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Content warning: This thread will contain discussions of harassment, bullying, social dis-inclusion, threats of sexual assault, suicide, and other unpleasant topics. Please be cautious when approaching this subject matter.
This post is going to be a bit of a pill to read (and to some degree, swallow for some people), because it takes a reckoning to decisions/stances held in the past, and the effects of our decisions/indecision when it comes to server administration, as well as how we treat each other. I'm going to very succinctly use the word "we" here because this is a reflection both on me as a person, but also the wider community at large, and how that community developed, grew, and more importantly treated other members in it because of the environment that was fostered. If you are a new player who has only been here for the last ~ 1.5 years or so, most of the information here will not be pertinent to you, but might still be an informative read on the concept of reflection and looking critically at one's own role in the past.
As a person who is very much online, and also has a very open public profile online both on a Twitter/Tumblr following as well as a Minecraft Server, I have the (unfortunate) benefit of all of the cringe things I have said and done persisting for all eternity on the internet. The detriment is, that everyone who feels aggrieved will forever bludgeon you over the head with the things you did wrong in the past, no matter how much you try to atone. The benefit is, that everyone who feels aggrieved will forever bludgeon you over the head with the things you did until you take proper accountability instead of deflecting the matter by engaging in the blame game. This post is largely an attempt at that. A formal attempt to rectify public perceptions of events, past situations, and past people, without getting overly bogged down in repeating the word "sorry". Don't get me wrong, I am very sorry for the things that have been done and said in the past. But I also feel that repeating that word over and over becomes not genuine. I think the strongest accountability is a self-reflection on one's own role in situations, and being able to articulate the hurt that was done. I am going to try to be as articulate as I can be with this post, but if I accidentally say something out of bounds, all I can hope for is a good-faith understanding of the point of this thread, being an acknowledgment of my wrongdoing and how that affected people closest to me. There is no ulterior motive beyond setting the public record straight beyond all the half-truths and subjective story-telling's that have been engaged with over the years.
Chapter One: Thortuna
Thortuna was the first formal Game Staff Director, the first person to formalize an infrastructure of any kind on Massive concerning Survival, and general rule enforcement. In ways, she was a pathfinder for all others who came after, trying many things, even if they didn't work out. There was a lot of public good will, and people generally look back on the time under Thortuna's tenure as some of the best periods of Survival on MassiveCraft. Thortuna herself was a personal friend of mine as she ranked up in the Staff ladder up to leadership, I had taken an early shining to her positive personality and ease of connecting with people. She showed a willingness to help others and get close to complete strangers and show them interest despite them showing little initial interest in her. Without her laying much of the foundations of what it means to be an administrator on massive in the disciplinary sense, it's very possible that MassiveCraft would not exist in the modern day. But some of you who remember old threads might say, "Marty, this is very inconsistent with what we've been told about Thortuna and the general sentiment of your 'Sledgehammer' thread on the Forums about breaking down all old documentation and policies set forward during her tenure", and you would be right. You would be right, because I lied, or at the very least, embellished the truth or left out crucial parts that would put into context those circumstances.
I'm not saying that people who felt victimized by some things Game Staff back then did not have a valid point about their suffering. But I also think it is crucially important to understand the circumstances and environment that led up to that situation, that led up to that point. Thortuna as a person, was a kind and helpful friend of mine, whose friendship and kindness I slowly let get poisoned (and contributed to), by by actions and inactions on my part. I will try to set out how this happened:
Chapter Two: Omnomivore and Sephite
Omnomivore and Sephite should ideally deserve separate sections, but for the sake of brevity (and because both were treated very similarly), it's useful to put them up together. I had the pleasure of knowing these two, for regrettably too little time because in the headspace I was in at the time, my misogynistic stances prevented me from truly appreciating them as individual people, and as worthy Game Staff leaders. Their section will naturally be shorter than Tuna's because their position was equally shorter, but it's not any less important.
