I've rewritten this post a couple times because I can't quite talk about everything that bothers me in this thread, so I'm just gonna condense it down to this:
Maybe it's strange to say this, but this thread has lowered my opinion of the Era community more than any of the controversies. Or some parts of the community or some members, however you want to say it, but that Era does this thing, where it weaponizes morality and compassion? It's disgusting. For 30 fucking pages, Mods have come in and told people, over and over, that they feel more hurt, targeted, and exploited by the members of the community here more than they ever have Cerium, who they have nothing but good things to say about.
If you give a shit about the mods, this just doesn't track in any way. Some have said that wanting a compensation system for mods and still wanting to be critical of them is not a mutually exclusive position, and sure, fair enough, but saying that you are upset about the mods being treated unfairly while, at every point, disregarding the requests for basic decency and empathy from the mods you are speaking on the behalf of definitely fucking is. You can't do this. You can't say that you give any kind of shit about the mods and then say they're voices on their own experiences don't matter, AND THEN act all offended when they start lightly clapping back at the sheer absurdity of being told they are not accountable sources of their own goddamn experiences. Those things are not reconcilable. Either the wellbeing of the mods matters, or it doesn't. If it does, then them speaking how the community has hurt them ought to matter in some way, but every mod post has been disregarded. At best, users go "Okay, if that's fine with you, whatever" then shift towards still maintaining that Cerium is capitalist scum.
So, since I can't reconcile this rhetoric into a coherent worldview, then I have to say that this is some "The Card Says Moops" shit.
If you find this comparison to alt-right rhetoric inflammatory, you should know that the video essayist in question has always said that the Alt-right Playbook was a collection of primary kinds of arguments the Alt-right utilizes, but that doesn't mean they have a monopoly on them. The arguments he covers are modes of thinking that any group can fall into if they have an enemy that they want to attack. But I challenge anyone to watch this and say that there is a categorical distinction in the usage of this kind of argument as has been seen by this thread. When people try to argue two incompatible arguments, you look at what the argument actually seeks to accomplish, and that's the real end goal of the people making it. If you're looking at this and angry I am making comparison to alt-right rhetoric, then I hope you have an actual reason, instead of mere indignation, of why this isn't applicable to this situation.
And the worst part about this is that this is all about NOTHING. I don't think it's been pointed out by anyone, but as of yet, nothing has actually happened to the forums.
Step back for a minute here. We've been assured by all parties that MOBA has no interest changing the way Resetera works. Maybe that's untrue and once the change-over happens we'll see some interference, but as of now, nothing has happened and we have no indications anything will. Meaning all the damage, the increased ads, the monetizatized membership, the forced allowed discussion of controversial games like Hogwarts, is imaginary. Even if you're absolutely sure it will go that way, and even if you prove to be right, it's pure speculation now, and I don't think that justifies the vitriol shown here. And I say that as someone who
agrees with the skepticism. It's hard to believe that MOBA won't make any demands, whatever assurances they offer, but it's asinine to say Resetera is ruined before anything has even happened.
But the primary targets of this thread, or atleast the people who've actually felt the hurt, have been the Mods. And that feels twisted because, unlike other controversies in the past where you could at least make the argument that the mods were in some way in the wrong, the mods here are, in every aspect, provably blameless. No Mod has any responsibility for what Cerium does with his website, they only help him run it, but where Cerium seems to have stepped away from this thread as soon as he posted it, it's the mods that have been here, told they were exploited, told their labor to make the site better has meant nothing, told they are happy with the arrangement they have, told their life experiences don't matter....all while they have done nothing wrong and couldn't have demanded Cerium do anything otherwise in the first place.
Is there not something extremely fucked up that it's the Mods that are being constantly disregarded and disrespected by users here....over not being paid for volunteer work that all mods I've seen speak on the subject say they accept the current arrangement of...about a business decision they have had no choice in anyway....out of a controversy about harm done to the forum experience they have not experienced because, at the moment, it has not yet happened?
And the entire time this is happening, the loudest voices always insist they have the highest ground. They were betrayed because cerium is turning his back on Era's founding principles (as if this was ever some worker co-op or some shit), that they are the ones who've been kept information from (as if they are entitled to everything pretaining to resetera), that they are the ones who care about how the mods are treated actually (as they insult and disregard them when they speak for themselves and don't conform to their narrative).
I think people have a right to be skeptical about MOBA because, at best, if they operate like Cerium said in the OP, then they will do so out of cold greed, because they just want to make money from Resetera and won't really care to interfere unless it totally goes belly-up. That's fine, but it does mean that the owner of the site won't care about it, we're just going to be another cash cow for them. But I don't think you can make that argument if you also think Cerium was this dispassionate ghoul people have characterized him as that just used ResetEra to cash in. Which is nothing like the characterization I've seen from anyone that's actually worked with the guy, and he seems to have been involved in every crisis the forums have had since it started. But it's clear he has disengaged from Resetera as a community, and not just recently, but a while back. But the response this thread has, I can't blame him. The "He will cry into his millions" meme is right, regardless of his moral character, money heals most wounds.
Still, I imagine being him and crafting this farewell letter to a community he's put this much effort into, and reading the majority of these responses. In his OP, he says Resetera has been the greatest honor of his life, and maybe that's true if he's referring to working with the mods, who seem to universally like and appreciate him. But if I were him, and I saw the community be this, then I would not think "Farewell". I'd think "Good riddance."
One thing in Final Fireworker's masterpost stood out to me.
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.
This is perhaps the most important post in the last 2 years. Why IS the community like this? Because this isn't normal. Or, it wasn't normal, but then 2016 to present day happened, and I think this, cancelling, kind of became the default way of dealing with grievances, especially since it sometimes works. Hell, you could argue that Resetera, moreso than any leftist ideals or progressive principles, was founded as a way of spiting an asshole who wouldn't take accountability for the things he did wrong. But, somehow, that's become the primary way of dealing with problems, even when there aren't any actual problems.
That needs to change. I don't think Resetera will destroy itself like NeoGaf did for the simple reason that, unlike NeoGaf, it isn't run by a narcissist fuckface that is also heavily involved in the community. The community exploded because Evilore couldn't stand having a community that reproached him, and Resetera, as evident by this thread and many others, can. Maybe the head of MOBA is, but it won't matter unless they create an account here and start becoming involved in the community, which I doubt they will.
But Resetera will never have a healthy relationship with the moderation team if they think they can throw a fit and use them as a punching bag any time they feel like it, and moderators will be ground down into cynicism and apprehension about the community each time.
For me, controversies in the past have ranged from (imo) legitimate to (imo) overblown, but this is the first time I feel that the moderation team is being put through the ringer over nothing, nothing at all, and it is (imo) absolute bullshit.
