@DarkPhilosopher can you private message me I have to ask you for a favour?
Hermit was banned.
(insert_real_name_here) was not blacklisted.
It’s all good. 
1 Like
I can direct-message you, not private message you.
Seems pretty straightforward.
in a nutshell:
The tone of your posts favors a grandiose, declarative style that is easily experienced as authoritative, especially by those new to subs or by those who may be vulnerable to doubt or hopelessness.
Not a crime, but you need to learn to use that tone with more self-awareness. Apparently it was influencing people too much and interfering with the accuracy of their learning processes.
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watching grown ass men fight like this is _____ 
The decision was made and it is final.
Conversations with Hermit was made via PM and in public. You can search the board and find them — one as recent as a week or two ago when he “left” the board because Qv2 was so powerful that the higher spirits or whatever wouldn’t jive with your stack.
On two occasions myself, and also with @Fire. We asked him to stop with the overbearing spiritualism and conspiracy theories, we asked him to stop with the pretending that he’s an expert on our technology.
He even messaged @fire when he returned and I shit you not, started telling Fire that reconciliation isn’t real, it’s actually “resistance,” and began telling him what he was getting wrong about his own products.
Here’s a quote from @RVconsultant just a week and a half ago where he asked Hermit to stop after receiving complaints:
Hermit didn’t listen. Instead, he continued with the same behavior. Here he is offering to be someone’s spiritual guide:
Here’s another thread where I asked Hermit to stop: Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #832 by SaintSovereign
This time, he went full on Hermit, leaving the forum because Qv2 is too strong for humanity until we evolve, etc.
It’s a pattern of behavior that he just wouldn’t stop. We gave him more chances than we give most people. Everyone who has been here awhile knows that I am stern, but very fair. We don’t ban many people. We barely even do edits. When everyone in the mod team has asked you to stop doing something and you continue, you’re asking for trouble.
The first time I messaged Hermit and asked him to chill, over a year ago (because he was going on rants about how Donald Trump was a “light warrior” and posting Q Anon stuff), his response was to post publicly that he is being “stifled” by “weak minded people who couldn’t handle the truth.” I let it slide. I kept letting it slide because I liked Hermit. Then it hit me:
He has never respected our wishes and continued the same behavior without regard to how it affected this business. That’s not something a friend, colleague / whatever would do. And I’ve learned that you must excise those people out of your life, because they will continue to find ways to hurt you and then make it your fault.
Even now, he’s not respecting our wishes. His store accounts aren’t banned. He could’ve messaged support stating his case, telling us that he understood our position and wants to make amends. Instead, he evaded the ban and continued to play innocent and make false claims that we never messaged him, as if I don’t have proof of everything.
As far as I’m concerned, the right decision was made. Hermit, ban evading isn’t helping your case. Humbling yourself and showing self awareness and taking responsibility for what you did MIGHT.
This is not the case of the “elites” or whatever stomping on the poor proletariat. You just kept breaking the rules.
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First and foremost, I want to discuss this topic of “censorship”.
I invite each and every one of those that claim censorship to go out and visit other communities (such as Twitter, as @Budewr gave as an example), to see how they deal with members that cause trouble.
If you don’t want to, let me tell you what you’ll find - you’ll find real censorship, where the owners barely show up on their own forums and the moderators ban without care.
That’s not the route we want to take.
Let me tell you a secret - both @SaintSovereign and I seriously dislike having to ban, silence or edit people’s posts. We take no joy, no pleasure, no sense of superiority over it. We feel sad that we have to do it.
Our ideal forum is the one where we can all sit together at a campfire and share openly deep secrets, knowledge, advice and life experience with each other.
That is the vision we strive towards, and that is why every single time there is an incident on the forums we hold a meeting to discuss the incident at length.
To put it into perspective - at what forum do the owners themselves take time away from direct business endeavors to focus on a forum incident?
