If I’m honest, I didn’t think I’d be able to get that to work. It may not be the same as the buffalo sentence, but I’ll take it.

Long ago when the internet was young and computer games were still using rigid shapes because circles were too expensive, I was a frequent poster and, much later on low-tier moderator, for a forum surrounding the game Robot Arena 2. For those interested, the game is exactly as it sounds: you fight robots. It was created out of the early 2000s hype around Battlebots and later Robot Wars, both have been attempted to be revived; I believe the new Battlebots is still alive, but would probably be doing obscenely better if they had gone for the online video/YouTube market instead of trying to do a real TV show again. In any case, Robot Arena 2 is easily one of my favorite games and while it really doesn’t hold up well at all, it’s still obscenely entertaining to just stick weird parts onto created geometric shapes and watch what happens.

Throwing my nostalgia into the backseat, moderating for that forum, though it was very short, was one of the larger factors into what shaped my ability to write, communicate and argue in a reasoned manner by using logic, evidence and facts. Moderating also helped mold one of my biggest credo: If you’re going to do something, do it right and do right by others; it’s why most of what I cover on here usually devolves into ranting about people being lazy and dishonest and how embracing shitty vices like those ensures that whatever you do, it will be terrible.

Why am I talking about this? The reason is because my past experience both on that RA2 forum, along with others, and my entire working life having been spent in the help/service industry, shoots my mad-meter through the roof when I see shitty moderating happening. Now and even back then, people who I used to encounter on any forum I browsed or was a part of that were moderators would always complain about how difficult and thankless their work was. While I understand the ‘thankless’ part, seeing as being a moderator is being an online custodian, I’ve never been able to comprehend the difficult. Is is tedious? Yeah, just like most things in life, but it’s not difficult. Communicating with people is not difficult, nor is reading messages, modifying posts, moving topics, fixing links and everything else that comes with moderating. Despite this, people who moderate continue to bitch, even though smartphones exist, and I’ve become less and less tolerant for poor moderator performance as the years have gone on.

Since I don’t moderate anymore, I don’t have any personal examples, and the website I modded at long ago is gone. However, I managed to come across one example while on Reddit that fits the bill of not only bad moderating, but is a perfect example of the kind of people I rip on here: lazy assholes that act and behave in very fagaciously. ‘Sahltines, that’s not a word!’ You’re right. It’s my way of getting around the whole ‘faggot is a terrible word’ non-troversy since it sounds nothing like faggot. Plus, it’s a new word, so I get to feel like fucking Shakespeare for a bit.

Shots fired.

While it is a straight-up dick move, sometimes you need to call someone or a group of people out in front of others. Yeah, it makes you look petty but it gives you a ton of witnesses and forces both parties in the argument to be as civil and objective as possible since the discussion isn’t being held in a far more private situation. If a moderator isn’t willing to take the five seconds to a full minute that would be required to scan a topic and make a more educated decision, then that person shouldn’t be moderating, period. A problem that I’ve seen with moderators on Reddit and in the current atmosphere is that the honeymoon period with the duty doesn’t last long and quality of moderation tends to fall off a cliff and moderator personality starts to bleed in, rather than keeping up the necessary impartial/unbiased personality a moderator needs to do his/her job properly (I wish I could provide you with data to back this up concretely instead of eye-tests, reasoned assumptions and anecdotal information, but I haven’t found anything statistical relating to this idea, nor do I have the manpower to comb through all the data available to confirm/deny this; take this with a grain of salt, in other words).

Having looked at both topics, it was pretty evident from the first paragraph and the title alone that both topics should’ve been left alone. Then again, I analyze flaming garbage as a hobby, so perhaps I’ve just become extremely well-conditioned to catching this sort of stuff in split-seconds, but that still doesn’t excuse lack of correspondence from ten people. The sub-Reddit in question here has an autonomous bot program that sorts, organizes and outright deletes topics if they don’t adhere to the rules, so if the bot doesn’t catch it, then logic should dictate that there is some sort of difference between two similar posts. In any case, poor showing by the mod who deleted the topic and the mod team who didn’t respond. You have cell phones that are supercomputers; you have no excuse to miss an email. Then again, I was raised by people and in a culture that made timely communication a priority and I do my best to get back to people as quickly as possible, so I’m definitely not part of modern societal cultures where people seem to want to do whatever’s possible to ignore communicating with others.

