- Pronoun
- she/her
The main reason that I personally wanted these logs posted is because I know these poeple have a lot of friends on this forum, some of which they might actually still be talking to and claiming their innocence. I don't really care about that very much. If any of you still want to be friends with people, that's none of my business (and you're not going to be like, banned for it or something). What I really wanted is for people to be making informed choices about what these people are like. If you're friends with these people, I want you to think critically about your friendship with them and decide if you're okay with all of this shit that's been going on. You're not a bad person if you don't want to be friends with someone because they do things you don't like.
I think you can look at this situation two ways.
The first way you can look at this is that they were being malicious. I look at the logs and remember everything I've experienced with these guys ... and I just have to wonder how any of them forgot that the things they were doing were really, seriously problematic. They discuss with each other in the logs whether it's advantageous to keep lying to the social group so blazheirio889 won't be banned. They discuss several times openly about manipulating people so they'll have them 'on their side'. They talk about whose accounts they have access to and joke about us believing some of the things they lied about. They're self-aware about the discussion they're having, and a lot of it does seem genuinely malicious. There are also several mentions of laughing about how ASB will burn to the ground without them, how they're destroying ASB, how funny it is that they're lying to people and making them upset.
For example, I personally confronted Mai and vented my frustration about this (Mai accessed my account specifically) because I thought Mai was cool and I thought we could be friends; they basically deflected and didn't respond to me at all. You can later see Mai joking that 'uv has decided that I'm a terrible person now'. That isn't the actions of a person who didn't think they were doing any harm and just joking around, sorry. It's kind of unambiguously mean.
Keep in mind that the actual rules they broke - breaking into people's accounts, using the Mod CP to track IPs, reading through people's private messages - are actual serious behaviours that usually have real-life consequences. This is the kind of thing that you would get fired for at a job or expelled from school for - or at worst, you could potentially face legal action or the law. I say this a lot, but we're a tiny pokemon forum with ~100 active members. The worst consequence they could face from us is a ban (which isn't even foolproof).
The other way they could look at this is that they didn't mean to be malicious and just thought it was funny. I feel like probably a few of those involved didn't intend to actually do harm to people by getting involved in things like this. When you're friends with people who make bad decisions but their friendships are valuable to you, you can rationalise it and ignore the bad parts and keep being friends with them. Eventually these bad behaviours don't even register as a big deal anymore and you kind of stop thinking about it. I get that.
But even if you look at it this way, when someone does things that affect you, it's a two-way street. Someone can accidentally step on your sandcastle and not intend to upset you, but that can still be really upsetting! Because your sandcastle has a giant foot imprint in the middle of it, and that really sucks, but you'd understand if it was an accident. You probably won't hate someone for that.
But you'd probably hate someone for... standing on your sandcastle because they thought it was funny. They didn't do it with the expressed purpose of doing it to make you feel bad, but you're probably going to be upset because that's a dick thing to do. You'd probably be more upset if it was a really big sandcastle and they'd helped you build it and pretended to be super excited about it. You'd probably be even more upset if they did this multiple times, even after you telling them that it was a mean thing to do.
The good thing about sandcastles is that they're made out of sand and you can fix them pretty easily! You can scoop up all the broken bits, pick out all the shells and get those assholes escorted off the beach.
There are several instances in those logs where they're gloating that ASB is going to be ruined now. I'm not really interested in seeing that happen.
This isn't really directed at you; I just want to speak openly about it.
I think you can look at this situation two ways.
The first way you can look at this is that they were being malicious. I look at the logs and remember everything I've experienced with these guys ... and I just have to wonder how any of them forgot that the things they were doing were really, seriously problematic. They discuss with each other in the logs whether it's advantageous to keep lying to the social group so blazheirio889 won't be banned. They discuss several times openly about manipulating people so they'll have them 'on their side'. They talk about whose accounts they have access to and joke about us believing some of the things they lied about. They're self-aware about the discussion they're having, and a lot of it does seem genuinely malicious. There are also several mentions of laughing about how ASB will burn to the ground without them, how they're destroying ASB, how funny it is that they're lying to people and making them upset.
For example, I personally confronted Mai and vented my frustration about this (Mai accessed my account specifically) because I thought Mai was cool and I thought we could be friends; they basically deflected and didn't respond to me at all. You can later see Mai joking that 'uv has decided that I'm a terrible person now'. That isn't the actions of a person who didn't think they were doing any harm and just joking around, sorry. It's kind of unambiguously mean.
Keep in mind that the actual rules they broke - breaking into people's accounts, using the Mod CP to track IPs, reading through people's private messages - are actual serious behaviours that usually have real-life consequences. This is the kind of thing that you would get fired for at a job or expelled from school for - or at worst, you could potentially face legal action or the law. I say this a lot, but we're a tiny pokemon forum with ~100 active members. The worst consequence they could face from us is a ban (which isn't even foolproof).
The other way they could look at this is that they didn't mean to be malicious and just thought it was funny. I feel like probably a few of those involved didn't intend to actually do harm to people by getting involved in things like this. When you're friends with people who make bad decisions but their friendships are valuable to you, you can rationalise it and ignore the bad parts and keep being friends with them. Eventually these bad behaviours don't even register as a big deal anymore and you kind of stop thinking about it. I get that.
But even if you look at it this way, when someone does things that affect you, it's a two-way street. Someone can accidentally step on your sandcastle and not intend to upset you, but that can still be really upsetting! Because your sandcastle has a giant foot imprint in the middle of it, and that really sucks, but you'd understand if it was an accident. You probably won't hate someone for that.
But you'd probably hate someone for... standing on your sandcastle because they thought it was funny. They didn't do it with the expressed purpose of doing it to make you feel bad, but you're probably going to be upset because that's a dick thing to do. You'd probably be more upset if it was a really big sandcastle and they'd helped you build it and pretended to be super excited about it. You'd probably be even more upset if they did this multiple times, even after you telling them that it was a mean thing to do.
The good thing about sandcastles is that they're made out of sand and you can fix them pretty easily! You can scoop up all the broken bits, pick out all the shells and get those assholes escorted off the beach.
There are several instances in those logs where they're gloating that ASB is going to be ruined now. I'm not really interested in seeing that happen.
