EFFORTPOST [Effortpost] Classic G*mer Drama: The Great ResetEra Cyberpunk Spergout

Still one of my favorite pieces of drama I witnessed, a months-long spergout that involved forum espionage, leftist infighting, chuddery, and tons of funny paranoia. I posted about it as it was happening on the old place but I figure I'll do a better write-up here.

Background

Once upon a time there was a gayming website called Gaming Age, with their forum called the Gaming Age Forum, commonly abbreviated as GAF. Eventually Gaming Age went under, but the top two jannies (Evillore and Bishoptl) were able to move their community to a new forum, appropriately called NeoGAF. It had a reputation for aggressive jannying which wasn't entirely unfounded but overall it was a pretty cool and chill place to talk vidya, and imo probably the most fun forum of the aughts. Cracks started to show in 2013 with the most important war of our lifetimes, G*merGate. Still, things were mostly fine as long as you avoided the dedicated containment thread. Trump winning in 2016 brought the place to its knees with libs screaming for the jannies to clamp down on rightoids, jannies mass-banning anyone they suspect of liking Orange Man, everyone screaming for Evillore's head since he wasn't as left as people think, and overall an implosion imminent. A Japanese American poweruser called Cerium saw the writing on the wall and built a clone. Within a year Evillore got #metoo'd, causing an exodus to Cerium's new ResetEra (geddit? Neo -> Reset, Age -> Era). Cerium was much more of an absentee leader than Evillore was and didn't interact much beyond technical issues before selling the site, which had the benefit of avoiding a “the owner is an evil chud” controversy but indirectly lead to an “inmates running the asylum" environment for a couple years until he promoted an unpaid janny (B-dubz) to paid janny to manage in his stead.

NeoGAF founders Tyler Malka (Evillore) and Tim Lewenson (Bishoptl). Evillore never worked in gaming besides running the forum but Bish is a genuine industry figure since the '90s who worked on stuff like Turok, Dawn of War, Apex Legends, and is currently an EA exec

Like how every Reddit clone is founded because Reddit is too leftoid and so gets plagued by insufferable rightoids, ResetEra was ultimately founded because NeoGAF was too rightoid and as such is plagued by insufferable leftoids, resulting in constant infighting and drama. One such instance lead to the banning of poweruser KetKat, the unofficial leader of ResetEra's many s (henceforth known as TransEra after the groomercord they operated out of) and the one who ran the TransEra groomercord. Ketkat basically never did anything at all but stir up shit and harass the jannies but every attempt to ban led to huge drama and eventually weeping jannies rolling over and showing their bellies and begging for mercy that never came, until finally after four or five "perma-bans" one finally stuck. This becomes important later.

Initial Drama

One day TransEra decided that the upcoming video game CyberPunk 2077 was a transphobic Nazi game because an ad shows an in-game ad featuring a peepee girl. Unusually, this was enough of a stretch that nobody else on the Internet (including the other really woke sites) shared the same view. For some reason this controversy was entirely confined to ResetEra, which nobody found suspicious.

TransEra demands that all discussion regarding Cyberpunk be banned and that the United States government sanction Poland for allowing this game to be made within their borders. The jannies of course don't want to ban talking about what may be the biggest game of the year (this was still when Era had pretentions of being a gaming forum, years later they would cave and ban Harry Potter) while all the other users were just adding the s to their block lists. The latter just makes the s angrier of course.

The jannies eventually take action by making and sticking a containment thread. It's not super dramatic but it's a good overview of where they're directing their ire at a given moment, and to watch them seethe. That page I linked features:

• People whining about how the game has trans actors and why aren't they protesting?

• A in an arranged marriage saying something about being an "angel's advocate"

• Someone realizing that there are literally zero FtM s on the forum, they are all men in dresses

• A guy saying it's pathetic to talk about video games on a video game forum

The sole basis of the transphobia accusations was this pre-release screenshot

The jannies next decide that they'll allow discussion but ban it on Trans Remembrance Day or whatever, which would be the week the game came out. The company proceeded to undercut them by delaying the game past that. Searching for some other way to virtue signal the jannies create an "Official Megathread" for the game and immediately lock it with a message about respecting trans rights or something, which of course nobody sees because nobody can post in it and so it falls off the front page. Somebody else creates a Spoiler Thread which the jannies initially allow until it gets so clogged up with s seething that they lock it. The s start to realize that they aren't getting the attention they want.

Nazi Infiltrators

Having been put on everybody's block list, TransEra realizes the only way to get people to notice them again is to have one of their own make the Cyberpunk 2077 Official Thread (OT). As the jannies have declared that the OT will be the only allowed thread on the game besides the transphobia sticky, this will allow the s to monopolize discussion on the game and force people to unblock the OP if they want the thread to be visible. The problem is that you have to reserve the right to make the OT in advance (months in advance in the case of major AAA releases), and the current OT guy is a fellow named Black Chamber who is not trans, is quite excited (maybe unhealthily so) about the game, and still thinks ResetERA is primarily a gaming forum and not a progressive hugbox.

So TransEra sets to wrestling the thread away from him. They accuse him of being a paid astroturfer and other various things until a prominent named Kyuuji leaks a four-month old PM from him (which can't be seen anymore but it was apparently mildly dismissive). Normally leaking PMs is a bannable offense but when a janny points this out he is demodded and temp banned for using the wrong pronouns to describe Kyuuji.

