So this is the story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.

At about 11:30ish last night, 6/7/10, I received an AUP Violation notice. It came from an admin who I'd previously had good experiences with. I'm not going to say his name, so he'll be just 'The Admin'.

Anyway, the notice said that my avatar had been removed, for being 'seizure-inducing'. Which, yeah, is true enough. Still though, I was pissed off because of what had happened about a month ago.

~WHAT HAPPENED A MONTH AGO~
1. Some crazy stalker bastard keeps bothering me relentlessly on FA
2. The admins give him a talking to and tell him to back off.
3. All of a sudden, I get notified of a truckload of AUP violations. I now have about thirty missing submissions on my hands.
4. I get royally pissed, first at The Admin, but then my anger shifts abruptly as I realize that someone had to report all those violations. It seems a certain someone went through my gallery and reported every single submission they could find that technically violated the rules.
5. I find out that, due to the grandfathering policy, none of those submissions should have been removed in the first place.
6. The Admin says 'Whoops. I guess you can put them back up if you wanna.'
7. Faced with the task of replacing thirty or so submissions that will absolutely bury everything in my scraps gallery, I say 'Fuggit'.
(By the way, the user who got my submissions taken down [has been dealt with, and it's over now].)

So this is all brought back into my memory as I realize I now have to reupload my avatar.

Except when i go to check on my avatar, it has been replaced.

It's been replaced with one that says "I [heart] FA ADMINISTRATORS."

After a day that hasn't exactly been stress-free at this point, I find out my avatar has been removed and replaced with the absolute last thing on earth I wanna see at that point.

Alfador later made the perfect analogy: "It's like the cops breaking into a store and putting up 'SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT' posters in the windows."

Anyway, I quickly changed my avatar to say "FUCK FURAFFINITY ADMINISTRATORS". Which reflected how I felt and didn't seem to be against the AUP.

I sent a reply back to The Admin saying:
1. I knew nothing of this new rule.
2. I've had the same avatar almost-continuously for FOUR YEARS with nothing but compliments.
3. What the fuck was up with this cutesy-bullshit new avatar!?

I was too angry when I wrote this reply, I admit. I should have been calmer, and my anger didn't help a damn thing. But I did at least try to convey that I didn't expect the 'fuck' avatar to be up very long and that when The Admin took it down, could they please just put up the usual cup o-paintbrushes or a gray square or nothing at all? I told him if it went back to the 'I Admins' avatar, I would raise a humongous stink about it. I should have been clearer.

But it wasn't like I could expect what happened next.

I went about my business and started telling a friend about the whole incident in a PM. It was then that I realized I hadn't saved a copy of the bizarre '' avatar, and maybe I should have, to prove it had actually happened. I thought maybe I could find it via the Search feature, so I searched "Administrators" and there it was.

My heart sank as I realized The Admin himself had created it. It was right there in his gallery. I know it's a cliche: "his heart sank", but that's pretty much what it felt like. I realized he thought this was a funny, funny joke. But to me, it seemed like a really petty thing to do. As I told him much later, it had not been funny to me; it had been confusing and alarming. (My exact reaction was something like "What the FUCK is THIS!?")

I left this comment on the submission:
I'm really, really disappointed to find out this was from you.

This isn't going to help anything. I actually would have been fine with you simply sending me a PM saying my avatar was in violation and allowing me to change it myself. Instead I get this cutesy bullshit, which annoyed me about a thousand times more than changing the avatar would have. See, I kinda like being treated like an adult, and I think a lot of other people do too.

I know you think this is funny, and maybe it would be if it was just an idea and you hadn't put it into practice. But if makes someone like me far angrier at the admins than I would have been otherwise, then how do you think trolls are going to react to it?

The Admin himself did not reply, but three of the other people on the journal jumped in to give their thought provoking insights, like "CRY MOAR PLEASE". Real classy stuff.

A few moments later I tried to get back to my messages when I hit a dead end. I could practically hear a 'clang' of metal slamming shut. It was a grey page with a warning logo, saying my account was 'closed'.

Closed? What the hell did that mean? Was I banned? Permabanned? Was there just an extremely coincidental system glitch?

I went to my email account. No notice. Nothing from FA at all.

The grey page was there no matter where I went. I couldn't even check my userpage to find out my status!

So, seething like a bag of molten hate, I called up Alfador and asked him to take a look at my userpage. He did a WTF. Then Zephon took a look and he did a WTF. I was informed that, yes my status said 'banned' and yes, the '' avatar was back up.

Within moments, Zephon had written a journal about it and Alfador mirrored it. Word started spreading. I later found out that Omny87 and KTurtle made journals too.

Around then EtherRealty popped up on Skype. I talked to him for the next few hours while shit unfolded. suffice to say it was epic amounts of confusion. I eventually realized that I needed to log out in order to get rid of the grey page, which at least meant I could keep up with my friends' journals now.

Zephon and Ether both commented on The Admin's submission of the '' avatar itself. This is what he wrote back to one of them:
If you're referring to Alex, he was not banned without warning. He was warned first concerning the issue and then he uploaded another avatar saying "Fuck Fur Affinity Administrators" to try and get a rise out of us. He was banned for 24hrs because of this due to purposely breaking the AUP after being warned and violating the TOS by attempting to harass/disrupt FA Staff.

"He was warned first concerning the issue" This was untrue. My avatar was removed and changed with absolutely no warning. In fact, The Admin and I had talked less than a month ago, and there was ample time to mention any problem with my avatar then. Or, during the FOUR YEARS that it was up.

"and then he uploaded another avatar saying "Fuck Fur Affinity Administrators" to try and get a rise out of us." This is only true-ish. I sure as hell posted that avatar. But I didn't post it to 'get a rise'; I posted it because I felt it was an appropriate response. It was a direct reflection of what my avatar had been changed to.