I can see you don’t need any sodium with your chloride.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than someone starting off with an excuse, especially one that’s given after a lengthy period of time after the issue occurs. This kind of excuse tells me one of two things:

1. The excuse being offered is valid, but was not offered as soon as possible, meaning the individual is poor at communicating within a timely manner.
2. The individual is lying outright and is now untrustworthy.

 

‘But Sahltines, sometimes people are really busy and can’t get back to others!’ No, that is horse shit and you know it. Use the litmus test of having a real job and ask yourself, ‘Would my boss be okay with me not telling him/her why I’m not showing up right now three weeks after I don’t show up?’ No, your boss wouldn’t be okay with that. The only way it would be kosher is if you were in dire enough straits to need assistance from an outside party, and how often does that happen? If your answer was ‘almost never’, then you are correct.

That’s also assuming the best case scenario, which is something dire happened to this moderator or the moderator’s excuse was valid but very late, and those are both negative-outcome scenarios. Given that moderating is an easy job, that Reddit is easily accessible on a cell phone and that being sick in the States is faked by slightly over half of the working population, I don’t think it’s unfair to call this one bullshit. Even if this moderator was indeed sick, it would need to be a sickness that immobilizes you so that you cannot access a computer and cannot type on a keyboard or touch screen. I also don’t see how someone not posting is evidence of ‘being sick’. You can not post and be active. You can not post and be out. You can not post and be avoiding work. The problem is that not posting simply means you were away; it doesn’t confirm or deny whether or not you’re actually ill. Is it general enough to be a moderately okay scapegoat? Sure, but you would think another moderator would’ve came in and vouched for this person, and none did. Again, it’s the era of the fucking cell phone and being inter-connected at every turn. If you do not keep people updated, you either better not have limbs or better be dead; you don’t have an excuse or a good enough one to leave people in the dark when you can hit them up from within an airplane.

With that all in mind, I’d call your ass out, too. Granted I’d call this mod out because he’s a known douche who has a bit of a vindictive streak, evidenced by his link and him firing back after being called out. Good moderators don’t get involved on a personal level, but then again, good moderators take their job relatively seriously, view it as a job and make sure everything is handled even if they can’t be there to get it. Speaking of that link, let’s take a look at it:

Ha, oh wow.

When someone responds like this, a red flag and a tiny siren go off in my brain to alert me that I’ve encountered someone who is a ‘kid’. Most uses of that term are by adult morons who want to try and appear ultra mature, so they call anyone who disagrees with them ‘kid’ because they’re believe it tips the power balance in their favor. There are very few times when it can be used in a non-ironic/non-moronic fashion, and this is one of them.

‘Distracted’ is not a reason to not do your job. If you can’t handle something, tell someone else to take care of it; it shifts responsibility off of your plate and at least attempts to ensure that whatever the issue is will be dealt with. Even if the case was as I painstakingly detailed above, this dude uses the phrase ‘hardly touched reddit’, which means he’s been on reddit, just not as much as he usually is. We can assume that, as a mod, that means he hasn’t been on 24/7 and, if this were 1995, that would be sort of acceptable though the question of ‘why didn’t you pass this off to someone else?’ still remains. However, it’s obviously not acceptable for the reasons I’ve detailed already.

Point one is fair, since I wouldn’t be able to tell what this dude is messaging about. However, the cursing sounds forced and unnecessary. I know that sounds odd coming from a man who swears worse than a goddamn sailor, but again, litmus test this and pretend it’s a real job. ‘Sahltines, you can’t do that for everything!’ I absolutely can do that since it applies to nearly everything, but I won’t because the vast majority of things in the universe are not work. That being said, you aren’t born a moderator, you choose to become one. It is, ostensibly speaking, a job, even if voluntary. That means it should be viewed as a professional outlet, and random cussing through a medium that can be documented and used against you is stupid and a hallmark of an immature person. Swearing isn’t a bad thing and I’ll defend it to the death, but when you swear constantly, then the words lose their impact and you end up sounding like a thirteen year old who recently found Urban Dictionary. It’s annoying at best and showcases a lack of nuance at worst; I’ve met very few people that are a joy to be around or intellectually stimulating that swear constantly or insert cuss words when they aren’t needed.

