Maybe the real NeoGAF was the friends we made along the way...

[Transhuman]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

He admitted there was an atmosphere of showing favouritism by way of targeting particular undesirables with temp bans as a pretence for later permabans, and allowing other posters more leeway if they were considered beneficial. (This was years ago)

[who is ted danson?]

I can't believe fucking rollingstone has an article about evilore being a creep. I honestly can't wrap my head around that.

evi finally making the big leagues. he runs a social media website, its a bit like facebook.

[zomgbbqftw]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

There is picture and archive evidence, but the gist of it is that beefsoda showed favouritism towards certain posters and worked very hard to ensure others were banned as quickly as possible.

Is it about how he purposefully did not ban people for bannable offenses because they were women/POC and the "young, white, male demographic" needed to hear their voices? If so I found it.

Yeah that's the one.

[SwolDic]

I can't believe fucking rollingstone has an article about evilore being a creep. I honestly can't wrap my head around that.

Rollingstone is being sold off. No one cares about that crappy magazine anymore. It's been shit longer than NEogaf has been shit.

[Himu]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

There is picture and archive evidence, but the gist of it is that beefsoda showed favouritism towards certain posters and worked very hard to ensure others were banned as quickly as possible.

I think I was protected when I was an Social Studies Warrior and followed right think. The thing about being protected on gaf is that whoever is protecting you isn't going to tell you. I didn't really want to be protected but I was. I'd say awful, horrendous, hate filled things and get away with it. If someone like Kinitari said something reasonable and I disagreed they'd be banned. I had no say  in it and I knew that if I said anything I'd be banned too. And even when I did, I wasn't. It was really weird. What's even weirder is that the second I reflected, shed and renounced my Social Studies Warrior views, I was then considered a problem. The shift was really weird but that didn't stop me.

How I got away with what I said without repercussion I do not know. No one talks to me about it.

So the protection thing is 100% real. I never tried to bait anyone into getting banned, but they'd be banned just for engaging with me and I'm sorry for that.

[thisismyusername]

Fear is what kept people from stepping "out of line" on gaf and once that fear was gone, posters were free to speak their minds. The last 3 hours of the site before it was taken down were a thing of beauty. Much like Bane bringing freedom to the people of Gotham, polyh3dron has liberated the people of Gaf: at a terrible cost.

If you take a screenshot, you'll be banned?
It'd be extremely painful...
You're a big board.
...for you.

[Tokyosandblaster]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

[injurai]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

He admitted there was an atmosphere of showing favouritism by way of targeting particular undesirables with temp bans as a pretence for later permabans, and allowing other posters more leeway if they were considered beneficial. (This was years ago)

Well that was fucking obvious for ages. I remember when new atheism was the protected class, to when equity politics became the protected class.

The moderation team actively cultivated a culture that baited people to purify the forums, instead of enforcing a shared zero-tolerance standard for civil decency. The forums actually believed they were a sanctuary.

[Scrooged]

Call a place full of people attacking the ACLU “left”, brehs.

Would you rather the term alt-left?  I realize that using the terms 'left' and 'right' can be broad and meaningless in the current political landscape, but make no doubt that anti free speech rhetoric these days is coming squarely from the left.

How bout Neo Puritans

lol, that would fit. The militant adherence to dogma and town-square shaming are spot on, even though their reasoning is different.  Two sides of the same coin.

[Opiate]

Also worth noting that Besada wasn't the only one engaging in that sort of behavior: quite a few moderators engaged in explicit favoritism, which again I strenuously objected to. In most cases, however, it was less politically motivated and more just "protecting your boys," or some such thing. For example, some moderators who frequented sports community threads would go out of their way to protect posters who were frequent posters in their preferred sports threads. One moderator considered overturning a ban I implemented on a poster who had expressly threatened my life because that poster was his sports-bro.

[FStop7]

Call a place full of people attacking the ACLU “left”, brehs.

Would you rather the term alt-left?  I realize that using the terms 'left' and 'right' can be broad and meaningless in the current political landscape, but make no doubt that anti free speech rhetoric these days is coming squarely from the left.

