Byond Account: BlessedLemon
Character Name(s): Zeek the Rat
Discord Name (ie: Name#1234): puppersdoggo
Ban Message (Gyazo/imgur or copy and paste): https://i.imgur.com/3Ir6aK2.png
So recently I was permanently banned from Fulpstation. Not just the SS13, but also the Discord Server.
Ok, fine. I am Zeek the Rat. A Greytider. A troll from time to time. Sometimes I get run-ins with staff.
Maybe a lot of them don’t like me. I wouldn’t completely know. It’s hard for staff to completely “like” a rulebreaker I’m sure.
I try to go easy with my bans/warnings. I don’t fight back often, I usually just take it. If the staff think I’m not fit for their culture/climate at the time, I’d be disappointed, but on some level I’d get it.
What did I get permabanned for exactly?
“Greytider”? No.
“Trolling”? No.
“Disrespecting Staff”? No.
“We Just Don’t Like You?” No.
“Multitude of Things?” No.
What I got permabanned for was this:
“Sexual Content/Sexual Harassment”
Woah. That’s pretty strong.
Depending upon the extent of that, it could even be an IRL felony.
Hell, depending upon the circumstances, it could even imply pedophilia.
Since the server is full of minors after all!
That is a very, very, very, serious charge against me.
Here’s the deal - It’s Complete Bullshit.
And I think you have a seriously fucked up sense of justice if you think labeling someone a “sexual harasser” leniently is right on ANY level. I almost feel like there is conscious admission of this in the ban note itself. I was technically banned for “Sexual Content” despite the rest of the note explaining that the real reason is sexual harassment. It’s almost like I was charged was a lesser crime because the more full crime would sound ridiculous.
And it’s not just labeling me in a one-off, but it’s engraving it into my ban history / note history.
People will get to ask the question: “Why was Zeek the Rat banned?”
And the staff, legally, gets to respond with: “He’s a sexual harasser” or “Sexual Content”.
Which is Bullshit that I will explain in this “Ban Appeal”. (You can’t appeal something that never happened. Where the “several warnings” leading up to it are vague and impossible to find concrete evidence of. That’s some Salem Witch Trial shit.)
Now while the internet practice of summarily labeling people “Sexual Harassers” without trial or proper evidence is an extremely based practice typically done on Twitter, this is apparently being done on Fulpstation as of today. I am not going to let that slide on me.
So what did I do to earn this exactly?
Story time.
(Note: All of this is paraphrased and happened in the span of a few hours.)
You see, I like to play jokes. Improv joke. Trollish jokes.
That’s the nature of being a Greytider. Or a Clown.
This is a game where you have Clowns and comedy. It is expected.
Sometimes I confuse people with my jokes and sometimes I get in trouble for them.
Sometimes the jokes don’t go down well with people and you get in trouble for them.
That’s Fair. Play Stupid Games - Win Stupid Prizes.
I don’t mind if I have to put in my place by staff from time to time,
or if they altogether have to ban me for extended periods of time.
That’s the nature of the game.
I don’t always agree with it always, but I keep my bitching to a minimum.
When do I tend to bitch the most?
Usually when I think someone has malice out of me.
Like if I think someone reported not because I’m ruining their RP, but just because they don’t like me.
Anyways:
One day I noticed someone posted in #ask-mods saying something like “Go Review my Ban Appeal”.
Now, this is a misuse of the channel.
Because someone would so casually misuse a channel reviewed by staff members,
people, me included, thought it was funny, reacting with a GigaChad emoji to it.
This event made me start to hatch some ideas for practical jokes.
What could I do in #ask-mods that would be funny too?
How could I softly misuse the channel to create comedy.
Sure, I didn’t want to -outright- break the rules, but sure, I was rocking the boat with this idea.
So I came up with a stupid idea!
I would ask the mods a difficult moral dilemma, a trolley problem essentially.
One that would I would not expect them to be able to solve.
I asked in #ask-mods, something like:
“Hey, what if someone catches a person breaking the rules,
and tried to blackmail them into doing something?
What would the mods do?”
It’s a vague question with no obvious answer, and more importantly…
It almost seems as if I might be asking about myself.
A lot of people say things like:
“Theoretically speaking, if someone did…”
Or “A friend of a friend did…”
When they’re really speaking about themselves.
So the purpose of the improvised joke is that I was the butt of it.
People would see me as an object of suspicion. I was the class clown.
Risky idea? Rocking the boat? Of course, but for the chance at a good joke, why not?
