It was certainly more large and varied a couple years ago but best to leave it at that I guess
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ResetEra Ownership Update
- Thread starter Cerium
- Start date
- Status
This can still happen. What was sold is a brand. The forum is the users. They didn't buy that.
I think people who think this was a long con are getting into conspiracy theory territory here, I mean, if anyone buys one of the Era splinter forums for a cool $1m in a few years are we going to say that was the plan all along as well?
If I'd been the one to start Era and someone offered me millions for it you can bet your life I'd be taking the money and running
If I'd been the one to start Era and someone offered me millions for it you can bet your life I'd be taking the money and running
Respect is probably poor phrasing. I'd expect more of paid employees than volunteers, having managed teams of staff and teams of volunteers for charity I think my mindset is a bit different imo
Didn't IGN try to buy the other place in 2015 or something or is that an old pirates tale?
I think realistically, at the end of the day, the mods on this site do so because they care about the community. That's why I was a mod. That's why I'm still here years later.
I would not trust some random guy hired by a random corporation to give a shit about Era as a community. Someone in it for the money is always going to have a certain level of disconnect that can't be bridged.
Whilst I agree with this, you can understand the concern right?
Oh man, the irony of one of the premier leftist forums being sold in the night so the owner makes millions while leaving the rest of the paid staff to negotiate with the new owners individually.
Another exodus incoming I guess?
Another exodus incoming I guess?
sell my data i dont give a shit
tell the world i like futas, hate cargo pants, and am unlovable
tell the world i like futas, hate cargo pants, and am unlovable
So much for "Support Afghan Women, Tax the riches, there's no ethical capitalism" and many other slogans repeated like a mantra in this forum. In the end it's just people jerking off at this to feel good about themselves. Someone comes with dough and the admin can't deal with the stress, he cashes out with 4,5m, transparency be damned. He's now the rich guy, and he and his cronies can now label this post as "harassment", because that's how it is, the people with power are the ones that have a say over these things. And the communities that were left in the dust like Asian Era, Sales Era or PC era can attest to that.
Resetera is the same to the progressive movement as wearing El Che's t-shirts in real life.
Resetera is the same to the progressive movement as wearing El Che's t-shirts in real life.
Its absolutely disgusting. Additionally, it feels like profiting off of the sexual harrasment that led to the founding of this forum: I personally would welcome a replacement and would happily make the exodus.
ngl, i'm losing my shit at all the LEFTIST VIDEOGAME FORUM posts in here you'd think this forum would be some legit Leninists when it's just performative rainbow capitalism for the most part
Why? Most of us don't know you, or the staff, from a bar of soap. Expecting unwavering and automatic respect simply because you're staff? I don't think so.
Perhaps you should direct your sentiments towards Cerium, if he could still be reached.
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you should set it up, and then in 5 years time someone offers you millions for your site....
Not everyone sells. At the old place Evilore was supposedly offered many times more than what Resetera just sold for, repeatedly by a few different companies and he never sold it. He still owns the old place to this day.
Seemingly he was happy to coast off the ad revenue. …I wonder if he ever regrets his decision.
I dunno what to say man. I didn't think this would ever even be on the table, I thought this was a collaborative community effort and not a business venture but I also understand things change I guess, I just want the staff to know they are appreciated
This is disgusting and completely lacks transparency. But to be fair this place never lived up to its stated ideals from the jump.
It was always in the back of my mind from the start that this place was a grift to get the neogaf money that (can't remember his name) turned down. Good to get an outright confirmation. And before someone says this is a conspiracy they were making bank before the sale (also Era Clear hahah lol)
It was always in the back of my mind from the start that this place was a grift to get the neogaf money that (can't remember his name) turned down. Good to get an outright confirmation. And before someone says this is a conspiracy they were making bank before the sale (also Era Clear hahah lol)
OK let's imagine for a moment. You are owner of this site with aim to make money. You have a paid moderation team who's job is to stop bad press for the site(ex:- association with racism, sexist various phobias etc etc). Now these mods makes a mistake and drives a community away along with a significant amount of revenue without doing any kind of damage control(recent sales era fiasco). Your immediate response would be to fire these moderators and replace them with new ones. You don't have to care if they have their own defense force or anything. Sounds capitalistic as fuck? Yes. But from this news it's pretty clear that it was founded for capitalism and will run on capitalism, what's wrong with putting a check on mods who otherwise can misuse their powers?
Well at least individual users could imagine this as a bastion of mostly left leaning posters. These events quite literally changed the slogan to "ResetEra: Performative Rainbow Capitalism" which I think is a tougher sell.