It was reactionary and authoritarian.  Literally built its reputation as being authoritarian on the gaming side and that same philosophy took over OT.  When you build a community culture of authority worship this is what you end up with.

[Forgotten A. Turnbuckle]

How do we know you're the real beep boop android we know?

I suppose I could log in to NeoGAF (if it ever comes back up) and post some sort of cryptic message as proof, but it is true that one of the downsides of internet anonymity is that it becomes difficult to prove ones identity should it ever become necessary.

I also think I'd be an odd choice to imitate if someone wanted to come here and impersonate a mod, both because I wasn't there until the very end and because (for most people) my speech patterns would be particularly difficult to imitate. Regardless, it is I.

If it truly is you, what was your name on Diablo III on PC?
We used to play that a bunch back in the auction house days.
You also used to play in your dad's account a lot. What was his name on there?

My battle tag is Verse, and most of my characters also had that name. My father's battletag is Ikemu.

Ok, I'm convinced. 
After reading the rest of your posts I realized it must be you.  You got the names right.  Nobody could impersonate you this well, but in light of all the new members and lurkers taking up others' personas I had to make sure.

I never bought the pedo accusations thrown against you.  I thought, however "robotic" you became known for, you were fair, thoughtful, and good at getting some of us lefties to challenge our ideas about those we disagreed with in a productive way.

Hope you stick around here.  You're good people.  Being able to come in here and post candidly about what went down despite knowing you've been branded as some horrible things is impressive. 

[Shuri]

I'm just imagining some future romantic prospect of Evilore'Google his name and find all of... This.

I was thinking about this earlier while driving..

It's pretty fucking insane how this stuff is gonna be on the internet forever now.

I'd get a name change at this point.

[SwolDic]

Also worth noting that Besada wasn't the only one engaging in that sort of behavior: quite a few moderators engaged in explicit favoritism, which again I strenuously objected to. In most cases, however, it was less politically motivated and more just "protecting your boys," or some such thing. For example, some moderators who frequented sports community threads would go out of their way to protect posters who were frequent posters in their preferred sports threads. One moderator considered overturning a ban I implemented on a poster who had expressly threatened my life because that poster was his sports-bro.

It's good to get confirmation on all the things people thought about the mod team there. Frankly, you were all seriously terrible. Never in my 20 years of internet usage have i come across such a terrible group of mods.

[Joseph]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

There is picture and archive evidence, but the gist of it is that beefsoda showed favouritism towards certain posters and worked very hard to ensure others were banned as quickly as possible.

Is it about how he purposefully did not ban people for bannable offenses because they were women/POC and the "young, white, male demographic" needed to hear their voices? If so I found it.

Yeah that's the one.

Ah, gotcha. I am a big supporter of a diverse forum body will often yield diverse viewpoints to the benefit of everybody, but that is sure as hell not how you handle it. You cannot just run a forum (or anything for that matter) with unequal enforcement of the rules. People will notice and realize they can get away with far more shit without repercussions. That is one of the things about Gaf. While I was happy that things liker racism, homophobia, sexism, etc., were not tolerated on Gaf, it went far and above that and people were dogpiled in a lot of cases where they just were ignorant or not very eloquent with their words. If you want the "young, white, male demographic" to listen, you have to explain to the people you are trying to talk to why their preconceived notions are wrong rather than just gang up on them til they get banned.

[Maiden Voyage]

Former Gaffer here. This could not have happened to a better website.

[Bacon]

Why did you decide to be a pedophile?

Why did you hate the Wrestling community?

(that was you, right?)

I'm not a pedophile. I wasn't then, and I'm not now. Since leaving GAF, I have gotten married, and I love my wife dearly. It's worth noting that the thread I left GAF over was heavily redacted -- except for my posts, since I didn't feel obligated to rescind statements I still believed were reasonable -- which makes it difficult to read, since it's not clear what happened or what prompted my responses.

If you want a short response: I believe that it's a really big bummer that people grow up with pedophilic tendencies through no fault of their own. It sucks that we can never let them express their sexual needs (and to be clear, we really can't) the way we can let everybody else do so, and it must feel horrible to keep your sexual desires bottled up inside your entire life or else face (justifiable) persecution. It's a horrible life to be born in to.

