Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
Stopping by to say I think I figured out another candidate for who could be behind the lemme club dork accounts.
I've said this once before but I would like to state it publicly. I am a dumbass. Ive been wrong before and I swear to you all I will be again. If I can be proven wrong here I'll apologize myself. I would hate to be in their position if they really are innocent lol
I'll say I'm more or less spitballing here but while I was with the movie watching crowd on the hexbear live one of the regulars there mentioned someone, who's name I haven't heard in a hot minute, getting a temp ban over being a little shit and DM harassing someone. Coincidentally after that a bunch of these lemmy club accounts start popping up.
I can't confirm the helltaker thing because that info outside my wheelhouse, but I'd be willing to say helltaker's like a secondary suspect to who I'm thinking of mostly because I haven't seen a little peep from them but plenty of suspicious activity from my prime candidate, at least on the mod logs
For what it's worth, I fully believe that Helltaker's offline for legit reasons now. Whatever I think of the admin team at this point I don't think they'd go quite that far. At this point my main theory became that they made the first or first few accounts, then someone else saw us speculating about who it was and decided to add fuel to the fire by copying the style.
Just another note while we're on this topic, I fully expected to be banned the first time I made this public accusation. I am pleasantly surprised to still be here, and to still be able to stoke the flames of, uh, discontent or whatever's going on here, with my persistent and at times aggressive comments. I've been very happy to see people finally talking about issues with the site's management that I've been harboring for a long time and simply haven't felt like it would be worth getting banned to bring up. It would be really embarrassing if one of the main issues I've been hanging on to turns out to be verifiably wrong, I am absolutely certain I'd never live that one down (if I somehow continued to avoid being banned over it). I think it would be extra funny if it's somehow proven that this user I've been accusing actually isn't even the other user I keep accusing them of being. All I can say is that I fully believe everything I've said, and all I want is dialogue in which everyone else can say the same.
I've never been wrong in my life, except all those times I somehow became wrong retroactively. Funny how that works, eh?
Anyway like I said I've been expecting the ban for days so it won't surprise me if/when it arrives. I wish you the best of luck in your investigation, and seriously do let me know if it turns out fruitful so I can get that apology done.
Follow-up, should be resolved. If not now, pretty shortly after I comment this.
Make sure to use comic sans in your letter.
Duly noted. Make sure to report and DM harassment should it occur