For My Readers

[MrDownerup]

Just for the record.. he can remove anything he wants from this section..

[sex_machine_2013]

Just for the record.. he can remove anything he wants from this section..

He could have deleted fuck wads statements at anytime

[Toploader]

To all the people that reported DustinD's posts, why?

Stephen Ardrey has asked to post his writing here and does not want anything he writes edited.  That's fine with me, but I'm also not going to edit or remove anything that people respond with.  Freedom of speech works both ways, so please don't report a post because you disagree with it.

 

[StephenArdrey]

I really don't want that either. It goes back to not sinking to their level. Let him speak air whatever grievences he has and move on. I am mostly worried about my next piece. I just really wrote this so you guys had a place to air your issues as well. I hate censorship no matter which way it flies.

Check out propaganda and gaming or whatever it is you may like.

[sex_machine_2013]

To all the people that reported DustinD's posts, why?

Stephen Ardrey has asked to post his writing here and does not want anything he writes edited.  That's fine with me, but I'm also not going to edit or remove anything that people respond with.  Freedom of speech works both ways, so please don't report a post because you disagree with it.

Sorry we are just really fucking pissed about this cock smoker always slamming someone

I really don't want that either. It goes back to not sinking to their level. Let him speak air whatever grievences he has and move on. I am mostly worried about my next piece. I just really wrote this so you guys had a place to air your issues as well. I hate censorship no matter which way it flies.

Check out propaganda and gaming or whatever it is you may like.

Sorry Stephen just thought a taste of his own medicine would be good

[DustinD]

Ah yes, the Stephen brigade. I remember many of you.

So why exactly do I find them humorous? Well the short version is that in Stephen's early days as a writer on TGV there were a bunch of comments praising his work that also made a habit of picking out flaws in other writers articles. Humorously they felt the need to latch onto spelling mistakes and grammatical issues in submissions from a guy who doesn't natively speak English. Considering that they spell like Stephen (literally and figuratively) I felt it was pretty hilarious. Some others went around threatening Stephen and making it seem like his "controversial articles" were attracting a lot of negativity from the kind of people you don't want to deal with. Thing is, those comments were all coming from Stephen's IP (which isn't even in New Orleans, but that's beside the point). Once this was brought up, a fresh group of fans popped up to do much the same thing. They even have certain flavors of someone trying to hide who is writing it, but there's still the clear enough fingerprint to indicate who it is. Note how they all have the same opinion, utilize similar writing quirks (mixing up the first letter in a word due to unusual "A" sounds), and even resort to similar insults like "dick riding pussy" or the over-reliance on equating homosexuality with being a negative trait for a human being to have. Strangely, this behavior from Stephen's IP stopped dead right around that time.

Hey DOUCHE! It's me K_F_M am I still a figment of anyone's imagination??? Haha!   Bet you didn't think you'd be hearing from me again did you??  You need to stop acting like a spoiled two year old having a tantrum because nothing is going the way you want! 

Does anyone that didn't register in the last ~2 months and therefore isn't a known/suspected Stephen alt believe I am behaving like a 2 year old throwing a tantrum? If so, I'll gladly cease and desist. I am attempting some level of civil discourse with only the appropriate level of insult to certain parties who have already resorted to that behavior. I wish to provide another angle to this story and voice my version of the events. Otherwise I'll clearly be relegated to some sort of child rapist and baby eater once this tale gets embellished further. In fact, that already happened. Stephen's writing account already accused me of pederasty. But I don't exactly care enough about this situation that I'm about to make a nuisance of myself. Make of this what you will.

Not everyone is going to want to do a boring review.  I think a variety of pieces is great as it makes a site more interesting and fun for readers. If it's just review after review after review etc....... I get bored very quickly. Also you need to learn how to take constructive criticism when it's given not act like your two and delete or belittle anyone. 

To note, only half of my articles were reviews and I wholeheartedly support the idea for there to be a variety of articles. Those reviews I did were largely done on recommendations. It gave me something to do while I tried to work some of my ideas into an article that people might actually want to read.

I should note that I have no problem with constructive criticism. I openly submit my articles on the forum before a TGV submission to get additional eyes on it. If any readers happen to have a problem with my writing or anything of that nature, they can state that. The problem is that I'm not getting constructive criticism. I'm being called an egotistical jerk and a faggot. I don't know how exactly that's constructive. Perhaps I should become a self hating sadsack and stop sucking so many delicious cocks?

To add to this, Stephen is a guy who repeatedly states that he likes when people disagree with him and he likes to generate discussion with his writing. Now watch what happened when I did exactly that:

http://www.emuparadise.me/the-gamers-voice/10-things-you-wont-see-in-video-games/#disqus_thread

This happens to be the line of conversation that lead to Stephen's latest explosion and eventual firing. Could I have handled it better? Sure. Did I get a talking to in private from the big guy of the site? You bet your ass I did. But I think it's safe to say that I didn't go into it like a "two year old throwing a tantrum". More like "an informed gamer with a grievance".

Did you really thinking deleting comments was going to win you any favors? That just makes you look like the two year old douche you are.   Before you criticize walk in their shoes. Stephen really has worked his ass off writing those pieces and has stayed up all night. To be a true journalist you have to make sacrifices and put yourself out there. He isn't AFTAID  to do that.  But my bad everyone makes sacrifices for YOU so you can stay happy.

I'd like to know where exactly this belief that I'm the one who deleted comments came from. The comments are handled by the editorial staff. I'm a writer with site moderation duties. In short, I can't delete a damn thing on TGV. I personally would have left them there since I found the anger humorous and felt that responding to it was entertaining. But that wasn't my call to make. I can agree or disagree and, in some cases, provide a vote but that's all. Someone made a judgement call that those comments constituted spam and/or harassment and therefore deleted them. I figure if I came in resorting to stating that Stephen and Vince like to fly little boys in from all over the world for a rousing game of Altar Boy I'd find myself on the business end of a banhammer.

I don't see how I possibly implied that I was demanding a sacrifice. Last I checked I wasn't an Aztec god. He can write however and whatever he wants. If he's making sacrifices, it's purely his decision. My issue with him came from the rampant harassment of myself and others from his computer and from his fanclub. Which, clearly, he has no desire to let go. I will add however that if he can't handle people disagreeing with him, he really should consider a career change.

