I Got Banned + Taking Accountability · 12:25am Jun 6th, 2023
Um…okay. How do I explain this? This is something that I never thought would happen to me, and obviously, there is no excuse for what I did and the fault is entirely on me for not reading the rules more carefully. Let me try and break this down for y’all.
So I got home from a very fun day at Disneyland on Sunday, only to discover that I was banned from the site. I was shocked and horrified, understandably. I didn’t know what I did wrong and I felt my world crumble before my very eyes. I sent an appeal to knighty right away, which they never responded to, and I believed that whoever reported me just didn’t like me and wanted to ruin me for no apparent reason.
That was when I read my emails and I realized what I had done.
There’s this group that I forgot the name of with quite a bit of members that apparently kicked me out and I had no idea. It was for story promotion, of course, but one of its rules was that you couldn’t post your own stories there. You think I listened? Obviously not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here explaining this. The fault really lies with the fact that I’m very insecure when it comes to getting my stories out. I want maximum engagement and I want to feel like my work gets noticed. I’m sure that’s a feeling we can all relate to. So I have this tendency to get way over my head and accidentally promote my stories to where they shouldn’t be promoted.
Despite saying that I had learned my lesson in one of my previous blog posts that tons of views aren’t everything, old habits die hard, and I made a mistake that I shouldn’t’ve made.
I used alt accounts to circumvent the bans.
Now one of the admins, Winter Solstice, had already warned me two times over about not doing this, but I was just too airheaded to listen. I thought if I promoted my stories to the group using alt accounts, then surely they wouldn’t notice that it was me, right?
Well, I’m no criminal mastermind with a proven track record of success in fooling the system (nor would I ever want to be, let’s be honest), so understandably…I got caught, and Winter reported me to the admins.
Guys, I am just so sorry for everything. I’ve never been as self-confident as I like to portray myself as, so when I make a story, I like to promote it everywhere. And going forward, that definitely won’t change as practically everybody on this site does it to get the most readers possible and there’s no trouble in doing that, but I’ll definitely be more careful and read the fine print more carefully before promoting my story somewhere it shouldn’t. I’ve been battling lingering depression due to this as writing for you guys is practically my life. I love writing and posting stories. I want to be an actual author one day and your feedback has been life-changing for me. But there’s no excuse for this.
I am just so incredibly disgusted and disappointed in myself that I let the reckless part of me take over and caused me to get banned. I hold myself to such a high standard to the point where I expect myself to be this perfect specimen and role-model for the Brony fandom, yet I went ahead and did this. As you know, I’ve called out many users in the past and berated them for being so unreasonably negative on G5 as they have literally no evidence to its poor quality other than their purist nostalgia. I’ve created this morally correct standard that I hold myself to, as I want to be the face of a new, positive Brony fandom and set an example for others as to how we should behave like I’ve mentioned before.
Yet after this…I’ve realized that I’m not perfect and that I shouldn’t expect myself to be. I make mistakes and I’m not flawless. Dare I say it, I’m a work in progress. If I’m going to be someone who sets an example for others, I need to be able to admit to and grow from my mistakes. What I did was wrong and I’ll never do it again. I’ll be leaving the group that banned me and I’m going to find a way to delete all of my alt accounts as I can’t be trusted with them anymore. I am just so incredibly lucky that this wasn’t a permanent ban as I don’t know what I would do if that happened.
If you still want to hang around, read my stuff, watch my videos, and support my movement after what I have done, then that would be amazing and I’m insanely grateful to all of you. But if some of you don’t believe in me anymore, I understand. I’ve realized after being banned for two days that I can’t keep pushing the limits on stuff I shouldn’t. I should still promote my stuff a lot, sure, but I should also just trust in my audience to click the story and read. And most importantly, I need to read the rules before spamming my story onto a group’s folders.
