Well it finally happened, I’ve been permanently banned from Animesuki after all of these years for refusing to abide by what I felt was an arbitrary and unfair moderator condition and sticking to my guns of trying to be an honest, fair and progressive poster. What exactly was the condition I refused to follow and felt it was more important to put my voice and opinion ahead of people might ask, well this is the last message I received from the moderator who has appeared to have it out for me quite some time:
Kaioshin Sama,
Quote: Originally Posted by relentlessflame
I am giving you two choices:
1. You can agree to stay away from all Kyoto Animation and Key-related threads and sub-forums on the Forum, and resist any temptation to be a Sunrise defender either in threads or through rep. You could still participate on the forum, but would exercise voluntary restraint to keep yourself out of trouble.
2. You can receive a deserved two-point infraction for your recent baiting posts that will result in you being permanently banned from the forum.
Please take some time to consider your decision. If you choose the first option, please note that any subsequent failure to comply will be taken as an indication that you choose the second option.
The conditions were quite clear. You already caught yourself once previously in the thread, and deleted your post voluntarily, so I don’t think I can believe that you “just forgot”. I’m not sure if you believed that your new “position of casual curiosity” and your claim to be “not trying to offend” would cause me to somehow change my mind. But that was the exact same thing you tried last time too, and I already made it crystal clear: you’ve played this card way too many times over the years for anyone to believe you now. After so many dozens of warnings and infractions (this is #38!), I will not go back on my word.
I wish you the best wherever your journeys take you. Farewell.
Sincerely,
relentlessflame
AnimeSuki Forum Admin
What was this startling infraction one might ask that caused such a fierce reaction from relentlessflame. Daring to shirk such an arbitrary condition to insist that it is unreasonable to come into a thread insisting that a show is “moeblob shit” at the same time that it is unreasonable to insist that there is a “right way to watch Kyoani shows”. In short I argued what I felt was the reasonable approach of treating others opinions with respect as well as to plead that people not nail me to the cross for it yet in ironic twist this is exactly what happened. I suppose my mistake in all of this was interpreting “You could still participate on the forum, but would exercise voluntary restraint to keep yourself out of trouble.” as an okay to still post in these threads as long as I was careful to not break any rules, though to be perfectly truthful I still don’t understand why I should be so restricted in my posting if I’m just trying to dialogue with people without malice aforethought and express an opinion that people should get along and not be so entrenched in their hardened viewpoints like I once was. This too I suppose was my mistake in the end, but a little more on that later.
To those who made my time at animesuki a fun ride, Vexx, Reckoner, Triple_R, Guardian Enzo, Archon_Wing among others, it was a blast. You were all class acts and I treasure the conversations we shared together and regret that one moderators stark and accusatory opinion of my intentions had to result in it ending this way. Relentlessflame seems to have wanted things his way and refused to see any viewpoint or to be able to put himself in another’s shoes to the very end despite preaching otherwise, but to be honest I don’t hold hard feelings so much as disappointment that this is how things had to end. I don’t feel this solves anything and while I suppose it’s a conflict of interest to say so me being the accused and all I feel it only punishes the idea that reconciliation and atonement through words and actions can be achieved and upholds the idea that it’s better to keep people that have had a trouble past apart rather than allowing them to over time resolve their differences and misunderstanding through dialogues as respectable and mature adults. If I do have one regret it’s that I could not prove to this individual, despite my best efforts that I am not the monster he made me out to be and that I truly was trying to make amends for the poor treatment I had given the Kyoani fans, but that in doing so I refused to compromise my own opinions. This I will perhaps consider in time to be my greatest failure as a poster on Animesuki.
That said I’ll perhaps be making so occasional posts here again if people from AS who might come across this still wish to chat with me. I’d be more than happy to continue our productive conversations an a location where I don’t have to feel the weight and oversight of a mod staff that does not seem to like the way I conduct myself.
Farewell Animesuki Forums
Kaioshin Sama
Ah so that’s what had happened to you.
Now I know we haven’t really exchanged much at all. But I’d like to note, that I had enjoyed reading your posts on AnimeSuki, I had personally found them quite insightful. I thought you had a very interesting and compelling stance on shows (and genres). Opposite to mine personally, but most of the time I found it respectable. As opposed to others who had a some what similiar stance, but portrayed it in a fairly disrespectful manner of the sort I guess…
I was somewhat aware of your ‘history’ with KyoAni shows and what not. For the most part though (or as of recent months I guess) I found your opinions more or less acceptable. It is a shame relentless seemed to have kept/held a jaded view against you from past experiences…
I don’t really know too much about you really, just that I really did enjoy seeing you present/argue things the way they did. Sometimes discussions did feel slightly stale there, if say someone like you wasn’t there to express their viewpoints.I guess I also understand your views on how mecha anime is declining which is extremely saddening. I’m still trying to work through backlog of some of the older mecha’s that have caught my interest for some time, yet I just don’t have the free time I wish to view them.f
I’ll be honest though, when I had first read some of your posts sometime in 2009 to 2010, I thought you were a person extremely difficult to please. Though maybe that’s for the fact that I only saw a handful of posts then on a couple of shows. =P I’m glad though that I did read more of your posts, as they did bring in a fresh new perspective for me, which added on to my enjoyment for some series, even though it was quite the exact opposite. Heh.