Point two is stupid. Not only is the language used unclear, since the mod says ‘may’, which means he can understand why it was removed but also can understand why it should’ve stayed, but it’s putting the entire onus on the OP of the topic, despite the fact that tittle was different from the prior topic, contained different initial post information and was only removed once the moderator did so manually. This is not the fault of the OP for ‘not being clear/distinct enough’ as the quoted moderator implies,  it’s the fault of the moderator who removed the topic for not moderating properly. Point three is useless and should have been rolled into point two. It’s only separated as a way for this mod in question to talk down to the poster, which is a cunty move in anyone’s book.

Point four and the following seething rage paragraph are, at least to me, up there with all the other great rage incidents like the Navy Seal copypasta and the ‘DELET THIS’ video. Since going over these in depth is just rehashing what I’ve already said, I’ll instead focus on the fact that this mod should clearly not be a mod. Nobody should be getting this upset over a shitty appeal like this; hell, my fuse is obscenely short and even I wouldn’t be this mad. However, I’m also a rational person who doesn’t go out of my way to trip on imaginary power and be an unreal cockhole to anyone I meet online and anyone I meet online who disagrees with me. This guy is not, so it makes perfect sense why he’s giving that speech that power-hungry and mentally unstable middle managers give the people below them when they don’t follow some bullshit protocol or call one of their friends in the office out for fucking up royally. I’m sure plenty of people would say this mod’s ‘just being real’, but this isn’t being real. Being real is being honest, not attempting to cut people down to nothing because your side of the equation fucked up and then fucked off.

Back at the in-thread reply:

What a mess.

There’s so many goddamn problems with this, so let’s start with the easiest and most obvious:

1. Remove the ellipses and put a comma instead. This is shit from early grade school and something someone in an authority position should know how to use properly.
2. The part ‘but fucking well put more effort’ is awkward and confusing. I can’t tell if there’s supposed to be another pause since it feels very conversationalist, which would only work in a conversation. Proof-read before you post, you cataclysmic knob.
3. It’s not ‘copypaste’; this is lazy word mashing and portmanteau-ing that I only ever see actual teenagers do because they’re too lazy to speak or type properly and do shit like this instead since it’s ‘creative’ or ‘easier’. The term is ‘copy-paste’ or, more correctly, ‘copy and paste’; hell, use the goddamn ampersand for ‘copy & paste’, which is actually the most correct. Yeah, this is minor, but these are people who volunteered to be the police/custodians of the place. They are in an authority position and certain stuff comes with that territory.
4. The sentence is a mile long. Break it up into smaller parts, you tool, otherwise you sound overly verbose like me, and I don’t enjoy people snatching my schtick.
5. Comma after ‘Also’. Seriously, I can remember being in third grade and learning this, and that was eons ago when the internet was infantile.
6. ‘Taking a more’ what? The hallmark of someone who is semi-learned but extremely upset. If you get this furious over emails from random nobodies, I weep for whomever will be your co-workers in future or who are currently.
7. ‘We are human, too, and’ is awkward. Change it to something like ‘We’re also human’ or break it up into two sentences.
8. Why is there a hyphen there? Jesus christmas, the run-ons are fucking ridiculous. If this were a conversation, I’d be worried for this dude’s health since he clearly doesn’t breathe enough.

What I love is the double-standard which I’ve already briefly mentioned. ‘You have to put more effort into your posts and appeals. By the way, we’re just going to not check or communicate with your or each other for days and let shit pile up because of likely fictional personal reasons and put in the minimum effort it takes to do this.’ Kids these days. The level of salt is also hysterical; again, I get the OP didn’t put any effort into the appeal, but this is a low-tier, first-world, first-class, front seat problem. You should not be getting this busted up about it.

On the topic of the OP putting in no effort, let’s continue onwards:

I smell an exposé afoot.