One other point I made is that this discussion is so toxic, so emotionally driven for most people, that simply suggesting a shred of sympathy for pedophiles made people suspect you of being a pedophile yourself --  a point that was rather amply demonstrated by the response.

As for Wrestling GAF, I legitimately do not know where that sense came from. I had no particular issues with Wrestling GAF. It's possible that Wrestling GAF hated me, but I did not hate them.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's a total coincidence you also had a flickr account full of pictures of small children titled xxx, you fucking creep.

[toku]

https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/922092593592373248

[Mr Gilhaney]

How long until Alex Jones releases a video? #pizzagate

[Opiate]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

[jackbenimble]

Wait, this means poligaf is gone?

Good.

[GorillaGorilla]

Mainly posting this as I spent too much time on it way back. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Lurked on the place, never joined.

WeeviL Straddles: Europe is an awe inspiring, death defying odyssey across Africa, whence I will sample the delights of a whole continent, and talk to locals about my manly prowess, and inspire them to do things they never dreamed off. I did have a full grand tour booked at various five star establishments, been there and done that, so donated the trip to the make a wish foundation and now plan to slum it in the sort of places where even I should be able to catch a non-specific urinary infection. So I’m relatively irony-free.

I’ll be blogging my travels extensively, mainly through the medium of mime, in the language of my host nation. Without you the audience this whole exercise becomes  pointless as I would have to live for the moment rather than the diary. I’ve brought my charm, good looks and of course preston (more about preston later) as well as more gadgets than you can probably afford. I am a fine looking man looking for a good time. It will be excruciating to read this.

I’ll have my current location scribbled on the back of my hand. If any of you feel up to handling a few hours with me send photos of you sister/mother/girlfriend/goat and I will get my advance team to work on it. A few lucky individuals may even get to put me up for a night or two (no juniors). Please be aware I am a trained killer and should not under any circumstances be disturbed whilst I am asleep. This diary is not about my own journey, it can be a trip for each and every one of us, think of me as living the life you could have had.

[Nuitangg]

Remember when ACLU was defending alt right fucks right to protest and gaffers said the organization was now alt right/Nazi supporters?

I also remember Evilore posting his donation to them for everyone to fawn over before that all started. Hilarious time.

And wasn't it like 100$?

I don't recall the amount but Evilore tweeted it to the singer Sia so she could match it. 

[Sampdoria]

I also advocated on the gaming side for intellectual diversity: namely, I thought the site exhibited clear biases and preferences for certain platforms and game types, and I wanted more people with different viewpoints to be included. Even if that meant letting a Farmville gamer be a mod, or something. Virtually all of us (including me) were PC gamers first and foremost, and the few exceptions were primarily Sony gamers by the end.

Is it true that Evilore had a Sony bias?

[agrajag]

Call a place full of people attacking the ACLU “left”, brehs.

Would you rather the term alt-left?  I realize that using the terms 'left' and 'right' can be broad and meaningless in the current political landscape, but make no doubt that anti free speech rhetoric these days is coming squarely from the left.

How bout Neo Puritans

Neo Gaffians

[Nabbis]

The Bore: Your Neogaf Decompression Chamber!

Some of those dudes need therapy, not decompression.

I mostly though that the echo chambers were some internet personality thing for those posters but looking at this thread some of them really drank the koolaid. As someone living in an actual social democracy, Gaf's idea of leftist ideology is being an authoritative shit hole.

[HaughtyFrank]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

Confirmation that Opiate is into Milfs. This whole mess was worth it.

[Momo]

Wait, this means poligaf is gone?

Good.

The best part about this is wherever the usual suspects end up they will need to learn to behave as fucking humans, unless they are okay with being locked in a small box with only 15 people and  besada for company.