I dont mind the sale, but the mods are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, honestly, if they dont get something then this moves comes off as gross profiteering off the back of others. Not a good look, and brings up the question of the fairness of these forums.
"How DARE Cerium be a capitalist when resetera was
Thing is, even the press release says they (MOBAFire) are looking for ways to increase revenue so it's not going to be the way it was before - the genie is out of the bottle. It might not start tomorrow but in a few months they are going to do one of two things: change admission rules to rapidly increase their user base or aggressively monetise the existing users. There is a third but less likely option of sponsorships through PR approved OTs but I don't see how that's as valuable as the first two options
in these realities moderation will change. There's no way it won't imo
I'll be fascinated to see if it can somehow keep its soul
Set up a website with a community you didn't build
Promise said website would be community driven and transparent as a pane of glass, when in reality it never was
Set up additional monetization schemes to take advantage of people's willingness to help with costs
Consolidate ownership to one person and leave the site to be run by volunteers
Sell for millions and make out like a bandit in the middle of the night
Bravo
Promise said website would be community driven and transparent as a pane of glass, when in reality it never was
Set up additional monetization schemes to take advantage of people's willingness to help with costs
Consolidate ownership to one person and leave the site to be run by volunteers
Sell for millions and make out like a bandit in the middle of the night
Bravo
This is not because you disagree with GAF that makes you left-wing community.
The fact this site only act with Cyperpunk transphobia problems is quite telling.
But anyway, I still 100% agree with the rest of your post. This is a shitshow.
Good on you for taking care of yourself. I can't imagine how much of a toll it takes on a person over the course of 4 years. However, being owned by a company gets a big Hmmmm from me. As someone who works for a company who acquires smaller companies left and right, and sometimes being the person who delivers "we won't change your culture" line when I know in reality we have zero guarantee, I'm not buying it.
I'm willing to give them a shot to prove me wrong, tho. My suitcases will be packed tho, just in case lol.
I'm willing to give them a shot to prove me wrong, tho. My suitcases will be packed tho, just in case lol.
The issue isn't with the sale itself. But rather the rhetoric behind it, like take Era Clear for example, it was introduced as a way to keep the lights on, and we were told there wasn't enough revenue to pay the mods. But now we find out from another website that the site made 700K a year in ad revenue.
The main post in this topic makes no mention of the sale amount either, and is written as if the site's longevity and Cerium's health was the only reason for its sale. Yet when we read elsewhere outside the forum that it was sold for 4.5 million we get a proper picture.
If you want a payday then that is your right, but it'd be good to have some transparency in that matter. Because when I look at the main post and see the claim that the sale was due to the pressure of being the sole owner, I think to myself "Well then why not have the ownership shared with other admins?". We are also told that this was a decision that they had been thinking about for a while, yet the first time we hear about it is after the fact...which again is their right. But it'd be good to have a notification/discussion beforehand.
The site when it was first formed, was said to try everything to be community driven and not be a one person show. It was the main reason why most of us choose Era over the various other splinter groups (although the organisational aspect of it helped too, because no one else was organising the migration to this level). It's why the site was registered as an LLC later despite Cerium funding it and owning it completely in early days. But then over time the ownership got consolidated to a single person again.
Basically, it's fine to sell and have a payday. Most people would do that as well, but I'm not sure if most people would've done it in the same way. We are grown ups here, we know how the world works, there's no reason to hide these things...especially when we end up finding out about it anyway from outside the site.
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You didn't figure that out until now? As far as I can tell a huge portion of the activism in social media spaces is performative, and I never found any reason to think ERA was an exception.
So by that same token the sale isn't surprising. Best wishes to everyone, hopefully the community stays intact.
In hindsight the part where all the other owners were bought out by one person instead of selling to other members was where this all went wrong and I'm surprised there wasn't more said about this at the time, although I can't remember how transparent any of this was.
So seeing as moderation pay seems to be a topic of interest I thought I would share my thoughts on it.
Firstly: The discussion and resulting decision as to whether mods should be paid was had way back when, before I became a mod. I have only heard tidbits of arguments for and against that were discussed at the time, some of them have been discussed in this very thread. I won't comment on said discussion and decision, as I wasn't in the room at the time. Every mod will have their own view on things and opinions on the matter.
That said, I have been thinking the last half an hour while reading this thread whether I personally would want to be paid for this gig. To be honest, I am not sure.