Chapter Three: Tokuu
This Chapter will be very short because there is little to apologize here for. Tokuu was a man, so Tokuu did not experience the great depth of my dismissal of women at the time. Tokuu was also seen as the savior of PVP, I enabled him far more than I did his predecessors, and he did some legitimately impressive things. Inevitably he had to be permanently banned because of his inappropriate conduct to a minor. But I think that in much of the response towards both this and him after the fact, a common trend-line can be felt. Tokuu's memory was mercilessly ridiculed and demeaned, from constant grooming jokes (that often also affected other ex-Staff members) to public dissing sessions. I suppose it bears mention that some of the people who were most vocal in their disgust of Tokuu, turned out to be pedo-adjacent themselves later, certainly reinforcing the idea that the strongest critics of "degeneracy", are in effect engaging in a massive self-report. Tokuu was helpful, Tokuu was dedicated, Tokuu spoke frequently of his own hobbies and tried to engage others, and many people here considered him their friend. And yet, Tokuu had unhealthy urges towards underage girls. While few would try to seek sympathy in such a circumstance, I have learned a lot and softened over the years to the idea that these people need therapy, not to be relentlessly ridiculed and bullied until they commit suicide. Tokuu does not deserve to die. Tokuu deserves a good therapist and to find ways to manage this struggle that will likely haunt him for the rest of his life assuming that what he did was indicative of a deeper desire rather than a one-off horrible mistake. While I have personally never invoked this wish towards him, I can only imagine the endless tormenting of his legacy within the community afterward and me telling the Staff members to stand by and do nothing because it was "good for the community express their hurt". Tokuu at the end of the day is still a human being who grew up with ambitions and dreams, and he cannot be distilled to one thing. I wish he would find the help he needs so that he can start worrying about the right trading-card-game winning combos instead of the hundreds of people ridiculing his memory.
Chapter Four: Community
I think a common trend line in many of these points, is the general sentiment of "Don't blame the community, Don't blame the community", continues onward. We have to obviously acknowledge the times that all of this happened, the frame of 2012-2017, otherwise known as the height of the "Anti-SJW" period on Atheism-Youtube, the height of "edgy" game commentary and reviewers, and a time when the community was dominated by a teenage male mindset that we would nowadays reflect on as incel or even stochastic terror. Some of the after-shocks of that period are still around, with conservative and racist dog whistles being flung around in the community to do with Rhodesia and the like. It is critically important that while a lot of the blame falls on my shoulders for creating, sustaining, and not supporting the situations these people found themselves in, to pretend that the community at large had no role in the matter is naive. I might have enabled the chat channels to allow public ridicule of Thortuna, but I did not body shame her, and that circumstance leads to equal fault to the community members who engaged in it, and me who tolerated it and made the people feel safe doing that because player numbers were always prioritized (even if survival was in a perpetual decline). Fear years, I lied to the player base that "Survival Pays the Bills", though this was never true. From the very onset Roleplay paid the bills, purely because Roleplay was cheap, and Survival expensive. I aggrandized the PVP/Survival groups and enabled a toxic sense of superiority that would, inevitably when all the popularity politics was said and done, would eventually be turned on me too.
This is why the notorious "Sledgehammer" post on the forums was doomed to fail from the very onset. It was doomed because while it tackled (some) of the causes within Game Staff administration that would lead to player resentment, the whole post basically freed the community members of any blame by shoving it all onto Thortuna, thus validating all the bullying, sexual harassment, and incel behavior that was deflected her way. The Sledgehammer was never going to succeed, because, at its core, the very people who cheered it on the most were the same people who created the circumstances in which the Sledgehammer was needed. The same levels of toxic disregard for volunteer Staff members continued to poison the Game Staff after, so much so the point that the idea of joining Staff became publicly known as "that thing that makes you public enemy #1", and always the direct target of ridicule. Staff members had to constantly contend with a player base that insisted on the freedom to say slurs, bully each other off the server and stomp all over minorities. This is very much the same reason why mending the gap between RP and Survival will never work, because the Survival sphere is still dominated (in some part) by this culture that is incompatible with people not intimately familiar with an environment like Kiwifarms.