"purposely breaking the AUP" There didn't seem to be anything in the AUP against swearing in avatars (though yes, I admit I thought I was pushing it). But I also thought, 'Surely I won't be banned for just criticizing the admins!' Ha! Ha! Ha! I am a naive fool.

It was nice to know that at least the ban was 24 hours, instead of 72 or a permanent one. But it would have been nicer to have known that at the beginning. The Admin later said: "I did contact him. I sent him an email which he used to register his account." He tried to show this by linking to a screencap of an email. I don't have any reason to believe he was lying about sending it, but at that point I had no idea where it could have gone. I was watching my email account all night long. Nada. (More on this later.)

Now, I have since reconciled with The Admin, but there is one thing he did that I don't think I can forgive. And that was that, when my friends responded to his submissions, he deleted their comments. These were not malicious comments. They weren't insulting. They were just asking what the hell was going on. The Admin removed them all, including mine, and when my friends kept replying, The Admin kept deleting. Everything else that happened that night I can chalk up to misunderstanding with no real malice behind it. But this was a case of an admin using power intended for site business in a clearly personal manner. He's since explained to me why, and he did only delete comments from his own submission; not from anyone else's. That does show admirable restraint. But it still smells like silencing dissent. I wouldn't be able to do the same if those comments were on my page. The rest of us don't get to make comments disappear, no matter how much we don't like them. He did remove the submission itself by the end of the night, which I think was a good idea in terms of calming things down.

It's kind of moot though, because I screencapped everything. EVERYTHING. The whole night long, at every stage. Got me a 30.6MB folder full of .png files. This is the internet; nothing ever disappears. I don't plan to actually DO anything with them. But I like to keep records. I like to know, for my own sake, 'This really happened'. It's amazing how much you can forget of an event like this in just a week or so.

Anyway, during this time, I was still chatting with Ether and we were having a blast writing angry emails (which we're both glad we didn't send), and I also made up my own little parody of the '' avatar that said "I [club] FA ADMINISTRATORS." Juvenile, yes, but it amused me. Ether liked it too and I let him put it up for a while.

Meanwhile, Zephon had brought in the big guns: Wolfblade. Wolfblade, for those of you that don't know, is an ex-admin, he is terrifyingly intelligent, and he uses his tongue purty'er than a twenny-dollar whore. He had a talk with The Admin and I thought it was easily the most levelheaded, eloquent thing anyone had said throughout the whole mess.

Soon enough, my avatar changed to the cup-o-paintbrushes and The Admin agreed not to change any more avatars.

Soon after that, I was informed that I had been unbanned about an hour ago.

HO-LEE SHIT.

I logged back in and there was my userpage, my comments, my reply buttons. Aw, I wanted to kiss 'em all.

For a very short while I put up my usual self-portrait avatar, but with "NOTHING CAN KILL THE ALEX" written on it. But Zephon said that was rubbing it in, and I agreed myself when I checked my PMs and saw that The Admin himself had sent me an apology.

He was gracious and respectful. I gained back a tremendous chunk of the respect I'd lost for him earlier. I apologized for flying off the handle.

In his most recent reply he re-sent the screenshot of the email he'd sent. I'd had a suspicion by now of why I'd never received it. I looked a little closer. Mystery solved. My address has an '_' in it: alex_reynard@nunyabizniz.com. Somehow, the email addy I have on file doesn't include the '_'. (How the hell did I apply for an account here then?) Honest mistake. But proof that miscommunication can happen because of the tiniest little shit.

SO, YES, PUNCTUATION IS IMPORTANT, ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO THINK YOU'RE TOO COOL FOR PERIODS!!! ;)

To my friends, I want to thank you all. Everyone who spread the word, especially Zephon, Alfador, Ether, Omny, KTurtle and Wolfblade. As stressful as this experience was, all of those bad emotions were completely negated by the sheer galactic-level awesomeness of seeing such an amazing display of loyalty and solidarity and love from my friends. I'm honored to know all of you. I am boundlessly grateful.

One last thing. Zephon has since taken his journal down, but for a while there it was attracting a swarm of trolls. Most of them had changed their avatars to the 'I Admins' one, which was nice because it made it easier to spot the spineless kiss-asses. ;)

But I was really amazed at how most of them were bitching at Zephon for 'taking the internet too seriously' and 'bawwwwing' and basically saying, 'You're wrong for caring so much'.

I told him, it doesn't surprise me. If any of them got banned, their 'friends' would probably have a good laugh. These people probably know nothing of what it feels like to be in trouble and know your friends will do anything to help you. Certainly not feeling that surge of panicked loyalty themselves.

But I also wanted to say this directly to them: You're all wrong. The fact that you're reading this proves it. You are objectively wrong. The fact that my friends cared enough to make a lot of noise is directly responsible for an admin changing his mind about his decision, the two of reconciling, and a 24 hour ban turning into a 4 hour one. In his most recent message, The Admin denied that my friends' journals and comments made a difference. But I asked him, would you have reconsidered on your own? If my friends had all kept quiet, wouldn't the ban have just run out eventually, leaving this issue completely resolved, and the two of us still resentful of each other? Would we have found out about why that notification email went missing? Would I have forgiven him? Would we even be having this conversation at all?

My friends may have overreacted in some ways, but they only knew as much as i did at the start (which was dooley-squat). All they knew was: 'My friend is in trouble'. So up went the journals. Out went the word.

I was absolutely ready to accept the ban, wait it out and move on. But I didn't have to. Because of them. This journal is proof of what 'taking the internet too seriously' can accomplish.

I would defend my friends forever, because I've now had the rare opportunity to see proof that they'd do the same for me.





tl,dr: Shit just got real.