[Opiate]

Also worth noting that Besada wasn't the only one engaging in that sort of behavior: quite a few moderators engaged in explicit favoritism, which again I strenuously objected to. In most cases, however, it was less politically motivated and more just "protecting your boys," or some such thing. For example, some moderators who frequented sports community threads would go out of their way to protect posters who were frequent posters in their preferred sports threads. One moderator considered overturning a ban I implemented on a poster who had expressly threatened my life because that poster was his sports-bro.

It's good to get confirmation on all the things people thought about the mod team there. Frankly, you were all seriously terrible. Never in my 20 years of internet usage have i come across such a terrible group of mods.

While I obviously have been quite critical of NeoGAF in this thread so far, I will personally disagree with this. I think much of the moderation team is terrific, and the many of the mods were central to making NeoGAF the great place it could often be. Just because I disagreed with (for example) Besada does not mean I think he's a stupid dumb dumb head who I didn't respect. 

[Mr. Nobody]

Still just radio silence?

[Transhuman]

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

Grandma porn?

[NickFire]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

Next time start with a no, and if you need this many words, make sure to carve out space for an outright denial.

[Sai]

i hope one day someone accuses me of impersonating another user 

[Mr. Nobody]

Oh wow, Opiate's here.

Just how much has he handwaved away an online image gallery full of children's photos?

[Shuri]

Opiate, any stories of the owner threating the mods like crap in the admin forum? Like insulting them or degrading them in front of everyone?

[Optimus]

Neogaf community was openly left. The site did not want conservative posters or anyone who sympathized with ideologies in that sphere. It was also not a place for centrists or fence sitters which was also good but you could still post on the site as one. It wasn't some free speech Libertarian playground nor do I think this is a good quality to have for any forum.

lol no it wasn't. Either you people are delusional or politically uneducated, people who shill for Hillary fucking Clinton aren't left, they're neoliberals.

[Opiate]

I also advocated on the gaming side for intellectual diversity: namely, I thought the site exhibited clear biases and preferences for certain platforms and game types, and I wanted more people with different viewpoints to be included. Even if that meant letting a Farmville gamer be a mod, or something. Virtually all of us (including me) were PC gamers first and foremost, and the few exceptions were primarily Sony gamers by the end.

Is it true that Evilore had a Sony bias?

Without talking about Evilore explicitly, this was the general hierarchy among mods: PC->Sony->Nintendo-is-a-side-game->Xbox->Handhelds-->mobile. Again, not all moderators fit this exact formula, but it was frequent enough that I personally feared it could blind us to changes in the gaming industry that collectively didn't appeal to us (e.g. the meteoric rise of mobile).

[Bacon]

Why did you decide to be a pedophile?

Why did you hate the Wrestling community?

(that was you, right?)

I'm not a pedophile. I wasn't then, and I'm not now. Since leaving GAF, I have gotten married, and I love my wife dearly. It's worth noting that the thread I left GAF over was heavily redacted -- except for my posts, since I didn't feel obligated to rescind statements I still believed were reasonable -- which makes it difficult to read, since it's not clear what happened or what prompted my responses.

If you want a short response: I believe that it's a really big bummer that people grow up with pedophilic tendencies through no fault of their own. It sucks that we can never let them express their sexual needs (and to be clear, we really can't) the way we can let everybody else do so, and it must feel horrible to keep your sexual desires bottled up inside your entire life or else face (justifiable) persecution. It's a horrible life to be born in to.

One other point I made is that this discussion is so toxic, so emotionally driven for most people, that simply suggesting a shred of sympathy for pedophiles made people suspect you of being a pedophile yourself --  a point that was rather amply demonstrated by the response.

As for Wrestling GAF, I legitimately do not know where that sense came from. I had no particular issues with Wrestling GAF. It's possible that Wrestling GAF hated me, but I did not hate them.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's a total coincidence you also had a flickr account full of pictures of small children titled xxx, you fucking creep.

^^^

[Klelk]

[dridru]

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/922118626940878849

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/586624589377175552

He never saw it, like nobody knew amirox

He knew about the incident in Spain it seems:

@jasonschreier
Only thing I had seen before Thursday was that gross post about Spain
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/922118200325586945

Don't know if there was more going around at that time?