In a masochistic way I enjoy some of the mechanical aspects of moderation working through reports & tickets, banning bigots and such. I can do these things in my own time at my leisure. If I feel like it I can spend an hour doing it, or I can just stay offline for two weeks on end without anyone breathing down my neck.
Personally I have not really been involved in any of the big community fires that have flared up, for one because I was never part of the belligerent parties and I rarely visit the forum after hours and rather spend my nights blissfully sleeping. Now if I was paid I would feel much more obliged to be hands on in those very, very tense and stressful moments, maybe even be on call for when these fires start as opposed to just modding on my own time.
I never really gave it much thought, but it was obvious to me someone is making some money off the forum, I had and have no idea how much that is or where exactly that money goes.
Now moving forward it's not an individual making money off the site but a listed company and I do honestly feel conflicted about it. I am not really sure yet whether I will draw a conclusion from that as to my time on staff or not. At the end of the day I don't expect my day to day interaction with the site to be impacted by the sale but it does potentially feel different to volunteer for a corporation as opposed to an individual, though I am not sure if it should make a difference?
I volunteer for other things in life too, and in many of those I am sure some people in the organization get paid for what they do. It's well established that non-profits, charities and such have high paid executives and that a shockingly large part of the money they rake in goes to the bureaucracy as opposed to the causes they profess to champion. Does that mean it's a wasted effort to volunteer for causes that are still in and of themselves worth while?
As for Era, I am here to volunteer for the community, not for Cerium's bank balance, that was true when I started, it was true yesterday and as of now it is true after the sale too...
So would I want to be paid, I still don't know.
If it was just some pocket money it would honestly feel insulting. If it was a full time job I doubt I would pick it over my actual regular rather stress free 9-5 for one of those faceless corporations. Maybe if it was hourly, but honestly I would not want to have to clock in and out to visit Era.... On balance I probably prefer the option of just tuning out Era and the staff discord whenever I feel like it.
Firstly: The discussion and resulting decision as to whether mods should be paid was had way back when, before I became a mod. I have only heard tidbits of arguments for and against that were discussed at the time, some of them have been discussed in this very thread. I won't comment on said discussion and decision, as I wasn't in the room at the time. Every mod will have their own view on things and opinions on the matter.
That said, I have been thinking the last half an hour while reading this thread whether I personally would want to be paid for this gig. To be honest, I am not sure.
In a masochistic way I enjoy some of the mechanical aspects of moderation working through reports & tickets, banning bigots and such. I can do these things in my own time at my leisure. If I feel like it I can spend an hour doing it, or I can just stay offline for two weeks on end without anyone breathing down my neck.
Personally I have not really been involved in any of the big community fires that have flared up, for one because I was never part of the belligerent parties and I rarely visit the forum after hours and rather spend my nights blissfully sleeping. Now if I was paid I would feel much more obliged to be hands on in those very, very tense and stressful moments, maybe even be on call for when these fires start as opposed to just modding on my own time.
I never really gave it much thought, but it was obvious to me someone is making some money off the forum, I had and have no idea how much that is or where exactly that money goes.
Now moving forward it's not an individual making money off the site but a listed company and I do honestly feel conflicted about it. I am not really sure yet whether I will draw a conclusion from that as to my time on staff or not. At the end of the day I don't expect my day to day interaction with the site to be impacted by the sale but it does potentially feel different to volunteer for a corporation as opposed to an individual, though I am not sure if it should make a difference?
I volunteer for other things in life too, and in many of those I am sure some people in the organization get paid for what they do. It's well established that non-profits, charities and such have high paid executives and that a shockingly large part of the money they rake in goes to the bureaucracy as opposed to the causes they profess to champion. Does that mean it's a wasted effort to volunteer for causes that are still in and of themselves worth while?
As for Era, I am here to volunteer for the community, not for Cerium's bank balance, that was true when I started, it was true yesterday and as of now it is true after the sale too...
So would I want to be paid, I still don't know.
If it was just some pocket money it would honestly feel insulting. If it was a full time job I doubt I would pick it over my actual regular rather stress free 9-5 for one of those faceless corporations. Maybe if it was hourly, but honestly I would not want to have to clock in and out to visit Era.... On balance I probably prefer the option of just tuning out Era and the staff discord whenever I feel like it.
the end of an ERA...I do hope the new ownership keeps things exactly as is but in these situations they always say they will before they start changing things...I also never realized this forum was worth $4.5 million!!
what are some of these Era splinter forums?...first I'm hearing of it
what are some of these Era splinter forums?...first I'm hearing of it
I get your point, but in the end its just facelesa owner that selling the ownership. Itts not the community that build here. Now he gone and its up to you if you still comfortable to the fact.