So stop being a spoiled two year old get off your ass and actually work hard and try something new!!!!!!  Trying working Stephen's schedule ( you wouldn't be able to do it. You would whine and complain the entire time)  and leave him alone and let him write in peace as he has done nothing too any you or anyone else.

The reason I don't work Stephen's schedule is because I am unable to do so with my current lifestyle. My day is filled with things that don't revolve around being in front of my computer. I also play games pretty heavily and browse a couple gaming related websites. You can think of that as research, being that I'm writing articles about gaming for a gaming website. The simple fact of the matter is that not everyone is completely dedicated to the writing thing to the point where they can keep up his pace. I write as a hobby. If you don't like that you're quite welcome to go flog yourself with an especially splintery two by four.

You suck so much deeyuk ray can a mod or someone shut him the fuck up

Prime example of the sort of comment that was removed. Note how it adds nothing of value to the conversation, does nothing but belittle someone, and makes the community revolving around a website seem particularly childish. MasJ wanted an inviting place for people to discuss gaming while their illegal software downloads. You don't exactly give that impression when half the comments involve poorly worded hate speech.

Sorry we are just really fucking pissed about this cock smoker always slamming someone

I think you're being a little unfair here. The ratio of slams per side appears a little lopsided if you ask me. I'm having difficulty keeping up. Oh right, now would be a good time. I'm surprised you can hear my slams over the echo in your cavernous vagina!

LOL'd. I had already went through that shit so I knew pretty much all of it already except the facebook shit. Poor kid. But comments like "I wouldn't call the death of an emo-kid a big loss to the world at large" makes me want to fucking murder him.

Judging from the fact that you're posting as Stephen, I take it you're the fine gentleman who advocated the rape and murder of a certain writer. It sure is nice that Stephen has this wonderful readership to fling insults and threats in his absence. And then he gets to drop in and pretend to be the bigger man. What's with that? But I digress.

Welcome to the internet. I take it you never got your complimentary pinch of salt? In any event you should really stop taking everything at face value. It really can't be good for your health. In any case, I can assure you that if someone really wanted to kill themselves, they would. If anything this was a cry for help or possibly attention whoring. Being that she obviously fabricated the story about me I'm leaning towards the latter. I should note that several of Stephen's female readers are probably not even female. Thanks to the magic of Tineye I can assure you that many of their pictures are about as real as Pam Anderson's tits.

I would like more insight on this issue if you would be willing to provide it.But the fact that they are still following on your journalism clearly shows that they aren't over you.

Counterpoint: Stephen's continued writing of articles clearly shows that he's not over himself. Yeah, I don't see where you're trying to go with this. I should stop doing what I'm doing because people were mean to me on the internet? It shows that I'm a terrible journalist because I'm willing to keep writing even in the face of criticism? I only write for my own ego? You're being pretty vague.
 

By the way, you might want to throw in my story about getting censored for no fucking reason. You know if Ray keeps refutating and the situation arises. Also what's the deal with the DustinD username? Sorry I'm asking so many questions.

I should point out that my comments were deleted too. I just, y'know, moved on. You make us out to be the fucking thought police. A handful of inflammatory comments were removed (mine included) and suddenly we're preheating our ovens. In reality, we publish pretty much anything that gets submitted and we welcome the criticism. Ad spam for other sites and making unfounded claims about a person's sexual orientation aren't exactly the sort of free speech worth saving. If you pointed out how and why my articles are terrible, I welcome it. I don't exactly have a super high opinion of them myself as the OP will clearly show.

I felt it was appropriate to give Stephen a little something subtle to show that I'm really not unable to do research. I just don't go out of my way to drone on and on about how amazing I am for writing dozens of articles and doing research all day. But what do I know, I've got a huge ego and I'm also a fuck.

Also thanks for the unreleased article! Boy you live in fucking hell's pit. Everyone is a dealer, a murderer or a pedo. Crazy shit. I think you kinda exaggerated it a little with the wood spiders in a vagina, though.

That's something he'd have to take up with the editorial staff or the site admins. I should point out though that they can't push through an article until it's been submitted for review. If he didn't want it published it was as simple as not submitting it, making a note, or e-mailing someone. To my knowledge there was no effort on his part to have an article removed until such time as it was ready. Which should be easy to do, seeing as the software we're using allows a writer to do just that.
 

So yeah, good stuff. Also if anyone asks why there's nothing incriminating in EP about them you can tell them it's because they fucking deleted it all (it's their own site, it should be abvious at this point). In places where they can't delete crap at will (FB) they resort to idiotic inhumane shit like "No big deal if someone kills himself". Fuck Ray.

There are tools that would undo any of our attempts to remove that sort of thing. As any girl will tell you, once it's online it's online FOREVER. Whether you like it or not. You're all free to use whatever tools you wish. The most you'll find is a handful of childish behavior on my part with some childish namecalling being directed my way.

Unless, of course, you're insinuation that we happen to own google. As much as I would love that kind of income, I'm afraid that's not the case.

[Heather]

Okay, I'm confused as fuck!

You all need a fucking drink or two!

[Duck-and-Cover]

Seriously

[StephenArdrey]

Hey Stephen. Sorry I'm asking this but would you mind posting on my behalf on your "For My Readers" article? I have to tell Raype something.

"Judging from the fact that you're posting as Stephen, I take it you're the fine gentleman who advocated the rape and murder of a certain writer. It sure is nice that Stephen has this wonderful readership to fling insults and threats in his absence. And then he gets to drop in and pretend to be the bigger man. What's with that? But I digress."
What? Stephen is posting as me because I didn't want to make an account at RWS if all I was gonna do is post comments on Stephen's articles. Nothing wrong with that but I prefer emailing him my opinions. I'll gladly post my comments publicly if a comment system that just requires your email (such as Disqus) is implemmented. That's the only reason. And I have no goddamn idea who that guy is but I assure you it wasn't me. I've never advocated rape nor murder. I said I wanted to murder you, but you'll have to notice some subtle differences between that and what you did. Firstly, since we're apparently justificating ourselves now with literal semanthics, I said I wanted to murder you, not that I would. Huge difference. Secondly, that statement was in fact a private email I sent to Stephen expressing my indignation for your threats driving a person suicidal. I never intended that statement to go public. Not that I mind since I don't have anything to hide. But I never wanted to harass you (except for that time I'll mention later). So no that was not a death threat. And it should be noted that not even once has Stephen asked me to do anything aggresive to you or the community or the site. So stop making him look like the bad guy.