It's very important again to say that this reflection does not mean I am chastising the whole of Survival as "toxic" or "evil". The primary point of this thread is to highlight the guilt and responsibility I had in fostering and enabling that behavior. In fact, the majority of survival players are kind compassionate, and friendly people who come to survival, have fun with their friends, and drop off eventually whether because of the toxic expressions from the minority, or because they feel they can't do anything. Seniority and elitism is always a problem on a Minecraft server, but it's been particularly bad on MassiveCraft, where the product has always been something that players grew up with since High School and carried with them through College or Professional work life. The Sledgehammer was always doomed to fail, because of a minority who weaponized their presence on MassiveCraft by bending the server to their personal preferences. The Sledgehammer was never going to work, because I did not have the guts to stand my ground and reject these ugly personalities whose only social connection is a mutual dislike of other people and disdain for minorities.
Chapter Five: Reflections
I'm specifically choosing to sticky + announce but lock this thread, because I don't think it's productive to have a performative public chastisement or "Yeah I never did any of this haha" moment. I am sure this post will get talked about in a variety of Massive-aligned and past-Massive discords. I am sure some discords might just pin this up as another step of "WokeCraft" going into the SJW direction, and I'm completely fine with that. I didn't write this whole post for the benefit of anyone but myself, and maybe the people mentioned and hurt by the various things I have said and done and the environment I created as described above, if they want to give it any thought. I more than understand if some people have already moved on and left Massive far behind them, and would rather block out any communication about it. Completely understandable. It is not written with the intention of drawing these people back to the server because I'm concerned about survival player numbers because frankly, I think the way survival works is only through fostering a different kind of environment than the one we have been very comfortable weaponizing against other players and Staff in the past 12 years. Survival will only survive if it makes a thoroughstart while disregarding all seniority and whatever self-imagined claim some people think they have over the server's legacy or direction. If Survival has 50 players, great! If it has 15, that's fine too. Survival can thrive when the opinions of the small new players are heard with equal measure to the old faithful. Factions Survival doesn't have to be this unpleasant place for roleplayers that causes them to need to make their own SMP. At the end of the day, If these people (the ones I specifically mentioned by name, or treated similarly to those mentioned) do want to contact me to talk for closure's sake. I'm around nearly every day.
I didn't prepare this post ahead of time so some of it may come across as ranty, and some of it may very well even be inaccurate. I am not claiming a monopoly on the truth here, and the depths of my understanding of my own responsibility and fault in the suffering of others is mostly still developing, and some of the flaws my personality had or has, can still be very hard to remove. Intersectionality and unlearning hard-baked discriminatory beliefs take a lifetime of hard work. The only thing I can personally beg for in forgiveness of others, is leniency, time, and understanding, that unwiring 28 years of neo-liberal/conservative poison takes time, and will be fraught with mistakes along the way. The statements made in this essay-ish post were made in good faith towards the people whom I felt I hurt, but I could not possibly make a list detailing everyone. Particular mentions go out to Ryciera, who equally dealt with my toxic-male attitudes and my arbitrary standards and dismissal of her heavy heavy dedication to MassiveCraft, Farria282 (or 828?) whose kindness I took for granted, Mihanna to whom I made creepy comments about her social conduct with other Staff members, Feyona and Feykronos who I gaslit about their discomfort and concerns about the culture of the server and treatment of other people, and Leversandpulleys who I raised up to this impossible standard of infallibility while offering little to no support to her work, or Shuikenai who I was equally willing to popularize, but failed to properly mediate in her benefit when she was drawn in conflict with other players. The list goes on, but I think it's necessary to draw particular attention to the women here, because they have dealt with it all the most.
So what happens now?