These are some pretty hefty yet believable claims. Ironically enough, a sub-Reddit I frequented daily got into a spat with the community when a bunch of garbage-tier trolls came in and clogged up the board, shitting on all the content creators of said board. Rather than check posting and visiting history of the new cloud of chaos, the moderators went on a ban spree and outright removed some content that they later ghost-added without any sort of notification or admission of culpability. When folks who came to the board more often than I pointed this out, a whole meta thread was started as to why one large running content series hadn’t come back, and the moderators explained that it was causing ‘too many headaches’. I balked vocally at this and defended the creator because the problem had been handled by the moderators in the laziest and shittiest fashion possible. I got the run-around and a mountain of explanations about how difficult it was and that incoming rule changes and additions would solve the problem. Naturally, the trolls got bored and left, so we have zero idea on whether or not the change was good, and that was never the problem. Don’t be a mod if you don’t want the headaches of the duty.

Moving on from my personal rant and back to these claims, our OP here was kind enough to provide some evidence:

Pow, right in the kisser!

At the time of initially reading this, I felt absurdly satisfied. Too often are people in minor positions of authority not called out on their hysterics and bullshit as doing so is ‘poking the bear’ to the average Joe. The inherent problem with this is that letting an unstable person dictate demands or ultimatums that are stupid and inane and not pushing back means that you set a precedent, and that said asshat can then refer back to all the times when you bent over as a reason for you to bend over even further in the future. Pushing back is effort and introduces chaos into a system, but it’s necessary, especially to keep morons from stepping on you or practicing truly fagacious behavior like this. Both of the moderators involved in this ‘dispute’ need to be shit-canned ASAP for being extremely sub-par at their job and for letting their shitty attitudes seep into their work, as well as their laziness and use of hyperbole.

The shellacking continues with this:

Poor baby.

When I was still doing help desk/call center work, it was regular policy to give people the run around through various departments at all the other departments that were not ours. Granted, my desk provided technical support, but we had plenty of people calling in about shit not even tangentially related to technical support. We’d redirect them and hopefully send them on their way, and what I want to say was about fifty percent of the time, we’d get the back within an hour. It became customary for us to simply ask a supervisor or worker in the department that the person was looking for what to do, and if it was extremely general (which mos t of the questions were), we’d handle it. Of course, we were the pet darlings of the company, and all the other departments who had been pushing this work off that we picked up became stupidly jealous when we got new equipment, raises, promotions, a bigger space and the best candidates, but that’s what happens when you decide to slag off.

Nothing about this answer here is acceptable. The fact that this fool is complaining about angry posters hurling shitty insults means this moron regularly gets into fights, and his wording implies that this happens often and with the other mods. Fighting with posters is the hallmark of a shitty moderator. So is constantly passing the buck, and the fact that these retards teach new blood to pass the buck and then disappear is just fucking sad. I’ve always advocated taking the higher road and simply ignoring insults, but that’s also because my ego isn’t shattered by someone calling me a ‘faggot’ or ‘spic’ or ‘lazy mexican’ or ‘nigger’ or ‘cuck’ or any other stupid insult there is. That’s what these fartboxes should be doing, along with collecting evidence to build their case against shit-stains who hurl insults like poo, but it’s pretty clear that this isn’t happening. Since these knobheads can’t grow thicker skin, then they need to start blocking people. It’s still shitty behavior, but it’s far better than being overly aggressive with your user-base.

There’s a tiny bit more I could comment on, but it’s just more excuses for the shitty moderator who started this whole chain and more excuses by the irate moderator as to why future appeals will probably take longer (hint: it’s because they’re just going to abdicate their duty and ignore the OP) and how he’s going to be away so he’ll be unavailable. While I again think that’s a bullshit excuse, at least he wised up and put it out there ahead of time so people won’t try and reach out to him only to find out he’s not there.

In summary, don’t be a dipshit. Don’t sign up for something that’s tedious and thankless if you want quick, easy work and a ton of praise. Don’t put yourself in a place of authority and then act like a spoiled brat with a temper problem. Don’t stick up for your crew if they’ve fucked up, because nobody likes cronyism. Above all, fucking check yourself before you wreck yourself, because getting your period about one single mail over the course of five days which only happened because nobody dealt with it and you want to get back to masturbating to Hatsune Miku is not something worth losing your shit over in any case.