When people reacted to it, I found it funny.
Friends in my Discord dms found it funny.
Even reactors, I assumed anyways, found it somewhat funny, replying in a half-serious manner.
It was creating comedy.
Therefore, time to up the stakes.
I wanted a bit more comedy without outright breaking the rules.
I replied with a more concrete version of events:
“Like, what if someone catches a person ERPing with a cat-person…
And they force them to ERP with them too, or else the blackmail gets released?”.
This concrete version I found more funny, because, once again, no matter who you imagine I am…
I am the butt of the joke.
I am still very aware that the entire joke was a risk of course.
The mods could take it seriously and punish me.
That’s Fair. Play Stupid Games - Win Stupid Prizes.
Of course, this is all a joke. No evidence of this scenario exists, because it is fictional. It is improv humor, of which the butt of the joke is me. Nobody is being harassed. Nobody is being harmed by this joke. If you believe the joke was non-fictional, sure, someone might be being harassed, but first it would have to be non-fictional.
I am eventually removed from the server under the suspicion that there may be some actual offense.
I was half-prepared for this. To take the fall for my joke, maybe I’d net a day ban. A week ban at most. After all, nobody would convict you for a crime you didn’t commit, right? My crime should be, if any, the following:
- Unintentionally wasting the staff’s time, resources, ect.
- Misuse of the #ask-mods channel and staff communication.
- And whatever other shit you want to tack on to make it sting.
I was told, by, currently named discord user, ginkgo_tree, I assume Horatio, but who knows since nobody tells you their names, that they were planning to shift through my logs during the time period when cat-people were a part of the game (3 days) to find evidence.
Some degree of relief washed over me. It never happened. No evidence could be found of a crime that didn’t happen. I couldn’t be punished for THAT. Maybe for OTHER THINGS.
Did they mean Discord logs or SS13 logs?
I didn’t know, but either way there was nothing to find.
If they meant SS13 logs, maybe they’d find unreported acts of Greytiding and get me banned.
I also went pretty hard in Skub fighting so maybe they’d tack that on.
Not sure what else, but when police are rummaging through your stuff you can assume the worst of your menial crimes you’ll get in trouble for.
During ginkgo_tree’s questioning/converstation with me, they cast a hostile demeanor on me.
As if I was guilty before proven innocent.
I reacted, what I would consider, fairly casual and cordial…
As much as one could be in a situation like that.
At first I cooperated and confessed “Yes it was a joke.”
Despite this admission, hostility still met me
I replied with something along the lines of:
“Look, I’m stopping the joke so you know I’m serious.
If I were to have continued the joke in this dm,
I’d have said I wanted to ERP with Daddy [Named Public Figure]”
Apparently this enraged the staff member.
I was hounded into trying to confess of the crime I didn’t commit
I briefly continued somewhat cooperatively.
At the end, I did, in a non-hostile manner, note that the staff member has a bias against me by telling them directly “I think you don’t like me. You did X to me a while ago.”
Earlier in the week, or perhaps slightly longer than that, I asked something like:
“How do I contribute to the game? I wanna learn to be a maintainer.”
I was ridiculed by my lack of knowledge.
Said ginko_tree pinned in public chat to immortalize the humiliation of my comment.
I personally saw this, at the time, as a potential sign that this staff member has a negative bias against, perhaps with the fact that I am a Greytider. That they have some vendetta against me.
At that point, the response was to immediately ban me from both the Discord and SS13 server with the message:
“Core 3 - sexual content After several warings for borderline sexual behavior on Discord… Ect. Ect.”
Okay… Maybe I’m leaving something out.
What -Borderline- sexual behavior have I exhibited?
“Several Warnings” is an outright lie.
“Several” implies more than a few, a few being 2-4 maybe.
So I would have had to been warned like 5+ times?
Good luck finding the existence of these “Several Warnings” that don’t exist.
Evidence against me of committing “Sexual Content”:
- The joke I discussed in this story. 0 evidence of being anything other than a shitpost.
- Referred to a public figure as “Daddy” as per the shitpost in dms with ginko_tree.
According to their logic, this is apparently considered “sexual harassment” to privately joke about a public figure. People definitely don’t do that all the time. Like say, imagine if you were to photoshop cat ears (an often sexual symbol) onto Tom Fulp, a well-known, public, male figure. That would be sexual harassment right? Oh wait… The staff do endorse that… It’s almost like Public Figures are open to being used in a comedic sense, especially privately.