After thinking for a bit personally I feel reliefed and not bothered by ownership of facelesa entity from aanother faceless entity. Because in the end thats all Cerium's participation amount to. All the communnity mentality and interaction from the people is still real.
He checked out a couple of years ago, hasn't even responded in this thread and is sitting on $4.5m.
"Huh, didn't expect that. Anyways, wonder what's being said in this thr-"
go outside, touch grass, talk to real people, please, anything.
go outside, touch grass, talk to real people, please, anything.
Most people would have done it this way, because if there'd been a community announcement that the site was being sold for the immense profit of a single guy most users didn't know existed or owned the site, a ton of users and communities would have bounced.
And that would hurt the sale (they didn't sell the site, they sold the users).
I can't speak for any other staff, past or present, about whether or not they feel they should be paid for their work here. But I guess I can talk about how I felt about it and what I wanted during my tenure here. When I was active staff I was a major contributor and proud of the work I did for the website. It had a big impact on me. I am a different person now on the other side of it than I was when I started. I did not know what I was getting in to at the time, but I knew the position would be volunteer and accepted it on those terms.
The time I put in here was out of an earnest, personal desire to see the website flourish. It was to give the people here a place to post, especially the people who felt like they had nowhere else to go. It was to prove that a website like ours could exist, and should exist, and it could only exist if members of the community helped shape the website in to what they wanted it to be. My earliest posts on this forum, before I was ever staff, was beseeching that people be kind to one another and care about each other. A community that does not love each other cannot flourish. When I was asked to become staff a few months later, I accepted that responsibility because I believed strongly that this was the best way I could help this community prosper.
The volunteer nature of the position meant that it was flexible. There was no requirement for how much or how little I did. There were no required hours I needed to work. It was not a job. It was work, yes, but it was work to build something I felt like I was part of. The website was my vision too. The community was my own. I never felt like I was being taken advantage of. I can just say bluntly: I did not care literally at all about being compensated for my work here.
But there were times that I was. There were times where being a member of the staff made a big difference to me. There were times where my peers came through for me. There were times where other members of the staff were generous to me out of kindness. When family members were ill, they helped support me. When I got married, they helped support me. I do not believe the people who helped me would be comfortable if I named them, so I will not. I can also only speak for myself. I know that I felt taken care of by my team. Some of the best friends I have now, people I cannot imagine my life without, are friends I made when I was member of the staff. That is why it was so important to me.
I have no idea what current members of the staff want. I do not speak for any of them. But I can absolutely guarantee you that if they are unhappy with the arrangement they will just politely retire from the position. Nobody is going to be forced to stay if they don't want to. It's a volunteer position. Moderators are the people who suffer the most for this website, so if they do feel negatively about this change or feel like they are not being fairly compensated for their contributions, they are not going to stick around. They can leave whenever they want with no hard feelings.
What does create hard feelings, and is definitively the hardest and most unrewarding part of the work, is the absolute subzero trust and good faith you receive from the community you serve. The constant spinning of narratives to portray you as sinister and manipulative, as dishonest and vindictive, is brain-damaging. To be constantly subjected to thousands of people assuming the absolute worst of you no matter the situation, and no answer and no action ever being good enough for people, makes everything you do feel helpless, hopeless, and depressing. But you keep doing it because even if the work is thankless it is necessary for the community to exist. You do it because even if people think you're a useless moron who can't do anything right, or an evil actor with no regard for humanity, and even if people will hold every breath you take against you, the website needs people who care about it enough to take care of it even when it reduces them to ashes.
Over and over again I have seen sub-communities offer up their favorite members to the moderation team only to turn on them, call them traitors and failures, and grind them to dust. The division between staff and members should not be as wide as it is. All of the staff members were community members first - people who posted here and connected here and formed relationships here. They are members too. But this website, for all its claims to the contrary, absolutely despises the moderation team in every form it has ever taken. They want mods to hurt. They want mods to fail. They want them to quit or be forced out. People relish in the opportunity to drag or slander the mod team, to paint them as negatively as possible. It is a sport. The opportunity to do so is irresistible.
I do not know why the website is like this. Maybe it is a fundamental distrust of authority a community with values like ours has baked into it. Or maybe a website with our values is ungovernable. Members have always had conflicting visions for what this website should be, should feel like, and how it should be moderated. People are very comfortable in their insular community Discords where everybody likes the same things or shares the same interests or experiences and then think the atmosphere outside their discord is inhospitable. So they blame the staff for not making the website like their Discord and when that can't be accommodated they splinter off into some other website or server.