"Welcome to the internet. I take it you never got your complimentary pinch of salt? In any event you should really stop taking everything at face value. It really can't be good for your health. In any case, I can assure you that if someone really wanted to kill themselves, they would. If anything this was a cry for help or possibly attention whoring. Being that she obviously fabricated the story about me I'm leaning towards the latter. I should note that several of Stephen's female readers are probably not even female. Thanks to the magic of Tineye I can assure you that many of their pictures are about as real as Pam Anderson's tits."
Everything you just said is true to some degree. Yes lots of people on the internet are douchebags for no reason, and I normally don't mind them as long as nobody gets hurt. Yes, maybe the girl was an attention whore. Yes, maybe Stephen used a shitload of alts. Yes, maybe he has no female fans. In this day and age faking stuff online is relatively easy. BUT, you are working around the premise that those things are facts when you might be very wrong. Case in point: I am no alt and I am a fan of Stephen's work. So really bashing someone, online or not, on the grounds that he/she MIGHT be an alt of some guy is an assholish thing to do. By the way, back when I commented back at TGV, if you thought I was an alt you surely didn't do a great job with your IP dig-ups. I am from a different country, on the other side of the planet.

"Counterpoint: Stephen's continued writing of articles clearly shows that he's not over himself. Yeah, I don't see where you're trying to go with this. I should stop doing what I'm doing because people
were mean to me on the internet? It shows that I'm a terrible journalist because I'm willing to keep writing even in the face of criticism? I only write for my own ego? You're being pretty vague."
Counterpoint: Stephen was fired from TGV. Now if Stephen wants to reveal details about his issue with you guys that's up to him but it's not the way you are portraying him. You are avoiding to mention a lot of stuff there.

"I should point out that my comments were deleted too. I just, y'know, moved on. You make us out to be the fucking thought police. A handful of inflammatory comments were removed (mine included) and suddenly we're preheating our ovens. In reality, we publish pretty much anything that gets submitted and we welcome the criticism. Ad spam for other sites and making unfounded claims about a person's sexual orientation aren't exactly the sort of free speech worth saving. If you pointed out how and why my articles are terrible, I welcome it. I don't exactly have a super high opinion of them myself as the OP will clearly show. "
Firstly, please don't use literal statements to back you up. When I say "faggot" I'm not thinking about how much you love to take it up the ass. Since you seem to be an expert on all things internet you should know by now that "faggot" has devolved into a generic insult. Feel free to change it for the generic insult that offends you the least. Just to make sure it's clear I have nothing against homosexuality and even have gay friends for that matter. So don't use it as an excuse.
Secondly, boy you had it coming. My first post was just stating that I agreed with another of the comments on your article and ratify that anyone could play a demo without any money and little effort.
That's as constructive as criticism gets. Then you deleted my comment. Later I posted another comment asking if my previous one had been deleted and asking for a reason. It got deleted as well. What was I supposed to do? Censorship pisses me off. So I wrote a short list of insults directed at you for that.
NOW, you are saying you don't regulate the comments. You have no proof of that in all honesty. I don't know the inside workings of TGV/EPForums. But you know what? I'll take your word for it. In the light of this new information, I take back all the insults I threw at you back at TGV. So if really, honestly, it wasn't you who deleted the comments, then I'll gladly swallow my pride and admit my mistake. And apologize for it if you even care. But okay, then maybe I'll head back to TGV and start criticising your work. I promise not to flame or insult anyone, I'll just give my opinion on it. See how long it takes before someone snaps.
Also, I feel the need to point out I never wanted your posts in RWS (as well as in TGV) to be deleted. I hate all censorship in all possible ways.

"I felt it was appropriate to give Stephen a little something subtle to show that I'm really not unable to do research. I just don't go out of my way to drone on and on about how amazing I am for writing dozens of articles and doing research all day. But what do I know, I've got a huge ego and I'm also a fuck."
Okay. I personally prefer you try to prove your point by doing actual work and not by flaming Stephen's work or deleting comments. Kudos.
I don't know you, but I like when my hard work is appreciated. And Stephen didn't even go about boasting his ego with phrases like "Hey fucktards you better leave a comment and like my shit because I spent a lot of time doing my research and you can't do shit you useless fucks". If anything, his used that argument to excuse himself for delaying his articles and when some of them ended up somewhat unpolished. And I am going to bring up a related issue I wanted to adress. Basically all the articles from people from the Forums have a 100% of community people comments. The same people you hang out with at the Forums and can probably be considered your friends for the most part. I don't see how having a fanbase composed of you internet friends is better than having one composed of real-life friends. Assuming that was actually Stephen's case, that is.

"That's something he'd have to take up with the editorial staff or the site admins. I should point out though that they can't push through an article until it's been submitted for review. If he didn't want it published it was as simple as not submitting it, making a note, or e-mailing someone. To my knowledge there was no effort on his part to have an article removed until such time as it was ready. Which should be easy to do, seeing as the software we're using allows a writer to do just that."
I would like to start by stating that I am amazed you could make any sense out of that quote. Seriously, out of context it's completely uncomprehensible. Again, I don't know how the site works. I have no idea what software you use and what are the capabilities of the writers using it.

"There are tools that would undo any of our attempts to remove that sort of thing. As any girl will tell you, once it's online it's online FOREVER. Whether you like it or not. You're all free to use whatever tools you wish. The most you'll find is a handful of childish behavior on my part with some childish namecalling being directed my way."