It’s also almost like SS13 has a history of crude semi-sexual jokes, like Woody’s Got Wood and AI calling people Condoms. The worst part is I wasn’t even that provocative with my “Daddy” joke. It was tame and boring. As tame and boring as you could possibly be.
- Asked an 18+ egirl member (who I am friends with) to say “nya nya” once. (Deleted from cringe)
- Get screenshotted saying a slightly lewd one-liner joke with a friend / friend-of-a-friend.
Fine, you got me, I admit I took it too far with that one.
But also I was not the one who screenshot / Posted it / Immortalized it into a meme.
It should also be noted that this joke was a one-liner performed in a semi-private area.
Hold a minor one-time offense over my head if you want.
- I think I trolled and said felinids should be added back once. Might have said more.
- Once I kissed a detective randomly in-game to trigger Security.
…This is all the evidence I can currently, consciously, remember during my MANY YEARS of playing on Fulpstation. YEARS OF GAMEPLAY, and ONLY A HANDFUL OF MAYBE-ISH SEXUAL COMMENTS. Maybe I’m misremembering. Maybe there’s more small things I’ve done as shitposts.
Here’s a better test of my character:
Ask any female or non-binary regular on the server if Zeek the Rat has done anything sexual to them, or if they think Zeek the Rat is a sexual harasser based on their behavior. I guarantee the answer will be a unanimous no. Because it’s not part of my character, IRL or In-Game.
Scoure the Discord server for all my sexual comments and sexual images.
(I can’t delete any of my posts in the sever since I’m not currently in the server / Banned.)
You won’t find anything beyond what I’ve stated. IE nothing.
Of the things I have stated I have done, sure they are slightly sexual things.
If we were to judge the staff members for everything SLIGHTLY SEXUAL they have did/said/posted over their years of time on Fulpstation I bet you would find more than you would ever find on me.
Recently some staff members have been publicly discussing and screenshotting sexual related topics from a game called Suzerain.
Do I ever blame them for “accidently” discussing sexual topics publicly in a server full of minors?
(And by “accidently” I mean they openly didn’t care?)
No, I didn’t, because humans aren’t perfect and I found their behavior harmless.
So are my alleged “Crimes”.
TL;DR
You could argue I’m wording things here to make myself sound more flattering than I did in the moment.
It’s a complicated situation I put myself in, sure. Did I expect bad things to happen to me? Sure. But never in a million years would I have thought I’d be charged for “Sexual Content” nor did I expect the ban to be PERMANENT. Especially when I’ve done fuck all. There are no victims in this story. There is nobody I harassed. There was no “sexual content.” Nothing.
There is nobody to testify because nothing was commit against nobody.
I am being charged with the Sexual Content of nothing aimed at harassing Nobody.
All because I accidentally triggered someone who already hated me. (A Staff Member.)
There is nothing I can say to appeal myself, because I am being charged with fictitious crimes.
Asking me to ban appeal is like being asking a Salem Witch to prove she’s not a Witch.
There are only vague things being charged against me, and sure, you can dig deep deep into my history to find small tidbits of me misbehaving to suit your agenda, but you could also do that with anyone, for any crime.
Also, first few times I wrote this “Ban Appeal”, (More of a message to the community at this point tbh) I wanted to try to take the staff’s POV on it. Like it was a confusing event, so I get that a staff member would take the wrong path. But the more I write, the more I reflect, the more I feel like this is just a genuine act of corruption. The “After Several Warnings…” part of my ban message is complete fabrication. There are no “Several Warnings”, just a few offhanded "back-off"s. And the “Blah Blah Blah he called someone Daddy” thing is deliberately acting in bad faith with my words / rage baiting. Twisting my words to seem like the situation is more fucked up than normal. Lastly, labeling someone a sexual harasser, even semi-offhandedly, is fucking terrible. To be oblivious to that is insane considering the social-political climate that we’re in. You can’t excuse this level of shit. Lastly, the situation itself is complex. And complex situations are difficult to explain, making it 10x harder for me to refute any of this horse shit. I feel like this would be an opportune moment for a staffie to off me if they wanted to. Here’s our DMs if anyone wants to judge for themselves: https://i.imgur.com/0PFQ008.png
But don’t worry you don’t have to agree. Dog-pile on me if you want.
Go ahead and label people you don’t like as “Sexual Harassers”. It’s very based. 
While I’m banned I will play on /TG/ from now on.
Unless of course one of you manages to try to get me banned there too.