So with how brutally members on this website treat the moderation team, all of this "what about the mods?" energy rings extremely insincere to me. I know some people have their hearts in the right place, because I know some of you more personally, but the good-natured looking out becomes indistinguishable from the people who are just using this event as another opportunity to do what they've always done - to single out an enemy and make them suffer for it. To demand someone pay for the transgression. So on comes the accusations, on comes the spectacle, on comes the narratives about who is at fault this time and whose turn it is to pay for it.
If you care about the staff, even just in principle, pay attention to what they've always asked for: to be treated better by the community. Right now, the mod team isn't having to deal with the site being sold, they are having to deal with the reactions in this thread. They are having to read all the posts calling them complicit in a grand failure, they are having to read all the posts about how the website is over, all the "delete my accounts", all the "what about TRANSPARENCY", all the insistence that everything they have worked for is pointless, all the perception that nothing they do has ever mattered to anyone, all the grandstanding about how shady and dishonest and manipulative the forum is and that it must not actually stand for anything because the forum has a new owner. I don't know if people understand how incredibly damaging this torrent of rhetoric is for your mental health.
So if you genuinely care about staff, and you're not just in it for the fun of drama, do what is actually in your power to do: treat them like your fellow members invested in the welfare of the forum, not like enemies or failures. Maybe saying you think they should have been paid is your way of expressing that, but I mean it when I say that is never what I wanted. I was always very clear with what I hoped to get from this role. I never got it. I retired in exhaustion and humiliation because I could not overcome the mental and physical toll this community took on me. I've been to the emergency room. I've been medicated. I've been counseled. I've had to completely reinvent my relationship with the internet. I am fucked up and damaged goods from how members here, past and present, conduct themselves at the first sign of gossip or scandal. No amount of money would have made a difference with that. Not even a little bit.
If this transaction does change the priorities of the forum with respect to its values or ideals, you will never catch me defending it. I will leave too. I know the ideas this community is supposed to be built upon. I helped write them. You can bet I'm not sticking around if that changes. But right now - nothing has changed. I still have faith in the staff. I still believe the people there are doing this work out of belief it is important work to do. And I believe they would not be here anymore if this was not the case. They can decide if it's worth it to keep doing the work here - and I know money will have nothing to do with it.
This topic is upsetting to me in a way I would prefer not to engage with further, so I will not reply again. You can accuse me of cowardice if you prefer but I just don't have the guts for this kind of discourse anymore. I wish the best for everyone. For Cerium, for Dubs, for the staff, for all this forum's members. I have always wished for the best. That will never change. From the beginning I have always believed that if we can find a way to love each other, we will succeed. The terms have always been the same: we must either learn to love each other or we will die trying.
The time I put in here was out of an earnest, personal desire to see the website flourish. It was to give the people here a place to post, especially the people who felt like they had nowhere else to go. It was to prove that a website like ours could exist, and should exist, and it could only exist if members of the community helped shape the website in to what they wanted it to be. My earliest posts on this forum, before I was ever staff, was beseeching that people be kind to one another and care about each other. A community that does not love each other cannot flourish. When I was asked to become staff a few months later, I accepted that responsibility because I believed strongly that this was the best way I could help this community prosper.
The volunteer nature of the position meant that it was flexible. There was no requirement for how much or how little I did. There were no required hours I needed to work. It was not a job. It was work, yes, but it was work to build something I felt like I was part of. The website was my vision too. The community was my own. I never felt like I was being taken advantage of. I can just say bluntly: I did not care literally at all about being compensated for my work here.
But there were times that I was. There were times where being a member of the staff made a big difference to me. There were times where my peers came through for me. There were times where other members of the staff were generous to me out of kindness. When family members were ill, they helped support me. When I got married, they helped support me. I do not believe the people who helped me would be comfortable if I named them, so I will not. I can also only speak for myself. I know that I felt taken care of by my team. Some of the best friends I have now, people I cannot imagine my life without, are friends I made when I was member of the staff. That is why it was so important to me.
I have no idea what current members of the staff want. I do not speak for any of them. But I can absolutely guarantee you that if they are unhappy with the arrangement they will just politely retire from the position. Nobody is going to be forced to stay if they don't want to. It's a volunteer position. Moderators are the people who suffer the most for this website, so if they do feel negatively about this change or feel like they are not being fairly compensated for their contributions, they are not going to stick around. They can leave whenever they want with no hard feelings.
