The Total Freedom story

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.

Contents

1. Preface
2. Creation of the server</br> a. The Republic</br> b. The server and the forum</br> c. Freedom server niche
3. “The Golden Age”</br> a. Natural dissatisfaction</br> b. Transfer of ownership</br> c. Admin culture</br> d. Culture war
4. Deletion and revival of the server</br> a. The angle of incidents</br> b. My suspension from admin</br> c. The Akefu Raids
5. Ultimate downfall and demise</br> a. Debauchery and pedophilia</br> b. Ryan finally moves on</br> c. Revival attempts</br> d. Stuck in the loop
6. Conclusion</br> a. Rose-tinted glasses</br> aa. Response to Luke, taahanis and Telesphoreo</br> b. Final words

4. Deletion and revival of the server

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.

4a. Angle of incidents

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.

Ryan eventually decided to bring the Total Freedom server into the fold of his company Atlas Media Group, Ltd., which was also tied to his hosting service, Superior Networks. This about coincided with the decision to turn Total Freedom into a full-fledged network, with servers pertaining to different gamemodes. At first, the community was rather enthused about this, however it quickly became obvious that such a practice would only take focus away from what became known as the “freedom server,” further depriving it of technical support. The network also had the added effect of increasing the overall amount of resources and maintenance which the actual server would require.

A unique element of the server, as mentioned previously, was the system by which new staff members were ‘elected’ by existing staff using a system of vouch/neutral/object, in the form of an application made on the forum. The corporatization of Total Freedom resulted in Ryan appointing several of his friends, or employees at Atlas Media, as Server Executives. In my opinion, this greatly upset the balance of powers and further chipped away at the freedom aspect of the server by undermining the application system rather than embracing it.

4b. My suspension from admin

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, on the other hand, developed an unhealthy fixation upon it. The continuance of the server as a hotbed of drama and ideological conflict was such a mockery of its original self, and totally defamed the original idea of Total Freedom.

4c. The Akefu raids

A few months after being suspended from admin, I began exchanging more frequently with members of the so-called Granite Castle. A few other members and I decided to create a guild, as the server had recently implemented a plugin which adds these faction-like groups to the creative server, despite them having no real functionality. Over the course of a few months, the “eso” faction, named after esoTalk, would become one of the three most popular factions on the server. Regardless of the faction’s popularity, the server was practically unplayable at this point and so any interest in maintaining my own good standing with the administration had long waned, thus giving rise to the idea to raid the server. For this, I settled on a service named TheAltening, which uses a proxy to connect with a throwaway account and can easily be rotated in order to have new accounts join the server less than a minute after the previous one had been banned. In the beginning, the spam was being done by hand; I was copying and pasting the demoralizing messages, until eventually having written a script that does it for me.

Looking back upon this, there should be some sort of retrospective in which I disavow these actions, but in all truth, I don’t regret anything. The sheer incompetence of the server’s upper-level staff was demonstrated by this practice, with “the raids” having lasted for about 3 weeks until “prevent-proxy-connections” was enabled in the server settings. Unfortunately, several players were accused of having something to do with the raids when in fact there were only two people really doing it: Corona, the former Esoteric Chat moderator, and myself. In the wake of this, Ryan went through with permanently banning a handful of players, many of whom had nothing to do with the raids, however the server was already in a state of decline at this point, and so not much of value had been lost.

I did not predict the way in which the raids swallowed the entire community and produced an obsession with the character of Akefu, the participants of the Granite Castle, and myself. Obviously, members of the server were directing their hatred at me for spamming the server and made no effort to reconcile with the gaping holes that existed in the actual server configuration. Alas, this would turn out to bring about the demise of Total Freedom as a whole.

5. Ultimate downfall and demise

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.

The ultimate nail in the coffin was ultimately brought about by a slew of community members who were exiled in a similar fashion to myself. Declan (decyj145), Sperience and jwmphall (who did absolutely nothing) are just a select few members who were vilified by the community for allegations of participating in a group chat directed against the server named “The Granite Castle.” In more ways than one, this was a witch-hunt concocted in order to permanently remove these members from the community because they were proponents of stripping the majority of the existing Conduct Policy so as to return some sense of freedom to the server. Throughout the course of his ownership, Ryan would never actually consider doing this. In my opinion, the way in which admins reacted to the Akefu raids demonstrated the lack of external understanding that would bring about the server’s closure in response to another attack made against it by a German trolling group.

5a. Debauchery and pedophilia

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.

Most shamefully, this problem was never dealt with by the server administration, or at least not in any serious capacity. By the time of the server’s closure, “age-play” and online relationships between adults and children seemed omnipresent on everything associated with Total Freedom. The server itself became a hotbed for transgender ideology, and it eventually became difficult, if not impossible, to join the actual server without being bombarded by the transgender flag or various taglines derived from gay pride movements. The Conduct Policy was further enlarged in order to punish any rhetoric which goes in opposition to leftish positions. This is the essence of the political homogeny–descending into madness–as the direct result of the abuse of a process designed to express the will of the community, or the court of public opinion, which has abolished all forms of opposition.

5b. Ryan finally moves on

The particular nature or motives of the German trolling group which was responsible for taking down the physical server is unknown, however they did make a video showcasing their ability to obtain root-level access to the server and the destruction that ensued. It’s likely that a member of the group was banned for some reason, and this enraged them to the point of taking retaliatory action; players were getting banned for anything at this point. Ryan had decided that an empty, inactive server would be preferable to a server full of players who did not intend to follow the Conduct Policy in the most strictest manner. Regardless, they were able to bring down the server. Members from IPTFreedom (another freedom server) DDoS’d the forum and took down the Discord server.