Unless, of course, you're insinuation that we happen to own google. As much as I would love that kind of income, I'm afraid that's not the case."
I acknowdlege there are archive resources I don't know about, but since you seem to, please, direct me to a place I can see my archived deleted comments. As far as Google cache, there's no way in hell they are archiving a comment that was online for no more than 2 hours. In fact, I just checked the Google cache of your article and there's no comments on it. So no Google has not archived any of the deleted comments. But even asuming they did it's not the point. When people read your articles and scroll down to the comments they're not gonna wonder if there is stuff that got deleted and might be archived somewhere in the infinity of the internet. And you know it, that's why you deleted them anyway. If people could see the comments so effortlessly you wouldn't have even bothered.
I am a fan of Stephen's work, but I am not a so called "fanboy". I know he makes mistakes. I know he overreacted when you refuted him back in TGV. But I just let it go. It's not like I will throw away all my previous good ideas about him just because he lost his shit a little. In fact I am sending Stephen to write this for me. And the great thing is I can trust him to accept my criticism to him and he will accept it without calling me a cocksucker, a sockpuppet or censoring my shit. That's how cool Stephen is. Because it seems right now that is a pretty rare quality.

All in all, you have made one single valid argument: that you didn't have so much control over the comment section of TGV. Believe it or not that has improved my opinion of you a lot. Not that you really care because you think I am a sockpuppet and whatnot, but just FYI.
Still, stalking someone based on assumptions, firing someone based on assumptions, dismissing someone based on assumptions and overall losing your shit based on assumptions is just wrong.
Finally I'll let you know that I am a big fan of EP. It has been my go-to source for ROMs for quite some time. Which is mainly the reason I even give a fuck about this whole thing. I really like EP and really hate seeing what's going on there.

Anyway, I disgress. Firstly I was pissed about you guys firing Stephen for no reason. Now Stephen has given me insight of the situation so I can understand it and now I only hope for the best in his new position at RWS. Then I was pissed about the deletion of my comments. I am stilll kinda mad but I least are not that pissed at you for it. Again, I'm sorry. If you would care to tell me who to divert my rage to it would be much appreciated. If you are even allowed to pass that information, that is.
Still, persecuting people and driving them to attempted suicide is shit and I hope you can admit your mistake on that. I hear will be okay though so... well there's that.

Thanks and bye,
-Red Ghost Frog

[Heather]

Cliff notes version please.

[MrDownerup]

Cliff notes version please.

lol 

[Toploader]

I got as far as:

I'll gladly post my comments publicly if a comment system that just requires your email (such as Disqus) is implemmented

That's all this forum needs to post, your e-mail and to click a conformation link. If this guy cared about his point he'd have signed up to make it, rather than asking the person he's defending to post it on his behalf, which removes much of the meaning of it.

Just saying.

[DustinD]

Before I begin, a few things I should address that slipped through the cracks:

1. Contrary to Stephen's statements, no apologies or explanations were given for any of his previous actions to my knowledge. At the very least, I can state that none of them ever reached me personally. From my perspective he more or less ran right to legal action and once we finished laughing at him he immediately ran to twitter to flood MasJ's feed with claims that we're scam artists and lying thieves.  To note, this occurred in a tweet that was trying to help raise funds/generate publicity for a kickstarter project headed by a group of people who MasJ had recently partnered with. They had absolutely nothing to do with anything site related and were only looking for a helping hand. Pretty dick move all around. I should also add that this is yet another thing that was "completely beyond Stephen's control" and therefore exempt from any blame in these events. TheJessConcept handles that one, apparently.  How incredibly convenient. Not just that she was handling that, but that she was also online just moments after the fit hit the shan. Is the universe conspiring to make Stephen seem dishonest, or is something actually up with all this? You be the judge!

2. Thus far we've published everything submitted to the site. To claim that we withheld an article about TJC for some random reason is entirely false.  Stephen had voiced concern over how long it took for an article to "go through" and how several of them were still pending. That much is true, we do have a small editing group and only a select few are involved in the actual scheduling. If it wasn't up before, it was probably in the process of getting there. To my knowledge there was only one article that was never published, and it wasn't by Stephen. It was also not run for an entirely different reason than censorship.

3. We haven't published any of his articles since his departure from TGV and have no intentions of doing so now. The one feature he's talking about was a weekly game recommendation feature. He had been trying to pawn it off on other writers for weeks by this point. If he doesn't want any more installments to go up, he should have clarified that point. Contrary to popular belief, we do not read minds. Easily enough handled by contacting management. Seeing as he seems to enjoy staying in contact with them, it should be easy enough to toss that into an e-mail somewhere.

What? Stephen is posting as me because I didn't want to make an account at RWS if all I was gonna do is post comments on Stephen's articles. Nothing wrong with that but I prefer emailing him my opinions. I'll gladly post my comments publicly if a comment system that just requires your email (such as Disqus) is implemmented. That's the only reason. And I have no goddamn idea who that guy is but I assure you it wasn't me. I've never advocated rape nor murder. I said I wanted to murder you, but you'll have to notice some subtle differences between that and what you did. Firstly, since we're apparently justificating ourselves now with literal semanthics, I said I wanted to murder you, not that I would. Huge difference. Secondly, that statement was in fact a private email I sent to Stephen expressing my indignation for your threats driving a person suicidal. I never intended that statement to go public. Not that I mind since I don't have anything to hide. But I never wanted to harass you (except for that time I'll mention later). So no that was not a death threat. And it should be noted that not even once has Stephen asked me to do anything aggresive to you or the community or the site. So stop making him look like the bad guy.

I understand the difference. I was not making reference to that, but instead the other threats against my person that have pretty much hounded me since my first article went up. More on that later. I should point out that this was back before we confronted Stephen about his IP similarities to the rampant harassers.  The use of the Stephen account lead me to assume that you were one of his suddenly existing "roommates". Who I assume are separate from his harem of live in girlfriends. Or whatever his cover story is this week.

