EFFORTPOST [Niche Drama] [Effort Post] Grooming? In my 35 year old video game? It's more likely than you think!

So I occasionally watch Doom videos on Youtube and yesterday this video came up as recommended:

I have no idea who this guy is, but I had heard of ZDoom (https://zdoom.org). For those that don't know there are multiple "source ports" for Doom, basically reimplementations of the the original game engine but made for modern operating systems with new features added. ZDoom (new versions are called GZDoom I think) is one of these "source ports".

I decided to give the above video a watch and basically this guy makes Doom maps or something but he's leaving the ZDoom forums for good because of their mishandling of sexual abuse / grooming allegations against one of the prominent members of the ZDoom community: Marisa (https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Marisa_Lago). I just want to re-state again that I have no clue who any of these people are. This Marisa has been accused by multiple victims of engaging with them in sexually explicit chat while knowing that they were underage.

What makes this a little unusual is that this Marisa is repeatedly referred to as a "she". I had a hard time believing that a foid (female) was into a 35 year old first person shooter video game, so a brief google search turned up this: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=1239571#p1239571 Looks like we are dealing with a foid (male) unsurprisingly. So the thing that never happens has happened again.

To make things more dramatic the forum administrators apparently tried to keep this underwraps and made private comments that were derogatory against the accusers. Hilariously the admins of this forum are apparently buddies with some mods of Reddit Doom subreddits and they work in tandem to ban people across the board and they call their little group "The Fun Police".

Apparently the guy who made the above video was banned afterwards but has since been unbanned.

The forum admins have also finally released a statement and confirmed that they have banned this Marisa (foid (male) (groomer)): https://youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbjRiQWl1WjY2dTdTOHkwT2x1QW92TWpRLU1hd3xBQ3Jtc0ttbzlLekJDc1h1WnRvMmd1Y0liSE0wSUZ4OHBfMUlwS1MwaFdncDhMQmJmN3dQTGJJaUhwRnJ2Z2gzUnl6dk5iVWg1Z25lUGN1S0JBRXlyeEtmUVdUVGVocHg0Z1BpSS1PQUxNN2YtY2FyQTRYaFVKWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.zdoom.org%2Fviewtopic.php%3Fp%3D1239455&v=h5YrdarJ_7U

Summary of the accusations from the admin statement:

Marisa the Magician was accused of being a child groomer and libertarian in /r/DoomMods (the thread has since been deleted). The accusation came with a number of screenshots that displayed clearly sexual interactions between Marisa and a person who at some point claimed they were 17 years old. Among other things, the screenshots contained a message from Marisa where she said that her own first relationship was at the age of 18 when her partner was 14 years old.

Their summary of their findings:

As mentioned, it was Marisa herself who brought the post to our attention, so we proceeded to discuss it with her, trying to find out as much as possible. We found out the following:

• The screenshots were real, but presented in an incomplete and non-chronological manner (possibly on purpose).

• The accuser had approached Marisa first and was aggressively flirtatious. Multiple logs and screenshots showed them being the proactive party.

• At some point the accuser also claimed that they solicited erotic images with other users, including a 12-year-old boy, and shared those images with Marisa, unprompted. (Marisa presented us with logs of that interaction, images edited out.)

• The accuser's age was not mentioned until several months into their relationship. Marisa, in a display of obviously very poor judgement, apparenty hadn't thought to ask about their age earlier.

• Arguably the most darning fact was a message by Marisa saying she used to have a relationship with a 14-year-old while she herself was 18. Marisa's reaction to that was that she simply could not remember who she was talking about in that message, and in fact could not remember having any relationship at the age of 18.

I think a fair summary of the above would be: "the screenshots are real but the child forced themselves onto the and the has also confirmed being in a relationship with a 14 year old".

So even after banning the groomer the admins are quite clearly still trying to defend "her".

Despite the investigation feeling incomplete, we decided to ban Marisa. It seemed like the best course of action for two reasons:

1. If the accusations were true, we obviously couldn't keep an individual like that around. ZDoom community is not a place for pedophilia and sexual abuse.

2. If the accusations were false, she would become a target anyway, and by proxy the ZDoom community would become a target as well.

These poor admins (who do it for free) were forced into banning Marisa.

The that they've bent over backwards for then proceeds to chimp out:

That belief soon dwindled. Marisa replied to the original subreddit thread, which did not make the situation any clearer and did not make her look any better. She did not release a public statement, but later she did act out on her Twitter, going as far as stating that her boyfriend was "willing to track every single one of them down" (referring to the people who started targetting her by that point).

Now the admins are buttmad that the lashed out at them:

She displayed disregard for the safety of the ZDoom community and for all the benefit of the doubt extended to her. She also suspected that some of the people who were willing to assist her were, in fact, trying to sabotage her. Marisa did not care about the people she put in front of her to shield herself from accusations, she cared about herself.