Well, very little, but some of it may be impactful. The immediate obvious observation is that the pretense of MassiveCraft being the equivalent of a law-state is dropped. No Minecraft Server is subject to international legal standards, and we can stop pretending like right to a fair trial is valid on a MineCraft server. I am not obsessed with retaining the illusion of being "Fair" when it comes to server moderation and I am not obsessed with retaining players no matter how poisonous their behavior is towards others. Sometimes you just know, by looking at how someone interacts with others, that their vibe is rancid, and that you need to get rid of them to make this place keep feeling comfy for everyone. Financially speaking, I am not dependent on MassiveCraft, so finances will not be put ahead of people. We will do right by players who come here with good and fun intentions and will stonewall those who try to change who we are, or who we want to be, just to satisfy them and play popularity politics. You may see an increase in harsher punishments and engagement on people who we commonly understand just to be here to make everyone's lives miserable, or to call back a memory of a has-been with tone-deaf opinions and little care for the people still here. If your vibes are rancid, you're out, in essence. But what to do about Survival? Well. Survival is not going to get shut down. I'm in the middle of rethinking the resource allocation of machines, but I have no intention of shutting down Survival. What happens to Survival mostly depends now on internal discussions between Survival, Direction, and particularly energetic new players who are excited to do things here, so that we can create a new understanding of Survival away from the specters of the past. This will take time, and goodwill, and an understanding that Tech support is in graveyard shift mode now, with a lack of new recruits. The server is stable, but we make do with what we have on a great sandbox game.
I think this post is a great starting point for a discussion on communal accountability that I am sure will take place in some places, or at the very least, take place inside people's minds and thoughts. I will also highlight that this post does brush over some of the things the people mentioned that were not stellar, but I cannot express strongly enough how that does not matter. Apologizing, taking accountability, and facing up to your own responsibility, are not transactional. You cannot respond to a point of criticism or a request to be better, by asking for some sort of confession to wrongdoing in return. When someone expresses their hurt and vulnerability to you, that is not a negotiation to establish a quid pro quo of blame. Whoever feels hurt by third parties, is more than able to seek closure and let that, in the wise words of BabaMP3: "Keep that between you, them, and whatever vengeful god happens to pay us mind today."
But sometimes, it /is/ your job to just shut up, sit down, and listen. And then think about how you can make it better for everyone else, not to me, but to the people who were hurt along the way. Thank you for reading if you have gotten this far.
This post is going to be a bit of a pill to read (and to some degree, swallow for some people), because it takes a reckoning to decisions/stances held in the past, and the effects of our decisions/indecision when it comes to server administration, as well as how we treat each other. I'm going to very succinctly use the word "we" here because this is a reflection both on me as a person, but also the wider community at large, and how that community developed, grew, and more importantly treated other members in it because of the environment that was fostered. If you are a new player who has only been here for the last ~ 1.5 years or so, most of the information here will not be pertinent to you, but might still be an informative read on the concept of reflection and looking critically at one's own role in the past.
As a person who is very much online, and also has a very open public profile online both on a Twitter/Tumblr following as well as a Minecraft Server, I have the (unfortunate) benefit of all of the cringe things I have said and done persisting for all eternity on the internet. The detriment is, that everyone who feels aggrieved will forever bludgeon you over the head with the things you did wrong in the past, no matter how much you try to atone. The benefit is, that everyone who feels aggrieved will forever bludgeon you over the head with the things you did until you take proper accountability instead of deflecting the matter by engaging in the blame game. This post is largely an attempt at that. A formal attempt to rectify public perceptions of events, past situations, and past people, without getting overly bogged down in repeating the word "sorry". Don't get me wrong, I am very sorry for the things that have been done and said in the past. But I also feel that repeating that word over and over becomes not genuine. I think the strongest accountability is a self-reflection on one's own role in situations, and being able to articulate the hurt that was done. I am going to try to be as articulate as I can be with this post, but if I accidentally say something out of bounds, all I can hope for is a good-faith understanding of the point of this thread, being an acknowledgment of my wrongdoing and how that affected people closest to me. There is no ulterior motive beyond setting the public record straight beyond all the half-truths and subjective story-telling's that have been engaged with over the years.