Everything you just said is true to some degree. Yes lots of people on the internet are douchebags for no reason, and I normally don't mind them as long as nobody gets hurt. Yes, maybe the girl was an attention whore. Yes, maybe Stephen used a shitload of alts. Yes, maybe he has no female fans. In this day and age faking stuff online is relatively easy. BUT, you are working around the premise that those things are facts when you might be very wrong. Case in point: I am no alt and I am a fan of Stephen's work. So really bashing someone, online or not, on the grounds that he/she MIGHT be an alt of some guy is an assholish thing to do. By the way, back when I commented back at TGV, if you thought I was an alt you surely didn't do a great job with your IP dig-ups. I am from a different country, on the other side of the planet.

In the interest of clarification for the users here, remember when I brought up how a second wave of new users popped up once Stephen was confronted? The animal themed users were among them. By this point direct IP information was irrelevant. I can easily hop onto a proxy and be broadcasting from a McDonalds in Sri Lanka or a whorehouse in Bangkok. So wherever he claims to be is pretty much irrelevant unless he has a sheet of paper, a digital camera, and a clear view of some landscape that is clearly in whatever country he's claiming to be in. In which case, a brief message scrawled upon it declaring how huge of a cocksmoker I am would be much appreciated. Make sure it's all in frame now. No photo trickery by the way. I intend to Exif it.

Whether or not he had any actual readers mixed in with the alts I can't be 100% sure. I also can't be 100% sure I'm real for that matter.

But let's examine the facts for a moment here. Keep in mind this is from my perspective.

-A guy was having a go at himself and other writers to make his pieces seem more popular than they were whilst making negative comments on other writers' articles.
-He gets called on it due to the staff looking into the IPs of the posters.
-Suddenly, it stops but a string of shiny new users no one has heard of before show up and pull the exact same shit. To whit, they fellate the hell out of Stephen while going on and on about how terrible everyone else is at writing. Strangely, they all share similar opinions practically to the letter. And the time-stamps are so suspiciously close together that it's almost as if it's being coordinated. For a site with only 5K users, it's pretty amazing for several people to suddenly comment all at once, then for it to be more or less silent for hours. Frankly, I wish I had a buck for every time my "dull review no one read that bored everyone to tears".
-The new users are largely theme named. Note how we have both a mouse and a frog. Pretty sure there was a squirrel in there at one point. Maybe even moose and squirrel. Several are obviously theme named to be supposedly attractive women. That alone is suspect in my opinion. I can't begin to tell you how much pussy I get by being a fat lonely neckbeard who argues with people on the internet when I'm not going on and on about which game sucks or how this game did something better. The ladies absolutely adore it when I do that. Let's be honest here, we're all repulsive.
- The coincidences continue to pile up and people are obviously being let in on stuff that was privately discussed with Stephen (IE: your baiting of Cookie in his article and here). The way I see it, either they were Stephen or he was privately bringing up his grievances with the site so that his fan club could do something. Whichever one is closer to reality, I find it rather unprofessional to leak that sort of information. The hell did he think was going to happen?

What possible conclusion would anyone reach in my shoes?

Most crimes are, after all, carried out by their most likely suspect. Occam's razor and all that.

Counterpoint: Stephen was fired from TGV. Now if Stephen wants to reveal details about his issue with you guys that's up to him but it's not the way you are portraying him. You are avoiding to mention a lot of stuff there.

Professional courtesy goes a long way. It's why you haven't seen any articles about why Stephen was fired, nor any articles stating that we'll burn his house to the ground. If I have anything to say about it, you never will either. It's a major rule of journalism. But I suppose the gloves are off and that's why I'm here.

So the basic jist of why Stephen was fired.

I'll try to cut it down a bit, but as a bit of background there were several people fed up with Stephen's perceived shenanigans as well as the sort of air he was bringing to the site. If nothing else, he was clearly a magnet for the sort of user that thinks little of behaving in an especially unruly manner at the drop of a hat. He was, however, tolerated because if nothing else he was a dedicated writer who provided a constant stream of content. Most writers were told to avoid creating any huge incidents with him after a few previous outbursts (complete with threats of legal action on Stephen's part).

He submits an article on the supposed widespread censorship of gaming. I disagree with the article and deconstruct his argument in a comment. Now the thing about Stephen is that he keeps talking about how he likes to generate discussion with his work. He also talked at length about how writers might wish to run articles that provide conflicting or different viewpoints on a certain topic. He even stated how he likes criticism and appreciates his detractors. So, surely, a statement of what I saw as a civilized disagreement was acceptable, right? Apparently I was wrong. He then gets overly angry with me and starts insulting my writing. Recurring theme when dealing with Stephen or his fans, by the way. If anyone's intending to write here, be prepared for an earful about how "boring" and "unedgy" your stuff is . Anyway, as it turns out somewhere along the line he got it in his head that I was a horrible person and a complete prick. When he starts talking smack, I return in kind, bringing up our past issues with him. He then goes completely apeshit. He e-mails MasJ requesting my head on a platter. I can't be certain of the exact details here as I'm not privy to everything that happened there. I'm limited to information that was relayed to me later on when this situation had sufficiently progressed.

But as I hear it, basically he was threatening to sue me and demanded that MasJ hand over my real name, location, and any other information he had on me. MasJ attempted to ease the situation and mediate things. He sent me a few messages during this ordeal. During this time I was berated for bringing up certain details of Stephen's tenure at TGV to the public as well as trying to kill the credibility of both another writer and the site itself. "Airing our dirty laundry" as he put it. He requested that I stop and to conduct myself in a more professional manner in the future. I agreed to comply with certain conditions to avoid causing him further problems, as well as attempting to give him my side of things. The general consensus that we reached was that it was entirely my right to disagree with Stephen and offer my critique, but if I were to do so in the future he wanted it off his site unless I was doing it in article format (which would be subject to review and possibly dismissal by either him personally or by a small handful of his most highly trusted associates). This was after my second response in that article. If you want any evidence as to my claim, I have not had any contact with any account tied to the 'Stephen' name between then and now. I have also not had anyone contact or harass Stephen on my behalf.

A short while later I get informed that Stephen had been fired. When MasJ's talks with him fell through, he began demanding the personal info on all TGV writers. I guess being a prick to someone online is grounds for a lawsuit nowadays. When MasJ told Stephen he wouldn't be giving that information up, Stephen threatened to sue MasJ and Emuparadise directly. MasJ's response was to fire Stephen for his behaviour. I was also given warning somewhere in here that he was apparently hopping on a plane to serve me papers. I'm sad to say that I never got them. I could have used some fresh TP.