That is what happened here. @SaintSovereign and myself spent 5 hours, with @RVconsultant weighing in with his thoughts, discussing at length every aspect of what happened - instead of managing the company and developing the technology.
That is how much we care about being fair in our decisions regarding this community, and that is how much we care about our vision for it.
Furthermore, some expressed the idea that we should simply let things be unsafe if members make it so, such as:
I posit forth this thought:
Think about a community where the owners do not care about members safety. Why test things? Let’s just let them run all the experimentals without care! They are adults after all, so it’s up to them what happens, right?
I think this is an extremely slippery slope.
The moment we start thinking “it’s completely up to them” is the moment people will get hurt, and that is not only unethical but also damaging to the company.
Can we completely stop people from harming themselves, like @AlexanderGraves said?
No, we cannot. But we will damn make sure we try our hardest. Anything else would be lazy and wrong, and we are well aware of what can happen when people skirt our recommendations.
It’s not a game people. It’s not about lawyering and policing others.
It’s about protecting our customers.
To illustrate my point, and to tackle the following claim:
We personally messaged/responded to Hermit at least 5 times:
-
I privately messaged Hermit in July 2020, asking him to stop with excessive spirituality as it is putting off other members.
-
@SaintSovereign discussed at length in March 2020 the topic of censorship and why he must be careful in the way he words things.
-
So, we asked him to relax his zealous stance twice. Some time later, we end up with the following:
Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #834 by Fire
Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #832 by SaintSovereign
Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #824 by SaintSovereign
Where apparently subliminals are a way to provoke spirits and that is completely unnatural. We of course, describe at length why this is not so and to please stop. Keep in mind, both @SaintSovereign and myself have to do this - multiple times. -
Then, @RVconsultant asked him, again, to stop, with multiple responses:
Putting ultima cores in custom Q? - #22 by RVconsultant -
Finally, we have the following:
Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #832 by SaintSovereign
Qv2 experiences, comments, insights and questions - #824 by SaintSovereign
Now, I seem to recall another discussion where both @SaintSovereign and I distinctly told @Hermit to stop.
But here’s my thought process:
Why do we have to continuously warn @Hermit and ask him to stop? If there is such great love for this company, why must we take so much time out of our day and out of developing this company, just in order to protect our customers from someone who does not want to listen to what we directly ask of him?
For me, this does not make logical sense.
So after discussing it at length with @SaintSovereign and @RVconsultant, we decided that simply warning him again is not going to last. We tried it multiple times, and it did not work.
And here’s the thing:
You should know that the person you are saying is defensive and emotional, the person who needs to work on his “shadow”, is the person who felt the most sad about having to see you go.
@SaintSovereign didn’t ban you - I did, because I do not want my closest friend and business partner to have to go through sadness.
I, the one who is so kind and logical, while I did feel sad to see you go, had no problem doing so once a decision was made as it is for the good of this community and the company as a whole.
Y’all need to understand that @SaintSovereign is a man who uses all his fiery emotions to bring incredible change to peoples lives - and he does so out of the kindness of his heart and deep understanding that at times, tough love is necessary for real growth to happen.
Where you might see shadow, there is light.
To reiterate, @Hermit was not suspended due to censoring or sharing his thoughts publicly. He was suspended because of potentially dangerous information that could directly cause harm to our customers, even after being talked to multiple times.
There are no “laws of power”, “power tactics” or “evil” at play here.
We do not get any sort of enjoyment out of moderating. All we do, is for the betterment of our mission - advancing human potential, as well as the safety of our customers. Once you start down that road, we will start telling you to stop, and if you do not listen, we will take action.
It’s as simple as that.
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Its been months since I started to realize Hermit was completely blinded by his ego and mystical delusions, which is not my problem at all, but when it becomes dangerous to others then measures need to be taken.
Saints and Fires posts proves that he was warned many times and didnt listen, not only that but he continued to act in the same way. Later he lied and victimized himself when he was confronted with facts.
