Looked at my notifications with 6 replies all from people who I have run into a communication problem with.
Mark all as read. There is a point where you have to back off. Doesn’t matter how civilized you might be, how flawed your approach to an issue is and what you admit or say. The second everyone is in a different lane, there is no point in trying to debate or argue. I learned that this past week.

Every time I have looked at this site in the past year I don’t leave with a smile on my face or excitement on what is next to come. What I observe is newcomers with messy work getting bodied rather than taken under the wing of people. People like Gigan fanning flames on the occasional drama and developing bad views of people and relaying it onto others. Full blown smear posts about the most trivial things, bringing up old dirt out of nowhere. I was next on the list for that.

First hand I am confused where it comes from. Out of all the things I have done which I ain’t proud of, ego wasn’t ever on the list. More what comes up is my old bluntness, former lack of understanding of various things, a tone that would often come off as rude until I later read it. You are all well aware of the post that came up recently.

I will put right up front, my first comments being completely confused of the narcissist accusation at me made sense and were balanced. Some of my posts after that fall off. The brutal reality is there is a way higher bar set for me than other people. A single trivial mistake makes me look like an ass and hypocritical way more than a person on this site who does that on a daily basis. I corrected myself when called out, not enough.

Self reflection over the past couple days reminded me where I fall short, but also where this site has a negative impact on everyone who uses it. It used to consist of people with big projects, showcasing, getting feedback and it was mostly civil. People who were dicks when giving criticism where shunned like Epitaph. There was a bar set for respect among people. That doesn’t exist anymore and is celebrated.

Despite a desperate attempt to figure out where this ugly painting of my ego has come from, everything just got hazier. No points got across, no common ground was found, I never achieved what I thought I could achieve by first commenting on the childishness of the original post, followed by the comment from an old friend. Included in the friends comment was an insult and a bunch of stuff which I vaguely can get the idea where it comes from, but still unsure where it comes from.

Everything I tried to do turned into a mess despite being civil to start off with. Gigan drew my attention to the post with a mention in what I believe was his typical joking manner. But before I could even reply to anything, he starts slamming me based on the accusations made. I retaliated, wrong move.
Thoughts, who instead of addressing how he got to a point of disliking me and getting the idea of me being a narcissist, picked apart my message. I let him drag me off what I was looking for. Replying whether I had good intention or not was a bad move. I fed a ragebait post.

It went from looking for *what is going on?* to people digging through everything I say here and on discord to vilify me. The most that was got was the comment of “If I pulled what Epitaph did and started making his mistake, people would done less to attack me than they have over misunderstood details in my description and videos.”
An exaggeration was made to make a point and put it into perspective yet it got picked apart as “EB thinks being egotistical is worse than pedophilia” somehow. There is no win, no conversation here. This is taking a name and dragging it through the dirt starting with a dated observation of who I once was.

No my approach was not perfect, but it clarified to me there is an issue with this site. You have people like Tastylemon, Ralph and Arcionek who actually make the place welcoming and provide a voice of reason when it is needed most. They post cool stuff and after conversing with them or viewing their posts, you leave with something positive.
Then you have everything else. Negativity.

People who I have crossed in a bad way left the site as well as people who I am great friends with. They moved to platforms like Twitter and Discord which are cesspools of toxicity to get away from the mess that is this sites culture.

Something needs to change. That includes me. I want to ditch this site and not come back right now, but there are people who really try here. I don’t want to leave them on their own. There was so much that was great here. It was a functional animation community, not Reddit, 4chan or Twitter.
The negativity needs to be drowned out. Instead of ripping into everything that is wrong and bringing in personal attacks, there needs to be a collective effort to bring up everything that is right.

Tastylemons daily log should be full of cool shit and development, not fights between people.

From here on I will not entertain any more drama and petty arguments.
Go ahead and post a couple paragraphs ripping into me here. I will not reply with anything to entertain it.
I’m well aware people hate me here. I don’t care about who and why anymore. I want to bring back what made this site great. Repair a broken community. Re-establish the standard for behavior. I owe it for where I fall short. I will try and post more. My focus will be the stuff people have been doing. Bringing attention to cool stuff I see in the community and giving proper feedback and calling out posts that should not be made.
I will do my best, but if everyone regardless of stance can do the same, something can be achieved here. Everyone wins.