Seems the Xbox dude was not talking about NeoGAF earlier, but football. Bad timing there:

@XboxQwik
@TattooedGamer83 Actually, Yankees losing but boy did this take a different direction. I expected a lot of Yankee fans to reply.
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/922097678435041280

The valuation discussion earlier in this thread is interesting. A website these days is valued at about 1 or 2 times the yearly revenue. Forums less even considering the great risks of having no control over the content and users can jump ship at any time. Don't know the revenue he had, but considering the quality if banners, I doubt it was that much. Certainly not millions a year. Still don't understand why he stuck to those ads. Gaming OTs are read hundreds of thousands of times. Stick some affiliate links in there for users to buy through, get some deals going with shops, branch out to mailing or PM subscriptions with gaming offers, those kind of things. A game sale can be a few dollars, you need to do thousands of pageviews for that with the type of ads running. Plus, forum members use adblock a ton, wouldn't be surprised if the desktop traffic was 3/4 adblock or more considering the target audience.

Anyway, crazy events. Don't get what the delay is with that statement. He could have prevent like 90% of the fallout going right now by being pro-active with it when the details came out.

I'm just imagining some future romantic prospect of Evilore'Google his name and find all of... This.

I was thinking about this earlier while driving..

It's pretty fucking insane how this stuff is gonna be on the internet forever now.

I'd get a name change at this point.

Or move to Europe and file a 'please forget me'-request with Google in a few years.

[Opiate]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

Next time start with a no, and if you need this many words, make sure to carve out space for an outright denial.

My first responded-to-question in this thread had me saying exactly that: no, I am not a pedophile. Feel free to look back: it was a response to KissVibes in this very thread.

[nudemacusers]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

Another poster on team milf

[zepblackstar]

http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/neogaf-offline-amidst-sex-assault-allegations-against-owner-w509871

WELP.

Neogaf made the rolling stone in a section that they fired everyone from a couple of months ago

[exGAF]

Neogaf community was openly left. The site did not want conservative posters or anyone who sympathized with ideologies in that sphere. It was also not a place for centrists or fence sitters which was also good but you could still post on the site as one. It wasn't some free speech Libertarian playground nor do I think this is a good quality to have for any forum.

lol no it wasn't. Either you people are delusional or politically uneducated, people who shill for Hillary fucking Clinton aren't left, they're neoliberals.

Yep, that's the awesome magic trick the republican party managed to pull off. Making anything that isn't caricature far-right look like left-wing.

[NickFire]

Also worth noting that Besada wasn't the only one engaging in that sort of behavior: quite a few moderators engaged in explicit favoritism, which again I strenuously objected to. In most cases, however, it was less politically motivated and more just "protecting your boys," or some such thing. For example, some moderators who frequented sports community threads would go out of their way to protect posters who were frequent posters in their preferred sports threads. One moderator considered overturning a ban I implemented on a poster who had expressly threatened my life because that poster was his sports-bro.

It's good to get confirmation on all the things people thought about the mod team there. Frankly, you were all seriously terrible. Never in my 20 years of internet usage have i come across such a terrible group of mods.

While I obviously have been quite critical of NeoGAF in this thread so far, I will personally disagree with this. I think much of the moderation team is terrific, and the many of the mods were central to making NeoGAF the great place it could often be. Just because I disagreed with (for example) Besada does not mean I think he's a stupid dumb dumb head who I didn't respect.

Does Besada have major dirt on you?  Can not fathom how you could respect anything about him. 

[Opiate]

Why did you decide to be a pedophile?

Why did you hate the Wrestling community?

(that was you, right?)

I'm not a pedophile. I wasn't then, and I'm not now. Since leaving GAF, I have gotten married, and I love my wife dearly. It's worth noting that the thread I left GAF over was heavily redacted -- except for my posts, since I didn't feel obligated to rescind statements I still believed were reasonable -- which makes it difficult to read, since it's not clear what happened or what prompted my responses.

If you want a short response: I believe that it's a really big bummer that people grow up with pedophilic tendencies through no fault of their own. It sucks that we can never let them express their sexual needs (and to be clear, we really can't) the way we can let everybody else do so, and it must feel horrible to keep your sexual desires bottled up inside your entire life or else face (justifiable) persecution. It's a horrible life to be born in to.

