I return with more tales! I checked some old PMs to verify that I did complain to the admin about the ban and got different responses to justify it, confirming that they were just backing it up instead of doing something about a shitty ban. Spineless.
So my most recent ban was over this post by zexen lowe. No More Heroes debuting on the Wii was a real sore spot for the HD Brigade and they constantly cited its "poor" sales years after the game came and went. They just could not accept that it succeeded. Around this same time, the mod team decided to treat everyone like 3 year olds so even uttering the words "fanboy" or "troll" got you banned in a flash whether it was justified or not. A new troll showed up withthe same old NMH schtick, I called him out as a troll and proved him wrong, and got banned for "flaming" him on the basis that I said the word "troll." The best part? The guy got banned for trolling. So the mods agreed that he was a troll and banned him for trolling since that's what trolls do, but I got banned for calling him a troll even though he was trolling. Ban message: "Flaming (No matter what a user is doing, calling him a troll is flaming)" Those sort of absolutes don't work with people over the age of 13.
My favorite illogical ban was this one. A user with a slant against Nintendo liked to make threads that were clearly biased. He got called out on it and he eventually agreed that he would think his posts through before starting shit again. A day later he made that thread, I replied with a facepalm - some people never learn. Nordlead banned me with some leap of logic that facepalm pics are the equivalent of flaming. We had an argument through PMs where he continued to rape the English language further and shame dictionaries into sad, irrelevant tears by inventing meanings for words to justify the ban. Eventually I left it alone, you can't really argue effectively with someone that has no concrete understanding of words. I'm not surprised that he's no longer a mod.
And last but not least was the reign of montanahatchet. He had a history of flaming people before he became a mod (so did ssj12, and onymeth, and...it's a trend). He toned it down somewhat when he got promoted into a mod, but there was still a layer of condescending snarkiness behind every post. Even so, there was a period where he was trying to cement his status as second worst mod in the history of the site (behind ssj12) by flaming people and getting away with it. I don't believe in immunity for mods; the more power someone has, the more their actions deserve scrutiny. I don't know if it's still like that now, but back then you could shit on waves of people and get away with it as long as you were a mod. Case in point: this attack.
I reported him for flaming me but I wasn't surprised when nothing was done about it. It wasn't even acknowledged. If you want to flame people and jump in the trenches to go on about how the imaginary fanboy army is out to ruin every thread you read, you have no business being a mod. People who know me know that I make blunt posts but I'm not unreasonable - I only give what I'm given so if you're a jackass to me, I'm going to tell you about yourself. But I got banned in the thread for making this post so I knew it was a set up for another ban if I kicked his ass (verbally) unitl it was as red as his mod tag. Just another plus to being a mod - if anyone has even gotten the axe for their actions, I'm not familiar with the story.
Tag - "No trolling on my watch!"