I think that's more or less it. Any further questions and whatnot are welcome.

Firstly, please don't use literal statements to back you up. When I say "faggot" I'm not thinking about how much you love to take it up the ass. Since you seem to be an expert on all things internet you should know by now that "faggot" has devolved into a generic insult. Feel free to change it for the generic insult that offends you the least. Just to make sure it's clear I have nothing against homosexuality and even have gay friends for that matter. So don't use it as an excuse.

I'm aware of what you were doing. I just find it odd that the company Stephen keeps all seem so incredibly reliant on cock related metaphors. I take it the cigar isn't just a cigar here? That aside, it's strange that you're all reliant on the sort of insult that went out of fashion right around the time my balls dropped. Seems like you're all way into insinuating people are homosexuals. It's almost as if you're all drawing water from the same well. Peculiar.

[DustinD]

Secondly, boy you had it coming. My first post was just stating that I agreed with another of the comments on your article and ratify that anyone could play a demo without any money and little effort.

Note that this includes yet another statement of my laziness. I'm somewhat curious as to where this idea got started as well as how it became so widespread across Stephen's fan base to the point where Stephen himself has repeatedly voiced it. But I suppose I might as well point something out here. I don't actually publish everything I write. Shocking, I know. My writing style, unlike Stephen's tendency to make quick concept pieces, tends to go towards perfectionism. I have a bunch of half-finished articles that may not see the light of day anytime soon simply because I want more out of them. I never intend to put out an article I'll regret later. Which is why it takes me so damn long to put one out (roughly once a week). Throw in my day-to-day life and my concession that I don't live solely to write and it's seemingly understandable. I'm not saying my way is better or worse, if anything I wish I could write articles as quickly as he does and felt motivated enough to do the legwork of contacting people for interviews. I'm just saying that my way is different. You're really comparing apples to oranges here.

I also don't quite get where this implied belief that we all think we're amazing writers comes from. You don't even have to look beyond the first post to see that. I almost immediately self-depreciated my own articles in that video, calling them something akin to "poorly worded boring pieces of shit". Because, yeah, I could use some better criticism and I should try to write shorter, simpler articles than I do. One of my biggest problems is that I sometimes bite off more than I can chew with a submission. While I can usually illicit a chuckle or two in my interactions with my fellow users I'm having a lousy time transitioning that properly into the format of a submitted article. I could go on for pages about my shortcomings. As for the claim that I'm unable to "deal with sleepless nights", I would also like to bring everyone's attention to the system clock. I recorded that just shy of 2 AM. Because that was the only free time I had after a rather full day. Is the quality of the video great? Nah, it's fucking bad. My mic is on its last legs, my capture software desynced like a bastard, I knew little about the product, my playing is sloppy, and I was way too worn out to be even remotely entertaining or insightful with my commentary. It's probably among the worst things I've ever recorded. When you're doing a first impression of something, you can only do it once. I can't help that I blew my one shot and have the honesty to not attempt faking it. I attempted to fix my shortfall by appending what I felt was a decent-ish written synopsis of my experiences with the demo. As I recall I finished up just a little while before sunrise. Life gave me lemons and I attempted to make lemon aid. It came out terrible, but I tried.

As for the whole "it's a demo" thing, a demo is supposed to showcase what the full product has to offer. Whether or not it succeeds at doing so is certainly a matter of interpretation. I should add that I make sure to point out in every single demo recording I've ever done that a demo is never really a perfect gauge of the final finished product. That included this one. I'd like to be able to grab every new game and give some insight into what it offers, but games are pretty low on the financial priority list. If the demo proved mindblowing, I could have been swayed to divert the necessary funds. It failed to do so. I don't have the kind of cash where I can just throw it at every game that comes along. We're 100% unpaid for these articles, by the way.

Ironically, Stephen kinda disproved several of his own points simply by linking that video in the first place. While I would like to laugh at him trying to stab me but instead falling upon his own sword, I know better. He had a reason for posting that. For those of you without youtube accounts, once someone posts your video somewhere there's a toolset that tells you where the traffic is coming from. It allows people to get some idea of where their content is winding up and ensure it's not being misappropriated. I find it interesting and it lets me interact with potential fans and receive my daily dose of humility when people laugh at my incredibly gay voice or mock my lame attempts at humour. So why exactly was it that he went out of his way to link a video from a writer he had a clear grudge against in an article where he directly calls out all of his former coworkers? That's simple. He obviously wanted to have it out with me in some way. I guess he feels that his new audience should see the sort of monsters he used to affiliate himself with. I suppose it's entirely possible he wasn't aware of that, being that he's semi-technologically illiterate and judging from his own dust covered youtube account no one has ever hotlinked his stuff anywhere.  So I should state that it's possible he just goofed in a most hilarious manner.

That's as constructive as criticism gets. Then you deleted my comment. Later I posted another comment asking if my previous one had been deleted and asking for a reason. It got deleted as well. What was I supposed to do? Censorship pisses me off. So I wrote a short list of insults directed at you for that.

I didn't delete anything, nor did I ask for it to be removed. So I really don't have anything to add here. Except perhaps that if you aren't really enjoying what I'm writing, you can just opt to not read it. You can't please everybody all the time. I used to do things similar to this on the forums, and the reception was generally good enough that I felt like continuing it. I was given the green light to move my semi-weird review things to TGV so I did. It also gave me an avenue for an alternative to trying to get back into an opinion piece I was trying to wrap my head around. Essentially, I would have done that whether TGV existed or not. Like I said, I set a personal goal for one article per week on the belief that if everyone followed my example we could easily have 1-2 articles per day going up. When that deadline started coming up, I crammed in something I knew I could pull off. So I guess my defense is pretty much "I just felt like doing that at the time" and "I had a deadline, and this is something I could do in that timeframe". I will state that the concern that "not everything should be about reviews" is being taken to heart by some people. One of our editors has said that he'd like to see more regular features and interesting submissions like our contest entries. I can't speak for anyone else, because I don't write their articles, but I try to vary my writing. Now that this one is out the door, I intend to make sure I don't have to cop out next week.