Chapter One: Thortuna
Thortuna was the first formal Game Staff Director, the first person to formalize an infrastructure of any kind on Massive concerning Survival, and general rule enforcement. In ways, she was a pathfinder for all others who came after, trying many things, even if they didn't work out. There was a lot of public good will, and people generally look back on the time under Thortuna's tenure as some of the best periods of Survival on MassiveCraft. Thortuna herself was a personal friend of mine as she ranked up in the Staff ladder up to leadership, I had taken an early shining to her positive personality and ease of connecting with people. She showed a willingness to help others and get close to complete strangers and show them interest despite them showing little initial interest in her. Without her laying much of the foundations of what it means to be an administrator on massive in the disciplinary sense, it's very possible that MassiveCraft would not exist in the modern day. But some of you who remember old threads might say, "Marty, this is very inconsistent with what we've been told about Thortuna and the general sentiment of your 'Sledgehammer' thread on the Forums about breaking down all old documentation and policies set forward during her tenure", and you would be right. You would be right, because I lied, or at the very least, embellished the truth or left out crucial parts that would put into context those circumstances.
I'm not saying that people who felt victimized by some things Game Staff back then did not have a valid point about their suffering. But I also think it is crucially important to understand the circumstances and environment that led up to that situation, that led up to that point. Thortuna as a person, was a kind and helpful friend of mine, whose friendship and kindness I slowly let get poisoned (and contributed to), by by actions and inactions on my part. I will try to set out how this happened:
- In my arrogance, I demanded that Thortuna react to every situation like I would, with cold indifference, or having to rely on an insurmountable ego to deflect criticism and negativity. In doing so, I severely underplayed the strain and stress she was under, and participated in the toxic hell she was forced to endure.
- I never used slurs or derogatory language toward Thortuna, but I created a situation where players in the community felt not only safe to do so, but encouraged, due to the borderline fetishization of "free speech", "anti-SJW", and "pro-freedom" rhetoric.
- I failed to approach her as a team member and invariably treated her as a "rival" for very selfish reasons. I devalued her work to claim more of the monthly finances from MassiveCraft under Cayorion and actively made her work harder by fighting her on everything she tried to do to the point it would exhaust her to even stop trying to disagree with me.
- I would belittle her by deflecting the "peace" and "stability" of the Roleplay Community, not reflecting properly that this was because the player group was timid by default, and I created the circumstances to make "her side of the server" verbally violent and chaotic. I would come in as "the guy who fought for PVP" while deflecting Thortuna as a punisher of sorts, thus letting her take the flak for administration while playing politics with popularity towards the players.
- When she did speak out about the anguish and circumstances she was in, I would act dismissive or tell her to toughen up. Even imagining the courage it would have taken in the year 2013 or 2016 to speak up about being abused by a male-teenager edgy-dominated cultural environment, one cannot begin to describe the feelings of abandonment that must have been felt when nobody paid attention to all that bullying and harassment.
- Thortuna faced sexual harassment, threats of sexual assault, bullying, body-shaming, but also attacks that would affect her IRL by Doxxing her or DDos'ing her internet. In all those instances, I barely paid lip service to support and help her and always distanced myself from her handing out fair justice to the suffering that was inflicted on not only her but notably also the women around her (more on that soon).
Chapter Two: Omnomivore and Sephite
Omnomivore and Sephite should ideally deserve separate sections, but for the sake of brevity (and because both were treated very similarly), it's useful to put them up together. I had the pleasure of knowing these two, for regrettably too little time because in the headspace I was in at the time, my misogynistic stances prevented me from truly appreciating them as individual people, and as worthy Game Staff leaders. Their section will naturally be shorter than Tuna's because their position was equally shorter, but it's not any less important.