One other point I made is that this discussion is so toxic, so emotionally driven for most people, that simply suggesting a shred of sympathy for pedophiles made people suspect you of being a pedophile yourself --  a point that was rather amply demonstrated by the response.

As for Wrestling GAF, I legitimately do not know where that sense came from. I had no particular issues with Wrestling GAF. It's possible that Wrestling GAF hated me, but I did not hate them.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's a total coincidence you also had a flickr account full of pictures of small children titled xxx, you fucking creep.

^^^

I have already responded to this question, but I suppose I will reiterate: not only is that not my Flickr account, I don't have a Flickr account, period. To my knowledge, I've never been to Flickr (although realistically it has probably passed my browser unbeknownst). I have no idea who that is and I have no idea why you are so convinced that it is me.

[tummyfat]

https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/922092593592373248

It's pretty funny watching all of neogaf's former targets reveling in its demise

[Tasty]

Opiate's here?

[zomgee]

So.... I see I a lot people mention the whole Besada PM thing that happened. Can someone explain to me what exactly happened? While I have (had?) an account on Gaf, I rarely posted and was not involved in any forum drama.

There is picture and archive evidence, but the gist of it is that beefsoda showed favouritism towards certain posters and worked very hard to ensure others were banned as quickly as possible.

Is it about how he purposefully did not ban people for bannable offenses because they were women/POC and the "young, white, male demographic" needed to hear their voices? If so I found it.

Yeah that's the one.

Jesus you can post it here:

https://imgur.com/gallery/TkpY3

You won't get banned.

[Masquerader]

Remember when ACLU was defending alt right fucks right to protest and gaffers said the organization was now alt right/Nazi supporters?

The forum was on a downward trend but after Trump people lost their minds.

I hate Trump more than I hate almost anybody else, but I was consistently blown away with how large parts of GAF were unable to accept that part of the reason why he won is because Hillary sucked, the Democrats sucked, and they didn't do enough for the people of the US. It was flat-out denial, and if they actually channeled their vitrol into something useful, they'd be pretty damned good centre politicians, instead of useless annoying forum commentators.

[ModernBoxes]

Opiates real identity is Gordon Schlansky.

I like all the "NEOGAF WASNT LEFT" posts. Sad stuff.

[Para-Medic]

Just poking my head up from the masses of newly washed ashore members.

Can't say I have any particular grudge against GAF, pretty sure I was "Junior culled" before I even got a single post off. I ended up being totes fine with that because I mainly browsed it for the news aggregation and little else. I'll miss that aspect of it tbh, it was the first thing I checked when I got up and the last thing I checked before bed. (And because I did that for years, I actually recognize tons of names and avatars here lol) I wanna say I had been lurking for at least a decade, I believe I registered in Middle-School which feels so long ago now. 

Don't think GAF would have kept me around for long anyway. I don't do bandwagons, FFXIII trilogy isn't that bad, and YAS QUEEN was a terrible meme. Japanese games are my favorite and I don't think shitting on their character design all the time constitutes actual discussion. Even though I'm left leaning myself I just couldn't wrap my head around GAF in the later years. Discourse fell by the wayside and staff didn't seem at all interested in encouraging actual debate or discussion. 90% of posts were a single line of agreement or disagreement, at least when it wasn't memes or inside jokes. Just yuck.

Anywho, with all the drama from yesterday shutting down GAF, I ended up turning to twitter for news and recognized some GAF names. One thing led to another and when I found the bore, I felt awkwardly compelled to register. I don't socialize much, no FB, tweets, or instawhatevers, I grew up in the 90's and early 2000's, traditional internet forums feel like a home of sorts, they're comforting in a nostalgic way. I'll probably hang out mostly in the gaming side, but since ya'll seem so chill maybe some OT discussion on the side won't be so eye-rolling here.

[hungrynoob]

I'm just imagining some future romantic prospect of Evilore'Google his name and find all of... This.