There are a lot of groups that allow self-promotion, yet there are also some who don’t, and I need to respect the rules that others have. Otherwise, something worse might happen and I may never see you guys again. From now on, whenever I call out somebody for doing something, I need to be damn sure that I’m not doing the same thing. I also now know what it feels like to get banned and let me tell you, it’s not fun. There have been many times where I’ve wanted someone to get banned from the site because they were being rude to me or someone else I care about. Now I’m questioning whether or not I actually want to see that enforced on a whim. Penalize them sure, but banning? Ehhhhhhh…
Not only can you not interact with anyone, comment on their stories, or explain to your own followers where the hay you’ve gone when they ask, but it also just feels so scary. Appeals also apparently don’t work either as I sent in like 3 emails and I didn’t even get a response from knighty as they seem to be barely online. So when you’re banned…you’re pretty much banned. I was at first worried that my stories would be deleted, but thankfully, they weren’t. You can still comment on them and see them.
So what does this mean for The Misty Saga? Well, my release schedule has been thrown way out of wack. As I said, I was battling depression upon learning of this, so a little more than half a day of writing got wasted. It’s not all bad though as despite how bad I was feeling, I eventually picked myself up like a real stallion, told my brain to suck it, and forced myself to write, so that I may post the chapters when I get back. That means a bit of Redeemed is kind of done, but not really. As a result of the f’ed up schedule, Redeemed is instead coming out on the 7th or the 8th. I know, a bit late, right? Well, you can’t compete with Hasbro, and you know what? I don’t want to anymore. I’ll release the story when it’s ready to come out and not try and brute force a rushed resolution.
The point I want to make is, I’m sorry. I really am. This really has been a learning experience for me and after almost losing you guys forever, I realized that I have to change the way I think about certain things. If you can forgive me, great. If not, I understand, I’m open to learning and growing from this experience, and I want to be a bit more open with you all about how I feel.
I’ll be posting the next three chapters of The Fall of Opaline in just a few minutes, so be sure to catch the next update! See you all soon!!
Trust me, I was in the same position once, so you ain't alone on that.
Whilst this wasn't on this site in particular, I was flung from a group that had apparently been absent, so when I tried to get in through another account, they caught on and I was permanently removed from the group.
Now, I did apologize to the group and they've forgiven me since then. So, lesson learned.
Sorry that happened to you man.
I know the feeling.
During my freshman year of high school was on a forum and I thought I was a funny guy that people enjoyed. Only to one day discover I got banned. I was never told why, but it didn’t take long to figure out how. I was a peace disrupter, typing all caps (basically yelling a lot) swearing a lot, saying offensive things, and even making threats against other users.
Like you I had been warned, but it seems I didn’t take myself seriously.
I want to say that I’ve matured since then. And in some cases I have. But I find myself slipping back into my old self from time to time. So don’t worry, you’re not hated by me.
I’m just glad you haven’t been removed from the site entirely.
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I am too. Rest assured, I believe that I’ve learned my lesson.
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Yeah. Well, I wish you luck with your story.
Reading Fall of Opaline right now and have some things to comment on.
I've been in FimFiction for almost 10 months now, yet I'm finding out about groups being a thing today...
Still, I think you're pushing yourself too bad.
You made a mistake. So? You're not a cartoon character with no flaws that can overcome everything without a scratch: You are human, a mortal being that's gonna screw it sometimes, AND THAT'S OKAY!
I could literally make a whole list about the amount of times I made mistakes because I didn't read the rules as I should've had. And yet, I learned from my mistakes, or sorta, because I still not read rules sometimes... But that doesn't mean I'm always gonna screw it up.
Is a thing about live and learn: You fall, but you can either let yourself be beaten by failure; or you can get up, clean yourself, and keep going.
I know that this post you made is not for me, since again, I didn't even knew groups were a thing until today, but know that everyone makes mistakes. As long as you learn from them, that's what matters, so I say stop pushing yourself over this.
No one is perfect. Everyone has their flaws. We're all humans at the end of the day, and it's in human nature to make mistakes (or something like that.) (*hugs*) I'm sorry that happened to you. But I feel grateful that it was only temporary, because your stuff are amazing!
I'm just glad you're back. I was worried about how long you're going to be banned and I put reading TFoO on hold until the situation was cleared.
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Thank you both, really. That means a lot to me. I can’t state enough how grateful I am that I have you guys to support me when I f*ck up like this. I always appreciate it.
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I am too. It feels so great to be back and not banned forever. The situation has been cleared, so by all means, read on. I’m back to updating it regularly and we only have I think 5 chapters left or something.