What does create hard feelings, and is definitively the hardest and most unrewarding part of the work, is the absolute subzero trust and good faith you receive from the community you serve. The constant spinning of narratives to portray you as sinister and manipulative, as dishonest and vindictive, is brain-damaging. To be constantly subjected to thousands of people assuming the absolute worst of you no matter the situation, and no answer and no action ever being good enough for people, makes everything you do feel helpless, hopeless, and depressing. But you keep doing it because even if the work is thankless it is necessary for the community to exist. You do it because even if people think you're a useless moron who can't do anything right, or an evil actor with no regard for humanity, and even if people will hold every breath you take against you, the website needs people who care about it enough to take care of it even when it reduces them to ashes.
Over and over again I have seen sub-communities offer up their favorite members to the moderation team only to turn on them, call them traitors and failures, and grind them to dust. The division between staff and members should not be as wide as it is. All of the staff members were community members first - people who posted here and connected here and formed relationships here. They are members too. But this website, for all its claims to the contrary, absolutely despises the moderation team in every form it has ever taken. They want mods to hurt. They want mods to fail. They want them to quit or be forced out. People relish in the opportunity to drag or slander the mod team, to paint them as negatively as possible. It is a sport. The opportunity to do so is irresistible.
I do not know why the website is like this. Maybe it is a fundamental distrust of authority a community with values like ours has baked into it. Or maybe a website with our values is ungovernable. Members have always had conflicting visions for what this website should be, should feel like, and how it should be moderated. People are very comfortable in their insular community Discords where everybody likes the same things or shares the same interests or experiences and then think the atmosphere outside their discord is inhospitable. So they blame the staff for not making the website like their Discord and when that can't be accommodated they splinter off into some other website or server.
So with how brutally members on this website treat the moderation team, all of this "what about the mods?" energy rings extremely insincere to me. I know some people have their hearts in the right place, because I know some of you more personally, but the good-natured looking out becomes indistinguishable from the people who are just using this event as another opportunity to do what they've always done - to single out an enemy and make them suffer for it. To demand someone pay for the transgression. So on comes the accusations, on comes the spectacle, on comes the narratives about who is at fault this time and whose turn it is to pay for it.
If you care about the staff, even just in principle, pay attention to what they've always asked for: to be treated better by the community. Right now, the mod team isn't having to deal with the site being sold, they are having to deal with the reactions in this thread. They are having to read all the posts calling them complicit in a grand failure, they are having to read all the posts about how the website is over, all the "delete my accounts", all the "what about TRANSPARENCY", all the insistence that everything they have worked for is pointless, all the perception that nothing they do has ever mattered to anyone, all the grandstanding about how shady and dishonest and manipulative the forum is and that it must not actually stand for anything because the forum has a new owner. I don't know if people understand how incredibly damaging this torrent of rhetoric is for your mental health.
So if you genuinely care about staff, and you're not just in it for the fun of drama, do what is actually in your power to do: treat them like your fellow members invested in the welfare of the forum, not like enemies or failures. Maybe saying you think they should have been paid is your way of expressing that, but I mean it when I say that is never what I wanted. I was always very clear with what I hoped to get from this role. I never got it. I retired in exhaustion and humiliation because I could not overcome the mental and physical toll this community took on me. I've been to the emergency room. I've been medicated. I've been counseled. I've had to completely reinvent my relationship with the internet. I am fucked up and damaged goods from how members here, past and present, conduct themselves at the first sign of gossip or scandal. No amount of money would have made a difference with that. Not even a little bit.
If this transaction does change the priorities of the forum with respect to its values or ideals, you will never catch me defending it. I will leave too. I know the ideas this community is supposed to be built upon. I helped write them. You can bet I'm not sticking around if that changes. But right now - nothing has changed. I still have faith in the staff. I still believe the people there are doing this work out of belief it is important work to do. And I believe they would not be here anymore if this was not the case. They can decide if it's worth it to keep doing the work here - and I know money will have nothing to do with it.
This topic is upsetting to me in a way I would prefer not to engage with further, so I will not reply again. You can accuse me of cowardice if you prefer but I just don't have the guts for this kind of discourse anymore. I wish the best for everyone. For Cerium, for Dubs, for the staff, for all this forum's members. I have always wished for the best. That will never change. From the beginning I have always believed that if we can find a way to love each other, we will succeed. The terms have always been the same: we must either learn to love each other or we will die trying.
- Status