prisoners at auschwitz is a *very* bad look” [emphasis mine]
TheRedBaron: the SCP itself is not the serum, its the troops
TheRedBaron: Im made this because wehrmacht was the largest group, and reserve would most likely be in the backlines where they weren’t fighting. SS and more experienced Wehrmacht groups were mostly in the frontlines
Lily: “Nazi will not be used in the regular article, it is only used for context, the group is purely Wehrmacht and not Waffen SS and a mostly reserve group, meaning the Nazi ideology did not really stick with them.”
Lily: this is pretty much nazi apologism and is defending the wehrmacht
Lily: Regardless I’m not here to argue semantics; your idea is in *incredibly* bad taste and includes common nazi apologist talking points such as the above, which when combined with imperial german stuff, a common red flag, is very concerning.
Lily: Do you have anything further to add.
The chat logs are followed up by our recurring guest in this essay, Lily. Let’s officially meet Lily:
Lily shares the details of an appeal attempt — and its invariable failure — saying that the user “did not show any realisation of the problems that got them banned”. At one point, Lily understands that they have made intellectual missteps and are working off flawed notions. However, this and any appeal is not about accuracy of information. A competent and justified defense of one’s self is not going to do anything but prolong the ban and maybe make it worse; the decision has been set long before the appeal begins.
We see this time and time again, and will observe it again in the course of this essay; there is an allergy in SCP to complex topics. The stringency is overwrought to the point of being irrational. This is not good for the site’s mental health and intellectual capacity or direction.
A similar anaphylaxis occurs in reply to the most distant and abstract scent of Nazism in the discipline a fourth troll ban, LazyBird13. This user was banned for simply titling something that a Staff member (guess who) felt was a white supremacist dog-whistle. The title is “Deus Vult”, which translates to “God wills it” in Latin — historically a rallying cry for the First Crusade. Its use of course dates back farther than its mild assimilation by white nationalism in recent times. Theoretically it has a legitimate and unique justification beyond its most recent and most historically negligible connotation.
However, this — as is again and again — in bad faith automatically collapsed into the worst possible interpretation; not because the nuance is not there or the SCP Staff aren’t smart enough to know the difference, but because they are on a public stage and feel the need to continually advertise to themselves and their constituency that they are better people than others and are protecting, shepherding the community from what could threaten to destroy it. (The irony is that this attitude as SCP’s primary thruster into the ground, and its movement off the historical stage.)
Lily — confident, cocksure — explains:
‘Deus Vult’ and other similar media concerning the city of Jerusalem are very common white nationalist dog whistles. Per the judgment of SCP Disciplinary staff, and our site’s zero-tolerance policies regarding hate groups, the user has been issued a permanent ban.
Is this a dog-whistle? The truth is that no one can be sure. The article is about Jerusalem, which fits its historical contexts. There is nothing quoted in the O5 Command at least that would indicate this is the work of a supremacist who is attempting a dog-whistle, except Lily’s insistence.
The real disappointing realization is that Staff knows there is no way to know if this is a dog-whistle, but decide to err on the side of paranoia not despite that, but in spite of that. Again, the presumption that any use of “Deus Vult”, or Nazi Germany, has to by public proclamation be a white nationalist dog-whistle, or at least too proximal to one to not censor, is outright hysteria that brings to mind the most pandemic of deliriums. Again, there’s the clear observation that this article would have been deleted anyway.
As a result of the criticisms from the Town Halls, Staff promised to minimize the awarded influence of imaginary ghouls crouched in the corner of their website. Is it any wonder or surprise that they have not slowed down this paranoia at all, but seemingly sped it up in more hushed places on-site? Despite recognizing that “basing policy decisions and interactions with the community at large with a hypothetical malicious entity is fruitless and contributes to unnecessary paranoia”? The words ring hollow and the general mood most fits late 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. A witch hunt will never run out of witches.
Staff continue to go to stupendous lengths to keep the boogeyman hunt alive, refusing to let a multifaceted phrase escape its most recent and unsavory undertones. It’s almost as if such a boogeyman has a sort of demonic and superhuman power that dwarfs that of Staff and SCP at large; that when a phrase is appropriated by a bad crowd, it is from then on irreparable, or dead. Like one time up-to-bat staying forever definitive. This is quite some power attributed to people who do not have it; anyone who thinks they are superior to another due to skin color has no right to appropriate anything that doesn’t belong to them, and certainly not something with a rich history. But, in their neurosis, SCP Staff further and exacerbate the problem, and deny the solution, which is to retrieve the phrase and place it back in uses that are not supremacist.
An an aside, it’s interesting to note that within these very chat logs for TheRedBaron, this is also captured…
… given no similar treatment of zero benefit of doubt, and is arguably more eyebrow-raising than the historical use of Nazis in a horror fiction piece.
