Cormac:
r3n, one of the few admins Imkihca could easily contact, ignored DMs from her in regard to this matter.
One of TNP's admins -- I won't publicly say who -- accused Syberis of causing him personal issues when he was contacted, prompting Syberis to cease contacting TNP's admin team at all lest he be the next one falsely accused of harassment by TNP's admin team.
So yes, individual admins have been ignoring inquiries (sometimes in very creative ways!), and the admin team's public silence for three months has also effectively meant the entire team is ignoring the situation. It's absolutely ludicrous that this incident occurred four months ago and the best you folks can do is "we're still working on it." Get on with it. You've falsely accused someone of harassment -- it's kind of an urgent matter. Maybe not for you, but certainly for the person you falsely accused.
For reference, Cormac is referring to me here. However, there are several accusations and falsehoods in this post that I need to address, and as this was posted publicly, here I am.
Yes, I informed Syberis that I had a panic attack when he messaged me. This occurred when I received the ping, before I had read the message. Indeed, the message he had sent me was perfectly innocuous, and had I read it at any time other than after a panic attack then I would have responded very differently. It occurred shortly after midnight in my timezone, on the morning of January 21st, around two months after I first became involved in this incident as a TNP administrator. During this time the crusade for Imkihca was in full swing, and the stress of the situation protracted across so long was causing my mental health to deteriorate.
Now, let's get to the meat of the matter. For full reference, here is a screenshot of the conversation I had with Syberis on that morning:
https://gyazo.com/577b0fa821891f4c3cef4b609744d38c
First, please note the following:
- I did not accuse Syberis of causing me personal issues. I informed him that him sending me a message triggered a panic attack. While the phrasing may make little difference to you, I meant exactly what I said. I do not blame Syberis for the panic attack, and I apologize if my response did not make that clear.
- I did not accuse Syberis of harassing me. Far from it; that short DM conversation was the sole conversation I had directly with him, ever (as far as I recall). One message, which in itself contains nothing that even comes close to crossing any lines, does not make a case of harassment.
Now, I will establish here that, yes, I did have a panic attack, but thank you for accusing me of lying about my real life disability to avoid responding to what wasn't even an inquiry. No, I do not have evidence of this, because I won't be revealing any further information about my real life for the sake of an online game. I'm sure you understand given the situation.
So, let's start with my message.
The actions I took (messaging and blocking) following Syberis messaging me were, 100%, not cool. I have no intention of trying to cover up these actions or to make excuses. I should have, instead, informed him that I was not currently in a state to discuss the situation, and would reach out to him the following day after work. But I did not; I acted emotionally, and said many regrettable things which only made the situation worse for all involved, not just for Syberis and myself but also my fellow admins at the time since it only damaged the credibility of the invitation to privately discuss the matter for the entire team. In fact, I had planned to apologize to Syberis when I had calmed down.
Until I logged in to Discord and received a direct message from a friend that informed me that I had been declared ban-on-sight in Osiris's Discord server "for [my] own good."
Looking back at the event... yeah, sure, fair enough. It was clear I needed to back away for a bit to get myself together before continuing, and I did. Hell, had I re-joined the server to attempt to pick fights or expose myself to more stress only to be banned, I'm sure at this date I would look back and
thank Syberis for that. At the time, however, I only saw this as using my real life disability against me for his own purposes (which I doubt is at all correct), and refused to contact him after that.
So here you go, Syberis. My own apology. I apologize for reacting the way I did, and everything I did was wrong. I know you don't frequent this forum so I'll be TGing you a screenshot of this post. (Or just the text since I'm getting long-winded.) I'm sorry that I had to make this apology in public, but as you can see I rather had to respond in this thread. I'm also sorry it took so long for you to receive it, but as you can see things are a
little slow-paced here in TNP.
That said. It seems Cormac was made aware of this event. Now, based off of the fact that Cormac referred to the event as "personal issues", and the fact that I believe you (Syberis) have a generally level head, I'm going to assume that Cormac doesn't know the exact details of the incident, and that you only informed him that I blocked you after accusing you of causing me "personal issues". Considering the situation, if that's all you told him, that's fair, too, and I thank you for keeping my real life disability private.
However, if you informed him of my real life disability after I informed you of it in private, or if you told him that I lied about my panic attack, or if you told him that I accused you of harassment, please take the following paragraph as being addressed to you as well.
What I did was wrong, yes, but
bring my real life disability into this very public thread, even if anonymously, and then topping it all off with outright lies is far, far more wrong than what I did, and crosses the line so much that I can't believe anyone would even consider doing that. You'll be interested to hear, Cormac, that it triggered another panic attack, though I doubt you'll believe that, either. Either way, your post is what convinced me that any positives that I get out of this game — the lovely community, the chance to practice my coding, the many friends I've made, the chance to give back to the community by becoming an admin and developing tools for the players to use, the chance to practice leadership, the chance to practice communicating with others, and anything else I've missed — none of those outweigh the negative of this game triggering my mental conditions, and those conditions being used against me with outright lies thrown into the mix. You may have referred to me anonymously (which I do appreciate that effort, don't get me wrong), you have basically forced me to acknowledge that it was me due to all those public lies. I hope you're keeping score, because that's now two TNP administrators that have left the game.
I apologize to the other admins that I had to step out in the midst of all this. But I consider it the right decision. I hope that I'll be in a better state to return someday, but with the direction this all is going it may take a while. I hope you can hold out better than I have, especially since there's at least a few people agreeing with the direction we've taken to resolve this very serious lapse in judgment.
I also apologize again to Syberis for what I said, and I consider the whole event to be water under the bridge. It's amazing how zen about the whole situation one can be when one takes a step back, and such is what I should have done back then, as well. I hope at least that you'll feel confident in the team enough to send a TG or two their way now.
Anyway, that's it. See ya.
The worst part of this is that the reputations of all involved parties will be adversely affected in some way. Let's also keep in mind that Imki is the aggrieved party with the most to lose (reputation-wise) in this matter.