The next quote clearly shows how he sees himself, as a saviour of humanity, by extension everyone that thinks/acts differently is evil and working for the dark side.
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As much as I am sad to see Hermit go, the decision is final (for now).
I always find it equally sad that in general complaints, accusations, other negative things are endlessly discussed here and get a lot of attention also from the team. The time could be better spent to comment, discuss and elaborate on more positive things to achieve this:
That’s what I would love to see all the attention go.
For the decision with Hermit, I know from firsthand experience that the subclub staff is incredibly kind and fair. I also got banned from the forum two years ago and got a second chance a few months later. To be honest, this was a very valuable experience for me as it strangely changed my life around for the better. The same thing can happen here. So let’s leave it for now and focus back on the positive things.
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This is what I’m talking about, y’all. @Fire had to be the voice of reason here, as I was actually fond of Hermit. Fun fact: Hermit was the only non-staff member that I offered OG Blue Skies to, a sub we later deemed too dangerous for public release. He also received a special version of Beyond Limitless (or Stark, something like that) back when we were testing Ultima because I valued his feedback, but at some point, this feedback seems to have evolved into a complex where he makes assumptions and asserts them as fact.
I came up with every reason NOT to ban him until @Fire correctly pointed out that I was allowing my fondness for him to override my logic, which could jeopardize our mission.
Without knowing this, he wrongly assumed that I was the driving force behind the ban and now I’m getting lectured by a 20 year old who knows nothing about me about my shadow and how he’s gonna save my soul and etc.
Hermit, you really need to humble yourself and learn how to temper yourself. Until then, SubClub isn’t the place for you.
I’m done discussing this.
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From the last 2 comments by @Fire and @SaintSovereign, all my doubts have been cleared regarding this issue and I have absolutely no intention to plead Hermit’s case anymore.
I don’t know if it is a Messiah complex or not (and I know that feeling when you want to bear the burden of the world to lessen its suffering) but later realized that that is pure narcissistic behavior AND more importantly putting others down to be seen as better isn’t the right thing to do.
Despite repeated calls to follow simple forum rules, Hermit hasn’t complied. Thus proving that SaintSovereign, Fire has done all that is possible to keep you and no more can be done for you, Hermit (at least with the mindset you currently hold).
If something changes and you come back, I will be glad to see you. But for now, please meditate on what has happened. All the best.
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Since @Fire mentioned the camp fire.
Mind sharing a few quick stories about modules or scripts that didn’t make it into the public because they were too powerful or crazy and what they did do in the backstage dev thread?
I’d love me a good campfire story of this kind.
Everything else in this thread has been said I think. Just wanted to add this.
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I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel bad for Hermit. I often enjoyed, and even learned somethings from his posts. I may not have agreed with everything he said, but I did respect him.
The decision was made. I wasn’t at the meeting. I don’t have the inside scope. So, I don’t know much about the situation. With that I say:
I hope Hermit the very best. I hope he’s not banned from purchasing subs from here.
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When doing my spiritual work through the book “The Power of Now” years ago, I believe I achieved Nirvana. The feeling you get and the clarity does make you feel like you are a god. Fortunately, I was also listening to Alan Watts at the time who in one of his seminars explains that for those unprepared for the experience, they will take it to the extreme and assume they are the only god. The truth is, if they are a god and that is the nature of the universe, then so is everyone else. Making you no more special than anyone.
I believe, based on what I’m reading, this was Hermits misunderstanding.
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When it comes to great spiritual attainments, the profound wisdom that I’ve learned from Zen Buddhism is:
“meh.”
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that hits me somehow…I love it…
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Exactly. There is a Zen story that goes something like this:
Before enlightenment: Mountains are mountains, and waters are waters.
During enlightenment: Mountains are no longer mountains, and waters are no longer waters.
After enlightenment: Mountains are again mountains, and waters are again waters.
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Yup!
“Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water”
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This is why the first priest ever was…Meh-lchizedek
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this is true zen