…Now I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have come across this if I went to the latest BD/DVD ranking thread in MAL and saw some posts from you. Since you were posting there, and ‘banned’ on AS, curiosity lead me to your profile there, and then to this blog of yours. (apparently I’ve visited it a few times, don’t even remember it…)
Not much else to say…but I guess I’ll enjoy visiting this blog since I don’t have anything against you! (plus conflicting viewpoints & stances are something I do enjoy for whatever reasons…)
Ah…maybe I should have navigated a bit more on the site. Now I definitely remember coming here on a few occasions. Though they were more for Klashikari’s JE posts, than yours. (no offense though – I was just still a bit interested in detailed con posts/reports. heh)
I’m not …. terribly amused that you got p-banned yet flying still prances around alive when he’s caused far more trouble. In my opinion, your posts have improved a 1000% over the old days when I offered a few tips in how not to antagonize when criticizing. I’ll just say it again. There are a couple of mods whom I would have not selected as mods for the same reason *I* wouldn’t make a good mod –> making a hobby of someone who I’ve made a “special friend” (planning to drive them nuts). I find it difficult given the actual content of your posts to believe that one or more mods wasn’t in some kind of denial about their objectivity. Ah well, I barely post in the anime threads these days other than just to say I’m watching something or to provide information. If I could just learn to avoid the General Chat completely, it’d be fine.
Carry on, there’s lots of Internet out there.
@Flavorfantasy: I actually consider myself a pretty easy person to please but hard to truly impress and likewise hard to truly upset. There are really only a few things that really get under my skin when it comes to anime related stuff and those are in order of the offense from greatest to least shows that waste time by being boring or meandering, shows that pander to an excessive degree yet put up a pretense of being deep and introspective and shows that are overly misogynistic/misandristic towards it’s cast.
@Vexx: Ahoy my good friend. You were always a true gentleman and one of my favorite people to talk to on AS. I always appreciated sage words of wisdom coming from life experience.
The way I see it Relentlessflame in particular just really had in it for me and eventually it came to a point where I just could not stay unbanned by him for more than a few months at a time tops for what I and others including some mods found to be the flimsiest and arbitrary of reasons. He’d seemingly always find something to continuously give me permanent points on my account for seemingly towards this ultimate goal of finally being rid of me. In his mind whenever there was a transgression and I was anywhere in the vicinity I seemed to always get identified as the instigator and took the brunt of whatever infractions were handed out. It’s pretty shameful, but it is what it is.
The other mods didn’t really seem to have much against me in particular and never really bothered me for the most part though.
Got here via google reader. I was somewhat surprised to see a new post here, since even though I still visit for Klashikari’s posts, I just assumed the blog sort of died.
Well, I can say that it was really shocking for me that you actually got banned from the forums, and also saddened a lot. You were actually the reason I actually got so familiar with the forums and your posts here and there as well are what motivated me to improve my general posting techniques and etiquette and to think more about what I put in writing.
I’m really sorry to hear that there seemed to be a lot of bad blood between yourself and relentless. I’ve spoken with him several times and he never struck me as being an unreasonable person (quite the opposite really), but it seemed like he never really shaken off his view on you from the older days.
I honestly don’t think you deserved to be perma-banned for expressing a different opinion on Key/KyoAni shows, especially since you had really changed your tone and language since the older days where you were most certainly far more hyper-critical of them.
In any case, I’ll still be dropping by if you decided to revive the place again sometime in the next year. Always liked reading your posts
It’s going to be ending of mine day, except before end I am reading this enormous paragraph to increase my knowledge.
I do not find myself in agreement with the ban conditions: I thought a forum was for discussions. It is the risk of a ban that minimises my participation in forums: given that I use AnimeSuki as an information source, my account exists only so I can have subscribed posts and the like. A ban would impair my capacity to read the forum’s contents, so I prefer to hang out and simply observe what is being said.
That said, I contest the notion of Reckoner being anything resembling a class act. While I cannot be sure of his intentions, his writing style comes across as very confrontational and academically oriented (i.e. he tries to sound like he’s making an argument as one would in academic literature like journal papers). In the context of anime, that doesn’t work. Moreover, I’ve heard stories where Reckoner down-repped someone for disagreeing with his views, and the disparity in their reputation power led the other people to drop into the red.
Heya i’m for the first time here. I came across this board and I find It really useful & it helped me out much. I hope to give something back and help others like you helped me.