An Apology

[oakthielbar]

Hey everyone,

I used to be a semi-active member of the forums, and thanks to the incredible support I've received from @Liontamer about updating my name on this website (both my forum name - formerly artemisjaeger - and my actual name as a remixer/human - formerly Kevin Stephens), I have been looking through my past activity on this forum. I've reached an inescapable conclusion.

I was a toxic member of the community. I won't go into the details here - I've edited almost every one of my posts to add an apology at the end, so you can just open my profile and look through my activity if you want to know more - but what I do want to do is say thank you to everyone that ever called me out for my poor behavior, and I especially want to apologize to anyone and everyone I was hateful and mean toward. I was essentially a bully, and I can only imagine how many people I made to feel discouraged or hurt. Not one person deserves that.

Everyone who contributes to this community is doing incredible work, whether that's through forum posts or making music, and I'm really glad to see that OCR is still thriving.

Oak

Edited June 28, 2019 by oakthielbar
clarity

[Meteo Xavier]

Must've been before my time as I don't recognize either name, nor am I able to find anything by searching.

Anyways, I literally speak for every single person who has ever been on Ocremix when I say "Apology accepted and then some! Reclaim your former valor and treasures and then help yourself to more in the vault. Take our wives as your concubines and our children as slaves for the emmer fields. The throneseat is yours and we will immediately begin erecting a monument for your return and reign."

And as I promise to everyone every time I promise them something: it will be a MIGHTY erection!

[oakthielbar]

Okay, honestly not quite the response I expected, so I'll take these one at a time.

1. I don't want anyone's wives. That's some serious commitment, and I think it might be illegal.

2. Non-consensual concubines are called sex slaves these days, and that shit is bad. Bad bad. <- not being playful about this one

3. However, if these were consensual concubines (I assume that is straight person talk for pup play?), not my kink.

4. I'm going to strongly suggest that we talk about slaves and slavery only in very serious contexts and in very sensitive ways, as they are topics of extreme gravity whose effects we are still grappling with today (at the least in the USA, and I assume elsewhere). Pretty sure a person of color who might be considering joining the community would be more than a little put off by stuff like that. <- not being playful about this one

5. Throneseat sounds rad, but I make no promises about returning, and fuck reigning, I'm here to bring anarcho-syndicalism.

6. I do appreciate a good erection.

7. Is this a common tone for discussions around here? I feel really weird about this conversation. I feel weird about most conversations, but this one is pretty high on the weirdness scale.

Edited June 29, 2019 by oakthielbar
bad at sentence structure

[Modus]

First he insults us, then he refuses to take our wives. I really can't believe this.

 

(Welcome back man. It' ok, just do better, feel good about yourself and where you're headed. You're destined for great things.)

[Jorito]

7 hours ago, oakthielbar said:

7. Is this a common tone for discussions around here? I feel really weird about this conversation. I feel weird about most conversations, but this one is pretty high on the weirdness scale.

Don't worry about it, it's classic Meteo and he has a knack for weird posts

Having said that, I applaud you you for your newly found attitude and can imagine it was not easy. Anyway, welcome back and enjoy your stay (in a more positive light than the last time).

[Volt]

It's interesting, isn't it? I think 10 to 20 years ago, it was definitely cool to be cruel online. It was probably because anonymity was the norm, and you didn't know who the other person was (and nobody knew who you were). But now that everybody puts their lives online, there's a push to be kinder to each other. I'm not a fan of the reduced anonymity, but it's nice to see everyone try to be a bit less of a jerk.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, some of us grew up too I guess. I'm in my thirties now D:

Edited June 29, 2019 by Volt

[Gario]

Nope, have no idea who you were. I guess that's a good thing since you didn't really like your own presence on here prior? It was about ten years ago since you last posted anyway, so it makes sense that I don't remember - I've only been on here ten or so years, myself. Doesn't look like you needs any hazing, either, since Meteo's got that part covered.

Anyhoo, welcome back, glad to have another person enjoying OCR and it's forums!