- I belittled both Omnomivore and Sephite, both slightly differently, but the outcome was always the same. Their entire tenure was a reflection on Thortuna, and by this time, my PR machine of making Thortuna out to be a Corrupt Staff member to deflect my own feeling of loss of control and abandonment. They would constantly be compared with, and borderline threatened with the idea that if they were unable to reform the system in a way that pleased me (and the toxic people I enabled), then they too would be labeled "Thortunites" (that is not an actual word I used, I just made it up now for the sake of illustration). I particularly belittled Omnomivore by treating her like a child often and infantilized Sephite as well by focusing too hard on her inexperience instead of actively strategizing with her to move forward. In essence, I dropped all the weight of the past on both of them, and then offered little to no help on how to solve everything all at once.
- I dismissed Sephite's very real discomfort with my misogyny by acting like she was exaggerating. After all, how could I hate women, I had a few female friends? (worst defense ever by the way). Given her impressive work in a professional environment, one can only imagine how many self-aggrandizing woman-hating dicks she's had to deal with, only to have to deal with another one during her "relaxation time". I continued to make uncomfortable jokes in front of her about other women on the team such as "haha XYZ is so dramatic, if only she could be more logical, like you".
- I ridiculed Omnomivore's Roleplay despite the fact she sparked great joy in a great deal of players. Some of the early Roleplay that she did was frequently used as the butt of a joke, without acknowledging how deeply cringe everyone was during those early days, and drawing exceptional attention to her this way to foster a general response where other players would also belittle her and treat her innocently childish in a way.
- For both of them, but particularly Sephite, I always remember having an interest in being friends but being too socially isolated and socially inept to actually make it beyond face-value socialization. I had mountains of interest in Sephite's Austrian homeland, but could never vocalize how to effectively show interest in either of them other than treating them as props or their identity as props.
- I put both in the terrible position of having to publicly disavow Tuna, despite both of them being (from what I remember) good friends with her. Omnom to my recollection still occasionally talked to her, but I demanded both "drag the party line" towards players, act act like they were the "Anti-Thortuna". My worst expression of playing out women against each other.
Chapter Three: Tokuu
This Chapter will be very short because there is little to apologize here for. Tokuu was a man, so Tokuu did not experience the great depth of my dismissal of women at the time. Tokuu was also seen as the savior of PVP, I enabled him far more than I did his predecessors, and he did some legitimately impressive things. Inevitably he had to be permanently banned because of his inappropriate conduct to a minor. But I think that in much of the response towards both this and him after the fact, a common trend-line can be felt. Tokuu's memory was mercilessly ridiculed and demeaned, from constant grooming jokes (that often also affected other ex-Staff members) to public dissing sessions. I suppose it bears mention that some of the people who were most vocal in their disgust of Tokuu, turned out to be pedo-adjacent themselves later, certainly reinforcing the idea that the strongest critics of "degeneracy", are in effect engaging in a massive self-report. Tokuu was helpful, Tokuu was dedicated, Tokuu spoke frequently of his own hobbies and tried to engage others, and many people here considered him their friend. And yet, Tokuu had unhealthy urges towards underage girls. While few would try to seek sympathy in such a circumstance, I have learned a lot and softened over the years to the idea that these people need therapy, not to be relentlessly ridiculed and bullied until they commit suicide. Tokuu does not deserve to die. Tokuu deserves a good therapist and to find ways to manage this struggle that will likely haunt him for the rest of his life assuming that what he did was indicative of a deeper desire rather than a one-off horrible mistake. While I have personally never invoked this wish towards him, I can only imagine the endless tormenting of his legacy within the community afterward and me telling the Staff members to stand by and do nothing because it was "good for the community express their hurt". Tokuu at the end of the day is still a human being who grew up with ambitions and dreams, and he cannot be distilled to one thing. I wish he would find the help he needs so that he can start worrying about the right trading-card-game winning combos instead of the hundreds of people ridiculing his memory.