The “guilty until proven innocent” trap mindset here is, as one might expect, completely absent when Nazis, Nazi-adjacent rhetoric, and Nazi imagery is used in the privacy of Staff Chat. Here, suspicious questioning regarding the rationale for bringing up Germany instead of any other country in order to make a point is not applied; the one using Nazi imagery and symbols is not assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.
One might think from familiarity that Staff is incapable of letting bad jokes be bad jokes. However, when a potentially sticky insinuation such as the above is done by a member of Staff, suddenly bad jokes really are just jokes.
Were a snippet or two as an image here showing a particular long-time SCP Staffer creating and inviting people into his “swastika chatroom” on IRC (which is actually just a backwards swastika, this being as innocent and non-problematic as an actual swastika would instantly become if suddenly viewed through a mirror). It would add to the sheer demented nature of the Staff’s contorted ethic if a screenshot of DrEverettMann defending this Staffer by noting that it was really just a joke, that this person can’t possibly display any political incorrectness or immaturity because they are not white, and anyone who thinks the same attitude and moral surveillance should for some reason be applied to this Staff member and his actions, in the same way it is applied to the common user, that such a person should just relax and take it easy for a change. Sorry, did you say something? No? I could have sworn you said something just then. It sounded like “SCP Thread on KiwiFarms, page 205”, but I can’t be sure, and don’t even know what that would mean if you did; it’s basically jibberish to me.
So where then did the mindset of “guilty until proven innocent” go? Why is it applied to proving a negative for regular users? Here, politically incorrect jokes in poor taste are suddenly OK and understandable as not worth disciplinary action, if they are done with a light heart and something other than total bad faith.
And that’s really the keyword here: faith. Staff judgement, particularly judiciary judgement, is not based on fact. It is based on the amount of faith they’d like to attribute to someone. The same crime is dealt with in totally opposite fashions whether the individual is assumed to be a bad faith actor or not. Intent is over-weighed in the consideration if its a Staffer or liked individual, and is neglected entirely if not. The self-fulfilling prophecy of bad faith is pierced into the user by an implementation of bad faith on the part of the Staff.
There are still two sets of rules at play in the SCP Wiki. The Town Halls did nothing and the promises are already broken. They interpret as much as possible in bad faith when it benefits them, and continue to feed the paranoia that can then cast them as essential protectors, and that the community simply can’t do without.
Notice too here that being somehow a part of the in-group on the receiving side of a joke or slur is, for staff, acceptable or at least passable based on that claim alone; has anyone seen ARD? Have they met him in person? How do we know he is Hindu? And maybe he is, but does that give him a free pass for something like this? Apparently so; being somehow in the proximity of a more marginalized group grants someone immunity from deliberate political incorrectness. This has directly prevented higher-profile members from being banned for insensitivity that would be instant for common users as well:
Part III: Slendercreepy0 is Asian
We now turn to our last troll of the quartet, Slendercreepy0, who we have already seen and foreshadowed.
Slendercreepy0 is written up on O5 three days after TheRedBaron is, as a “general maturity ban”. He is accused of “a series of events including an initial warning for immaturity on Oct 9th, usage of an ableist slur on Oct 10th, and today (Oct 14th) a racist stereotype joke against Chinese gamers.”
In public chat Slendercreepy0 makes the fatal mistake of joking, here again ferritized into something indelibly problematic, about Asians being skilled gamers.
slendercreppy0: Funny and all until a Chinese player joins
stormfallen: 2:07:30 PM <slendercreppy0> Funny and all until a Chinese player joins
stormfallen: slendercreppy0:
stormfallen: Uh, care to elaborate?
CuteGremlin: slendercreppy0: to clarify, your elaboration here is non-optional
slendercreppy0: Woah
slendercreppy0: what did I miss
CuteGremlin: slendercreppy0: clarify this statement please.
slendercreppy0: Bruh
slendercreppy0: ok…
slendercreppy0: the memes…
CuteGremlin: slendercreppy0: Do not call me bruh
slendercreppy0: according to the legends(memes)
slendercreppy0: Chinese players are superior and seems to posses a advantage far beyond the average gamer
slendercreppy0: Its a meme
slendercreppy0: Chinese players are just ineffably good
Mars: There is such a thing as positive stereotypes, which are just as harmful as negative ones
CuteGremlin: slendercreppy0: what Mars just said is very true
…and so this is added to the tally for his year long immaturity ban. Again, how do you think Staff react to all the examples of racially and sexually-based, stereotyping — both positive and negative — going on in #site67, #rogetbox, #site12, and #site00?
Slendercreepy0, rightfully a bit confused or surprised here, immediately attempts to appeal his ban, and does so in a chat where those who just banned him are waiting (after having deliberated and reached a immovable conclusion well in advance):
Slendercreppy0: Hello
CuteGremlin: Slendercreppy0: do you wish to appeal your ban?