Edited June 29, 2019 by Gario

[oakthielbar]

12 hours ago, Jorito said:

Don't worry about it, it's classic Meteo and he has a knack for weird posts

Okay, that's what I figured. It just kinda took me be surprised, haha.

9 hours ago, Volt said:

It's interesting, isn't it? I think 10 to 20 years ago, it was definitely cool to be cruel online. It was probably because anonymity was the norm, and you didn't know who the other person was (and nobody knew who you were). But now that everybody puts their lives online, there's a push to be kinder to each other. I'm not a fan of the reduced anonymity, but it's nice to see everyone try to be a bit less of a jerk.

Yeah, now that you mention it, people really were just generally meaner in places like forums and chat rooms back then. Perhaps a lot of that has just moved to Twitter and Facebook these days.

10 hours ago, Volt said:

Edit: Oh yeah, some of us grew up too I guess. I'm in my thirties now D:

You too, huh? Were we pretty much all just teenagers or in our early 20s back then? Kind of incredible to think of everything that was accomplished considering how young we were.

 

I don't know how active I'll be on OCR (forums or otherwise) now or in the future, but it feels good to know that I'm welcome. <3

 

[Argle]

Wow, you came back after a decade to apologize for even older comments?  I guarantee that no one but you even remembers any churlish comments you made, but if this was weighing on you then it's still good to apologize.  We all mellow as we get older.

[Garpocalypse]

Looks like you were out right before I started getting active on the forums here and it's super cool that you came back to apologize for past transgressions. Honestly though I don't fault you for speaking your mind at the time.  Back in those days the forums were active with at times some VERY colorful personalities and to have a few people that seemed to only exist to stir stuff up all went along with the territory. Being a 90's kid that's what most of the internet experience was back in the day and In a weird way i'm starting to miss those people. :/

.... but not that "Technomanga", "don't F--- around" guy. 

That's an obvious example of going too far.  

[Meteo Xavier]

Was Technomanga and Don't Fuck Around the same guy? I remember the latter but not the former.

[oakthielbar]

2 hours ago, Argle said:

Wow, you came back after a decade to apologize for even older comments?  I guarantee that no one but you even remembers any churlish comments you made [...]

Yeah, I didn't think that pretty much anyone from those days would actually still be around, much less remember what I said (except maybe Pretzel because of some shit I said to him to get a week-long ban). It was just one of those things where I was looking through my activity history and was thinking "but surely I wasn't like this for the other three pages of activity - okay two pages - okay WOW".

Going through and editing in addenda to each of those comments felt like a cheap way to sneak in apologies, and I wanted to just get one big apology out there for anyone who might need to see it.

14 minutes ago, Garpocalypse said:

Being a 90's kid that's what most of the internet experience was back in the day [...]

I honestly don't remember a lot about the internet back then - I was just young enough that nothing about the discourse itself stuck in my head since platforms (at least in my head) seamlessly transitioned to social media, and that came with an inherent change in interactions. I do seem to remember more flame wars prior to social media, but then again, I just split the moment I see one starting anymore, so maybe it's the bubble I've created for myself.

I think people here have essentially said this already, but it seems like we weren't always individually focused on building a community and interacting with each other in that context - we just thought we had a shared passion and a space to talk/argue with others about that passion. That was certainly the case for me.

Saying this stuff makes me feel old, haha

[Garpocalypse]

25 minutes ago, Meteo Xavier said:

Was Technomanga and Don't Fuck Around the same guy? I remember the latter but not the former.

Yea he was.  Trying to remember if he was also the Killer Studio Chops one too but it may have been another.  

 

[Volt]

Oh yeah, Technomanga. That name brings back memories.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Ten years ago, we were mostly teenagers and college kids who thought the internet was serious business. Then we (most of us, anyway) grew up, got jobs, got laid, had a few drinks and smokes, and learned to chill the fuck out.

Don't worry, we were all shitty back then, and we mostly don't remember anybody's shittiness from ten years ago except our own.

[prophetik music]

On 7/8/2019 at 8:59 PM, Geoffrey Taucer said:

we mostly don't remember anybody's shittiness from ten years ago

emphasis mine. some people never get forgotten. like me!