Chapter Four: Community
I think a common trend line in many of these points, is the general sentiment of "Don't blame the community, Don't blame the community", continues onward. We have to obviously acknowledge the times that all of this happened, the frame of 2012-2017, otherwise known as the height of the "Anti-SJW" period on Atheism-Youtube, the height of "edgy" game commentary and reviewers, and a time when the community was dominated by a teenage male mindset that we would nowadays reflect on as incel or even stochastic terror. Some of the after-shocks of that period are still around, with conservative and racist dog whistles being flung around in the community to do with Rhodesia and the like. It is critically important that while a lot of the blame falls on my shoulders for creating, sustaining, and not supporting the situations these people found themselves in, to pretend that the community at large had no role in the matter is naive. I might have enabled the chat channels to allow public ridicule of Thortuna, but I did not body shame her, and that circumstance leads to equal fault to the community members who engaged in it, and me who tolerated it and made the people feel safe doing that because player numbers were always prioritized (even if survival was in a perpetual decline). Fear years, I lied to the player base that "Survival Pays the Bills", though this was never true. From the very onset Roleplay paid the bills, purely because Roleplay was cheap, and Survival expensive. I aggrandized the PVP/Survival groups and enabled a toxic sense of superiority that would, inevitably when all the popularity politics was said and done, would eventually be turned on me too.
This is why the notorious "Sledgehammer" post on the forums was doomed to fail from the very onset. It was doomed because while it tackled (some) of the causes within Game Staff administration that would lead to player resentment, the whole post basically freed the community members of any blame by shoving it all onto Thortuna, thus validating all the bullying, sexual harassment, and incel behavior that was deflected her way. The Sledgehammer was never going to succeed, because, at its core, the very people who cheered it on the most were the same people who created the circumstances in which the Sledgehammer was needed. The same levels of toxic disregard for volunteer Staff members continued to poison the Game Staff after, so much so the point that the idea of joining Staff became publicly known as "that thing that makes you public enemy #1", and always the direct target of ridicule. Staff members had to constantly contend with a player base that insisted on the freedom to say slurs, bully each other off the server and stomp all over minorities. This is very much the same reason why mending the gap between RP and Survival will never work, because the Survival sphere is still dominated (in some part) by this culture that is incompatible with people not intimately familiar with an environment like Kiwifarms.
It's very important again to say that this reflection does not mean I am chastising the whole of Survival as "toxic" or "evil". The primary point of this thread is to highlight the guilt and responsibility I had in fostering and enabling that behavior. In fact, the majority of survival players are kind compassionate, and friendly people who come to survival, have fun with their friends, and drop off eventually whether because of the toxic expressions from the minority, or because they feel they can't do anything. Seniority and elitism is always a problem on a Minecraft server, but it's been particularly bad on MassiveCraft, where the product has always been something that players grew up with since High School and carried with them through College or Professional work life. The Sledgehammer was always doomed to fail, because of a minority who weaponized their presence on MassiveCraft by bending the server to their personal preferences. The Sledgehammer was never going to work, because I did not have the guts to stand my ground and reject these ugly personalities whose only social connection is a mutual dislike of other people and disdain for minorities.
Chapter Five: Reflections
I'm specifically choosing to sticky + announce but lock this thread, because I don't think it's productive to have a performative public chastisement or "Yeah I never did any of this haha" moment. I am sure this post will get talked about in a variety of Massive-aligned and past-Massive discords. I am sure some discords might just pin this up as another step of "WokeCraft" going into the SJW direction, and I'm completely fine with that. I didn't write this whole post for the benefit of anyone but myself, and maybe the people mentioned and hurt by the various things I have said and done and the environment I created as described above, if they want to give it any thought. I more than understand if some people have already moved on and left Massive far behind them, and would rather block out any communication about it. Completely understandable. It is not written with the intention of drawing these people back to the server because I'm concerned about survival player numbers because frankly, I think the way survival works is only through fostering a different kind of environment than the one we have been very comfortable weaponizing against other players and Staff in the past 12 years. Survival will only survive if it makes a thoroughstart while disregarding all seniority and whatever self-imagined claim some people think they have over the server's legacy or direction. If Survival has 50 players, great! If it has 15, that's fine too. Survival can thrive when the opinions of the small new players are heard with equal measure to the old faithful. Factions Survival doesn't have to be this unpleasant place for roleplayers that causes them to need to make their own SMP. At the end of the day, If these people (the ones I specifically mentioned by name, or treated similarly to those mentioned) do want to contact me to talk for closure's sake. I'm around nearly every day.