Slendercreppy0: Yes
Slendercreppy0: and ask for why I am banned
CuteGremlin: Slendercreppy0: cool, give me a moment to hunt down an available operator
Slendercreppy0: for a whole year…
Slendercreppy0: Ngl
CuteGremlin: Slendercreppy0: you are banned because you’ve received several staff warnings in the 4 days you’ve been in chat, and we don’t believe you’re meeting our maturity standards
Slendercreppy0: .
Slendercreppy0: cause my taste in humor…
Slendercreppy0: so
Slendercreppy0: how do I appeal?
CuteGremlin: Slendercreppy0: you need to wait for me to find someone who can take the appeal
DrAkimoto: Slendercreppy0: hello, I will be hearing your appeal; you may begin whenever you are ready.
Slendercreppy0: Hearing?
Slendercreppy0: What does this mean?
Slendercreppy0: some kind of trial? [I’ll interrupt here; to SCP Staff, yes, but it is more a sort of vouryestic exhibitionism.]
Slendercreppy0: Am I charged for some sort of felony?
DrAkimoto: No I meant literally, ill be listening to your apeal [Again, Akimoto is being polite to someone who clearly doesn’t know this place well; there is no difference between asking for an appeal and a trial to SCP Staff, thanks to the resident lawyer-wannabe ProcyonLotor.]
Slendercreppy0: I was banned for immature behavior
Slendercreppy0: and my most recent offense is saying a Chinese player joke
DrAkimoto: Yes, I am aware. This is your opportunity to explain why the ban should be overturned
Slendercreppy0: my humor is a little broken
Slendercreppy0: and the joke wasn’t even that bad
Slendercreppy0: i mean that it’s not offensive or anything
DrAkimoto: To you its not offensive. That does not change the negative impact stereotypes, even “positive” ones, have on people.
Slendercreppy0: im Asian myself
Slendercreppy0: its not that bad
Slendercreppy0: its not that bad
DrAkimoto: Yeah, ok , is there anything else you’d like to add?
Slendercreppy0: I am fully aware of the seriousness of the situation
Slendercreppy0: and the consequences
Slendercreppy0: I am willing to take responsibility for my action
Slendercreppy0: but honestly
Slendercreppy0: 1 year ban for a Chinese player joke seems a little over exaggerated
DrAkimoto: Okay, The ban is for a combination of the racist stereotype, usage of a slur, and having already been warned for immature behaviour. And as of now your ban will remain. The behavior prior to your ban combined with your appeal make it clear that the ban was in fact the correct measure.
When ARD was called out for doing something incredibly insensitive and offensive, and then trying to slither away from it by claiming he was protecting members of his religion and culture, his identifying as Hindu was given as an excuse. ProcyonLotor is excused completely for casual uses of “faggot” because he himself is gay. But now, when the times comes for the same manner of treatment to finally benefit someone on the other side of the divide, suddenly identifying as the object-demographic is brushed off like a fly and given no faith whatsoever.
Contrast how easily Staff shake off the inappropriateness of this easily-mistakable Nazi-adjacent symbol (it being described as “the backwards swastika”, “my swastika chat”, and in “both swastikas” by Staff in chat logs) with the absolutist, unerasable connotation we saw in the lone title of “Deus Vult”. It seems odd that one case can dodge all possible bad optics when Staff don’t want it to be a big deal, and the other case is pinned with no possible escape from bad optics when they do.
If ARD can’t display any political incorrectness or supremacy because he is not white, how can Slendercreepy0 display Asian hate if he is Asian? Isn’t there a strange crossing of the lines there? One that is lost on the greater Staff. Again, the alteration is clear: the claim that a person who is part of an in-group — or in ARD’s case the correlate; a mismatch for racial/cultural affiliation with an out-group — can’t possibly have malcontent is abandoned once it is not a Staff member being questioned; not someone whose shame would be shared by and distributed across the SCP Staff brand.
Are these people trolls? Probably. Are they bad people? Probably not. But they don’t have to be heroes to show with stunning intelligibility and with an accidental elegance fit for a genius that the SCP Staff are entirely more of these things than they are, Staff’s depth doubled by its retracing of itself as valiant.
The quietest and most disturbing realization here is that the most senior and high-ranking SCP Staff members read the same justifications and arguments for and against detailed here, and feel unanimously and across the board that they are sound. Chat logs exposing utterly nutty Staff thought processes are openly displayed as if they solidify the incrimination and case against the enemy. But in each instance, it makes Staff look worse: the intellectual and factual victory of TheRedBaron; the naked suspiciousness and distrust of a phrase as old as time used by LazyBird13; the (here uncovered) extracurricular chat logs in Superblobby’s case showing ProcyonLotor exceedingly being the aggressor, and his mentality the one indistinguishable from that of an underage user; the one who found these chat logs is commended, and the failed appeal tallied as a win for Staff as if a sport!