Not directed to you in particular, but the way most comments went you'd swear we were operating the text equivalent of the Ludavico Technique. If you click on a link to one of my articles, you're going to get one of my articles. The people who feel that I do nothing aside from write shitty reviews are welcome to not read it if the only comment you intend to leave is "it sucks", "e-mail Stephen here" or "werez stephen?". If you want something different written by me, then just wait until I get something non-review related written. Or, better yet, don't go to the review section. It's not exactly a hard concept to grasp. Since you're all in contact with each other, just send a mass e-mail to spread the word. Or use that e-mail that he keeps posting for user questions. Or subscribe to his twitter feed which was plainly visible on TGV, because lord knows the guy can use a follower count that's higher than my grandma's. Or you know, anything that doesn't make it look like someone's kicking off some sort of spam marketing campaign on other people's work.

As for your comment, it's possible it might have gotten mixed in with something else. My memory is a little hazy around here, but I believe it might have been submitted as a reply to one of the numerous "obvious girl gamer name underscore bunch of numbers" comments about how my article sucked and how I'm a non-edgy boring faggot and we should bring Stephen back. As mentioned earlier, we had pretty significant reason to believe that those were alt accounts and we treated them as such. Your stuff might've been grouped in with the comment. I don't know how Discus works, but most software of that nature deletes the entire conversation when it removes an OP post (so my reply and yours would have been taken down if they were both responses to the same original post). Collateral damage. It wasn't censorship, it was moderation. There's a difference.

NOW, you are saying you don't regulate the comments. You have no proof of that in all honesty. I don't know the inside workings of TGV/EPForums. But you know what? I'll take your word for it. In the light of this new information, I take back all the insults I threw at you back at TGV. So if really, honestly, it wasn't you who deleted the comments, then I'll gladly swallow my pride and admit my mistake. And apologize for it if you even care. But okay, then maybe I'll head back to TGV and start criticising your work. I promise not to flame or insult anyone, I'll just give my opinion on it. See how long it takes before someone snaps.
Also, I feel the need to point out I never wanted your posts in RWS (as well as in TGV) to be deleted. I hate all censorship in all possible ways.

You're correct that I don't have evidence, but I will claim that I was set up with the same account level that Stephen had. The way TGV was laid out, there are two levels: writer and publisher. Both of us fell into the category of the former. It basically just limits you to being able to handle the writing, visibility, and submission of your own articles. I had no more control over the comment section than he did. He can clarify that I've never once edited a single article he wrote and was never responsible for publishing/reviewing his work. Not a single note from me was anywhere to be found on his submissions. Honestly, I have enough headaches to worry about just dealing with moderating the forums and dealing with the resulting spillover from other EP ventures. I wasn't about to worry about TGV too. The only users with publisher accounts are members of the site administration team. My current rank and file lists me as a moderator, not an administrator. Effectively, the people running TGV are my bosses.

In the end, I have to answer for any actions I take the same as everybody else. Were I abusing my power for petty reasons as these claims state, I'd quickly find myself powerless and possibly facing an outright exile. We believe in a team mentality over there. Cooperation and things like that. Vigilantism is highly frowned upon. People can and do get removed from positions of power over there for abusing it. Which is one of the reasons why I make it a point to win arguments with my brain, not my e-penis. When those comments were removed, it was after a discussion, decision and agreement was made in the upper hierarchy of the site. Those people earned their positions, so if they say that removing those comments was in the site's best interests, then they're in a position to make that call for a reason. You can agree or disagree, but to say it's because one or two of us happen to be a bit miffed about something as silly as being unable to take a harsh word or two and has taken to turning moderation into censorship is a fairly unfounded claim.

I can't guarantee that future comments won't be removed. I can really only state that I won't remove them and I've expressed a desire to not have things removed from my articles. If you've made the personal shit list of everyone with more power than I, that's completely out of my hands. Personally I choose to believe the people in charge are better than that.

Okay. I personally prefer you try to prove your point by doing actual work and not by flaming Stephen's work or deleting comments. Kudos.
I don't know you, but I like when my hard work is appreciated. And Stephen didn't even go about boasting his ego with phrases like "Hey fucktards you better leave a comment and like my shit because I spent a lot of time doing my research and you can't do shit you useless fucks".

It's not so much the fact that he received praise that's the problem here. It's not something as simple as jealousy on our part. Instead, the problem here is that his articles receive nothing but praise from people who never have a positive word to spare for anyone else. And they never give him a negative comment even when he kind of deserves it. I find it difficult to believe that not a single one of his dozen or so female readers took issue with him effectively treating a woman like a piece of meat. The freakish wholehearted devotion to his work, regardless of quality or content, to the point where they are completely unable to appreciate anything that doesn't have his name attached seems more than a little off. It feels like I could literally submit a photo laden article on my latest bowel movement, throw Stephen's name on it, and expect everyone to lap it up. Well, almost. They'd all be suddenly and strangely aware that he didn't write it. It's almost like some sort of weird fucked up cult. Or one guy with way too much time on his hands. But I digress.

While his comments are never that overt, he has his own means of stating it. His statements about how we're all terrible small time writers who can't "hang" for instance. Which I feel is an appropriate metaphor to copy here. Stephen tried to be the big boy on the block over at TGV and when he fell flat on his face he ran home to mommy crying "sue sue sue".  He'll also bring up his supposed credentials at the slightest provocation and make damn sure to point out that the other parties don't have his background. Which is completely impossible to back up because he was a 'ghost writer'. Convenience, etc.  Again, one of those poorly written user submitted articles by a random nobody beat his in an open contest. They beat my ass too for that matter, but I'm strong enough to take the hit. For all I know that guy could've been a best selling author. Or just an angry 10 year old hopped up on glue. The world may never know. What we do know, however, is that a lot of people apparently felt that guy's work was good enough to surpass all other entrants including everyone Stephen has a grudge against and Stephen himself. Godspeed hopped up on glue kid. Godspeed.

