[Vihntage]

Ingame Name: Lily

SteamID: STEAM_0:1:10225451

Who Banned You: Collective Upper Staff decision.

Reason For Ban: Toxicity / Harassment of other players

Length of Ban: Indefinite

Reason for Admins to Unban: 

Before I begin this appeal, I would like to ask everyone here to discuss the merits of my unban, and the evidence specifically related to me. I request that everyone stay on topic and give their unbiased opinion on my ban. I cannot control the way that others react, but I’m going to try my best to make sure people don’t feel afraid to post their thoughts here.


With that out of the way, hey guys, how are ya? So as everyone knows by now, I was one of the people who was hit in the recent ban wave. This came as a bit of a shock since I haven’t been very active outside of the community discord server for about a month or so. However, after reviewing everything, I can see why it came to this. I personally have never been one to support toxicity towards another player on the server. For example, In the instances of Trombowen and Cosmic, I didn’t agree with the way that people in my friend group treated them, and even got into arguments with multiple of my friends defending the two. In Batton’s staff application I did not attack others for their opinions on the thread but instead tried to be a mediator as people kept arguing back and forth with each other. My goal was to facilitate productive conversation.


As for my staff application, I don’t know why anyone would think that I would form a personal grudge against them based on their feedback on my application,The main point of me making that application was to get feedback and see what I could improve upon; I knew I wasn’t going to get it. The timing was bad considering the drama that had occurred a couple of days before me posting it. I wanted people to tell me how I could improve because I was genuinely interested in wanting to be staff on the server. WILD and Avi both gave me legitimate criticism that I appreciated, and have been actively working on. Sadly, other people decided to reply to any negative statements about me, which might be why some people were fearful in the first place. It doesn’t matter if you’re friends with someone or disagree with someone's perspective. You should not attack people for their opinions, but discuss with them on why you have a different belief. 


The main factor in these bans  is the “mob mentality” that is present within groups. I hate it, but it seems inescapable at this point, which is frustrating. When I was staff, there was a mob mentality within that. Not really concerning the upper staff at the time, but more so those in the lower ranks being influenced by what the majority thought, and attacking people who would disagree with their notions. While I don’t know if that still happens, I do know that the same thing is evident in my friend group, as well as others. I think that this is something everyone in the community can work on, if we keep having these same problems, it will only get worse. I admittedly do let other people's opinions influence mine, and I’m sure that my opinions do the same thing. It’s impossible to block out entirely other people's thoughts, and everyone will be affected by them in some way or another. I’ve been working on being more aware of that and making decisions based on my thoughts, despite what my friends, or anyone thinks of them.


As possibly seen in some of the screenshots that the admins may have seen, I have my own opinions about others that I try to keep private within my discord, because I don’t want it to cause drama outside of it. I understand now that nothing is truly private, no matter how hard you try and make it. There will always be talking, and if you talk about others then it’s likely that they will hear it, even if you said it in a private setting. My discord server was created about 3 years ago, to have all of my friends in one place so that I could easily talk to them. Some people have questioned why I make it so exclusive. This is because in the past another group of friends that would harass me when the server was public, joining with alts and making server invites for other people on their alts to come in and attack me. That’s the main reason why my server is exclusive, and why I care so much about who is allowed access to it. It’s a personal fear that I have of those people coming back to mess with me, even though it’s been so long. I never meant to make anyone feel unwanted in it's exclusivity, but that was me being ignorant to how others would feel about it without knowing the context as to why I made it this way.


Lastly, as Queef stated in my staff apps’ denial, I will admit that I’m hot headed at times. I like to think of myself as a chill person, but specific things that will set me off really quickly. That is a flaw of mine that I am working on. I still have a lot of growing up to do on my part, and if I could take back the things I said in those heated moments, I definitely would. That doesn’t really matter now though, since we’ve come to this point.

I can’t help but to feel responsible for a lot of this. If I hadn’t come back to this community a couple months ago, my friends probably would not be banned. My discord provided a place at the time for toxicity, at the time I did not see this. After taking time to step back I do now, and I will take steps to prevent anything like this from happening in the future. 


Have you been banned before (Link relevant threads): Nope


Other: I would have posted this sooner, I wanted to wait for the Upper Staff's response thread, though.. so that's why I'm a little late ;;