ResetERA founder Isamu Fukui (Cerium). He made hundreds of thousands off of Era every year and cashed out for a cool $4.5 million in 2021, which was controversial since he never did anything to manage the website, and NeoGAF owner Evillore had famously claimed to have turned down a similar amount to sell GAF

The jannies eventually declare that Black Chamber will be allowed to make the OT (in all likelihood he's finished it by now) in exchange for being banned for a month afterwards and there being a post about transphobia stickied to the top of every page. This doesn't appease TransEra because of course the point is to make the OT themselves to force people to engage with them. Tensions rise as people who just want to talk about video games start to rise up.

Users desperately try to figure out what the required opinion is

The s finally find Black Chamber's Achilles heel: he doesn't like The Last of Us, which is very much a sacred cow on Era. His fate is sealed when somebody digs through his Twitter and finds a two-year old post suggesting he's a Republican which is literally a bannable offense. Black Chamber is perma-banned and the jannies encourage users to doxx suspected Republicans, going further in a later post where they say janny duties will now include going through users' social media (which is very much in their power because they require your real name on account creation). They also lock every thread about the game except the trans containment thread. Alas this is a pyrrhic victory for TransEra as rather than give them the OT the jannies say they'll just make it themselves.

Black Chamber melts down on Twitter over his ban and goes back to NeoGAF. This leads users to suspect that he was a neo-nazi infiltrator sent by Evillore to destroy ResetEra from the inside. Some writes a 7000 word melt down.

Image unrelated

Janny Infighting

Cuberpunk 2077 finally comes out and TransEra, high on victoriously chasing out a chud, celebrate by playing it despite it being literal genocide. But in a community this dramatic any peace is temporary. The first sign that things are going to explode is that AndroidSophia, the site's highest-ranking janny who was brought on specifically as a concession to TransEra during a prior spergout, has lost her janny tag. Normally TransEra would be up in arms about this, but now they're suspiciously silent, making it clear that they're behind her demopping.

Meanwhile, on the Secret Resetera Groomercord Server where the mods and powerusers hang out, a janny named Poodlestrike gets in a fight with a trans user and bans them on the main forum. One of the banned 's friends throws a fit on Era and is perma banned for "Does not want to be here." TransEra begins throwing a fit and pooping up the front page whining about the jannies and leaking DMs. Small collection of cryposts here.

Rather than apologize Poodlestrike fights back, confirming that the reason AndroidSophia no longer had her mop was because she was bullied by TransEra during groomercord conference (called Summits, ERA regularly has them when a minority group - be they Asians or PC g*mers - is aggrieved) between the jannies and TransEra and resigned "in tears." Proving that they're real women TransEra refuses all accountability - "This is freaking gaslamping!" "Maybe we'll stop telling you to go frick yourself if you stop being a transphobic b-word!" AndroidSophia herself shows up and confirms the accusations, and also says that she literally almost died writing about Cyberpunk because it's so transphobic.

Jannies and s proceed to scream at each other,, calling each other lyers and "rat-frick cowards." BIPOCs get mad that mayos are appropriating their oppression.

Alright, the safe word is ‘janny brutality'

Surprise Twist!

The drama reaches its climax when furry biofoid janny Nepenthe who was in the groomercord conference writes a 5000 word screed, helpfully documented here. She also posts this screenshot of the very first of the list of demands TransEra was making:

Do you remember way back at the beginning when I mentioned the jannies having banned poweruser and unofficial Top , KetKat, a year before? It turns out the entire Cyberpunk-transphobia debacle was some ridiculous groomercord gayops by KetKat to force the jannies to come to the table and relitigate her permaban. Nobody actually thought Cyberpunk was transphobic, the whole thing was a coup attempt cooked up by a conspiracy in a smoky chatroom who knew the mods wouldn't give in to banning the game and so a stink could be raised. Even better, KetKat already had an alt (Hexe, which the jannies knew about and turned a blind eye too) which she used on the site, this absolute dramaqueen decided that orchestrating six months of screeching was preferable to going under a different username.

KatKat shows up on her alt and writes a 3000 word rant about how she totally didn't want to come back anyways, and is immediately banned as Nepenthe reveals that she's suddenly non-binary, which makes her a double minority since she's also black. Some s show up and try to resist but it is too late, the war is lost and anybody who complains get sniped.

The who wrote the 7000 word essay earlier outdoes himself by writing another 5000 words and then quoting two other 5000 word posts in full at the end. He doxxes himself, gets permabanned for pinging, then cries to the mods and has his account wiped.

Epilogue

Although they ban any s who act up too much, the jannies ultimately fail to take any lasting measures (like banning everyone on the TransEra groomercord, in particular power user Kyuuji who was pretty much acting as a front for Ketket) despite otherwise being extremely quick to pull the "Banned for engaging in bad faith" card on anybody else. Pooping up and making a mockery out of the site in an effort to blackmail the staff apparently isn't bad faith enough. The result is that even though TransEra didn't succeed in their goals, they got confirmation that they can cause as much chaos as they like as long as they don't directly insult the staff or the forum.

So when Hogwarts Legacy rolled around and TransEra started to act up the jannies immediately caved and banned any mention of the game to avoid a repeat, to the point where when the game sold well people couldn't post weekly sales charts without editing the name out. Another win for trans rights!

The game that shall not be named