Lets be honest, evilore's dating prospects were already pitiful if he thought following some chick with a bf into a shower naked was a good idea.

[Optimus]

https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/922092593592373248

It's pretty funny watching all of neogaf's former targets reveling in its demise

I have to admit, I never liked PDP but I subscribed after watching a few of his new vids about the constant witchhunting against him by these fucking loons. The guy is very different than he used to be a decade ago, I kind of like him now.

[Tasty]

One other point I made is that this discussion is so toxic, so emotionally driven for most people, that simply suggesting a shred of sympathy for pedophiles made people suspect you of being a pedophile yourself --  a point that was rather amply demonstrated by the response.

You told a victim of child sexual abuse to recuse herself from a conversation about child sexual abuse.

Fuck off and die you goddamn cylon.

[injusticeforall]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

Note that this isn't a response directly to this post, but just in general to the former moderators and admin of GAF. I think there were a couple main problems, with the site, and it doesn't necessarily mean you yourself a part of it.

First is, there was little understanding of the word 'objective' by the community there. Take for example a typical flame thread I would see, involving road rage. It usually could be someone in a car or a motorcycle driving like a dick, which then prompts another driver into rage to react in an attempt to kill or seriously injure the person. This is a classic GAF response thread, where most would agree the reaction to try to kill someone is absurd, and then you would have individuals pointing out the person initializing the entire mess deserves fault too, and the poster stating that would usually receive a huge backfire until they may be eventually banned.

GAF allowed non-objective initial reaction statements constantly like this to just call people pieces of shit, etc - which then caused the predictable 'well there's both sides blame here' response too. Neither one of these statements is objective, and objectiveness is very dry - like PBS or CSPAN dry - but for years GAF allowed that kind of ruthlessness if you were on the "right" side. If you weren't, well, you were banned. I'm guessing no moderator or administrator read books like "Feeling Good" by David Burns on how to practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and what name calling and generalizations lead to, but GAF is a prime example of the pit it leads to.

I'm not even religious, but if you had a thread on the Pope calling for some income equality and someone replied, "well he's still a homophobe POS", no one cared. If someone had a thread on a legitimate scientific study on the dangers of climate change, it wasn't a discussion about the study, it was knee-jerk smarmy remarks about how Republicans may ignore those issues. It's not even the fact I agree with the Catholic Church's stance (because I don't), or agree with the disregard of climate change, it's just the fact it was just CONSTANT subjective one liner after another demeaning something or someone.

Second, is the complete lack of awareness of victim blaming vs. pragmatism. A good example I recall is the unfortunate US college student who went to North Korea via China, and was essentially eventually murdered, after being put in a labor camp, for stealing a North Korean flag. He absolutely didn't deserve it, but at the same time, it doesn't change how the world is. If he were my brother and told me he would goto North Korea, period, much less pull that stunt - I would call him every name in the book for his idiocy and do everything possible for him not to go because I would not want to see what happened, happen to him. In an ideal world, a woman should be able to dress how she wants wherever she goes, a person should be able to travel the world without oppressive local customs, but it's not realistic. That doesn't mean they're to blame for when something happens to them, but at the same time it's just as reasonable to comment on the lack for awareness why the world is. Just because I should be able to walk in the bad part of town with a new iPhone and $100 bills hanging out my pocket with nothing happening to me, doesn't mean I should disregard common sense and safety to do so.

These are just a couple examples of many others that the community and moderators fostered that I believe were completely unreasonable.

[D3RANG3D]

Just poking my head up from the masses of newly washed ashore members.

Can't say I have any particular grudge against GAF, pretty sure I was "Junior culled" before I even got a single post off. I ended up being totes fine with that because I mainly browsed it for the news aggregation and little else. I'll miss that aspect of it tbh, it was the first thing I checked when I got up and the last thing I checked before bed. (And because I did that for years, I actually recognize tons of names and avatars here lol) I wanna say I had been lurking for at least a decade, I believe I registered in Middle-School which feels so long ago now. 