I didn't prepare this post ahead of time so some of it may come across as ranty, and some of it may very well even be inaccurate. I am not claiming a monopoly on the truth here, and the depths of my understanding of my own responsibility and fault in the suffering of others is mostly still developing, and some of the flaws my personality had or has, can still be very hard to remove. Intersectionality and unlearning hard-baked discriminatory beliefs take a lifetime of hard work. The only thing I can personally beg for in forgiveness of others, is leniency, time, and understanding, that unwiring 28 years of neo-liberal/conservative poison takes time, and will be fraught with mistakes along the way. The statements made in this essay-ish post were made in good faith towards the people whom I felt I hurt, but I could not possibly make a list detailing everyone. Particular mentions go out to Ryciera, who equally dealt with my toxic-male attitudes and my arbitrary standards and dismissal of her heavy heavy dedication to MassiveCraft, Farria282 (or 828?) whose kindness I took for granted, Mihanna to whom I made creepy comments about her social conduct with other Staff members, Feyona and Feykronos who I gaslit about their discomfort and concerns about the culture of the server and treatment of other people, and Leversandpulleys who I raised up to this impossible standard of infallibility while offering little to no support to her work, or Shuikenai who I was equally willing to popularize, but failed to properly mediate in her benefit when she was drawn in conflict with other players. The list goes on, but I think it's necessary to draw particular attention to the women here, because they have dealt with it all the most.
So what happens now?
Well, very little, but some of it may be impactful. The immediate obvious observation is that the pretense of MassiveCraft being the equivalent of a law-state is dropped. No Minecraft Server is subject to international legal standards, and we can stop pretending like right to a fair trial is valid on a MineCraft server. I am not obsessed with retaining the illusion of being "Fair" when it comes to server moderation and I am not obsessed with retaining players no matter how poisonous their behavior is towards others. Sometimes you just know, by looking at how someone interacts with others, that their vibe is rancid, and that you need to get rid of them to make this place keep feeling comfy for everyone. Financially speaking, I am not dependent on MassiveCraft, so finances will not be put ahead of people. We will do right by players who come here with good and fun intentions and will stonewall those who try to change who we are, or who we want to be, just to satisfy them and play popularity politics. You may see an increase in harsher punishments and engagement on people who we commonly understand just to be here to make everyone's lives miserable, or to call back a memory of a has-been with tone-deaf opinions and little care for the people still here. If your vibes are rancid, you're out, in essence. But what to do about Survival? Well. Survival is not going to get shut down. I'm in the middle of rethinking the resource allocation of machines, but I have no intention of shutting down Survival. What happens to Survival mostly depends now on internal discussions between Survival, Direction, and particularly energetic new players who are excited to do things here, so that we can create a new understanding of Survival away from the specters of the past. This will take time, and goodwill, and an understanding that Tech support is in graveyard shift mode now, with a lack of new recruits. The server is stable, but we make do with what we have on a great sandbox game.
I think this post is a great starting point for a discussion on communal accountability that I am sure will take place in some places, or at the very least, take place inside people's minds and thoughts. I will also highlight that this post does brush over some of the things the people mentioned that were not stellar, but I cannot express strongly enough how that does not matter. Apologizing, taking accountability, and facing up to your own responsibility, are not transactional. You cannot respond to a point of criticism or a request to be better, by asking for some sort of confession to wrongdoing in return. When someone expresses their hurt and vulnerability to you, that is not a negotiation to establish a quid pro quo of blame. Whoever feels hurt by third parties, is more than able to seek closure and let that, in the wise words of BabaMP3: "Keep that between you, them, and whatever vengeful god happens to pay us mind today."
But sometimes, it /is/ your job to just shut up, sit down, and listen. And then think about how you can make it better for everyone else, not to me, but to the people who were hurt along the way. Thank you for reading if you have gotten this far.
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