[DustinD]

If anything, his used that argument to excuse himself for delaying his articles and when some of them ended up somewhat unpolished. And I am going to bring up a related issue I wanted to adress. Basically all the articles from people from the Forums have a 100% of community people comments. The same people you hang out with at the Forums and can probably be considered your friends for the most part. I don't see how having a fanbase composed of you internet friends is better than having one composed of real-life friends. Assuming that was actually Stephen's case, that is.

I'm not sure I'd say 100%.

http://www.emuparadise.me/the-gamers-voice/castlevania-harmony-of-despair-you-got-your-multiplayer-in-my-vampire-slaying/#disqus_thread

Oh look, loads of comments calling for my death. All from Stephen's IP. All by people not seen on the forum, the bt tracker, the facebook page, or anywhere else. Seemingly wrapped up with Stephen trying to virally market some stuff he was writing. And then, nothing. Not a word. How strange. Oh yes, and despite his fans showing up quite a deal later, they were all intimately familiar with this particular submission of mine. Call me paranoid, but something about that seems a bit off.

Now I'm not going to say he isn't entitled to a fanbase. Quite the opposite, I'd love it if there were more people going there. I just find it odd that his fanbase was composed entirely of people who materialized out of thin air and were prone to vanishing just as abruptly. When your fanbase has earned a reputation for being career pool urinators that's really just compounding things. Say what you want about my 'friends', but you can easily see that they're real. Unless of course I happened to fabricate thousands upon thousands of posts over the last half-decade for the sole purpose of making myself look good. They also didn't really go out of their way to belittle Stephen or his writing. About the only instance that comes to mind was someone pointing out his tendency to make spelling errors and how odd it was that his fans took issue with it when others misspelled a word despite Stephen's regularly being wrought with typos. I guess it's hard to take time out of being a hardcore writer to skim your article or download a browser that isn't developed by Microsoft. "My time writing it is worth less than your time reading it" indeed.

I would like to start by stating that I am amazed you could make any sense out of that quote. Seriously, out of context it's completely uncomprehensible. Again, I don't know how the site works. I have no idea what software you use and what are the capabilities of the writers using it.

I figured it was calling back to the claims that we pushed through an unfinished article and he was completely helpless to do anything about it. The context being that you mentioned an "unfinished article" while there's still talk about an article being "rushed through before it was done".

I acknowdlege there are archive resources I don't know about, but since you seem to, please, direct me to a place I can see my archived deleted comments. As far as Google cache, there's no way in hell they are archiving a comment that was online for no more than 2 hours. In fact, I just checked the Google cache of your article and there's no comments on it. So no Google has not archived any of the deleted comments. But even asuming they did it's not the point. When people read your articles and scroll down to the comments they're not gonna wonder if there is stuff that got deleted and might be archived somewhere in the infinity of the internet. And you know it, that's why you deleted them anyway. If people could see the comments so effortlessly you wouldn't have even bothered.

I meant something a bit more substantial. Surely if we put the kind of effort into lambasting Stephen that he did into smearing us there'd be something of note somewhere. And with all this talk about censorship I'm sure there were plenty that were up long enough for something somewhere to pick it up. Really now, some of you guys are talking about a guy who themes himself after a goddamned muppet like he's throwing people into room 101.

I might have bothered. Regardless of any enjoyment I could have milked from the obvious butthurt from Stephen's fans, the simple fact was that several were trying to use it to publicize the work of a guy who was canned for essentially being a massive bleeding vagina who threatened the entire site with legally unfounded litigation. And now that same site is being used for publicity. Around that time word did come down that Stephen related links were to be relegated to spam status. I probably would have went with a lighter touch like removing the links, but it's not exactly like I had the power to do any of that, now did I?

Still, stalking someone based on assumptions, firing someone based on assumptions, dismissing someone based on assumptions and overall losing your shit based on assumptions is just wrong.

Assumption is not really the correct word here. They're really more inferences. Stephen has been known to use alternate accounts. Stephen is informed that we're aware of his use of alternate accounts. Accounts that are completely unverifiable appear that behave exactly like Stephen's previous alternate accounts. There is little to no evidence to indicate these are legit new users fresh off the boat. I therefore infer based upon that information that these new accounts are Stephen. An assumption usually involves a sizable leap. Instead my reasoning is that it's just Stephen being Stephen.

Again, I'm sorry. If you would care to tell me who to divert my rage to it would be much appreciated. If you are even allowed to pass that information, that is.

It's really not my place to shove the blame off onto someone in particular. I have no intentions of making someone a scapegoat. We're all supposed to stand by decisions regardless of our viewpoints. You may continue to hate me based upon the simple fact that I'm part of the larger quasi-democratic machine that erased those comments. But I felt it was necessary to state that it wasn't my finger on the button nor was I the one who openly advocated anything that lead to your particular comments being wiped. I do have the ability to add to any discussion on how things are run, but I'm really just another vote, same as any writer, staff member, or even the site owner.

Still, persecuting people and driving them to attempted suicide is shit and I hope you can admit your mistake on that. I hear will be okay though so... well there's that.

I should state that my dark humour notwithstanding I have no involvement whatsoever in any attempted suicide. Full disclosure here, I do believe that TJC was a vapid bitch who I can't say I'm overly saddened by the mental image of her deepthroating a 12 gauge. But I would never in a million years push someone to offing themselves. It's really not my style to behave in that way. If we assume that she's not a blatant fake attention whore with a terminal case of internet illness trying to top it off with a fake suicide, a Stephen alt, or somesuch then she's probably a deeply troubled individual with a family. By doing something like that to her, I wind up inflicting massive amounts of suffering on everyone around her. It's really not worth it to "get back" at some random individual who called me a doody head on the internets. My general dislike of her remained mostly under my hat, as I don't seem to recall many instances where I even commented on her posts. Unless she changed her name multiple times for some reason.

But that's beside the point. Until such time as I see verifiable logs or e-mails from her, I'm going to have to say that it's probably total bunk. Unless my severe schizophrenia is acting up again. If my persecution was delivered with a thick Jamaican accent then I should probably up my meds. If it was delivered by a guy who sounds kind of like Fran Drescher fucked William Shatner you want the guy down the hall.