Don't think GAF would have kept me around for long anyway. I don't do bandwagons, FFXIII trilogy isn't that bad, and YAS QUEEN was a terrible meme. Japanese games are my favorite and I don't think shitting on their character design all the time constitutes actual discussion. Even though I'm left leaning myself I just couldn't wrap my head around GAF in the later years. Discourse fell by the wayside and staff didn't seem at all interested in encouraging actual debate or discussion. 90% of posts were a single line of agreement or disagreement, at least when it wasn't memes or inside jokes. Just yuck.

Anywho, with all the drama from yesterday shutting down GAF, I ended up turning to twitter for news and recognized some GAF names. One thing led to another and when I found the bore, I felt awkwardly compelled to register. I don't socialize much, no FB, tweets, or instawhatevers, I grew up in the 90's and early 2000's, traditional internet forums feel like a home of sorts, they're comforting in a nostalgic way. I'll probably hang out mostly in the gaming side, but since ya'll seem so chill maybe some OT discussion on the side won't be so eye-rolling here.

[CrankyJay]

Schrier's comments seem correct, to me. I think some of you are missing how this got ignored: not because no one had heard it before, but because we hear so many things that knowing which are real and which aren't is difficult. I'm sure in any comment section, Evilore is called a Nazi but also a communist; a great leader but also an asshole; a person who sexually assaults women but also a pedophile. It isn't that they haven't heard this stuff before -- it's that someone in Evilore's position has been accused of basically everything, so knowing which accusations have real meat and which do not can be difficult.

So you're not a pedophile?

One of the worst things about such accusations is that I have no real way to disprove it. I can say I'm not, but maybe I'm lying; I can tell you I'm now married to a full grown woman (Well, she's actually quite short, but she's also 30) , but maybe that's a cover; I could tell you I've never been arrested or charged or found with suspicious content, but perhaps that just means I haven't been caught yet.

If I could post something a little forward, I'd point out that I have of course watched pornography in my life, and that my inclinations in this regard definitely do not lean towards that sort of persuasion. The opposite, if anything.

So you're into elder porn? You monster.

[Mr. Nobody]

https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/922092593592373248

It's pretty funny watching all of neogaf's former targets reveling in its demise

I have to admit, I never liked PDP but I subscribed after watching a few of his new vids about the constant witchhunting against him by these fucking loons. The guy is very different than he used to be a decade ago, I kind of like him now.

Yeah, I'm sure that was all it took 

[Marhunchy]

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/922118626940878849

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/586624589377175552

He never saw it, like nobody knew amirox

He knew about the incident in Spain it seems:

@jasonschreier
Only thing I had seen before Thursday was that gross post about Spain
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/922118200325586945

Don't know if there was more going around at that time?

Seems the Xbox dude was not talking about NeoGAF earlier, but football. Bad timing there:

@XboxQwik
@TattooedGamer83 Actually, Yankees losing but boy did this take a different direction. I expected a lot of Yankee fans to reply.
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/922097678435041280

The valuation discussion earlier in this thread is interesting. A website these days is valued at about 1 or 2 times the yearly revenue. Forums less even considering the great risks of having no control over the content and users can jump ship at any time. Don't know the revenue he had, but considering the quality if banners, I doubt it was that much. Certainly not millions a year. Still don't understand why he stuck to those ads. Gaming OTs are read hundreds of thousands of times. Stick some affiliate links in there for users to buy through, get some deals going with shops, branch out to mailing or PM subscriptions with gaming offers, those kind of things. A game sale can be a few dollars, you need to do thousands of pageviews for that with the type of ads running. Plus, forum members use adblock a ton, wouldn't be surprised if the desktop traffic was 3/4 adblock or more considering the target audience.

Anyway, crazy events. Don't get what the delay is with that statement. He could have prevent like 90% of the fallout going right now by being pro-active with it when the details came out.

I'm just imagining some future romantic prospect of Evilore'Google his name and find all of... This.

I was thinking about this earlier while driving..

It's pretty fucking insane how this stuff is gonna be on the internet forever now.

I'd get a name change at this point.

Or move to Europe and file a 'please forget me'-request with Google in a few years.

Ybarra then retweeted boogie last tweet on the matter

He's been cheeky, but the subtext is there