Nostalgia, old staff feels

[All_That_Chaz]

To people who don't know me at all, this post will make no sense. Sorry. Hi, btw<3


I never really talked about my experience on staff here before with anybody outside of I suppose Hammy, devonin, and Ani. I'd like to. If you don't want to read it, neat. If you're worried I'd actually resurface after years to be petty and smear people, allow me to assuage your anxiety. I will have nothing but glowing words for all of the colleagues and friends I had here. This is me writing a note in a bottle and casting it out to sea from a desert island, except my life isn't quite as sad. And I certainly don't intend on spilling any trade secrets =p

After a convention meetup in Ohio in 2008 (a very cherished memory, Synth is a god at Pacman and Rock Band drums), I and a few other active users were made profile mods because we were always on, weren't morons, and were willing. I liked that I was able to help clean up profiles removing porn and offensive images and stuff. There wasn't much power. I honestly don't remember for sure but I don't think I had the ability to ban anyone in any way.

In 2009, the FFR blackout happened. We were in the staff skype chat and the details were a bit sketchy. I'm not going to go into them here. We tried to keep in touch but many of us were just trying to get details of what was going on. When the site came back up we had trouble getting in touch with all of the mods. I offered to help with the forums. I really enjoyed the olde tgb community and that camaraderie made me really care about making this community a nice place. This was basically my home, '08-'09 was a bad time for me irl outside of Hammy who held me together.

I liked being a forum mod. I always looked up to the unquestionable morality of two in particular, Stretchypanda and Guidohunter. Amanda and Andy continue to be among the world's best people. I'd know more about them if I used Facebook more regularly. I thought they had the right idea of how to enforce rules while still being genuinely empathetic. I thought I was decent at it. I tried to look out for the users and make sure they got a fair say. I also always tried to get as many staff opinions as possible to get as many perspectives as possible and to have a dialogue so someone who gets in real trouble understands what happened and what our stance is. Because one of the most frustrating things about being banned is that you don't always know exactly why and you often didn't have any ability to explain. I was banned once in '07 for calling an idiot an idiot. Guido banned me for a week because it was in the newbie's introduction thread (for the record, I didn't call the newbie an idiot, I called some other idiot an idiot). I didn't feel it was warranted, but I couldn't do anything about it. I feel like especially for really long bans this is just what causes people to change their IP to dodge IP bans. Talking to these people you ban shows that you aren't some monolithic uncaring arbitrary force of punishment. Confronting them also shows that you aren't avoiding them out of a sense of guilt. Also, even if they are ungrateful and write enormous angry private messages that you'll never fully read through, later on they usually do come to understand. That's when their 37th alt finally doesn't get deleted and they're given a shot to fly under the radar and be a good person. I like to talk to seek them out and talk about life and just see what kind of person they are. If they lash out unprovoked over the ban, that's proof they need to keep waiting it out. If it isn't even on their mind, and they've genuinely been a good person on the forums as an alt, the ban does occasionally drop. Frankly it always made me so happy. I mean if someone is willing to make alts just to post on the dopey forums for a dancing simulator, they clearly miss the place. I was glad I could make it easier for them to enjoy the community they like.

I guess I went on a bit of a tangent. I always cared too much about what the community thought of me. I just wanted people to think I was fair and didn't do things out of spite or randomly. I started talking about IP banning back in there. I was made an admin when Sky Kitten was. We went from becoming profile mods at the same time to becoming admins at the same time. Ally's a cool cat.

Short aside: People always asked me how to get on staff, like there's a cheat code or a score on a song you have to get or something. When we looked for new mods, I know I was always just looking for people who were active in the area we were looking for help in and that they were respected for the right reasons. Just be good people, you know?

Anyway being an admin was different. The real reason I got the access was so I didn't have to bug Sprite anymore to IP ban someone who was evading me in the forums. The biggest difference for me was that I felt like I was supposed to do more but didn't really know what, or how. That feeling just made me want to really stay active on profiles and forums because it's what I knew. I wanted people to think that these places were well taken care of.

My activity pretty much stopped when a lot of things in my life were in upheaval as I was starting a new career and trying to get on my feet financially and personally, so I guess this was around 2013 or so. When the activity on the ffya forums waned and stopped in 2015, that was pretty much it for me and forums. I knew eventually the access would be revoked. I didn't know if I'd want to come back later so I didn't formally leave. Maybe that's why I never got the Retired Staff tag.

Overall the experience was fascinating and rewarding. It's so hard to describe the feeling of being nominally important part of what was a breathtakingly huge community (it may still be, I don't mean to throw shade). I helped this place function and got to affect the lives of so many people. It's honestly helped me in my career as a high school teacher. I was training to manage groups of hyperactive teenagers years before I ever started teaching!

I know, huge post of weird personal introspection. Why, Chaz, dammit Chaz no. I get it. I think about this community in that time period so much because it really was my home. When I walked into my empty apartment in Wisconsin I was really entering profile chat and vid chat and skype and was connected with thousands of people I knew and cared about. Even though those years were not good years for me personally, it's important to remember the places and people who got you through it. I'm still alive, and sometimes that's worth celebrating.

And something really really good did come out of it