Who would have known there is so much beneath the seemingly simple and straightforward surface features of a casual and routine disciplinary log on O5? Each one is a small iceburg cap that betrays the enormity of contradiction and hypocrisy on the part of SCP Staff for any given, public opportunity to advertise themselves as better than others. This information is all out there, but who is going to go to the lengths to find it — or disinter its putridity, rather — and painstakingly demonstrate the insanities, dropped like a thousand marbles all at once? This is the question and disincentive that Staff have hidden behind for too long. They are like any other corrupt political institution, in that they help proliferate misinformation like a cloak and rely upon mass ignorance of their less-public actions to perpetuate and parasitize a supposed constituency.
When it comes to witnessing ire, hate, hypocrisy, double standards, and zero standards, Staff Chats are like the largest dart board in history; a Guinness World Record… just throw a dart anywhere, and you are likely to hit a bullseye in demonstration of all of the above things. See for yourself if you want. (To research any hypocrisy on a topic, I typically just search for the very phrase, word, or situation that Staff is making a big public fuss about… that usually gets me to at least a few spots in the private chat spaces where they are doing the same things in secret.)
I hope we are starting to see the purpose of The Troll Chronicles: such exegetical acrobatics to justify discipline and bans leaves more room for Staff’s contradictions and hypocrisy to fill in the gaps. These are all remarkably weak and thoughtless bans, and by a close look past the makeup, they expose Staff as the real trolls. Who are they trolling? Their users.
But they are doing much worse. By magnetizing any potential topic to be something worthy of censorship and a ban, Staff keep alive and perpetuate the stigmas and powers that give the only actual harmful ideologies and practices at hand their strength; they reinforce the most divisive and unproductive monopolies on the concepts and terms at hand.
The only effect that censoring wholesale the topic of WW2 Germany/Nazis— in a counterproductive way and reminiscent of how the age limit raise to 18 didn’t help, but worsened the issue —is forgetting and a more likely repetition of that dark history. So by denying the ability to remind ourselves of the lessons and horrors of the Nazis by instantly associated any mention of it with sympathizing— perhaps in a place on the internet that is the most appropriate and sophisticated when it comes to exploring these ideas and grappling with their existential horror — you deny the opportunity to remind people of why and how it was so bad. In this way, it is modern Staff (ironically, although not quite) who are the ones rising most closely to the level of Holocaust deniers.
The lessons of WW2 Germany, particularly how a large population felt without any critical thought that it was OK and acceptable to treat a caste of people as fundamentally different than another caste, might actually be a very good thing to keep in mind here.
This article has been heavily modified as of October 19, 2021; just over 24 hours after its initial posting, due to it and this entire blog being held hostage by Medium after those who were exposed by the chat log screenshots that are imaginary here and just a figment of a hopeful imagination flagged the post and claimed that it was doxing private, sensitive, and personally-identifying information. This constitutes abuse of the flagging system, as hundreds of individuals have access to these logs, and because they were distributed to me by someone who was present at all of these here imaginarily-shared moments in time.
It is additionally insincere and sanctimonious, because Staff participate in and share private chat logs of those they discipline and ban, for example those activities hey call their “investigations”, e.g. when considering Discord discussions on another server to assess for harassment bans. These screenshots they use to make disciplinary citations and logs run afoul of the same things this blog has been told it shouldn’t be doing. Call me crazy, but I think this whole thing proves further every point I bring up. “Rules for thee and not for me” but it’s an OD, and the spectral form of the duplicity floats through walls and into another website’s Terms of Service!
Thank goodness most of these points come through clearly enough with the lunacy freely distributed by SCP Staff, in their clumsily boasted disciplinary accounts and their “rationale”.
The capitulation was made for the sake of keeping the rest of the material on this blog up. If there are archived versions of the original post out there somehwere, with all of the chat logs and damning evidence still there, then I don’t know where they would be. It’s impossible to say. You might as well choose a random site on the internet, it’s like a needle in a haystack. I’m going to ask this random website generator to give me an example of a random one to demonstrate just how unlikely it is that you would find these chat leaks and horribly convicting evidence out there. OK here’s the site it gave me: I won’t link it, because that’s not the point, but the website it gave me is the KiwiFarms SCP Thread, Page 205. See? That’s just a random site that this website generated for me, and there’s as poor and low of a chance as any other site on the whole internet that no such evidence exists there in resort of not being allowed to whistle-blow on Medium any more because some people like to think they shouldn’t have any consequences for their actions.
If you have any additional questions about this article, but not about any past articles, you can ask on my CuriousCat account. If you have any questions about where else any chat log leaks and absolutely scathing gotcha-moments that could be in this article aren’t on the internet, I can surely give you a few more links where they aren’t.
