Reading this kind of hit me in some way, probably because it's 12 1 2 AM, I can barely keep my eyes open and my brain is in the process of shutting down, but also probably because I have my fair share of experiences with poorly-moderated small Discord guilds (well, one, specifically) that kept breaking up and re-grouping.

I've kinda seen some patterns pretty similar to my experiences in their post, but those might be because my brain is barely trying to make sense anymore.

We were also "refugees" of another platform (An obscure Minecraft forum that spiraled down to a server advertising hellhole), we also had our fair share (read: A LOT) of toxicity, we also constantly did the dance of "guild -> small group chat -> guild", also occasionally opening up to the public before realizing we couldn't be bothered with it, and we also tried and failed at ""elections"" (But ours were so obviously rigged that it didn't make any damn difference. I know because I used to help with that when it was happening)

For the last month or so, I've been intentionally not interacting with the group. I'd say that's because I just didn't want to be associated all the toxic behavior going on. I'll list a few, but since I was on there for more than 3-4 years, I might be too "light" on what I'd consider toxic.

(Also, I doubt this was all, this is only what I could think of at the moment)

• Wasn't uncommon to have various "alternate" accounts, just to mess with people. While sometimes this was about something internal to our group, mostly it was just to annoy other (pretty innocent) people.

• Back when Minecraft 1.14 was very new (like, a few days old), I patched together a hacked client, which we aggressively used to our advantage on a couple places (the popular hacks weren't updated yet, so even for that standard we had the unfair advantage). While my code is now out-of-date (I've grown out of that :p), they still have something similar and as far as I know, still use every now and then (though they don't play Minecraft that often anymore, afaik)

• Manufacturing useless fights and other various "issues" just to have more "activity" in the chat.

• We did various "crap" on the forum I said we were the "refugees" of. Vote/Like "boosting" was common, alternative accounts replying affirmatively, or "bumping" threads were common, going as far as to have two accounts, both controlled by the same person, arguing with "each other". I'm not sure if we did that more than once, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

I was actively involved basically all of them, and I don't think these were things I would've done (or to as much of an extent as I've done them), if it weren't for that group. There are some more I'd like to list, but I haven't (at least, conciously) been involved with these:

• I was planning to link a screenshot here, showing the search result count for (various different spellings of) the n-word, but Discord apparently doesn't do partial searches, and I don't really care enough to write the full word out

• I am pretty sure homophobia —and probably transphobia too— was common as well. On the top of my head, "gay" was used as an insult, along with "tr*p" (and I don't really care enough to look through to find more).

• One instance of digging for a person's (totally unrelated to anybody in the group) photos and making fun of them, just because they didn't like their world view. This happened very recently.

• Or to simplify: A bunch of very privileged white guys talking in private with little-to-no-filter. You might be able to extrapolate the rest from here.

I was a part of the "top 3" that were (most of the time) together on all this mess. Whenever a Discord guild had more than one staff member, it usually included us three.

Basically everything I've listed has been done at least once by a specific person, also a part of the "trio", and is the person that almost always had the permissions when a guild only had one admin (as it has currently). They are also the most active person, often being the on starting the discussion on whatever.

Having that kind of influence over any group "shapes" the group towards whatever you say and do, often indirectly by driving out the "incompatible" people, and inviting in "compatible" people, that are probably already in your friend circles.

And by "driving out", I don't mean people straight-up leaving, but not reading or responding. There are currently 18 people (myself included) in the chat room. However, I count ~7-10 people (depending on how you frame "inactive") that only very occasionally come in to say hey and leave, and 4-7 people that are actually post day-to-day. The rest are on various stages in the middle of the two extremes, and I expect a couple of the inactive ones just haven't bothered clearing out their guilds list on Discord.

There is also another reason I have mentioned being a part of the "top 3", which is that they (the previously mentioned person, along with some other active people) are still looking to "get me back". They've done this once before, even going as far as to making an (unlisted) YouTube video (which is as cringy as it sounds).

They have sent several emails, one in a public mailing list I set up for something else, and they are no doubt are occasionally reading through both my blog, and my Mastodon account. (And they might find this out too, they know Tildes exists, and I have shared a few invites I now regret)