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I will eventually, but it's been a while since I updated my own story and it is high time I finish the next chapter.
Normally, I'd keep this to a PM, but since you saw fit to mention me BY NAME in your blog, I'll keep this public.
First of all, stop using the phrase "accidentally." It makes you sound like a toddler who has no idea what they're doing, when that's far from the case. Second, there's this:
That was over TWO WEEKS ago, and you still haven't done either of those things.
Consider this a friendly, LAST warning. I have been informed by the admins if you try something else the punishment will be harsher.
But as for me, I'm done with this.
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Um, I checked and I’m out of the group. The button says JOIN now instead of LEAVE, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. I already got kicked. Am I still in the group on your end? Maybe an alt of mine is still in there. And to be fair, I have no idea how to delete accounts and I’m still working on it. If I did, they would be gone in an instant as I keep my promises. Two of the alt accounts are apparently also banned indefinitely, so I can’t delete them anyway even though I wanted to.
Also, I may have done the same thing three times in a row, but that mainly comes down to my stubborn tendencies and reckless instincts, which is why I consider it an accident. Once I realized the full ramifications of my actions, I was ashamed of myself for a long time and I still am. I do consider it an accident even if you don’t because my stubborn brain was not cognitively aware of how much this would be breaking the site rules. Whenever I do something, I have this tendency to just keep doing it out of sheer stupidity and I really hate that about myself. My mind has this habit of tempting fate and I was just so desperate for my story to be seen that I thought if I did it under an alt account, no one would notice. The first and second times, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know at the time that being a co-author on 40 Years would make the story not qualify. The third time I did it out of curiosity, not malice. As I stated above, I thought using an alt account was fine for some reason. I can be really stupid sometimes and I admit that. But none of it was malicious. If I was doing this out of malice, then I would consider it an intentional thing. But considering that my actions mainly came down to blind stubbornness and sheer idiocy, I consider it an accident. For me, what constitutes an accident or an intentional thing is defined by the motivations of the perpetrator.
But for all intents and purposes (as I don’t want to go further into subjective logistics), let’s just say that the word “accident” is a gross mischaracterization on my part about what I did. That doesn’t change the fact that I wholeheartedly recognize that it was really horrible and I still don’t forgive myself for any of it. I’ve been disgusted with myself for weeks without end as there is no excuse for any of that. I hold myself to such a high standard that once I realized that I fucked up big time, I have never stopped beating myself up over it. I brand myself as setting an example for others and then I turn around and do this. It’s honestly really stupid and you have every right to be absolutely livid with me. I have genuinely learned my lesson, really. I’m paying closer attention to site and group rules and I’ll be much more careful about what I do in the future.
I understand if you are still angry at me. Frankly, I do not blame you. You’ve warned me multiple times about this and my stubborn brain just didn’t listen and thought it knew better. I was going to apologize to you via PMs right after I got back, but I’ve honestly been scared about facing you again. I appreciate the fact that you commented on this blog post and forced me to respond because there was no way I was going to otherwise. I want to clear the air and apologize from the bottom of my heart for everything, and that I never meant to intentionally exploit the group nor do anything out of malice. I just wanted my stories to be seen and my insecurities drove me to be reckless and not pay attention to what should be really be quite obvious.
Thank you for commenting and I’ll be sure to use it as a reminder to keep my crazy instincts under control. I’m still learning and growing as a person, and I think there is redemption to be found here. I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me and I don’t ever expect you to. Just know that I’m very sorry for all of it.
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I'm not angry, I just have a low tolerance for what I perceive as unnecessary nonsense. If you say you've left the Group, that's fine, I believe you, but your name still appears in the roster, as do your alts. When I have time, I'll seek advice from the admins as to why that's so.
But as I said, this matter is now closed. Good luck with all your future writing endeavors, as I know you'll continue to grow and turn out amazing stories!
W_S
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I totally get that. And thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind words. I’ll take your advice to heart and use it to better myself, so we don’t ever have another situation like this again. Good luck to you as well. I’ve actually read some of your stories and they are amazing. Keep up the great work!
-Admiral Producer