About the Esoteric Chat forum
Esoteric Chat is a web-forum which centers around topics that are “typically not understood by the majority of people,” hence the name esoteric. However, it is also a website with a rich and detailed history; and, in addition to this, it has been the subject of sharp criticism on behalf of its members originating from various different communities. Over time, the forum began to flourish into a community of its own, with its own conventions and sense of humor.
Ryan Wild and Total Freedom
Panther was one of my most persistent critics during the period in which Esoteric Chat and its members came into direct conflict with the Total Freedom Minecraft server. In many ways, I was directly responsible for this, having launched several attacks on that server by using throwaway accounts in order to “raid” the chatbox.
When Seth made the decision to delete Total Freedom, he was almost instantly met with unwavering ridicule, with little regard for the underlying reasons why he thought it appropriate to do so. Looking back, I now believe that Seth was probably doing the right thing. The server’s community was beginning to take internal conflicts between its members more and more seriously, to the point where death threats were being exchanged between one another, and things were beginning to spiral out of control. I have no doubt that the constant attention demanded by the task of administrating such a chaotic server was beginning to chip away at Seth’s mental health. Furthermore, things began to reach the point where it would be preferable for the server to be remembered for what it used to be, rather than further desecrating its name and legacy by trying to keep it on life support. And indeed, that is exactly what happened.
After the core elements of the server were put back together by a select few members (of which I was one, much to my dismay) it became immediately obvious that the server itself, which had amassed to several of tens of gigabytes by that point, was in need of a hosting solution that was both stable and economically viable. Ryan Wild, server developer and founder of a hosting service by the name of Superior Networks, came to the rescue. Ryan was quick to offer one of his private servers for the purpose of hosting Total Freedom, with no apparent downside in doing so. As such, nearly everybody jumped on the idea of going through with this, and Ryan Wild quickly became responsible for the revival of the actual server.
Many narratives tend to suggest that Seth deleted the server and thus Ryan “took over.” “Ryan ultimately inherited a corpse, a zombified version of a community that had been long dead, devoid of decent people.” (t. Luke, What Happened to TF?) This is misleading, be it by intention, or as the result of many years having passed by, thus obfuscating the actual course of events. In actuality, Ryan’s initial participation in the revival of the server did not exceed his previous role as Developer. Despite this, the practical implications of one individual being in control of the actual server, which every other platform was centered around, allowed for him to consolidate power in a way that made it impossible for there to be any serious objections when time rolled around for him to become Server Owner.
Eventually, Ryan obtained total control of the Discord server, which was originally created in an unofficial capacity. Ryan also took control of the forum, which was, up until that point, hosted by ProBoards. In my opinion, these two actions further centralized administrative control over the Total Freedom community and set the stage for the abandonment of the principles of freedom and lax moderation which once defined the server. It became exceedingly obvious that the initial purpose of the server had been completely lost once its admins began using mental gymnastics to explain how the name Total Freedom did not translate to actual freedom, and did not go against the grain of the several-pages-long, ever-expanding Conduct Policy.
With this, the social and political narrative being espoused by the server’s administrative team became increasingly monotonous and dissuasive of constructive criticism, in favor of hyperbole and an appeal to emotion. The source of moral chaos in this is that a Minecraft server is naturally inhabited by impressionable young children, and the particular ideology that became intertwined with its administration was arguably conducive to the sexualization of children, the population of child predators among its community, and an overall attitude which failed to take seriously the kind of attitude that would drive any sane, aware parent to forbid their child from joining the server. Indeed, there were many instances in which I observed 13-some-odd year olds participating in sexualized roleplay with grown adults, and this later festered into the soldification of online relationships between them. (Around the server’s end, the Marriage plugin was added, and some players began complaining about of the plugin’s lack of capacity for polygamy.) It was bad.
Up until this point, I was an admin on the server. I first became admin in 2014, and so by this time I was a Senior Admin. I decided that I would try to upset the social attitudes that came to exist in this community by appointing several new admins who I knew well to not partake in the aforementioned toxicity, and was confident in their ability to act against it. PinkPanther1046 (a well-known member of the community) and icksp (a traditionalist friend I had made at the time) were among the admins I had picked for “TPaS” (Telnet Picks a Super), and eventually “SPaS” (Senior Picks a Super). Panther went on to become an extremely notable admin, for better or for worse, and would eventually take a position directed against my forum Esoteric Chat in saying that it failed to actually exercise the freedom of speech.
My removal from admin was the natural consequence of the position I had long decided on taking, which stood in direct opposition to that of the Server Owner and those below him, so in no way did I see it as unexpected, but rather inevitable. By that point I had already become invested in Esoteric Chat, not to mention my own server Aedificium. Total Freedom’s playerbase was rapidly declining, and the level of activity exhibited on the actual server was a mere fraction of what it had been when I first discovered it. By this point, it became evident that Seth’s decision to delete the server should probably have gone uncorrected. Most of the original members either grew out of the desire to participate in the community or developed an unhealthy fixation upon it. The continuance of the server as a hotbed of drama and ideological argument was a mockery of its original self, and totally defamed the original idea of Total Freedom.
By the point that Ryan decided to close the server, it had already been dead for several years, in all but name. The server that Ryan oversaw was not Total Freedom, but rather, a server which just so happened to have the name Total Freedom being staffed by a few members of the original server. The continuance of the server could only have brought about a greater source of mental anguish for its community, many of whom were not in great mental health, as evidenced by the proliferation of degeneracy and sexual perversion throughout.